She pauses for a moment.
“To the extent that we pretend that isn’t the case, we are complicit too. It is hypocritical to say it’s Democrats’ job to win back swing voters but think we’re taking the high ground when we decide we won’t ‘talk politics’ with Auntie Em at Thanksgiving. It’s not the job of the Democratic party, and it is definitely not the job of people of color, to change Auntie Em’s racist mind. It is our job, the job of everyone with an Auntie Em.”
“Yes,” I say, weighing it in my mind. “I think that’s right.”
The silence lengthens, as if we’re afraid to disturb the wonder of the moment.
Finally, I say, “So what do we do? About the O-O-T voters?”
“Well, we definitely don’t pander to them.” She checks in with me, to make sure we’re on the same page on this. When I nod, she continues, “We don’t tie ourselves in knots pretending that a jobs message will bring them back. We can point out that Republicans pit white, black, and brown families against each other in order to gain power for themselves and kickbacks for Republican donors. But it will be up to the O-O-T voter whether or not they are interested in a government that seeks to help all Americans—whether white, black, or brown; fifth-generation or newcomer; man or woman; LGBTQ or straight. Because we are the majority, and we are not going back.”54
She checks in with me again, and again I nod.
She nods back now, resolute. “And we will do what we’ve always had to do in the face of bigotry. We call it out. We stand up to it. We mobilize and we get to work and we take back our country. And we address global warming, and we fix the social safety net programs, and we restore our alliances across the globe. And when we do that, we will Save the White Man, along with the rest of us. And maybe, just maybe, some of them will come along.”
I consider this and can feel its ‘rightness.’
I say, “We can continue to make it a better world, for all of us.”
“Yes, yes we can,” she says. “The question is, the question has always been, ‘Will we take care of each other?’ And for Democrats, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’”
And so we get to work, to take back our country, so we can take care of each other.
…
My first impulse is to pull Dangerous World. “We need to take the video down. Take it off the website so it can’t do any more damage.”
Imogen says, “Right now, there’s still a lot of traffic to RAPAC’s site. If you take the video down, traffic will dry up. If we craft the right message, RAPAC’s website may be our only platform for it, and Dangerous World our only way of driving traffic there.”
“You’re right,” I say. “We need a new message, one we can lay over Dangerous World.
“Republican elites just gave themselves big tax cuts. They’ll need to gut the entitlement programs to pay for them. But Corey said Republican elites and the Republican base are not on the same page about entitlements. The base loves Social Security and Medicare.55 Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion is providing money for drug treatment. So increasingly, in areas hit by the opioid epidemic, they love Medicaid too.”
“Gimme your laptop,” says Imogen, holding out her hands. She types furiously for a minute, then turns the screen to face me.
Moral Hazard, People!
Compassion is for Losers: Gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
Inequality is for Winners: $Trillion Tax Cuts for the Wealthy!
Vote Republican!
I chew it over, but I’m not convinced.
“It does sum up the Republican position, but moral hazard is a clunky, chunky idea. I wouldn’t want to base the message on moral hazard.”
“Okay,” says Imogen. “Keep going.”
“Corey said that in 2008, O-O-T voters had to choose between their racism and populism. He said some guys at the Economist had some data that showed that O-O-T voters used to be torn between the subtly racist, economically conservative Republican campaigns and progressive economic Democratic campaigns. Corey says Trump offered explicit racism and promised populist economics. They didn’t have to choose anymore.56 So maybe that means that the right message would be one that forced O-O-T voters like Darryl to choose between racism and entitlements again?”
Imogen stares past my shoulder for a moment, thinking. She turns back to my laptop and starts typing. I sit down next to her so I can read over her shoulder.
It sure is fun to Trigger the Libs!
But is it worth gutting Social Security and Medicare?
Republican Vote = Gutted Social Security and Medicare57, 58
“It’s kinda long. But it’s straightforward and gets to the central trade off,” I say.
“What do we do with it?” she asks.
“We replace the final screen of Dangerous World, the one that says ‘Vote Republican.’ It didn’t take more than a day for the agency to add the Tamir Rice pictures, and this is just replacing text. I don’t think it’d take more than a couple hours. What else? What about Save the White Man?”
“It’s too late for the billboard. We’ll have to live with that. The website is another matter. I can strip out the fire bombs. It’ll be vanilla white paper stuff by morning.”
The Plan of Action, or POA as Imogen refers to it, writes itself:
Get agency to mock up new ads
Fire Corey
Leak Corey’s ‘Master Solution’ to press
Update website with new ad and statement about firing Corey
It takes all of five minutes to email the ad agency with directions and call my rep to make sure she understands what to do. I hang up and rest the phone on the coffee table, thinking that with the agency in motion, we’ve done what we can for the evening.
But Imogen reaches for my cell phone and holds it out to me.
“Fire Corey,” she says, her eyes burning.
Much as I despise Corey, I’m taken aback at how merciless, even venomous her gaze is.
“I can’t fire a man on the phone.”
“Not by phone. The Trumpian way to do it would be by tweet, but you don’t have a Twitter feed. Text is the next best thing.”
I don’t touch the phone, which she now has jabbed into my bicep.
“Corey is a bad person. He essentially told Sylvia Delgado, a Stanford-trained lawyer and lifelong community activist, that she should be cleaning toilets because she’s Latina. He thinks releasing the pussy-grabbing tape was marketing genius. He deserves a hell of a lot worse than being fired by text.”
She’s leaning in, hissing her s’s with the intensity of her hatred for Corey. It’s all I can do not to draw back.
What she says about Corey is horrible and true. But things got personal and violent between them. I think it’s clouding Imogen’s judgment, making her see red.
“No one should be fired by text,” I say, taking the phone from her and setting it back on the coffee table.
“Christ, Iz. It’s not like I’m asking you to kill the fucker.”
I think it’s just as well that Imogen supports gun control and showed no interest in going to the shooting range.
49
Hotshot
Wednesday, October 31st, six days until the midterms
Latest poll: Reed (R) 46%, Delgado (D) 49%, Undecided 5%
Field poll, conducted Oct 28–29, 2018
Where the hell is Darryl? I want to talk to him before we put the Plan of Action into effect. I want to explain, to the extent possible, what I’m doing and why.
Corey’s coming in for what I billed as a final messaging meeting, but what is actually a face-to-face so I can fire him. I’ve changed all the passwords on the computers, and I’ve put together the paperwork terminating Corey’s contract with RAPAC, but I still need Darryl to cut Corey’s final paycheck.
I call Darryl’s cell for the twentieth time. Pacing the bullpen, I wait for the call to go through, anticipating the roll to voicemail. Since I’ve already left where-the-hell-are-you messages, I’m
pretty much out of escalations. I guess I could say ‘fuck’ instead of ‘hell.’
Darryl picks up on the first ring. “Iz.”
“Christ, Darryl! I’ve left a dozen messages! Things are really hitting the fan here—I need you to get to the office.”
I gather myself to update him and lay out the game plan.
“Sorry, Iz.”
That stops me dead. Just two words, but he sounds awful. I mean really awful. His voice is naked, broken. Did Kathy serve him with divorce papers? What shit timing.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong, Darryl?”
I hear him take a ragged breath in the silence.
“Darryl?”
“Dad died.”
He says it on an exhale that ends in a caught breath, a suppressed sob.
“Oh my God. Oh, Darryl, I’m sorry. He sounded like a really good man, a really great father. I’m so sorry.”
“He overdosed. My clean-cut, Boy Scout–leader dad overdosed. They don’t know what it was yet, but there’ve been a bunch of fentanyl overdoses in Toledo. Street fentanyl mixed in with heroin, so people don’t know how strong it is.”
His inhale is wet, mucus-y. He’s crying but trying not to let me know.
He manages, “It could have been an accident.”
“Oh, man. Is there anything I can do? When are you flying out?”
“Uh, I don’t know. The neighbor did the identification. They need to do an autopsy, suspicious circumstances and stuff. The tox screen takes time. I can’t plan the funeral until I know when they’ll release, um, when they’ll be done.”
“Where are you? Do you want me to come by?”
He’s been crashing with a work buddy since Kathy threw him out. The buddy is single. I imagine the apartment as a low-end hostel for aging frat boys, even though Darryl didn’t go to college, so was never in a fraternity. I don’t imagine it to be the sort of place you get the support you need when one of life’s shitstorms rolls in.
“No, no. I’m okay.’’
His voice gives the lie to that.
“Have you told Kathy?”
“Oh, no. Man, she thinks it’s the Republicans’ fault Dad got kicked out of treatment. Trump’s fault for undermining Medicaid expansion and drug treatment—”
His voice breaks. I can tell he’s holding the phone away from his face so I won’t hear him sob.
I know there are no words that will make this better. I know this.
But still my mind is racing around, trying things on for size: I think Kathy is right. I think Republicans should answer for these opioid deaths, goddammit. Hell, they should answer for gun deaths too. They should pay! I’ve all but disappeared down the revenge rabbit hole before I remember. Anger may be easier than grief, but it only delays the inevitable, makes it worse. I remember what it is to be on the receiving end of condolences. When Mom died, people couldn’t stop trying to make it better, in ten million wrong ways. All wrong because death is an amputation: you can’t make it better, you have to learn to live with it.
I say, “Do you want me to call her? Call Kathy?”
“No. Iz. I’m fine. I’m fine. Don’t call Kathy.”
“Why don’t I come over. What’s the address?”
“I’m fine, Iz. I gotta go.”
50
You’re Fired!
Wednesday, October 31st, six days until the midterms
“I have to let you go.”
I can’t believe we have to go through this charade. Corey’s contract would have been up by the end of the month, but I can’t have him around, gumming up the POA.
“What do you mean? You ‘have’ to?” Corey uses his fingers to put air quotes around ‘have,’ and I can tell I’m going to regret my choice of words.
“That sounds like someone is making you. That the case, Iz? You not the boss, somebody else pulling the strings? Because if there’s a higher authority here, I’d surely like to meet him.”
“The Dangerous World ads were a mistake. A terrible mistake. I think your messaging strategy is misguided and dangerous, and I intend to take RAPAC’s messaging in a different direction.”
“A mistake? The phone’s been ringing off the hook! Dangerous World succeeded beyond expectations, in no small part because of your contribution, the addition of the Rice kid. Oh, I see, the higher authority isn’t a him. It’s a her. This is because of that black feminazi you’ve been banging, isn’t it? What? Did you think I didn’t know? Did you think Clive wouldn’t tell me? Can you honestly believe your interests are aligned with hers? She’s black. Dusky. Dark. Sinister—”
“Corey!”
This man is absolutely repulsive, and it would be very easy to do something I will regret later.
“I’m sorry I greenlighted the ads and will have to figure out what I can do to rectify my part in all this. But your affiliation with RAPAC ends now. Your racist messaging is bad for the party and the country.”
Corey draws back in mock horror.
“I never suggested racist messaging. I merely pointed out the very real possibility that the reason African Americans have lower economic achievement and health outcomes is due to cultural factors specific to the African American community.”
“Corey, you suggested African Americans are stupid and lazy.”
“I posited intellectual disability and motivational gaps as possible hypotheses for differences in culture and achievement. Can you disprove those hypotheses?”
“Corey, I’m not here to engage in a faux-academic debate about your ugly ideas about race.”
“You can’t disprove them, Iz. Just like you can’t disprove the hypothesis that the reason there are so few women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies is because women do their best work lying down.”
“Your contract with RAPAC says you serve at will, Corey. I don’t need to provide cause for terminating our contract. Effective immediately.”
“‘Let you go.’ ‘Terminating our contract,’” Corey simpers in a falsetto. “Do you not have the stones to say ‘You’re fired!’? Have you learned absolutely nothing from the Great DJT? Iz, you are such a fucking pussy. You show such a complete and utter lack of testicular fortitude that I can’t really believe you’re a Republican. You act like you’re a Democrat and you run RAPAC like a false flag operation.”
Are these Corey’s ideas of vicious insults, or is he finally on to me? Does it even matter now?
Corey takes another stab in the dark. “What happens to your ‘low profile’ once I’m not around to serve as spokesperson?”
Corey is getting closer to home. I’m hoping to handle press queries going forward with email statements attributed simply to RAPAC. It’s not clear how well that will work.
“You’re not as indispensable as you think, Corey,” I say, shooting for unconcerned and dismissive, but not sure I make it.
“I hear Peter Thiel is leaving the Bay Area, moving to Los Angeles. Seems Silicon Valley is getting inhospitable for conservatives,” Corey says as he gets up and buttons his suit jacket.
He pauses at the door to say, “Wonder what your Silicon Valley neighbors would think of Dangerous World. I bet the San Francisco Chronicle would be willing to run a story on Bay Area biotech bucks funding ‘racist messaging.’ Hell, maybe even the New York Times would be interested. They keep a California correspondent on staff . . .”
Corey signed a nondisclosure agreement but enforcing it will be meaningless if he outs me. Consider Stormy Daniels. After protracted legal wrangling, President Trump may win damages from Ms. Daniels. But that won’t change the fact that everybody knows he slept with her shortly after the birth of his youngest son, and that sex with him was ‘textbook generic.’ If Corey outs me as responsible for Dangerous World, I would become an utter pariah. Los Angeles wouldn’t be nearly far enough away. I’d be relocating to the Himachal Pradesh, or someplace else I can’t find on a map.
Reminding Corey of the nondisclosure agreement will just let him know he hit his target,
so I say, “I’ll need your office key back, Corey.”
But Corey is already gone.
I wander out through the bullpen and the reception area and take a look at the office front door. Like the rest of the office and building, the lock is serviceable, but nothing high end. Should I get a locksmith in to change the cylinder? It’s less than a week to the election. Two weeks until the end of the lease. I have renter’s insurance; the lease required it.
My cell alerts me to a text from Darryl. He says he’s hanging in there and plans to swing by RAPAC’s office Saturday morning. He can take care of the last round of bills and generally wrap things up so that I can close down the office after the election even if he’s in Ohio. I text back not to come in if he’s not up to it but am deeply relieved. This means he can cut Corey’s severance check, and we can sign off on the severance paperwork. This also means I can get Corey’s key back in a few days.
I consider how much mischief Corey could get up to in the office if he chose to. I look at the big whiteboard in the bullpen and can imagine obscenities scrawled in Corey’s signature, permanent Sharpie across the surface. Replacing the whiteboards is probably cheaper than changing the lock, and faster than hanging around waiting for a locksmith to show. Anyway, Corey is a professional; he needs to protect his reputation.
51
Natural Selection
Saturday morning, November 3rd, three days until the midterms
Latest poll: Reed (R) 47%, Delgado (D) 47%, Undecided 6%
LA Times/USC Poll, conducted Oct 31–Nov 1, 2018
Rules of Resistance Page 19
