It’s hardly a secret that politicians like to define their opponents with simplistic, negative code words that can offset their positive messages and turn off potential voters.
For the 2020 Republicans, that word was “socialist,” as they sought, with some success, to make mainstream Democrats like Joe Biden into the ideological kin of self-proclaimed democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
For the Biden White House, the target is the “MAGA Republicans,” an effort to link all shades of Republicans with the anti-democratic extremism of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
