The Futility of Outrage

Lessons from Paul LePage’s Maine

Much the same as Donald Trump, Paul LePage began his tenure in office without a popular mandate. He made a name for himself in his campaign as a crass and blundering average Joe, free from the grasps of those pesky Wall Street Millionaires*. Six years before Donald Trump’s election, LePage had already weaponized a nebulous concept of populism in order to court, and eventually win, the votes of many Mainers.

While the LePage administration has done little to improve the lives of Mainers, he has certainly taught us all a valuable lesson: elected officials in this country enjoy near-impunity. The standard of professionalism that so many people in this country are held to in their workplaces simply does not seem to apply to politicians. And while outrage is of course an appropriate reaction to many of these incidents, it’s time we realize that alone, it is not an effective response. The job now for Democrats is to harness that outrage and channel it into a winning strategy.

Last week’s election results were a heartening example of just that. In addition to a landslide victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race, Democrats had a strong showing down ballot in the various House of Delegates campaigns. In Maine, a referendum question approving the expansion of Medicaid won by nearly twenty points** — a stunning rebuke of Republican talking points about the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act.

One thing is clear — we cannot stand by and do nothing but hope that our moral outrage will be echoed in the election results. Democrats must invest time, money, and effort into galvanizing their base and ensuring Jones’s victory. The lesson learned in Maine is now (hopefully) being learned country-wide: we live in a society where morality has fallen by the wayside of partisanship. Outrage won’t save us if we don’t show up. Showing up is the real resistance.

*As if.

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