PopTech
Republican campaign strategy sure can be despicable sometimes. When it comes to winning elections, no tactic is out of bounds. There’s no blow that’s too low.
Dog whistle racist messaging is alive and well. We see it strutting around in all its shameless glory in those “law and order” television campaign commercials. The crime footage is skillfully curated to imply that packs of young Black thugs are rampaging through pristine suburban neighborhoods, thanks to the permissive policies of Democrats. It’s about as subtle as an elephant stampede. But if racist fearmongering is necessary for their side to win, they won’t hesitate to do it.
The same goes for stoking fear of transgender people. Another strategy is to frantically try to convince us all that the secret agenda of trans people is to gain access to all public bathrooms so they can fulfill their inherent destiny as voyeurs and molesters. Who cares who gets hurt by sounding this false alarm? If that’s what it takes to win, that’s what it takes to win.
So why should it be any different when it comes to appealing to the most base disability bigotry? John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, is getting a painful crash course in how that works. Fetterman had a stroke back in May but has kept campaigning while he recovers.
The point of all this sleaziness is to associate disability with incompetence in the minds of as many Pennsylvania voters as possible.
As a result of the stroke, Fetterman has lingering communication disabilities. In order to understand what others around him in public are saying, he uses a closed captioning system, where speech is converted into printed words to be read off of a screen.
Fetterman’s opponent, the Oprahoid celebrity creation Mehmet Oz, has used Fetterman’s new method of communication as a means of questioning his fitness for holding office.
Fetterman is also having trouble communicating verbally. So the Republican National Committee seized the opportunity to post on Twitter a video montage of Fetterman stumbling over his words while speaking publicly. Accompanying the montage was the caption, “Does it sound like Fetterman is fit for office?”
The point of all this sleaziness is to associate disability with incompetence in the minds of as many Pennsylvania voters as possible. Closed captioning is used every day by deaf people and other disabled folks who can’t communicate effectively by traditional means. It’s empowering and liberating. And if a person stumbles over or searches for words, that certainly doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about. But Oz and his handlers would have us all believe that anyone who doesn’t do things the “normal” way just doesn’t count.
This tactic seeks to destroy decades of hard work that disability activists have done dispelling such stupid notions. That’s insulting and disgusting. Let’s hope it backfires.