The following is an excerpt from our upcoming book, Obey In Advance: How to Survive and Thrive Under Authoritarianism by longtime McSweeney’s writer Ginny Hogan and McSweeney’s resident satirist Carlos Greaves. From how to stick your head in the sand to avoid thinking about your dictator, to the most effective ways to reeducate the masses, this hilarious (and oddly reassuring?) guide has you covered—whether you want to Make Authoritarianism Great Again or not.
Democrats Need to Win Back Voters by Becoming Republicans
“Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is offering a warning about the rise of a ‘dirtbag left’ within the Democratic Party, a reference to candidates on the left who have run and won primaries while identifying themselves as democratic socialists.” — The Hill
The Democratic Party needs to take back our country. After losing in a landslide by 1.5 percent of the vote in 2024, it was clear the party had completely lost touch with everyday Americans. Now there is only one solution: we must win back voters by becoming Republicans.
If the election told us one thing, it’s that, across the board, the American people like Republican policies more than they like Democratic policies. That’s why we must head in the same direction the Republican Party is heading—towards a Christian ethnonationalist, crony capitalist state. Turns out, that’s what our base wanted all along.
Think of the voter ideological spectrum as a beach, and each political party as a beach-chair rental hut. If the Republican chair rental hut is over on the far right side of the beach, then all we, as Democrats, have to do is park our chair rental hut a little to the left of their hut, and we’ll capture the entire left side of the voter beach. According to the principle of minimum differentiation, America wants two political parties that are virtually indistinguishable, and that’s exactly what we intend to give them.
Kamala Harris did an admirable job trying to become a Republican. Nothing says “party of the people” like seeking out the endorsement of a wildly popular, salt-of-the-Earth everyman like Dick Cheney. If there’s one mistake the Harris campaign made, it was not doing more of that.
From now on, we must do everything Republicans do, but better. Democratic candidates should be on right-leaning comedians’ podcasts making fun of trans athletes. They should abandon “woke” social policy talking points like “racism is a thing there should be less of” and focus instead on kitchen-table economic issues like “immigrants should not be allowed to go to the doctor.” And they must stop harping on democracy since clearly nobody cares. The only “norm” the Democrats should be focused on from now on is Norm from Cheers—a beer-drinking middle-aged white guy—which is a key demographic Democrats have been ceding to Republicans for far too long.
These changes are the only way Democrats can earn back voter trust. By becoming indistinguishable from Republicans, Democrats can prove that, like Republicans, they too are in step with the voting populace. Then, the only other task remaining is to crush any opposition to the left of us. After all, that’s exactly what Republicans would do.
Advance praise for Obey in Advance:
“This book is the catharsis we all need. It’s not easy to make this current political moment funny, but Greaves and Hogan pull it off again and again. I laughed my ass off (which explains where it went).”
—Nikki Glasser
“This is the only self-help guide to living under a dictatorship that you will ever need, and by far the funniest. Read it before it’s banned.”
—Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report
“Democracy is priceless, but fascism sure seems to pay well. If you’re morally bankrupt and looking to sell your soul, Obey in Advance has everything you need for a profitable life of lickspittlery.”
—Kevin Kruse, Professor of History, Princeton University
Obey in Advance will be out this September and is available for preorder at our store.
