Jon Chait takes a run at the similarities between McCarthyism and today's hysterical attacks from conservatives on anything to the left of Mitch McConnell as "socialism" and "communism."
His jumping off point is that there were actual communists in America during the McCarthy Era. He points to Klaus Fuchs and Alger Hiss. Fuchs were unquestionably a Soviet spy, but he was spying for them in Britain, so...I'm not sure what the point of this was. Fuchs was perhaps the most damaging spy for Moscow, but it doesn't really say much about McCarthyism. Alger Hiss remains a fascinating Rorschach test about the Cold War. There is no smoking gun either way, but a ton of hearsay and circumstantial evidence. Hiss was likely a "Communist" but might not have passed on anything of value.
Regardless, the argument that the McCarthy Era adds some illumination to Democrats current debate seems fairly forced. History has not been as kind to McCarthy as the contemporaneous press was, but that hardly matters if you're trying to hold on to control of Congress.
Chait's thesis - and it's difficult to differentiate this from his long running obsession with campus speech codes and illiberalism on the Left - is a muddled mess. On the one hand, he's right that Democrats shouldn't engage in unpopular positions like "Defund the Police" or "Open Borders." When "The Squad" does embarrassing shit like vote against seizing Russian oligarchs' assets, because of civil forfeiture laws...that's just a stupid own-goal. On the other, the GOP media machine doesn't really care. The other lesson from McCarthyism is how much was just made up. Reporters helped "punch up" his crazy accusations to get front page bylines.
"Democrats" is also a tricky category. He mentions "dubious DEI training," which certainly exists and is another hobby horse of his. But we also know that teaching students that America was founded as a slave-holding nation dedicated to the white supremacy of slavery and the ethnic cleansing of Indian Removal is considered "CRT" by the Right. They are currently fomenting the idea that Social Emotional Learning is secretly CRT to make Becky and Chad hate that they are White.
One thing Democrats absolutely should do is make a positive case for letting people alone. Same sex marriage didn't poll great. It was rebranded as marriage equality and that helped get people to support it. Anti-LGBTQ bigotry is very real and not very popular. Culture war vendettas against Disney are not very popular. Vaccines are popular.
Defending human dignity should absolutely be a priority of Democratic messaging. I agree that Democrats shouldn't step on their own dicks, but neither should they cave in to Republican falsehoods and bigotry.
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