If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Be ‘Em

This one is drawn by Becky Hawkins.

I rarely write cartoons with a release date in mind. Typically, I write a script and it sadly hangs around in my “unfinished cartoons” folder for months or years before getting drawn at some random time.

This cartoon was written back in January 2026, so I didn’t think of it as an Election Day cartoon. I didn’t even think about it when Becky selected the script several weeks ago for her October cartoon.

But as so often happens with our cartoon schedule, Becky got busy with other things, and now it’s almost Election Day. On October 31, I asked Becky if she’d intended it to be an Election Day cartoon. She replied dryly, “In my head it would’ve gone out a few weeks before the election, yes.”

So it’s pure luck that this cartoon has ended up being a commentary on current news. In the lead-up to the election, several centrist Democrats have unsubtly tried to undermine Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign, explicitly targeting him for his criticisms of Israel.

Sore loser and Israel fan Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed defeated in the primary despite Stevens having establishment support and a massive fundraising advantage, demanded that El-Sayed condemn an ad his campaign didn’t produce, and misleadingly claimed that El-Sayed had been making the same arguments as the ad. Ironically, Stevens’ pretext for her backstabbing statement was a planned joint appearance with El-Sayed which was billed as demonstrating Democratic unity before Election Day.

Stevens wasn’t alone. Nancy Pelosi condemned El-Sayed’s (and also Zohran Mamdani’s) positions on Israel just days before the election, seemingly agreeing with the host’s suggestion that El-Sayed is antisemitic. “It’s more than concerning, it’s wrong,” Pelosi said, adding that the position wasn’t representative of congressional Democrats.

A day later, a Pelosi spokesman emailed out a pro forma statement affirming her support for El-Sayed’s candidacy in this week’s election. Pelosi’s lukewarm support for winning a Democratic Senate majority makes her better than two well-known Democrats associated with Stevens’ losing primary campaign, mega-fundraiser David Kramer and law firm owner Jason Turkish, who have both publicly declared that they’ll vote for El-Sayed’s Republican opponent.

A couple of random receipts related to this cartoon:

For decades—from the 1980s through the 2000s—major Democrats argued that in order to compete in red states, the Democratic Party had to stop being so very pro-choice. For instance, after John Kerry’s defeat in the 2004 presidential election, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid backed anti-abortion Democrat Tim Roemer for Democratic National Committee chair. According to reporting in The L.A. Times, Roemer argued that abortion opponents would be more comfortable if the party talked about the issue in a more open-minded manner. Roemer said:

“We must be able to campaign in 50 states, not just the blue states or 20 states.”

Sound familiar?

“The Groups” is what centrist Dems began derisively calling progressive organizations in 2024, although the buzzword really took off in 2025. Matthew Yglesias, in an October 2025 piece entitled “The Groups Have Learned Nothing,” mentioned that he picked up the term from “talking to people who work on Capitol Hill.”

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

A four-panel cartoon set in a coffee shop. Two people sit at a counter: a brown-skinned person with glasses, green hair, and an undercut, eating a sandwich, and a blond man working intently on a laptop.

PANEL 1

GREEN HAIR: What are you doing?

BLOND: Saving democracy!

PANEL 2

A close-up of the blond man, intensely focused on his laptop.

BLOND: Democracy is doomed unless Democrats win more elections! And that means getting online and fighting “the groups!”

PANEL 3

Back to a wider view of the diner counter. The blond man gestures as he talks.

GREEN HAIR: Who are “the groups”?

BLOND: Trans activists, of course! The anti-ICE radicals… and the “stop the genocide” lunatics.

PANEL 4

Green Hair turns toward the blond man, who looks a little puzzled.

GREEN HAIR: So after you fight all those groups, then you’ll fight the real enemy?

BLOND: You mean pro-choice?

KICKER PANEL BELOW THE COMIC

BLOND: To defeat Republicans we must become Republicans.

CHICKEN FAT WATCH

The logo on the back of the laptop starts as an orange slice; then a circle with eyes on stems like a snail; then three cherries; and finally, a pear.

The left-hand character’s arm tattoos change! The tattoo of the unicycle turns into a tattoo of a bicycle. The other tattoos begin as a hot dog with “if you can read this, you’re too close”; then a burger with “My other car is a bicycle”; and finally, a taco with “Not all who wander are lost”

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Be ‘Em | Barry Deutsch on Patreon