MSNBC’S Ruhle Asks DNC Chair Harrison if Party Should ‘Start’ Engaging Culture War, He Replies ‘We Have To’
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle on Monday asked DNC Chair Jaime Harrison whether his party should start getting into the “culture war” in order to combat “misinformation and nonsense” from Republicans. Harrison agreed that they “have to” in order to “call the lies out.”
MSNBC’s analysis since the Virginia election has focused on culture war issues as the catalyst for Republican victories, suggesting that racism and white supremacy were primary motivators. It was that take on which Ruhle’s question to the DNC chair was predicated.
“Do you need to start addressing more of these culture war issues head-on?” Ruhle asked. She said that what she’s heard from Democrats up to this point has been to call Republican arguments on the topic misinformation.
“Until now, I often hear: ‘this is misinformation, this is nonsense,’ which it absolutely is,” she said. “However, this misinformation and nonsense is impacting how people vote. Do you need to take a different approach to combat it?”
“We have to,” said Harrison, working on the shared premise that until now Democrats have not engaged on so-called culture war issues.
“We have to call the lies out for what they are. And they’re bold-faced, put-them-in-a-box lies,” he said. “Democrats have to call out the lies, and we have to be bold in calling them out.”
Harrison said his party – the one with a candidate who repeatedly claimed that if a Republican were to win in Virginia, abortion would be outlawed – needs to address the Republican party using “fear” to motivate voters on social issues.
“They understand that the only path to power for them is to make the American people scared,” he said. “To come up with all of the dog-whistles, and the boogeymen and all of that. “They think somebody is living in their closet or something. That is what they — That is what they rely upon.”
Ruhle, whose network has repeatedly blamed white supremacy for the Democrats’ losses (and everything else), nodded in agreement that it is Republicans who use fear in elections.
“We’ve got to make sure that we paint the contrast,” said Harrison. “Let people know what we’ve done for them.”
Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.
