Politics: Is Anti-Them a Good Thing?

Welcome back to the miscellaneous posts of this blog. I was wanting to do another theme, but will not put that in this blog just yet. The other theme will continue and alternate as usual. Now let’s get to the post.

Something that seems to happen a lot today in politics is the anti-them message. Don’t vote for x because of various reasons mentioned in this advertisement. They are bad due to their association with another person. This message is clearly anti-them. Them can be one person or a group of persons. It is not the same person all the time. Both of the sides might do this at once in the same election. It could even spread to different races in the end.

I think that most people from both sides can agree that anti-them is wrong. Why make your only argument for why you should win be that someone else shouldn’t? Why is it good for some people if your best argument for the race is that someone else is bad?

You’d think that there would be nothing positive to the anti-them message. But, from what I have been able to gather from recent years, it works as a message. Anti-them probably helped out the Democrats in both 2006 and 2008. Obama won with anti-Bush rhetoric in 2008, even though he wasn’t even running against Bush. Anti-Obama rhetoric then won the day for Republican’ts in 2010, 2014, and even 2016, despite Obama never being on the ballot once in any of those elections. Mitch McConnell was able to win in 2014 doing this although it might have helped that his opponent wasn’t wanting to embrace Obama being a good person. Trump then won with the anti-Obama rhetoric himself even though smart people should have known just how great we were doing under the Obama administration.

Of course, one also needs to remember and realize that this isn’t always what is done. Some might think that all the other party wants is for one to lose. But that’s not it at all. While some might think that the 2020 Democrats wanted Trump out of office as their only messaging, they have plenty of other ideas beyond that as many will state on their websites.

Still, a point that one needs to remember is that if one is challenging an incumbent to the race is that they don’t want to current person to win and would thus have to be anti-them in at least some minor way. Even the one who wants to stay in office would have to make the case for why he or she should win instead of the other person. Even if you don’t want to point out flaws, there has to be a bit of anti-them in your way of thinking or else they might not understand what is wrong with this other candidate in the end.

I would have to say in the end that anti-them is always a bad message. I want to know why I should vote for someone and not against another person. Even though I know you have to point out a person’s flaws in the end or a party’s problems, I want to know why you are good and not why the other party is bad. Those are my thoughts on why anti-them is not a good thing.