The primaries are over, and the winners declared. Voters and taxpayers are now going to be subjected to the general election campaign for state offices, governor, and federal House and Senate seats. We say “subjected,” because we expect little on real issues will be discussed by candidates – if they primaries are any example. Instead, we will see name-calling of vilest kind, and use of terms that, if they were properly used, would make adults blush. Unfortunately, we have few, if any adults, in politics today.
Locally, we saw a prime example of how issues are off the table, and many may not be discussed as one or the other person presumes he (or she in this case) have the moral high ground and any questioning is out of bounds. The people involved should be embarrassed, but we doubt it
Trenee McGee was battling Joseph Miller for the right to be the Democratic nominee for the 116th District. McGee, who won a special election last year was the party-endorsed candidate, Miller, a proclaimed Democratic activist, the challenger. The issue of abortion came up, and it was on this topic both candidates showed what is wrong with political discourse in the nation.
McGee gave an impassioned speech earlier the spring against abortion – a very noble and courageous thing to do given the Democratic Party’s stance. For her it was personal, and racial in that she related her experiences growing up and how abortion was a given for women of color.
Miller took that speech, given on the floor of the General Assembly, and used it in his campaign, taking the party line, calling for abortion on demand. So far, no egregious errors, but then things got ugly.
A story in the Hartford Courant asked for Miller to respond to McGee’s speech. Miller said the speech was one reason he decided to run and fight for what he considered party values. McGee, in a detailed answer, fired the first salvo. She said in no uncertain terms Miller, as a man, a white man, can’t speak to her beliefs. Not too bad, but it bespeaks a problem in that some feel only women can talk about this issue. Then she said the speech, if it prompted him to run seemed a “supremacist” motive.
Miller, correctly asked for a retraction and apology, but then he went off the rails in that he called abortion a “fight for the soul” of the Democratic Party.
What we have here are two candidates telling the other to “shut up.” Their beliefs are not only not to be heard, but are morally wrong, and shouldn’t be allowed for discussion. McGee calling Miller a “supremacist,” and Miller saying the issue involves the soul of the party are both shutting the discussion down: end of discussion, you have no right to be heard.
We see it all the time. Let’s list the words used: fascist, Nazi, supremacist, racist, homophobe, Islamophobe, Transphobe, xenophobe. These, and many more words are used today to shutdown discussion as if discussion itself, or a differing view, is something that cannot be heard by civilized people. Nonsense. It’s a vehicle to put the opposing view on the defensive, and it should be called out for what it is: un-American.
It started decades ago with “racist,” and it continued and grew legs during the Obama administration, when any disagreement on policy was shut down as racist and beneath contempt. It has grown, and in a social media world has morphed into the inability to recognize people can have differing views for valid reasons.
McGee won the election, but she lost in the sense she demeaned herself. Miller lost the election, and lost esteem for hyperbole, demeaning himself. We all lost because a true discussion of a major issue became a cudgel for both sides to use instead of engaging the in battle of ideas. And remember, this was an intra-party squabble. Who knows what we’ll see and hear next.