My schtick is: no matter how bad things are, Republicans will try to make it worse, and often succeed (see, e.g., abortion rights in Texas), and that that difference matters.
But if you have a Plan B for making things better, let's hear it.
Because I really want to know: if you don't think getting more Democrats into power is a good idea, what is your alternative idea? And what is the plan for accomplishing it?
And I don't buy your "broken person" claim. You're smart enough and engaged enough to find one of the best writers on the net (Freddie). If you can do that, there's clealry a lot more that you can do.
You're right that I don't think there is a better idea out there, but then again I've been wrong before. I'm a scientist, and this is how most us think and argue: we always want to find the better idea, the one no one thought of before. These ideas sometimes come out of left field, so most of us keep our heads up, watching for them. We also want to persuade other scientists with whom we disagree that we are right and they are wrong, but sometimes we get persuaded instead. This has happened to me many many times.
Good post, though I wonder about your assertion that the party's gone right. I would have said that's true up through, say, Clinton or George W. administrations, but that it's gone left since then, particularly on economics, and one reason Biden has been so good, overall, is precisely because the party's been trending left. He and the party leadership have been responsive to the impact that some of these big primary wins (AOC, e.g.) have had on the dangers of totally ignoring the left wing of the party. I think there's some fear among the centrist establishment, though not enough, that if they totally ignore the left base they'll get seriously primaried. Isn't that the strategy? One problem with Sinema and Manchin is that it's not at all obvious that a more left wing candidate would be able to win in those states, so it's a less plausible threat to them in particular.
Agree. It's definitely gone left culturally, but I just don't see how you can look at what Biden has proposed, and the vast majority of the party has supported, and not see that as evidence of leftward movement since the Obama stimulus, which was smaller than the bipartisan (!) infrastructure bill and way smaller than the big bill they're trying to pass through reconciliation. And the economy is in better shape now than after the great recession.
I disagree. Pretty much every government response to Covid has been driven by pure panic and fear of the unknown. I would rate those as more significant factors than any commitment to Keynes.
I think if you look at what the 2020 Dem presidential candidates were saying, and putting in their platforms, it's pretty clear that the Party moved left from 2016 and 2008. The experience of the 2008 crisis was a factor, I think, and increasing economic inequality, and the success of some left-wing primary candidates, knocking off establishment Dems. Some of the covid response was panic, definitely, but the big spending was easier because it's become pretty clear that the Clintonite center-left economic approach wasn't doing much of anything to halt the increase in inequality.
I don't disagree that socialism is now a mainstream position for party activists. But for the country at large I don't think you can draw a comparison between the Covid response and anything else to be illustrative of anything. It's just too dissimilar to anything else.
The Great Recession devastated my life. I lost my business, all my savings, my housing situation with basically no safety net whatsoever, didn’t qualify even for unemployment because I had been self employed. I didn’t even have health insurance. It took most of a decade to rebuild. If you can see what happened over the last two years, even with the flaws, of enhanced unemployment available to almost anyone, cash payments, eviction moratoriums, student loan deferments, and not see a leftward economic shift EVEN IF it’s not all the way to where some of us would prefer it be.
The response to both was an orgy of money printing and a wealth redistribution from the middle class to the donor class. We're pretty much where we were.
Agree that "blue no matter who," which used to be my own philosophy, is counter-productive for anyone hoping for alignment of thought in congress. What worries me about this situation and the pressure on Joe Manchin is just plain old stupidity. They are clinging to their barely there majority. Both are in states that really want republicans. Arizona will be red before too long. The pendulum is swinging away from the left, at least in government. So is the idea to get this passed just before the red wave? Isn't democracy supposed to be about accepting different points of view and not pressuring or bullying people into going along with something? That is what I thought it was. But I see authoritarianism rising in its place on the left. I have even seen her called a racist by a major publication, just for disagreeing. I could never belong to any party that went along with this kind of thing, not in a country with so many different kinds of people. That is why I am not longer a democrat.
One of my least favorite things that is common now is parties encouraging huge amounts of donations to these races just so they can try to get someone from their own party in. Something feels very nefarious about encouraging people from all over the country to donate money to a candidate running in a place that these people have never even visited. Strategically, obviously, it makes sense. But it feels morally wrong. I have my own candidates I can donate to, volunteer, and vote for. It is not my place to go outside that and start affecting other elections.
Maybe one of the reasons politicians aren't accountable to voters is because the people who prop up their careers aren't their voters...
Absolutely. And now with the blue checks of twitter adding to the noise - using fear, intimidation and public humiliation. This is how you get AOC with 12 million Twitter followers deciding what everyone should do in the places they live. It just doesn't sound "democratic" to me. Are they sure they even want people to vote at all?
There appears to be a huge streak of the left (there might be on the right too, for all I know) that has given up on self-governance. Even among friends who are political, I hear things that amount to "oh, those people are too stupid and backwards and brainwashed to ever decide for themselves".
And I'm like...maybe, but the point of democracy is they get to decide anyway! They think you're just as foolish as you think they are (see: there's a lot of memes on the right pointing out that Dem-run cities are having all sorts of issues with crime and surging homelessness and shit on the sidewalks). I don't know where this idea that any one policy is so self-evidently good that only a moron wouldn't vote for it is coming from, but it's corrosive.
Yeah, my biggest problem with moderates and even some people on the left is their antidemocratic streak. For the record, this is obviously true on the political right. They advocate explicitly for less representation in government.
I remember when Trump won in 2016 and journalists and thinkpiecers all came out to write thousands of words about how democracy is actually bad because it means idiots will elect an idiot.
I mean, the obvious way to convince voters is to actually talk to voters. There is barely a functioning Democrat grassroots organization anywhere in the country. I live in Minnesota--the only state not to vote for Reagan!--and the state has been migrating to the right because conservatives get out there and knock on doors constantly. But liberals seem to have just resigned themselves to never convincing these people so they don't even bother to try.
Never mind that the reason Obama won Iowa was because he went there over 100 times!
But when your party has no interest in addressing the material needs of people, it is hard to get out there, knock on doors, and then tell the people you're reaching out to that you plan on addressing exactly zero of their grievances.
Yes, but fewer votes than Obama in a year with higher turnout. Also worth remembering that Trump was a deeply unpopular candidate with no experience in government, and that's who she lost to.
Why do you support governmental institutions, then, that give places like West Virginia, with so few people, such disproportionate power over national politics then? I'm from the state and it hasn't exactly made anything better here. West Virginia is still run by pharmaceutical kingpins and rich assholes.
That compromise was required to get a country together in the first place. Small states have zero incentive to participate in an enterprise where they will get no voice whatsoever in national policy.
Careful with saying “get no voice whatsoever” when it’s actually “get a voice proportional to their population.” Some people use slippery language like that to try to pull a fast one with people who aren’t paying attention.
The outcome is the same. It's one of the reasons I think federalism needs to make a huge comeback--California can easily run roughshod over Wyoming, but California does not have the best interests of Wyoming at heart, nor does it necessarily know what's best for it. Decision-making should be as local as possible.
This is one of the major issues I have with the EU as well. Ireland has been getting drawn further and further into Europe. The bigger players like France and Germany throw small amounts of funding their way for infrastructure, and yes, without European money, Ireland's roads would still be shit or nonexistent, but for a country that never developed an indigenous industrial base, and only competes due to being able to set the ludicrously low corporate tax rate, giving up those levers in exchange for powerless membership in a Franco-German economic scheme seems insane. We've already seen what happens following the banking crisis. Let's not lean into that for all the PIIGS sakes.
Federalism makes a ton of sense in providing a voice to what would be marginalised groups. Similarly we elect representatives for rural areas at ratios to the population of far below that of urban areas. But if we were to just base it on population, the state is run predominantly by people divorced from the rural constituencies.
To say that, like Freddie implied in his last post talking about how it's always punching down when we don't like our opponent, our emotions are strong and full of logical pitfalls.
'I think this is exemplified in the presidency of Barack Obama, who appeared to be doggedly attached to appearing to be more reasonable than Congressional Republicans, never seeming to grasp that there was simply no advantage to having that laurel.'
This is a core misunderstanding of American politics.
By appearing 'reasonable' Obama was able to reassure the PMC (media, social workers, educators, etc. etc. etc.) about everything that he sought out to do. As a result he had carte blanche to do what he wanted: he launched a catastrophic intervention in Libya, expanded drone wars over much Middle East, presided over a border crisis wasn't scrutinized ('kids in cages'), he let the banking industry get away with murder, expanded imperial presidential powers, etc. etc. etc.
There's a swath of Americans - an ersatz elite with some power - who want respectability and reassurance. Providing them with that gets you a lot.
Now that Obama's in his fat Elvis phase (to quote Matt Taibbi), partying with celebs, living in his mansion, planning the construction of his imperial mausoleum that will take the place of a park in Chicago, and generally not giving a fuck, we perhaps have a better view of who Obama is and what he was able to get away with.
I don't. Partisans, even jaded partisans, tend to think this way. I am a far right winger, for example, and most of my fellow far rightists believe that the Republican party is intentionally sandbagging any rightward progress and that the Democrats are far more bloodthirsty, far more ruthless, far less ready to compromise. And I think they feel this way because when something in this country shifts culturally leftward, we on the right feel it in the gut, it's a personal attack, it's our patrimony being destroyed, our values are under attack etc etc. It doesn't really register that, for a professional politician, it's all in a day's work. Meanwhile if something vaguely rightist does occur - Trump's 'remain in Mexico' policy, for example* - it's not nearly so visceral a feeling. Instead it's: OK, add a point to the scoreboard. Now the hard work continues. In other words: any setback is catastrophic; any victory is tiny.
That's how I think Freddie regards leftist victories - and, to be as fair as possible to him, I'll also add that the leftist victories over the past twenty years have been mostly cultural, with only a very few economic, and my take on his writing is that he's far more concerned with bread and butter than nouns and pronouns.
*And this is where I begin to side with the partisans. On what planet is adhering to international law - remaining in the first safe country - any kind of victory? It's less Lady Justice and more a simpering consumptive coughing blood into a handkerchief. And I imagine this is much how Freddie feels when there's some minor reshuffling of parental tax credits or something. Yeah, it's a win, but look at the loss column!
I don't really understand why the Left, who make up perhaps 10% of Americans, and perhaps a quarter of the Democratic Party, think that they should be directing policy.
The working class remnants of the Democratic Party and black voters are far more conservative, economically and socially, than Leftists as are the suburban voters who decide elections in purple states.
The burgeoning Hispanic population, who will likely be the most important demographic in deciding elections the next few decades is Catholic, working class, and increasing in wealth.
I agree that Leftists need a plan: It should be to convince the rest of us why we should go along with them.
"Thinking they should direct policy" is just another way to say "have values and positions on politics." We're all expressing beliefs that most people don't hold on almost any issue. Or are you really in alignment with the country on every issue?
I disagree - I think economically there's a leptokurtic distribution where most Republicans and Democrats are actually pretty close. We want a welfare state (the Dems represents this tendency of the median voter) but we don't want to pay for it with regressive tax schemes like they have in Europe (Republicans represent this tendency of the median voter). Sinemas and Manchins fit pretty well into this part of the distribution.
If you're out in one of the tails and you want to realign society, it's your job to make your case.
Even assuming the majority of voters don't want regressive taxing schemes, bolstering a welfare state doesn't need to rely on this scheme. One of the big changes in my life is the way deficit obsessives have suddenly become quiet, so creating that welfare state shouldn't be a problem for Democrats.
Yeah, I dunno - this is a separate subject. I think if you are funding a welfare state you have to figure out a way to pay for it even though it's easier politically not to - the bill will eventually come due. Maybe we can have debt that is 200% of GDP but it's not clear that is a good thing. At some point we will do what? Devalue the currency and wipe out wealth of a lot of old people with modest savings? You do get to my point though that the Republicans largely align with the Democrats - they both want large welfare states that aren't paid for; the Democrats just want one that's modestly larger with modestly higher taxes.
Yeah, I agree with that. Though I think there are many ways to pay for the expansion of the welfare state than through aggressive taxation, even if I, personally, would prefer aggressive taxation (more as a limit to wealth, honestly).
I tend to think that the real Silent Majority in america are people who are cultural conservative and fiscally liberal.
Yeah I think this is right. Although I would qualify that to the degree that Americans are fiscally liberal they support broad transfer entitlements that have broad revenue sources.
So, Medicare/Medicaid, SS, etc. are what is popular.
I don't think Americans are fiscally liberal in the sense that they are supportive of more extravagant technocratic endeavors on par with Europe or Canada, for example. Again, it's the paradox of, 'I want a small government which gives me lots of stuff.' It may sound kind of stupid at first ('Keep the government out of my Medicare'), but if you are a left leaning libertarian the more you think about it the better it seams. To the degree that I am left-leaning fiscally, I would rather you give people a check than a social program.
I thought that too but read this the other day and now am not sure (and am thoroughly depressed). Would love to see a left rebuttal to this b/c if it's true that most WWC voters not only culturally but also economically conservative and hostile to social welfare programs, our struggle is even more uphill than I thought: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/can-democrats-win-back-the-white-working-class/
You can't just look at a tax on its own and say it is regressive. If you make $1000/month and then pay $500 in taxes but then get transfers equal to $1000, bringing your income up to $1500, is the tax still regressive?
Right, but that's generally not what you get in Europe. You get 'free education,' 'free healthcare,' etc. I think the question is do you want marginal tax rates of 50% once you hit $75k to pay for those things?
Yet Democrats have been saying for my entire lifetime that we should be more like the old continent, and to no avail. Why?
I immigrated to the US from Europe. I could give you chapter and verse on why. But somehow two weeks in Tuscany gives the upper middle class all the answers. Many such cases!
It's because we're in broad alignment with the general population on some pretty salient issues, mostly involving having a functioning welfare state, higher taxes on the wealthy, not invading other countries, etc. It would be nice if we could get a majority (even a plurality) of American voters to call themselves "leftists," but I don't think that's necessary to make significant progress.
Much of the project of the left is getting bourgeois politicians to act on their stated values, to bring about a government that's more responsive to actual popular attitudes. A modest first step, but a necessary one.
"Representative democracy only works if the representatives are accountable to the demos, but our partisan system and the power of party identification means there’s often precious little responsibility to voters to be found." Isn't accountability to the demos exactly what might be happening in AZ and WV? Seems to me most pols are extremely responsive to their voters, and when the voters shift so do the pols.
Arizona Democrats, who elected her, are trying to recall her for blocking Biden's agenda. And the point is general: if you give someone your vote no matter what, there is literally no reason for them to ever give you what you want.
It is interesting how the media narrative works: being conservative is inherently associated with "what people want" to a point where many people assume that if a democrat is conservative, it's because they are just doing their damned best to please civilian voters... being progressive is likewise inherently associated with "alienating hippie shit" no matter how many voters want it. It's a strong symbolic order.
I strongly agree with your general point. This was an aside on how there is so much energy directed at politicians, not their constituencies. Not "why is Sinema doing this or that" I think the better approach is "why is AZ doing this or that."
I think most Democratic party voters don't even really want things to change, they just don't want to feel as shitty about the status quo. Trump allowed them no such plausible deniability or psychological breathing room. I think this is why Trump supporters consistently referred to his "honesty" or that a pathological liar like home spoke his mind. Trump was, in many ways a more genuine representation of what this country is. A hideous one, but more accurate than pretending.
I don't doubt that many on the left actually do want change, but apparently not enough to dump the liberal/conservative categories the same system they claim to hate siloed them into. I'll put it even more bluntly. If you aren't even willing to reject liberal/conservative standard US politics you aren't radical in any meaningful way and never will be. You can call yourself a communist, anarchist, or Sherlock Holmes and it won't make a shred of difference. You're still playing the game of the status quo.
My husband was part of Veterans for Kerry in 2004. He worked very hard going to American Legions and VFWs. I worked for Edwards mostly. Such true believers we were. Now JK is jetting around and Edwards.. When Kerry got the nomination in 2004 all the locals who had worked on the campaign were pushed out by politician's kids who build their resumes and take over the campaign for the General. If you read about it you don't know how sidelined you can be. I think Fu Fighters came the last night (in FL). Partisan politics will break your heart.
Yes it will. Parties are ugly things. The challenge is to find, in the practical expression of partisan effort, whatever commitment transcends all of it. Political outcomes do matter. They reshape the world in consequential ways we only murkily understand. But the values for which we stand have a permanence that predates and outlasts individual election cycles. The good fight matters. Sometimes it's all we have, both in the bitterness of defeat and the disillusion that so often follows victory. Our messy system appears to be the least bad of all the alternatives that people have tried. We might as well embrace it.
The answer to the question posed a few times in a few different ways here (“how do leftists exert leverage over democratic politicians if they are assured to vote for them in the general election?”) seems really baldly obvious to me; the primary process. I see Freddie glancingly address this by saying that during the primary process, centrist liberals criticize leftists and their politics. And my response to that is… well, yes? I’m not sure how it follows that because there aren’t large numbers of leftists and they don’t always win that argument in the eyes of voters, that primaries are a lost cause or useless or something.
I’d also love it if Freddie could expand more on the idea that electoral politics is a “sham that can never result in progress”—I don’t take it that he’s fully committed to that position but I do occasionally hear it espoused. I don’t understand what the theory of governmental change is for people when they say this, short of changing the government by violent / revolutionary means or something. Or maybe I’m just not understanding the rhetoric somehow.
I don’t think that’s being mean but it does sound like there’s some misunderstanding, since I in fact said I *don’t* take it you are fully committed to that position.
I don't see this as advocating that position. This is clearly detailing the limitations of electoralism in a country with two parties, but the first half of this piece is recounting why voting Democrat is definitely better than not voting Democrat.
It's just that voting Democrat doesn't get the left what it wants.
As I said below (and specified in my post) I don’t think Freddie holds that position. But it is a position that I do hear from people and one that, being a writer and person much more of the political left and its associated communities than I, it seems Freddie is well-positioned to expand upon a bit, since he mentioned it.
I know it’s not a satisfying answer given recent outcomes, but the only option is to fight it out in the primaries. It didn’t work for the presidency, but sometimes it works for Congress (AOC is the most famous recent example). If you could go back in time and show Arizona primary voters the future, things might have gone differently.
For the presidency, Bernie has won states—it’s not impossible. The left has to persuade enough voters, and so far we have not. That’s not to say it’s a fair fight, but it’s the only fight we could ever win. ‘First past the post’ means a protest in the general will always fail.
Sinema benefits from the fact that voters assume women and minorities are more liberal than they actually are (because most voters use shortcuts to judge candidates). I’ve seen research on this for female and Black candidates, and the same probably applies to LGBTQ candidates.
One data point: I recently explained to my wife that Manchin and Sinema are holding up the infrastructure deal, and my wife furrowed her brow and said, “I thought Sinema was bisexual.”
I said yeah, she is, but she sucks. After some discussion, we decided her deal is that she loves attention and possibly has a personality disorder.
While I'm guessing that final paragraph is mostly a joke, it seems clear that the real answer is people pay her a lot of money to vote like a Republican. Same with Manchin.
It wasn't a joke. I think the individual personalities and opinions of Senators matter more than we often think on high-profile issues like this one. But I'm not inside her head, so I could be wrong.
I think the individual personality matters, but I also think, for most honest people, their ideals have a price tag. For some it may be a few thousand dollars and for others a few millions. But almost all of us will cross a seemingly uncrossable line if someone throws enough money at us.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to finally find some recognition that our system runs on a MASSIVE structure of legalized bribery justified behind a fiction that is so ridiculous a child can see it. American government is 95% corporations buying what they want and 5% trinkets thrown to the plebes.
I don't follow any of this closely. But it seems that there may be a percentage of people who support Bernie who also are turned off by a publicity stunt like wearing a purple wig and animal print coat in a congressional swearing in. My excitement about AOC's win has dwindled as the optics have remained the most enduring contribution. A ball gown with "tax the rich" on the backside? Give me an actual break. Wait, no. *Actually tax the rich.* And stop saying bullshit like "birthing people" because it's driving away support from folks who are otherwise on board with *actual policy ideas.*
When Obama's birthday party hit the news, I thought (and may have said aloud) "what the fuck?" Whereas in the link above Kathleen McCook shared, the opening for the presidential "library" (all digital, booooooo) was kept small "because of the pandemic." Yeah, not because there have been lots of objections from the community about the project.
Like I said, I don't follow much of this closely, which is why mainstream media coverage matters so much. I recently came across a Glenn Loury/John McWhorter conversation where they mentioned the Trayvon Martin case and how "it didn't happen like we were originally told" and I was like, huh? So I googled it and found, mostly in local Florida coverage, that several news producers/reporters were FIRED because they SPLICED THE 911 CALL to make Zimmerman sound racist. Zimmerman is an asshole and probably unstable, but to actually edit the call??? Oh my god. And I've become a skeptic, and didn't know this, because I don't have the goddamned time or energy.
I've wandered off topic, but it all goes together in my mind.
I actually visit the daily stormer occasionally. Why? Because on the one day that I randomly decided to visit it to satisfy my curiosity the site featured unedited footage of a shooting that occurred between protesters and counter protesters in New Mexico during a confrontation over a statue. The mainstream media slanted their coverage to imply that the counter protester who fired the shot was at fault. In reality the video shows him being pummeled as he's chased down the street by a mob before he uses his weapon.
As a consequence I drop by once in a while and sift through bat shit crazy conspiracy theories to try to find the occasional nugget of truth. Isn't that pretty much the ultimate condemnation of the current state of the news media?
I think it's impossible to be as famous and scrutinized as AOC without getting a little weird. I didn't care about the dress. The tears over Israel, though, were gross. There are several good progressives in Congress who don't get as much coverage, but if they reached AOC's level of fame they'd probably get weird and out-of-touch too.
I'd heard that about Martin. The one that blew my mind was learning that Matthew Shepard was killed over meth by people who included an ex-lover (so, not a homophobic hate crime). That and learning that the Pulse shooting was not targeting gay people.
Yes, forgot about those major cases. Good god. I recently wrote about why as a liberal I'm opposed to CRT in schools (virtually nobody read it because I'm of no importance, but it helped me collect my thoughts) and one of the reasons is the Marcusian underpinning of "negative thinking," the requirement that dissatisfaction with current conditions is essential, regardless of what those conditions actually are. In White Guilt, Shelby Steele refers to this as something like disproportionality of perspective.
Steele's politics are more boot-strappy than I think is fair, but he correctly (to me) identifies liberal politics as now being one based on disassociation from past moral errors, rather than being clear-eyed about present conditions, both good and bad. He wrote that book all the way back in 2006. (Which makes his reference to Cosby quite unfortunately questionable now.)
Consequently, I suppose I can't necessarily *blame* these folks for being weird and out of touch. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed ;) I can however blame media (like, specific human reporters and producers, for god's sake) for being downright dishonest.
And come to think of it, this intense liberal need for disassociation creates a vacuum of moral authority (Steele posits), which is perhaps why Dems are having such a crisis of identity, even as identity is an obsession. Republicans seem impervious to questioning their own moral authority. Hence the cohesive (if distasteful and wrongheaded) nature of the party.
"If Democrats lurch rightward, as they have for most of my life, then “better than a Republican” gets worse and worse, and yet you are not permitted to consider not supporting them or supporting a third party."
This is simply untrue. The Democrats have shifted leftward on almost every issue in the last few decades. There are studies you can point to here if you want to show this mathematically, but it should be kinda apparent given that Bernie Sanders is a genuine power player in the party today.
Part of that leftward rise is a rise in progressivism, and part of this is that there aren't very Sinemas and Manchins left to complain about so the remaining average is leftier. Manchin will surely be gone in the next cycle. There were a lot of annoying moderate Dem senators to complain about in 2008. They're all gone.
I think there are two branches of what people consider Left that don't necessarily line up. There's Left in terms of culture (which is by no means meaningless) and there's Left in terms of economics (which I think Freddie would say is more impactful across the board, including concerns of the Cultural Left).
While the Left has made a lot of progress on cultural topics, like LGBT rights, they've lost ground on the economic side of the coin. Because they have failed to make economic and structural changes to government, those cultural points of progress are also in jeopardy (as seen in Texas and the Supreme Court more broadly).
How exactly is today's Democratic party more right-wing economically than the Democratic party in the 90s? Things haven't shifted as radically in that dimension, but a self-proclaimed socialist is the chair of the Senate Budget Committee today.
Democrats reinstated the Bush tax cuts, which they said were so disastrous. While there is talk now of repealing the Trump tax cuts, I'm not very confident that this will come to pass.
Democrats state positions that are to the left of Republicans and are generally drifting to the left, but what they actually do seems to reinforce economic goals of the Right.
I meant their statements are drifting leftward. But their actions in terms of policy made into law have not followed that trajectory and usually seem to head in the opposite direction.
Joe Biden. Now that drift may not be motivated by internal reasoning so much as pressure from a tiny minority of party activists but the Biden of today is not the moderate of years past.
I think it's something that I tend to not consider because he's still to the right of where I'd want the party to be. But he has become more progressive, even if only vocally, since running for president.
I'm sorry, but Joe Manchin is most certainly representing the will of his Democratic voters. That is how democratic systems work. The left has an essential role in every society, which is to speak for the interests of those dispossessed or neglected in the flawed but invaluable inherited order we call society. Progress ultimately depends on persuasion - moral and practical - which is not a strong suit of the modern Democratic party.
I am a libertarianish conservative. I read Freddie deBoer because he is one of the three or four most persuasive, intelligent and intellectually honest left wing voices in our culture. He speaks for those whom our system hurts rather than for the party which - in theory at least - claims to represent them. People who consider themselves "Blue No Matter Who" can learn a lot from his example and criticism.
I'd just like to add that persuasion doesn't seem to be much of anyone's strong suit these days. Far too many social networks essentially allow us to live in bubbles of our own making. It's hardly an original idea to refer to the networks we travel in as echo chambers. In those chambers, we warmly and enthusiastically celebrate our own in-group virtues without ever actually having to argue the point. Just look at any Reddit thread. Anyway, I think I'm mostly agreeing with you. It's just that persuasion seems to be increasingly beside the point.
It's probably never been much of anyone's strong suit, but I agree with you 100% that our technology - most particularly social networks - are furiously worsening the problem. Substack (or more generally, the independent journalism that it has enabled) seems to be one bright spot in our disintegrating social world. We don't know where our civic culture is going or what it's going to look like even a few years from now. But the innate appetite we all have for authenticity and connection seems to me to be served here in some vital way. Maybe we can trust what's best in ourselves and others more than we realize.
I'm not sure what Manchin is up to b/c his approval ratings in WV are dropping ever since he started obstructing these bills. He may be pandering more toward his donors than his voters.
That's probably mostly a symptom of him being a Democrat, and everyone there being reminded they voted for him for some reason and took the gavel out of McConnell's hand. The best thing that could happen to him, besides actual bipartisanship, is quiet.
When a politician does something we find praiseworthy we extol his virtue, principle, vision, public-mindedness, etc. When he does something we don't like we condemn his venality, self-interest, short-sightedness, cruelty, and so on.
Don't you wonder at all whether Joe Manchin might actually believe the reasons he gives for his stands? Could it be that he is telling the truth when he explains why he's intending to vote as he says? It's possible, right?
Yes you're absolutely right. I said he "may" be pandering b/c I can't know what's in his heart but I take your point that the word "pandering" is inflammatory and uncharitable and, for all I know, Joe Manchin is a principled person.
Thanks, Erica. I don't really know much about Manchin. Re-reading it I see that your comment was actually quite neutral. I was impressed by the opinion piece Manchin wrote for the NYT, I think, regarding the filibuster. He seemed to me to be taking the long view.
In any case I may be wrong, but it seems that he's put himself in an awfully hard place. If his hold out on the infrastructure bill kills it then he'll be remembered for that - and not favorably - for a generation of Democratic voters. Makes me think of the Leonard Cohen lyric "And people call me traitor to my face." The easy and popular thing at this point would probably be to vote "yes," and he may yet. At the very least it's a complex situation.
The commenter Slaw suggests somewhere on this thread that a bunch of moderate Democrats don't really want to vote "yes." Maybe Manchin is taking one for the team. I'm not that cynical, but it's also a possibility.
I'll caveat my post with the note that I always vote Democrat, but I'm a bit of a neoliberal shill and used to be more so. (Now I'm an anti-imperialist neoliberal shill, because that makes a ton of sense!)
I really want to say that it makes sense for hard Lefties to vote third-party when faced with, say, Obama v. Romney, where Romney is way too conservative but would have been a perfectly competent leader. The marginal difference between Romney and Obama would not be so great that one couldn't reasonably decide to accept the long-term gain of increasing the power of the Left over the short-term loss of having Romney in office.
But in actuality, there are two problems with this attitude: one structural, one contextual. The former: the Supreme Court has such outsized importance in our legal system and the changes to it are so permanent that a vote for a Romney doesn't just determine how the next four years of the government will go but the next thirty. It's a stupid way to run a country, but that's what we've got.
The latter: the Republican Party has thrown itself over the cliff of anti-governance entirely. Sadly, the marginal difference between the two parties has grown massively, not because the Democrats have become that much better (though Biden's labor appointments and agenda are just about enough to turn this union rep into a single-issue voter--i love him SO MUCH), but because the Republicans are effing nuts these days.
So to answer the implied question of Freddie's "Perhaps there is a better way" statement... I don't think there is. A voting pattern that empowers people like Sinema and Manchin does the least harm to the country. Everything is terrible and is going to be terrible for a good long while.
I forgot to mention - it is frustrating that so much of Democratic discourse is about how the system isn't fair (the Senate, the electoral college, districting), but when people point out that the primary process favors moderate establishment candidates (such as all the institutions of the party pushing hard for Hillary in 2016), the response is, hey, that's politics baby. Find a way to win. Not a really consistent attitude.
Everything is stacked against them and worthy of scrutiny until it's stacked in their favor and then it's great! For all the Democrats want to be seen as the Party of Reasonable People, they're extremely unscrupulous when Reason should dictate limits on their behavior.
I don't think this is true. Since it's mostly the strongest partisans who vote in primaries, they mostly reward the more extreme candidates. You can really see this in primaries for the house, and I think it contributes to the polarization in Washington.
I think this effect also helped Bernie, institutions or not. He was much stronger with the primary electorate than he was with the democratic party in general, because the primary and caucus electorate is a ways to the left of the party.
Stronger than he would have been in a primary that actually included all or even most people who vote democrat. The primaries were his best case, he lost because his ideas aren't (maybe weren't, things are moving) popular.
"However, popular ideas have a limitation when every outlet that provides people news paint his ideas on a spectrum of dangerous to ludicrous.
Ideas tend to lose in the face of massive capital, especially when that capital defines the bounds of discourse."
This may have happened in 2016, but it most definitely didn't in 2020. Bernie had the early advantages and lots of friendly media coverage at the usual MSNBC-type places. But he ran a bizarre campaign with overly online weirdos on staff and an apparent belief that other candidates wouldn't drop out when their campaigns became lost causes.
Bernie may have gotten screwed in 2016, but he did himself in in 2020.
I agree that his ideas have gained traction since 2016. What's interesting is that he hasn't.
In 2016 there were 30 million primary votes, of which Bernie received 13.2, for 43% of the vote. Which is pretty good!
In 2020, there were 36 million primary votes, of which Bernie received 9.7, 26.2%. Which is surprisingly bad. I figured if the votes went up his percentage would go down, as my thesis here is that the more people who vote in the primaries the worse it is for him, as he's only getting very left voters and activist. But even if you combine him with Warren, the left wing of the party only comes up to 12.5, or 34%, which is still pretty bad, especially when compared to 2016.
From which I conclude that not only was Bernie benefiting from a more left primary electorate in 2016, he was also benefiting from running against Hilary.
In 2020 he had significant positive coverage and name recognition, along with plenty of money, but lost bigger, both in percentage terms due to the larger electorate, and absolute terms, due to not being able to be not-Hilary.
Not a compelling case for his viability even in the Democratic electorate, let alone the national one.
Running against Clinton was definitely an important factor in 2016. An little known Senator from a barely thought about state only rose to prominence due to: The strength of his ideas and the historic unpopularity of Clinton.
I think one of the big differences in turnout for Bernie had to do with the fact that the field was split between, like, ten people. I think this was ultimately to his benefit and why he became a front runner, but it still led the absolute percentage of voters to be split wider.
Incidentally, this was a massive disadvantage to the centrists running. When you're running in a 10 person race and 8 of the 10 have nearly identical politics to you, the centrist vote is going to disperse.
So while it gave Sanders an advantage since more centrists votes were dispersed across candidates, it also meant that some people who did vote or would have voted for him in 2016 voted for someone, like, say, Mayor Pete or Amy Klobuchar instead, possibly for aesthetic reasons rather than ideological.
As far as the positive coverage: he definitely got more than in 2016, but there's no serious way to argue that even half of his coverage was positive. I mean, MSNBC (to the extent that they are, they're the farthest left of any major news broadcaster in the country) went as far as comparing his campaign to the Nazi party. Not exactly insignificant!
Don't want to be rude this is a very strange take that is not supported by basically any democratic primary race I have ever seen. Democratic primaries are overwhelmingly dominated by the candidate that the party itself favors, which as Freddie points out, is a neoliberal, corporate dominated party.
Nina Turner was 40+ points ahead of her opponent a few months ago for a primary for an open Ohio seat, but the centrist party establishment (Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn, Hakeem Jeffries, most importantly a dark money group called "Democratic Majority for Israel") picked a different candidate who is more moderate but had much less name recognition and faced some ethics probes.
The moderate won, as they frequently do in these races. It's not about ideology in Democratic primaries because ideology overwhelmingly favors progressives, just like you say. But parties are machines that serve certain interests, and for the Democrats that is typically wealthy individuals and corporations.
also the NYC primary that just happened, same thing: the moderate won because he had the party establishment behind him (also the left was a bit of mess). The machine wins almost every time, AOC is the outlier.
I live in Cori (birthing people) Bush's district. At the least, she's not a lone outlier. Back during Bush this was happening on the other side, at least one major leader (like the one AOC took down) was primaried from the right, and the Tea Party also destroyed a popular Delaware senate candidate and gave us a Senate seat. I might be underselling the strength of the institutions, but I think you're underselling the radicalism of primary electorates.
As for NYC, that wasn't the primary electorate. I expect ranked choice and approval style voting systems to push the electorate towards the middle. In the FPTP, if a candidate can win the (tilted extreme) primary, they can win the safe districts. I might not like Bernie and think he's too far to the left, but I'm not voting *Republican*. But if my choices are Bernie, Pete, Booker, Biden, Trump, Cruz, Rubio - my ballot is probably Booker, Pete, Biden and maybe Bernie depending on my mood that day. He, or AOC, or Bush have a way better shot at my vote in the primary system, because the primaries are much more winnable for them and once they win the primary they've got me.
well, our politics are clearly quite different and that colors our perception of who the primaries reward I suppose. I will point as an example of our differences that apparently Cori Bush to you is someone know for using the phrase "birthing people" (which I guess you don't like?), but for me I recognize her as the person who nearly single handedly got the eviction moratorium extended last month (something I do like).
Again, I know Cori because she's my congressperson. My wife has marched with her and (I think) is on a friendly acquaintance level with her. Hell, I voted for her in the primary because my wife knows her and told me to.
And yes, I'm not a fan of defenestrating the word mother. I'm all fine with transmen and transmen giving birth and being dads and whatnot, but that's like a couple of hundred of births a year. I don't think it merits changing the language, and I do think trying to do so hurts us (Democrats) at the polls. People who hate the trans and want to make their lives materially harder are fundraising on that. They'll be referencing it in speeches next year when they run us out of the majority. It's an own goal.
I think it can be true that it’s mostly the strongest partisans who vote in primaries and that this does not necessarily work to the benefit of the most extreme candidates. For example the people I know with the most extreme left politics generally hold the democratic party in contempt and, like Freddie, are at best ambivalent about even voting for them at all, whereas the most partisan democrats I know have favorable views of party celebrities like Clinton, Obama, etc who might endorse more moderate liberals.
If there's a tilt in 2024 or 2028 where, say, Hispanics give Republicans a national majority of votes, and the Democrats are buffered by the Senate, electoral college, filibuster, will you still say it's unfair that these institutions and practices exist?
Yeah, there's a lot of considerations that make way more sense in their day than ours, some for good reasons, some that are simply reflections of their political viewpoints. For example, stronger state governments make more sense when geography was much more of a limiter.
The amendments and bill of rights in general make perfect sense if you consider them the guarantees most interesting to the most wealthy- they do not, for example, guarantee food, shelter, water, a living- things the poor might want.
And yeah, the vagueness over the power of the executive has always been a thing, mostly a matter of the lack of desire to really hash out specific roles in government. They just made a position they thought Washington would be suited for and it comes to today with a lot of different pressures going onto it.
I don't think this is entirely fair. The Constitution sucks because it was a beta test for republican democracy. It shouldn't be a surprise that they messed up a bunch of stuff that is now proving hard to fix.
Soooo much yes. The left, or at least Democrats, have spent a generation winning the most votes in almost every national election, including in the House, and still being shut out of power. It'll take time for us to forget it.
If the partisan valence of the anti-democratic features of our system flips enough, we *might* get bipartisan reform before we the left decides these things are a good idea after all.
But I don't really see how that happens. If the Hispanics go Republican, they win going away. Like, for real, with more voters and everything. Right now, if they win the presidency if they get to 48% of the vote or so. They win the house at 49ish. They win the Senate at about 45. I don't see any of that changing, other than that house percentage dropping a bit. That's just the way it is. Land votes, and Republicans have more of it.
For me, the difference is that in the Senate and electoral college, you can get more votes and still lose. (Winning the popular vote and losing the election; getting a majority in the Senate and losing bc filibuster; a majority of Senators representing a minority of the population).
In the primary process, generally, the candidate with the most votes wins. (Superdelegates complicate this but haven’t overruled voters so far.) The party’s influence happens in ways that will never seem as unfair as a majority of voters losing – and really it *is* politics, people forming coalitions and spending money and winning over voters. It was shitty when every moderate dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden, but the outcome still depended on people voting. That’s never going to be seen as equivalent to the person with the most votes losing the presidency.
I think you discount the primary process too much. The very left caucus in the House is small, but growing. Your guy came close a couple of times in the primaries. For that matter, Obama's primary win was a win for the left over the establishment, we've just forgotten that because Obama didn't turn out to be much of a leftist.
That said, the other answer is right there in your article. Work for things like jungle primaries and ranked choice voting. Our voting systems are shitty, and force us into these either/or boxes. But they aren't facts of nature, and they can (and are!) being changed.
My schtick is: no matter how bad things are, Republicans will try to make it worse, and often succeed (see, e.g., abortion rights in Texas), and that that difference matters.
But if you have a Plan B for making things better, let's hear it.
Because I really want to know: if you don't think getting more Democrats into power is a good idea, what is your alternative idea? And what is the plan for accomplishing it?
And I don't buy your "broken person" claim. You're smart enough and engaged enough to find one of the best writers on the net (Freddie). If you can do that, there's clealry a lot more that you can do.
And I want to know because, if there is a better idea, I will switch to advocating that.
You're right that I don't think there is a better idea out there, but then again I've been wrong before. I'm a scientist, and this is how most us think and argue: we always want to find the better idea, the one no one thought of before. These ideas sometimes come out of left field, so most of us keep our heads up, watching for them. We also want to persuade other scientists with whom we disagree that we are right and they are wrong, but sometimes we get persuaded instead. This has happened to me many many times.
Good post, though I wonder about your assertion that the party's gone right. I would have said that's true up through, say, Clinton or George W. administrations, but that it's gone left since then, particularly on economics, and one reason Biden has been so good, overall, is precisely because the party's been trending left. He and the party leadership have been responsive to the impact that some of these big primary wins (AOC, e.g.) have had on the dangers of totally ignoring the left wing of the party. I think there's some fear among the centrist establishment, though not enough, that if they totally ignore the left base they'll get seriously primaried. Isn't that the strategy? One problem with Sinema and Manchin is that it's not at all obvious that a more left wing candidate would be able to win in those states, so it's a less plausible threat to them in particular.
It's gone culturally left but economically it's stayed pretty much where it was.
The difference between the response to the Great Recession economic crisis and the COVID says that’s false.
Agree. It's definitely gone left culturally, but I just don't see how you can look at what Biden has proposed, and the vast majority of the party has supported, and not see that as evidence of leftward movement since the Obama stimulus, which was smaller than the bipartisan (!) infrastructure bill and way smaller than the big bill they're trying to pass through reconciliation. And the economy is in better shape now than after the great recession.
Yes. It seems like it would take willful blindness not to see the huge difference.
I disagree. Pretty much every government response to Covid has been driven by pure panic and fear of the unknown. I would rate those as more significant factors than any commitment to Keynes.
I think if you look at what the 2020 Dem presidential candidates were saying, and putting in their platforms, it's pretty clear that the Party moved left from 2016 and 2008. The experience of the 2008 crisis was a factor, I think, and increasing economic inequality, and the success of some left-wing primary candidates, knocking off establishment Dems. Some of the covid response was panic, definitely, but the big spending was easier because it's become pretty clear that the Clintonite center-left economic approach wasn't doing much of anything to halt the increase in inequality.
I don't disagree that socialism is now a mainstream position for party activists. But for the country at large I don't think you can draw a comparison between the Covid response and anything else to be illustrative of anything. It's just too dissimilar to anything else.
The Great Recession devastated my life. I lost my business, all my savings, my housing situation with basically no safety net whatsoever, didn’t qualify even for unemployment because I had been self employed. I didn’t even have health insurance. It took most of a decade to rebuild. If you can see what happened over the last two years, even with the flaws, of enhanced unemployment available to almost anyone, cash payments, eviction moratoriums, student loan deferments, and not see a leftward economic shift EVEN IF it’s not all the way to where some of us would prefer it be.
The response to both was an orgy of money printing and a wealth redistribution from the middle class to the donor class. We're pretty much where we were.
Agree that "blue no matter who," which used to be my own philosophy, is counter-productive for anyone hoping for alignment of thought in congress. What worries me about this situation and the pressure on Joe Manchin is just plain old stupidity. They are clinging to their barely there majority. Both are in states that really want republicans. Arizona will be red before too long. The pendulum is swinging away from the left, at least in government. So is the idea to get this passed just before the red wave? Isn't democracy supposed to be about accepting different points of view and not pressuring or bullying people into going along with something? That is what I thought it was. But I see authoritarianism rising in its place on the left. I have even seen her called a racist by a major publication, just for disagreeing. I could never belong to any party that went along with this kind of thing, not in a country with so many different kinds of people. That is why I am not longer a democrat.
One of my least favorite things that is common now is parties encouraging huge amounts of donations to these races just so they can try to get someone from their own party in. Something feels very nefarious about encouraging people from all over the country to donate money to a candidate running in a place that these people have never even visited. Strategically, obviously, it makes sense. But it feels morally wrong. I have my own candidates I can donate to, volunteer, and vote for. It is not my place to go outside that and start affecting other elections.
Maybe one of the reasons politicians aren't accountable to voters is because the people who prop up their careers aren't their voters...
Absolutely. And now with the blue checks of twitter adding to the noise - using fear, intimidation and public humiliation. This is how you get AOC with 12 million Twitter followers deciding what everyone should do in the places they live. It just doesn't sound "democratic" to me. Are they sure they even want people to vote at all?
There appears to be a huge streak of the left (there might be on the right too, for all I know) that has given up on self-governance. Even among friends who are political, I hear things that amount to "oh, those people are too stupid and backwards and brainwashed to ever decide for themselves".
And I'm like...maybe, but the point of democracy is they get to decide anyway! They think you're just as foolish as you think they are (see: there's a lot of memes on the right pointing out that Dem-run cities are having all sorts of issues with crime and surging homelessness and shit on the sidewalks). I don't know where this idea that any one policy is so self-evidently good that only a moron wouldn't vote for it is coming from, but it's corrosive.
Yeah, my biggest problem with moderates and even some people on the left is their antidemocratic streak. For the record, this is obviously true on the political right. They advocate explicitly for less representation in government.
I remember when Trump won in 2016 and journalists and thinkpiecers all came out to write thousands of words about how democracy is actually bad because it means idiots will elect an idiot.
I mean, the obvious way to convince voters is to actually talk to voters. There is barely a functioning Democrat grassroots organization anywhere in the country. I live in Minnesota--the only state not to vote for Reagan!--and the state has been migrating to the right because conservatives get out there and knock on doors constantly. But liberals seem to have just resigned themselves to never convincing these people so they don't even bother to try.
Never mind that the reason Obama won Iowa was because he went there over 100 times!
But when your party has no interest in addressing the material needs of people, it is hard to get out there, knock on doors, and then tell the people you're reaching out to that you plan on addressing exactly zero of their grievances.
I remind you that Hilary got 3 million more votes than Trump.
Yes, but fewer votes than Obama in a year with higher turnout. Also worth remembering that Trump was a deeply unpopular candidate with no experience in government, and that's who she lost to.
Why do you support governmental institutions, then, that give places like West Virginia, with so few people, such disproportionate power over national politics then? I'm from the state and it hasn't exactly made anything better here. West Virginia is still run by pharmaceutical kingpins and rich assholes.
That compromise was required to get a country together in the first place. Small states have zero incentive to participate in an enterprise where they will get no voice whatsoever in national policy.
Careful with saying “get no voice whatsoever” when it’s actually “get a voice proportional to their population.” Some people use slippery language like that to try to pull a fast one with people who aren’t paying attention.
The outcome is the same. It's one of the reasons I think federalism needs to make a huge comeback--California can easily run roughshod over Wyoming, but California does not have the best interests of Wyoming at heart, nor does it necessarily know what's best for it. Decision-making should be as local as possible.
This is one of the major issues I have with the EU as well. Ireland has been getting drawn further and further into Europe. The bigger players like France and Germany throw small amounts of funding their way for infrastructure, and yes, without European money, Ireland's roads would still be shit or nonexistent, but for a country that never developed an indigenous industrial base, and only competes due to being able to set the ludicrously low corporate tax rate, giving up those levers in exchange for powerless membership in a Franco-German economic scheme seems insane. We've already seen what happens following the banking crisis. Let's not lean into that for all the PIIGS sakes.
Federalism makes a ton of sense in providing a voice to what would be marginalised groups. Similarly we elect representatives for rural areas at ratios to the population of far below that of urban areas. But if we were to just base it on population, the state is run predominantly by people divorced from the rural constituencies.
Oh, definitely. I got caught up in the DEFEAT MITCH MCCONNELL fervor last election cycle and donated to his opponent. Feels stupid now.
To say that, like Freddie implied in his last post talking about how it's always punching down when we don't like our opponent, our emotions are strong and full of logical pitfalls.
Yeah, that really bugs me too. Local elections should be decided and run by the locals.
I just threw away some yellow dog democrat buttons.
'I think this is exemplified in the presidency of Barack Obama, who appeared to be doggedly attached to appearing to be more reasonable than Congressional Republicans, never seeming to grasp that there was simply no advantage to having that laurel.'
This is a core misunderstanding of American politics.
By appearing 'reasonable' Obama was able to reassure the PMC (media, social workers, educators, etc. etc. etc.) about everything that he sought out to do. As a result he had carte blanche to do what he wanted: he launched a catastrophic intervention in Libya, expanded drone wars over much Middle East, presided over a border crisis wasn't scrutinized ('kids in cages'), he let the banking industry get away with murder, expanded imperial presidential powers, etc. etc. etc.
There's a swath of Americans - an ersatz elite with some power - who want respectability and reassurance. Providing them with that gets you a lot.
Now that Obama's in his fat Elvis phase (to quote Matt Taibbi), partying with celebs, living in his mansion, planning the construction of his imperial mausoleum that will take the place of a park in Chicago, and generally not giving a fuck, we perhaps have a better view of who Obama is and what he was able to get away with.
I don't. Partisans, even jaded partisans, tend to think this way. I am a far right winger, for example, and most of my fellow far rightists believe that the Republican party is intentionally sandbagging any rightward progress and that the Democrats are far more bloodthirsty, far more ruthless, far less ready to compromise. And I think they feel this way because when something in this country shifts culturally leftward, we on the right feel it in the gut, it's a personal attack, it's our patrimony being destroyed, our values are under attack etc etc. It doesn't really register that, for a professional politician, it's all in a day's work. Meanwhile if something vaguely rightist does occur - Trump's 'remain in Mexico' policy, for example* - it's not nearly so visceral a feeling. Instead it's: OK, add a point to the scoreboard. Now the hard work continues. In other words: any setback is catastrophic; any victory is tiny.
That's how I think Freddie regards leftist victories - and, to be as fair as possible to him, I'll also add that the leftist victories over the past twenty years have been mostly cultural, with only a very few economic, and my take on his writing is that he's far more concerned with bread and butter than nouns and pronouns.
*And this is where I begin to side with the partisans. On what planet is adhering to international law - remaining in the first safe country - any kind of victory? It's less Lady Justice and more a simpering consumptive coughing blood into a handkerchief. And I imagine this is much how Freddie feels when there's some minor reshuffling of parental tax credits or something. Yeah, it's a win, but look at the loss column!
I admire MT but this was not fair to Elvis. Presidential Center (NOT a library, sadly) has been ground broken: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/after-extensive-controversies-barack-obama-finally-breaks-ground-on-his-presidential-library
Agree - not fair to Elvis.
Perfectly put.
Good one Freddie! I think I'm going to do a dramatic reading of this for some libs and overly-self-shaming leftists I know.
I don't really understand why the Left, who make up perhaps 10% of Americans, and perhaps a quarter of the Democratic Party, think that they should be directing policy.
The working class remnants of the Democratic Party and black voters are far more conservative, economically and socially, than Leftists as are the suburban voters who decide elections in purple states.
The burgeoning Hispanic population, who will likely be the most important demographic in deciding elections the next few decades is Catholic, working class, and increasing in wealth.
I agree that Leftists need a plan: It should be to convince the rest of us why we should go along with them.
"Thinking they should direct policy" is just another way to say "have values and positions on politics." We're all expressing beliefs that most people don't hold on almost any issue. Or are you really in alignment with the country on every issue?
I disagree - I think economically there's a leptokurtic distribution where most Republicans and Democrats are actually pretty close. We want a welfare state (the Dems represents this tendency of the median voter) but we don't want to pay for it with regressive tax schemes like they have in Europe (Republicans represent this tendency of the median voter). Sinemas and Manchins fit pretty well into this part of the distribution.
If you're out in one of the tails and you want to realign society, it's your job to make your case.
Even assuming the majority of voters don't want regressive taxing schemes, bolstering a welfare state doesn't need to rely on this scheme. One of the big changes in my life is the way deficit obsessives have suddenly become quiet, so creating that welfare state shouldn't be a problem for Democrats.
And yet!
Yeah, I dunno - this is a separate subject. I think if you are funding a welfare state you have to figure out a way to pay for it even though it's easier politically not to - the bill will eventually come due. Maybe we can have debt that is 200% of GDP but it's not clear that is a good thing. At some point we will do what? Devalue the currency and wipe out wealth of a lot of old people with modest savings? You do get to my point though that the Republicans largely align with the Democrats - they both want large welfare states that aren't paid for; the Democrats just want one that's modestly larger with modestly higher taxes.
Yeah, I agree with that. Though I think there are many ways to pay for the expansion of the welfare state than through aggressive taxation, even if I, personally, would prefer aggressive taxation (more as a limit to wealth, honestly).
I tend to think that the real Silent Majority in america are people who are cultural conservative and fiscally liberal.
Yeah I think this is right. Although I would qualify that to the degree that Americans are fiscally liberal they support broad transfer entitlements that have broad revenue sources.
So, Medicare/Medicaid, SS, etc. are what is popular.
I don't think Americans are fiscally liberal in the sense that they are supportive of more extravagant technocratic endeavors on par with Europe or Canada, for example. Again, it's the paradox of, 'I want a small government which gives me lots of stuff.' It may sound kind of stupid at first ('Keep the government out of my Medicare'), but if you are a left leaning libertarian the more you think about it the better it seams. To the degree that I am left-leaning fiscally, I would rather you give people a check than a social program.
I thought that too but read this the other day and now am not sure (and am thoroughly depressed). Would love to see a left rebuttal to this b/c if it's true that most WWC voters not only culturally but also economically conservative and hostile to social welfare programs, our struggle is even more uphill than I thought: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/can-democrats-win-back-the-white-working-class/
You can't just look at a tax on its own and say it is regressive. If you make $1000/month and then pay $500 in taxes but then get transfers equal to $1000, bringing your income up to $1500, is the tax still regressive?
Right, but that's generally not what you get in Europe. You get 'free education,' 'free healthcare,' etc. I think the question is do you want marginal tax rates of 50% once you hit $75k to pay for those things?
Yes, duh
Yet Democrats have been saying for my entire lifetime that we should be more like the old continent, and to no avail. Why?
I immigrated to the US from Europe. I could give you chapter and verse on why. But somehow two weeks in Tuscany gives the upper middle class all the answers. Many such cases!
It's because we're in broad alignment with the general population on some pretty salient issues, mostly involving having a functioning welfare state, higher taxes on the wealthy, not invading other countries, etc. It would be nice if we could get a majority (even a plurality) of American voters to call themselves "leftists," but I don't think that's necessary to make significant progress.
Much of the project of the left is getting bourgeois politicians to act on their stated values, to bring about a government that's more responsive to actual popular attitudes. A modest first step, but a necessary one.
"Representative democracy only works if the representatives are accountable to the demos, but our partisan system and the power of party identification means there’s often precious little responsibility to voters to be found." Isn't accountability to the demos exactly what might be happening in AZ and WV? Seems to me most pols are extremely responsive to their voters, and when the voters shift so do the pols.
Arizona Democrats, who elected her, are trying to recall her for blocking Biden's agenda. And the point is general: if you give someone your vote no matter what, there is literally no reason for them to ever give you what you want.
It is interesting how the media narrative works: being conservative is inherently associated with "what people want" to a point where many people assume that if a democrat is conservative, it's because they are just doing their damned best to please civilian voters... being progressive is likewise inherently associated with "alienating hippie shit" no matter how many voters want it. It's a strong symbolic order.
I strongly agree with your general point. This was an aside on how there is so much energy directed at politicians, not their constituencies. Not "why is Sinema doing this or that" I think the better approach is "why is AZ doing this or that."
I think most Democratic party voters don't even really want things to change, they just don't want to feel as shitty about the status quo. Trump allowed them no such plausible deniability or psychological breathing room. I think this is why Trump supporters consistently referred to his "honesty" or that a pathological liar like home spoke his mind. Trump was, in many ways a more genuine representation of what this country is. A hideous one, but more accurate than pretending.
I don't doubt that many on the left actually do want change, but apparently not enough to dump the liberal/conservative categories the same system they claim to hate siloed them into. I'll put it even more bluntly. If you aren't even willing to reject liberal/conservative standard US politics you aren't radical in any meaningful way and never will be. You can call yourself a communist, anarchist, or Sherlock Holmes and it won't make a shred of difference. You're still playing the game of the status quo.
My husband was part of Veterans for Kerry in 2004. He worked very hard going to American Legions and VFWs. I worked for Edwards mostly. Such true believers we were. Now JK is jetting around and Edwards.. When Kerry got the nomination in 2004 all the locals who had worked on the campaign were pushed out by politician's kids who build their resumes and take over the campaign for the General. If you read about it you don't know how sidelined you can be. I think Fu Fighters came the last night (in FL). Partisan politics will break your heart.
Yes it will. Parties are ugly things. The challenge is to find, in the practical expression of partisan effort, whatever commitment transcends all of it. Political outcomes do matter. They reshape the world in consequential ways we only murkily understand. But the values for which we stand have a permanence that predates and outlasts individual election cycles. The good fight matters. Sometimes it's all we have, both in the bitterness of defeat and the disillusion that so often follows victory. Our messy system appears to be the least bad of all the alternatives that people have tried. We might as well embrace it.
The answer to the question posed a few times in a few different ways here (“how do leftists exert leverage over democratic politicians if they are assured to vote for them in the general election?”) seems really baldly obvious to me; the primary process. I see Freddie glancingly address this by saying that during the primary process, centrist liberals criticize leftists and their politics. And my response to that is… well, yes? I’m not sure how it follows that because there aren’t large numbers of leftists and they don’t always win that argument in the eyes of voters, that primaries are a lost cause or useless or something.
I’d also love it if Freddie could expand more on the idea that electoral politics is a “sham that can never result in progress”—I don’t take it that he’s fully committed to that position but I do occasionally hear it espoused. I don’t understand what the theory of governmental change is for people when they say this, short of changing the government by violent / revolutionary means or something. Or maybe I’m just not understanding the rhetoric somehow.
"sham that can never result in progress”
Don't mean to be mean but I don't even know how to begin to have a conversation with you if you read this piece and conclude that that's my position
I don’t think that’s being mean but it does sound like there’s some misunderstanding, since I in fact said I *don’t* take it you are fully committed to that position.
Meanwhile us leftists sitting here with a single tear running down our cheek because you didn't say that.
I don't see this as advocating that position. This is clearly detailing the limitations of electoralism in a country with two parties, but the first half of this piece is recounting why voting Democrat is definitely better than not voting Democrat.
It's just that voting Democrat doesn't get the left what it wants.
As I said below (and specified in my post) I don’t think Freddie holds that position. But it is a position that I do hear from people and one that, being a writer and person much more of the political left and its associated communities than I, it seems Freddie is well-positioned to expand upon a bit, since he mentioned it.
I know it’s not a satisfying answer given recent outcomes, but the only option is to fight it out in the primaries. It didn’t work for the presidency, but sometimes it works for Congress (AOC is the most famous recent example). If you could go back in time and show Arizona primary voters the future, things might have gone differently.
For the presidency, Bernie has won states—it’s not impossible. The left has to persuade enough voters, and so far we have not. That’s not to say it’s a fair fight, but it’s the only fight we could ever win. ‘First past the post’ means a protest in the general will always fail.
Sinema benefits from the fact that voters assume women and minorities are more liberal than they actually are (because most voters use shortcuts to judge candidates). I’ve seen research on this for female and Black candidates, and the same probably applies to LGBTQ candidates.
One data point: I recently explained to my wife that Manchin and Sinema are holding up the infrastructure deal, and my wife furrowed her brow and said, “I thought Sinema was bisexual.”
I said yeah, she is, but she sucks. After some discussion, we decided her deal is that she loves attention and possibly has a personality disorder.
While I'm guessing that final paragraph is mostly a joke, it seems clear that the real answer is people pay her a lot of money to vote like a Republican. Same with Manchin.
It wasn't a joke. I think the individual personalities and opinions of Senators matter more than we often think on high-profile issues like this one. But I'm not inside her head, so I could be wrong.
I think the individual personality matters, but I also think, for most honest people, their ideals have a price tag. For some it may be a few thousand dollars and for others a few millions. But almost all of us will cross a seemingly uncrossable line if someone throws enough money at us.
I can't believe I had to scroll this far to finally find some recognition that our system runs on a MASSIVE structure of legalized bribery justified behind a fiction that is so ridiculous a child can see it. American government is 95% corporations buying what they want and 5% trinkets thrown to the plebes.
Legalized bribery is definitely the best way to understand this, I think.
I don't follow any of this closely. But it seems that there may be a percentage of people who support Bernie who also are turned off by a publicity stunt like wearing a purple wig and animal print coat in a congressional swearing in. My excitement about AOC's win has dwindled as the optics have remained the most enduring contribution. A ball gown with "tax the rich" on the backside? Give me an actual break. Wait, no. *Actually tax the rich.* And stop saying bullshit like "birthing people" because it's driving away support from folks who are otherwise on board with *actual policy ideas.*
When Obama's birthday party hit the news, I thought (and may have said aloud) "what the fuck?" Whereas in the link above Kathleen McCook shared, the opening for the presidential "library" (all digital, booooooo) was kept small "because of the pandemic." Yeah, not because there have been lots of objections from the community about the project.
Like I said, I don't follow much of this closely, which is why mainstream media coverage matters so much. I recently came across a Glenn Loury/John McWhorter conversation where they mentioned the Trayvon Martin case and how "it didn't happen like we were originally told" and I was like, huh? So I googled it and found, mostly in local Florida coverage, that several news producers/reporters were FIRED because they SPLICED THE 911 CALL to make Zimmerman sound racist. Zimmerman is an asshole and probably unstable, but to actually edit the call??? Oh my god. And I've become a skeptic, and didn't know this, because I don't have the goddamned time or energy.
I've wandered off topic, but it all goes together in my mind.
I actually visit the daily stormer occasionally. Why? Because on the one day that I randomly decided to visit it to satisfy my curiosity the site featured unedited footage of a shooting that occurred between protesters and counter protesters in New Mexico during a confrontation over a statue. The mainstream media slanted their coverage to imply that the counter protester who fired the shot was at fault. In reality the video shows him being pummeled as he's chased down the street by a mob before he uses his weapon.
As a consequence I drop by once in a while and sift through bat shit crazy conspiracy theories to try to find the occasional nugget of truth. Isn't that pretty much the ultimate condemnation of the current state of the news media?
I think it's impossible to be as famous and scrutinized as AOC without getting a little weird. I didn't care about the dress. The tears over Israel, though, were gross. There are several good progressives in Congress who don't get as much coverage, but if they reached AOC's level of fame they'd probably get weird and out-of-touch too.
I'd heard that about Martin. The one that blew my mind was learning that Matthew Shepard was killed over meth by people who included an ex-lover (so, not a homophobic hate crime). That and learning that the Pulse shooting was not targeting gay people.
Yes, forgot about those major cases. Good god. I recently wrote about why as a liberal I'm opposed to CRT in schools (virtually nobody read it because I'm of no importance, but it helped me collect my thoughts) and one of the reasons is the Marcusian underpinning of "negative thinking," the requirement that dissatisfaction with current conditions is essential, regardless of what those conditions actually are. In White Guilt, Shelby Steele refers to this as something like disproportionality of perspective.
Steele's politics are more boot-strappy than I think is fair, but he correctly (to me) identifies liberal politics as now being one based on disassociation from past moral errors, rather than being clear-eyed about present conditions, both good and bad. He wrote that book all the way back in 2006. (Which makes his reference to Cosby quite unfortunately questionable now.)
Consequently, I suppose I can't necessarily *blame* these folks for being weird and out of touch. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed ;) I can however blame media (like, specific human reporters and producers, for god's sake) for being downright dishonest.
And come to think of it, this intense liberal need for disassociation creates a vacuum of moral authority (Steele posits), which is perhaps why Dems are having such a crisis of identity, even as identity is an obsession. Republicans seem impervious to questioning their own moral authority. Hence the cohesive (if distasteful and wrongheaded) nature of the party.
"If Democrats lurch rightward, as they have for most of my life, then “better than a Republican” gets worse and worse, and yet you are not permitted to consider not supporting them or supporting a third party."
This is simply untrue. The Democrats have shifted leftward on almost every issue in the last few decades. There are studies you can point to here if you want to show this mathematically, but it should be kinda apparent given that Bernie Sanders is a genuine power player in the party today.
Part of that leftward rise is a rise in progressivism, and part of this is that there aren't very Sinemas and Manchins left to complain about so the remaining average is leftier. Manchin will surely be gone in the next cycle. There were a lot of annoying moderate Dem senators to complain about in 2008. They're all gone.
Just so we have that context:
https://jabberwocking.com/charts-of-the-day-heres-a-partisan-history-of-the-culture-wars-since-2000/
I think there are two branches of what people consider Left that don't necessarily line up. There's Left in terms of culture (which is by no means meaningless) and there's Left in terms of economics (which I think Freddie would say is more impactful across the board, including concerns of the Cultural Left).
While the Left has made a lot of progress on cultural topics, like LGBT rights, they've lost ground on the economic side of the coin. Because they have failed to make economic and structural changes to government, those cultural points of progress are also in jeopardy (as seen in Texas and the Supreme Court more broadly).
How exactly is today's Democratic party more right-wing economically than the Democratic party in the 90s? Things haven't shifted as radically in that dimension, but a self-proclaimed socialist is the chair of the Senate Budget Committee today.
Democrats reinstated the Bush tax cuts, which they said were so disastrous. While there is talk now of repealing the Trump tax cuts, I'm not very confident that this will come to pass.
Democrats state positions that are to the left of Republicans and are generally drifting to the left, but what they actually do seems to reinforce economic goals of the Right.
Well, whether they're 'generally drifting to the left' is the only thing I made a claim about, so it seems like we agree in the end.
I meant their statements are drifting leftward. But their actions in terms of policy made into law have not followed that trajectory and usually seem to head in the opposite direction.
The people in charge of the party have drifted leftward. The actual voters? Maybe not so much.
Who in the party hierarchy has drifted to the left?
Joe Biden. Now that drift may not be motivated by internal reasoning so much as pressure from a tiny minority of party activists but the Biden of today is not the moderate of years past.
That's definitely true of Biden specifically.
I think it's something that I tend to not consider because he's still to the right of where I'd want the party to be. But he has become more progressive, even if only vocally, since running for president.
I'm sorry, but Joe Manchin is most certainly representing the will of his Democratic voters. That is how democratic systems work. The left has an essential role in every society, which is to speak for the interests of those dispossessed or neglected in the flawed but invaluable inherited order we call society. Progress ultimately depends on persuasion - moral and practical - which is not a strong suit of the modern Democratic party.
I am a libertarianish conservative. I read Freddie deBoer because he is one of the three or four most persuasive, intelligent and intellectually honest left wing voices in our culture. He speaks for those whom our system hurts rather than for the party which - in theory at least - claims to represent them. People who consider themselves "Blue No Matter Who" can learn a lot from his example and criticism.
I'd just like to add that persuasion doesn't seem to be much of anyone's strong suit these days. Far too many social networks essentially allow us to live in bubbles of our own making. It's hardly an original idea to refer to the networks we travel in as echo chambers. In those chambers, we warmly and enthusiastically celebrate our own in-group virtues without ever actually having to argue the point. Just look at any Reddit thread. Anyway, I think I'm mostly agreeing with you. It's just that persuasion seems to be increasingly beside the point.
It's probably never been much of anyone's strong suit, but I agree with you 100% that our technology - most particularly social networks - are furiously worsening the problem. Substack (or more generally, the independent journalism that it has enabled) seems to be one bright spot in our disintegrating social world. We don't know where our civic culture is going or what it's going to look like even a few years from now. But the innate appetite we all have for authenticity and connection seems to me to be served here in some vital way. Maybe we can trust what's best in ourselves and others more than we realize.
I'm not sure what Manchin is up to b/c his approval ratings in WV are dropping ever since he started obstructing these bills. He may be pandering more toward his donors than his voters.
That's probably mostly a symptom of him being a Democrat, and everyone there being reminded they voted for him for some reason and took the gavel out of McConnell's hand. The best thing that could happen to him, besides actual bipartisanship, is quiet.
"Pandering"
When a politician does something we find praiseworthy we extol his virtue, principle, vision, public-mindedness, etc. When he does something we don't like we condemn his venality, self-interest, short-sightedness, cruelty, and so on.
Don't you wonder at all whether Joe Manchin might actually believe the reasons he gives for his stands? Could it be that he is telling the truth when he explains why he's intending to vote as he says? It's possible, right?
Yes you're absolutely right. I said he "may" be pandering b/c I can't know what's in his heart but I take your point that the word "pandering" is inflammatory and uncharitable and, for all I know, Joe Manchin is a principled person.
Thanks, Erica. I don't really know much about Manchin. Re-reading it I see that your comment was actually quite neutral. I was impressed by the opinion piece Manchin wrote for the NYT, I think, regarding the filibuster. He seemed to me to be taking the long view.
In any case I may be wrong, but it seems that he's put himself in an awfully hard place. If his hold out on the infrastructure bill kills it then he'll be remembered for that - and not favorably - for a generation of Democratic voters. Makes me think of the Leonard Cohen lyric "And people call me traitor to my face." The easy and popular thing at this point would probably be to vote "yes," and he may yet. At the very least it's a complex situation.
The commenter Slaw suggests somewhere on this thread that a bunch of moderate Democrats don't really want to vote "yes." Maybe Manchin is taking one for the team. I'm not that cynical, but it's also a possibility.
I'll caveat my post with the note that I always vote Democrat, but I'm a bit of a neoliberal shill and used to be more so. (Now I'm an anti-imperialist neoliberal shill, because that makes a ton of sense!)
I really want to say that it makes sense for hard Lefties to vote third-party when faced with, say, Obama v. Romney, where Romney is way too conservative but would have been a perfectly competent leader. The marginal difference between Romney and Obama would not be so great that one couldn't reasonably decide to accept the long-term gain of increasing the power of the Left over the short-term loss of having Romney in office.
But in actuality, there are two problems with this attitude: one structural, one contextual. The former: the Supreme Court has such outsized importance in our legal system and the changes to it are so permanent that a vote for a Romney doesn't just determine how the next four years of the government will go but the next thirty. It's a stupid way to run a country, but that's what we've got.
The latter: the Republican Party has thrown itself over the cliff of anti-governance entirely. Sadly, the marginal difference between the two parties has grown massively, not because the Democrats have become that much better (though Biden's labor appointments and agenda are just about enough to turn this union rep into a single-issue voter--i love him SO MUCH), but because the Republicans are effing nuts these days.
So to answer the implied question of Freddie's "Perhaps there is a better way" statement... I don't think there is. A voting pattern that empowers people like Sinema and Manchin does the least harm to the country. Everything is terrible and is going to be terrible for a good long while.
I forgot to mention - it is frustrating that so much of Democratic discourse is about how the system isn't fair (the Senate, the electoral college, districting), but when people point out that the primary process favors moderate establishment candidates (such as all the institutions of the party pushing hard for Hillary in 2016), the response is, hey, that's politics baby. Find a way to win. Not a really consistent attitude.
But isn't that exactly "politics, baby"?
Everything is stacked against them and worthy of scrutiny until it's stacked in their favor and then it's great! For all the Democrats want to be seen as the Party of Reasonable People, they're extremely unscrupulous when Reason should dictate limits on their behavior.
I don't think this is true. Since it's mostly the strongest partisans who vote in primaries, they mostly reward the more extreme candidates. You can really see this in primaries for the house, and I think it contributes to the polarization in Washington.
I think this effect also helped Bernie, institutions or not. He was much stronger with the primary electorate than he was with the democratic party in general, because the primary and caucus electorate is a ways to the left of the party.
...how was Bernie stronger in the primaries? He lost both times. He never made it to the general election.
Stronger than he would have been in a primary that actually included all or even most people who vote democrat. The primaries were his best case, he lost because his ideas aren't (maybe weren't, things are moving) popular.
His ideas are clearly popular, though, even across party lines.
However, popular ideas have a limitation when every outlet that provides people news paint his ideas on a spectrum of dangerous to ludicrous.
Ideas tend to lose in the face of massive capital, especially when that capital defines the bounds of discourse.
"However, popular ideas have a limitation when every outlet that provides people news paint his ideas on a spectrum of dangerous to ludicrous.
Ideas tend to lose in the face of massive capital, especially when that capital defines the bounds of discourse."
This may have happened in 2016, but it most definitely didn't in 2020. Bernie had the early advantages and lots of friendly media coverage at the usual MSNBC-type places. But he ran a bizarre campaign with overly online weirdos on staff and an apparent belief that other candidates wouldn't drop out when their campaigns became lost causes.
Bernie may have gotten screwed in 2016, but he did himself in in 2020.
Um...did you just forget how Chris Matthews compared Bernie winning a primary to the rise of the Nazi party.
While media was friendlier to Bernie, it was extremely antagonistic to his campaign. Especially once it came down to him or Biden.
I agree that his ideas have gained traction since 2016. What's interesting is that he hasn't.
In 2016 there were 30 million primary votes, of which Bernie received 13.2, for 43% of the vote. Which is pretty good!
In 2020, there were 36 million primary votes, of which Bernie received 9.7, 26.2%. Which is surprisingly bad. I figured if the votes went up his percentage would go down, as my thesis here is that the more people who vote in the primaries the worse it is for him, as he's only getting very left voters and activist. But even if you combine him with Warren, the left wing of the party only comes up to 12.5, or 34%, which is still pretty bad, especially when compared to 2016.
From which I conclude that not only was Bernie benefiting from a more left primary electorate in 2016, he was also benefiting from running against Hilary.
In 2020 he had significant positive coverage and name recognition, along with plenty of money, but lost bigger, both in percentage terms due to the larger electorate, and absolute terms, due to not being able to be not-Hilary.
Not a compelling case for his viability even in the Democratic electorate, let alone the national one.
Running against Clinton was definitely an important factor in 2016. An little known Senator from a barely thought about state only rose to prominence due to: The strength of his ideas and the historic unpopularity of Clinton.
I think one of the big differences in turnout for Bernie had to do with the fact that the field was split between, like, ten people. I think this was ultimately to his benefit and why he became a front runner, but it still led the absolute percentage of voters to be split wider.
Incidentally, this was a massive disadvantage to the centrists running. When you're running in a 10 person race and 8 of the 10 have nearly identical politics to you, the centrist vote is going to disperse.
So while it gave Sanders an advantage since more centrists votes were dispersed across candidates, it also meant that some people who did vote or would have voted for him in 2016 voted for someone, like, say, Mayor Pete or Amy Klobuchar instead, possibly for aesthetic reasons rather than ideological.
As far as the positive coverage: he definitely got more than in 2016, but there's no serious way to argue that even half of his coverage was positive. I mean, MSNBC (to the extent that they are, they're the farthest left of any major news broadcaster in the country) went as far as comparing his campaign to the Nazi party. Not exactly insignificant!
Don't want to be rude this is a very strange take that is not supported by basically any democratic primary race I have ever seen. Democratic primaries are overwhelmingly dominated by the candidate that the party itself favors, which as Freddie points out, is a neoliberal, corporate dominated party.
Nina Turner was 40+ points ahead of her opponent a few months ago for a primary for an open Ohio seat, but the centrist party establishment (Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn, Hakeem Jeffries, most importantly a dark money group called "Democratic Majority for Israel") picked a different candidate who is more moderate but had much less name recognition and faced some ethics probes.
The moderate won, as they frequently do in these races. It's not about ideology in Democratic primaries because ideology overwhelmingly favors progressives, just like you say. But parties are machines that serve certain interests, and for the Democrats that is typically wealthy individuals and corporations.
also the NYC primary that just happened, same thing: the moderate won because he had the party establishment behind him (also the left was a bit of mess). The machine wins almost every time, AOC is the outlier.
I live in Cori (birthing people) Bush's district. At the least, she's not a lone outlier. Back during Bush this was happening on the other side, at least one major leader (like the one AOC took down) was primaried from the right, and the Tea Party also destroyed a popular Delaware senate candidate and gave us a Senate seat. I might be underselling the strength of the institutions, but I think you're underselling the radicalism of primary electorates.
As for NYC, that wasn't the primary electorate. I expect ranked choice and approval style voting systems to push the electorate towards the middle. In the FPTP, if a candidate can win the (tilted extreme) primary, they can win the safe districts. I might not like Bernie and think he's too far to the left, but I'm not voting *Republican*. But if my choices are Bernie, Pete, Booker, Biden, Trump, Cruz, Rubio - my ballot is probably Booker, Pete, Biden and maybe Bernie depending on my mood that day. He, or AOC, or Bush have a way better shot at my vote in the primary system, because the primaries are much more winnable for them and once they win the primary they've got me.
well, our politics are clearly quite different and that colors our perception of who the primaries reward I suppose. I will point as an example of our differences that apparently Cori Bush to you is someone know for using the phrase "birthing people" (which I guess you don't like?), but for me I recognize her as the person who nearly single handedly got the eviction moratorium extended last month (something I do like).
Again, I know Cori because she's my congressperson. My wife has marched with her and (I think) is on a friendly acquaintance level with her. Hell, I voted for her in the primary because my wife knows her and told me to.
And yes, I'm not a fan of defenestrating the word mother. I'm all fine with transmen and transmen giving birth and being dads and whatnot, but that's like a couple of hundred of births a year. I don't think it merits changing the language, and I do think trying to do so hurts us (Democrats) at the polls. People who hate the trans and want to make their lives materially harder are fundraising on that. They'll be referencing it in speeches next year when they run us out of the majority. It's an own goal.
I think it can be true that it’s mostly the strongest partisans who vote in primaries and that this does not necessarily work to the benefit of the most extreme candidates. For example the people I know with the most extreme left politics generally hold the democratic party in contempt and, like Freddie, are at best ambivalent about even voting for them at all, whereas the most partisan democrats I know have favorable views of party celebrities like Clinton, Obama, etc who might endorse more moderate liberals.
If there's a tilt in 2024 or 2028 where, say, Hispanics give Republicans a national majority of votes, and the Democrats are buffered by the Senate, electoral college, filibuster, will you still say it's unfair that these institutions and practices exist?
Yeah. The US Constitution sucks. It's a bad document, written by and for the elite.
Yeah, there's a lot of considerations that make way more sense in their day than ours, some for good reasons, some that are simply reflections of their political viewpoints. For example, stronger state governments make more sense when geography was much more of a limiter.
The amendments and bill of rights in general make perfect sense if you consider them the guarantees most interesting to the most wealthy- they do not, for example, guarantee food, shelter, water, a living- things the poor might want.
And yeah, the vagueness over the power of the executive has always been a thing, mostly a matter of the lack of desire to really hash out specific roles in government. They just made a position they thought Washington would be suited for and it comes to today with a lot of different pressures going onto it.
It was also because they were coming from a system where they were highly averse to a powerful national executive power.
Thank god we don't have to worry about that now.
I don't think this is entirely fair. The Constitution sucks because it was a beta test for republican democracy. It shouldn't be a surprise that they messed up a bunch of stuff that is now proving hard to fix.
Yes, I will.
Me too. The manifest unfairness of one Senator representing 70 times more people than another has nothing to do with left vs right.
Soooo much yes. The left, or at least Democrats, have spent a generation winning the most votes in almost every national election, including in the House, and still being shut out of power. It'll take time for us to forget it.
If the partisan valence of the anti-democratic features of our system flips enough, we *might* get bipartisan reform before we the left decides these things are a good idea after all.
But I don't really see how that happens. If the Hispanics go Republican, they win going away. Like, for real, with more voters and everything. Right now, if they win the presidency if they get to 48% of the vote or so. They win the house at 49ish. They win the Senate at about 45. I don't see any of that changing, other than that house percentage dropping a bit. That's just the way it is. Land votes, and Republicans have more of it.
For me, the difference is that in the Senate and electoral college, you can get more votes and still lose. (Winning the popular vote and losing the election; getting a majority in the Senate and losing bc filibuster; a majority of Senators representing a minority of the population).
In the primary process, generally, the candidate with the most votes wins. (Superdelegates complicate this but haven’t overruled voters so far.) The party’s influence happens in ways that will never seem as unfair as a majority of voters losing – and really it *is* politics, people forming coalitions and spending money and winning over voters. It was shitty when every moderate dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden, but the outcome still depended on people voting. That’s never going to be seen as equivalent to the person with the most votes losing the presidency.
Thank you, this is exactly right.
The number of people per Senator in California is 70 times higher than it is in Wyoming.
This manifest injustice is in no way comparable to leadership of a political party "pushing hard" for one candidate over another.
The system and the primaries both suck
I think you discount the primary process too much. The very left caucus in the House is small, but growing. Your guy came close a couple of times in the primaries. For that matter, Obama's primary win was a win for the left over the establishment, we've just forgotten that because Obama didn't turn out to be much of a leftist.
That said, the other answer is right there in your article. Work for things like jungle primaries and ranked choice voting. Our voting systems are shitty, and force us into these either/or boxes. But they aren't facts of nature, and they can (and are!) being changed.