“The best defense is a good offense…”

Champion boxer Jack Dempsey, circa 1920’s

Two ways to win a fight: offense or defense

The actions to protect our democracy can be divided into two spheres: defense and offense.  Defense includes fighting lawsuits that attempt to undermine free-and-fair voting, challenging arrests that occur without due process, and opposing infringement on the protection of free speech.  But all these can be controversial because, in many cases, those being defended deserve the punishment they're getting.  It’s right to defend these principles, but it’s obnoxious to everyone when the defendant is an illegal gang member or the speech is widely perceived as anti-American.

So, an easier (but harder) way to defend this is to shift the defense to a strong offense.  A strong offense is congressional leaders who are working on issues and advocating solutions that are productive.  Policies that broadly benefit the US electorate take focus away from divisive questions like whether to detain illegal immigrants who are criminals without due process.  This approach drastically weakens the back-and-forth rhetoric of the Trump and Democratic-factions in each party.

The Blue Dog way is “good offense”.  It uses pragmatic approaches to issue that make reconciliation easier. For example, does anyone not support a smaller national debt?  Does anyone not support congressional leaders that serve their local constituents?   

The Blue Dog approach is attractive because it accepts that competing interests exist.  But it’s local-centric approach promotes a political culture where compromises to competing interests can be found.

An example of this within the Blue Dog coalition is on tariffs.  Jared Golden represents a district in Maine where manufacturing is important.  Adam Gray represents a district in the Central Valley of California where agriculture drives the economy.  Tariffs help US manufacturing but hurt US agriculture.  But a local-centric political culture enables these competing interests to be worked on.  It blocks the high-level polarized rhetoric from taking over.  It puts Jared Golden and Adam Grey on the same side of the table to find a way forward that may implement some tariffs but not others, for example.

The Blue Dog approach re-empowers congressional legislators so they can do productive work.  It undermines the authoritarian approach that Trump advocates, which leads to polarizing rhetoric, centralization of power, and stalemate.

Now is the time for two things to happen.

One is for the Blue Dogs to 5x or 10x the size its coalition.  In 2026, there needs to be a Blue Dog candidate in the primary and/or election in every district where there are conservative-leaning voters who hunger for a leader without the divisiveness, controversy and risk-to-US-democracy of Trump.  There are between 50 and 100 districts in Congress that have large blocks of working-class voters who starve for a Blue Dog-style candidate to vote for

Second is events, promotion, and advocacy.  These candidates need to be seen by voters.  They need to be recognizable as:  conservative and anti-Trump.  They need to cultivate ways for voters to find them, understand them, and talk about them.  From this, candidates can be competitive against Trump-loyal Republican candidates in right-leaning districts that, up to now, have had no realistic alternative to a Trump vote.

The approach saps the strength of Trump extremism without giving up conservative values.  This the option that voters in rural districts want and cannot find.  Weakening of Trump extremism becomes merely a valuable side effect of productive political leadership.

• Wins: 68

• Wins by knockout: 53

• Losses: 6

• Draws: 9