In 2004, I was on leave from the Marines and went to Ohio to visit a girl I was dating. It was right before the election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, and the Buckeye State was the swing state to decide it all.
During a get together with several of her friends, some started remarking how it was unfeasible that Bush might win again. Why? Because he was “stupid”, “dumb” and “unintelligent.” One person even remarked about his low SAT scores and that meant she was clearly more qualified to be president than him.
I was a bit baffled. Yes, Bush did the whole laid back, slow talking Texan thing and had a whole bunch of Archie Bunker-style malapropisms. But if you actually paid attention to politics, Bush was one of the most cunning and ruthless politicians ever to run for office. He could (and would) kneecap opponents by any means necessary. Look up John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary or Kerry and the so-called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”
Of course, Ohio and the election went to Bush. Democrats pulled out their hair and wondered how someone so “dumb” could be president. Twenty years later, here we are again, not learning the lessons of the past.
Democrats still have an air of superiority which leads them to vastly underestimate their opponents. This attitude has led to many baffling election losses in which they appear more inept than the party over which they claim intellectual superiority.
Like many liberals, I have seen just about all the Jordan Klepper vignettes that he has done for “The Daily Show,” going to Trump rallies and finding some poor souls to bait into saying incredibly stupid things. Of course, it is all edited and packaged to seem like everyone there is a nitwit, and it works. Klepper, along with other similar acts like Walter Masterson and The Good Liars have carved out a nice living making MAGAs look stupid.
This act is nothing new. Jay Leno did it with the average American on the streets of Los Angeles. Jesse Watters did the same for Fox News, targeting liberals. And now, with TikTok, a whole slew of interviewers create videos intended to portray whole groups as stupid. Whether it be Americans, college kids, women, MAGA supporters or football fans, it works because it makes the viewer feel smarter. The problem is, we all buy it and then assume that this extends to everyone, in the group, including Donald Trump.
As liberals, we need to be honest right now. We have treated everyone from Trump to Bush to Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) as imbecilic, then watched as they won elections and took control of the country. Maybe we need to start accepting that Republicans are just better at winning elections, and that we persistently underestimate them.
One of the reasons they do this is because of education. Yes, a higher percentage of Democratic voters have college degrees than Republicans, which used to not be the case. But most Republican politicians, despite their attacks on higher education, came through higher education. Bush went to Yale and Harvard. Trump attended Penn. Vivek Ramaswamy went to Harvard, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to Princeton and Harvard, Peter Hegseth to Princeton and Harvard, Vice President JD Vance to Yale, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to Harvard and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to Yale and Harvard.
Even more Republicans went to top-notch state schools and have advanced degrees in law, business, policy and STEM fields. And while excelling at those schools, they learned a valuable lesson. Only they themselves need to be the smartest guys in the room in order to win elections.
They are correct. By utilizing culture wars, populism, religious differences and faux patriotism, while building a distrust in education and government, Republican politicians are using their own educations to control government.
It is about time Democrats shed the dumb Republican stereotype and start treating their political opponents as equals, if not as their intellectual superiors. Maybe then they won’t be stuck on the sidelines trying to explain to their voters why they keep losing to the party they look down on.
Jos Joseph, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq, is a master’s candidate at the Harvard Extension School at Harvard University.
