The left can be insular. Some of their critics can be even worse
This piece argues that Democrats do themselves a disservice by catering to the left-wing of their party. As readers of this blog know, I’m a Democrat, but not aligned with the left and have many issues with that crowd. You might think I would be in agreement with the author wholeheartedly, but I’m not.
First, a little background is necessary. The author of the piece is the co-author of a book written in 2002 called The Emerging Democratic Majority. The ideas put forth in the book have not come to pass and he’s mad about it. His vision of Democrats uniting working class voters of all groups didn’t happen. A critique of that vision and its faults can be found here.
Instead of the author’s vision, Democrats have made gains with middle and upper class voters, particularly in the suburbs. Their support from working class voters has declined since the book was written. They still retain plenty of working class support, but often prioritize things their new coalition members care about. The author doesn’t like that at all.
Today, he is a staunch critic of Democrats and thinks they’re run by the far-left woke crowd. He now regularly hangs out with right-wingers and bashes the left as a sport. It wouldn’t surprise me if he became a Republican soon. That may be a bit unfair, but his writings have become so predictable and polemical that I know exactly what to expect each time. I hope my writings haven’t become like that.
I will keep reading what he writes. It’s unhealthy to only read things that you agree with. He’s also right about many things. Even if some of his criticisms miss the mark and are pre-determined, that doesn’t make them all wrong.
While there are many things I agree with him on, he still clings to the idea that if Democrats said and did all the things he likes, then they’d dominate for years to come. I agree that Democrats shouldn’t associate themselves with the furthest left elements in their party. I also agree that on substantive policy matters, Democrats should embrace making it easier to build things. The good news on both of those fronts is that I think Democrats have been doing that even if the pace is slower than I wish.
The problem I have with the author is he’s missed all that and is relentlessly negative in his writings. He has been especially critical of the cultural left. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that he seems to believe they’re the cause of everything wrong in the world. He says that Democrats must diffuse culture war issues by taking what he sees as moderate, “common sense” positions.
On issues like crime and immigration, I think that’s right. On everything else, I don’t. That’s not because I think Democrats should embrace left-wing cultural positions. It’s because I don’t think they should say anything about them because they don’t matter. The author likes to talk about “normies,” but his idea of what they care about is quite different from what actual voters think.
The author, for example, thinks Democrats should speak out against the cultural left on issues like gender affirming care, but I don’t. I say that because almost nobody will vote on it. The same is true for transgender athletes and DEI trainings. Even if most people think Democrats are wrong on those issues, they’re not going to vote based on that. The best approach for those kinds of issues is to just say nothing about them and not waste any oxygen talking about things nobody cares about.[i]
In his writings, he has downplayed abortion and insisted that it’s not very important. Apparently, “normies” don’t care about abortion, but they’re foaming at the mouth over gender affirming care, DEI trainings and transgender athletes. The author (rightfully) thinks the cultural left is out of touch, but he really needs to take a look in a mirror.
As much as the left-wing activist crowd is guilty of living in a bubble, some of their critics are even bigger offenders. The author is one of those people. To be fair, he lives in DC and spent a long time working at a left-wing think tank where that stuff is prevalent. The problem is he thinks all Democrats are like that. He thinks that Democrats are afraid to denounce defunding the police, that they don’t object to calling all white people racist and that they support equal outcomes in the name of “equity.” Good lord, man, get out of your bubble.
In the real world, wokeness has peaked. There is now substantial pushback against it in places where it previously was strong and very few elected Democrats endorse anything of the sort. From reading most anything by the author, you would think that crowd rules the world. At this point, he’s wedded to a narrative and is probably going to stick to it no matter what. That’s the case with most everyone who makes a living off of railing against wokeness. If they acknowledged that it’s on its way out, they’d lose their relevance.
On economic issues, he runs into the same bubble-dwelling problem. He has said, for example, that permitting reform is important and it’s too hard to build things. That is certainly right, but he has said that Democrats don’t have any interest in fixing it. He’s living under the world’s tiniest rock. Democrats very much are interested in making things easier to build and recognize that cutting red tape is key to advancing clean energy. The author criticizes the left for opposing permitting reform last year, but it was Mitch McConnell whipping votes against it that killed it. He doesn’t mention that.
True, the furthest left part of the Democratic Party opposes it, but that’s baked in. It will have to be accomplished on a bipartisan basis anyway because of the filibuster. I wish it was just the left opposing permitting reform because it would have passed already. As inconvenient for his narrative as it is, not everything wrong in the world is the fault of the left.
A vision rooted in wishful thinking and fantasy
The author does occasionally acknowledge the huge problems Republicans have. He asks why Democrats aren’t crushing them and attributes that to their going too far to the left. As I said before, I don’t disagree with the premise that going way out into left field is bad for Democrats. Associating themselves with and advocating for unpopular ideas isn’t an effective way to win.
Regarding why Republicans aren’t getting crushed, in some cases they are. For example, the gubernatorial races in Michigan and Pennsylvania last year should have been close, but they weren’t. True, many toxic candidates lost by just a hair. But they lost when they should have won. The midterms last year should have been a rout for Republicans, but that didn’t happen. Just because not all of their bad candidates got crushed doesn’t mean they paid no price.
When it comes to electoral strategy and substantive policy, I think Democrats would be wise to follow many of the author’s suggestions. Creating distance between the left-wing advocacy world and candidates running in red and purple states would be good. On policy, making it easier to build things would be great. Where I disagree with the author is the idea that it would lead to many more people voting for Democrats and make them the dominant party for years to come.
There are two major and related barriers that prevent a party from becoming dominant on the national level. One is that the country is extremely polarized. The other is that consistently maintaining control of Congress and the presidency is no longer a thing. The last time that happened was from 1932-1968. Back then, there was much less partisanship and polarization compared to today and the parties were much less ideologically cohesive. For example, the Democratic coalition included blacks and segregationists.
Those two barriers are here to stay. They may not last forever, but they aren’t going to be dislodged any time soon. If Democrats did everything the author wants them to do, it may help them at the margins and lead to some good policy outcomes. But the idea that they would enjoy a dominant national majority from it is wrong.
For one party to become dominant, a few things would need to happen. First, there would have to be much less partisanship and polarization. Neither of those things were created by the left. That crowd may not help to improve those things, but Democrats disavowing the left won’t end them. I wrote recently about how there is no clear solution to polarization. No amount of good policymaking is going to fix it because it’s not about policy differences.
When it comes to policy, things are less polarized than they were a decade ago. The author has lamented the Democrats’ moving to the left, but doesn’t ever mention that Republicans have also moved leftward. Examples of things that are more leftward than they were a decade ago include gay marriage (legal), entitlement spending (nobody wants to cut it), the Affordable Care Act (now popular and here to stay) and marijuana (increasingly legal).
Part of the reason why Republicans have seen an increase in support from working class voters is their leftward move on issues like entitlement spending and the role of government. Gone are the days when Republicans pushed for entitlement cuts and talked about “job creators.” The author blames Democrats losing working class voters entirely on the left. Sure, that crowd has very different priorities from most working class people and promotes ideas they aren’t interested in. At the same time, it’s malpractice to not mention that Republicans have defused many issues that hurt them with working class voters in the past.
Second, if Democrats were to become dominant, they would need to win overwhelming majorities of working class non-white voters while doing at least as well as Clinton and Obama did with working class whites. They would also need to continue making inroads with college educated whites. Is that possible? Maybe. Is it likely? No.
Party coalitions are leaky buckets. When more water gets poured in, more of it flows out. When a party gains ground with one group of voters, it tends to lose ground with others. Depending on who is gained and lost, that can be a short-term advantage, but beyond an election cycle or two it’s likely a wash. Appealing to college educated suburban voters is going to be different from appealing to non-college educated voters in rural or exurban areas. That doesn’t make it impossible, but priorities have to be set because parties don’t have unlimited resources.
Third, Democrats would have to keep their dominant coalition together, which is a very hard task. Because their coalition would include people with very different priorities and goals, whatever policies they enacted would have to be limited. They might wind up doing very little just to keep their coalition intact.
As consequential as the New Deal and Great Society were, those programs were all passed in just a few years. The New Deal began in 1933 but was basically over by 1938. The Great Society was pushed for in 1964 and 1965. Democrats were the dominant party from 1932 to 1968, but only passed major legislation in 6-7 of those years.
The New Deal coalition stayed together as long as civil rights legislation was kept on the back burner. When that changed it began to fray before falling apart entirely in 1980.[ii] A dominant coalition today would almost certainly meet the same end. There is a major tension between winning elections repeatedly and enacting policies. The author doesn’t seem to recognize that and thinks that if Democrats did all the policy things he wants them to do, their coalition would keep expanding.
Fourth, Republicans would have to not adjust after repeatedly losing elections. Nothing is a better teacher than repeated losses. Parties are in the business of winning elections. If Democrats managed to put together a dominant coalition, Republicans would adjust and figure out a way to gain some of its supporters. That may entail some policy concessions, but they would do whatever it takes to start winning again.
To recap, there are two major barriers today that prevent one party from consistently winning the presidency and holding Congress. The first is that durable national majorities don’t exist anymore. There is way too much instability in party coalitions, plus the usual midterm backlash, that makes a dominant majority hard to create. The second barrier is polarization. The amount of polarization and party cohesion we have today makes winning landslides like 1964, 1972 and 1984 all but impossible. Party coalitions are very different today than they were 50 years ago. Each party today is guaranteed a very high floor of support. Even candidates who are repulsive still have a chance of winning.
Why is it Democrats aren’t crushing Republicans everywhere given their toxicity? That’s your answer. Polarization ensures that landslide wins don’t happen. Midterm elections almost always go against the party in the White House. Combine that with party coalitions being fluid and you get a frequent changing of the presidency and especially Congress. The problem with the author’s vision is that it was unrealistic from the start and was never going to happen regardless of how many of his policy ideas and rhetoric Democrats copied.
Keeping things in perspective
The author is right about many things, particularly on cultural matters. I think saying there’s no difference between men and women is insane, DEI trainings are ineffective and sometimes cures worse than the disease, there are legitimate issues about transgender athletes and gender affirming care and the left-wing advocacy world is in a very bad place right now. Where I disagree with him is the importance he places on all that. He believes those things are a huge problem and I don’t.
They aren’t substantive issues. Very few people even know what those things are, let alone vote on them. If Democrats did talk about those things they would be elevating them and would be talking about things voters aren’t interested in. Republicans are the ones obsessed with culture war issues, not Democrats. It was Republicans, for example, who were apoplectic about Bud Light featuring a transgender person in their ads. I haven’t heard a single Democrat say anything about it.
Crime and immigration are the two substantive issues where I think the cultural left has done the most damage. Even then, Democrats have moved in the right direction. Biden has taken steps towards the center on immigration and virtually all Democrats back more police funding. The phrase defund the police hasn’t been articulated in a long while and I don’t expect to hear it again. The author has acknowledged Biden’s moves towards the center, but downplays them as not enough. What would be enough is unclear, probably because nothing ever would be.
The fact is, contrary to the author’s assertion, Democrats can afford to ignore culture war issues. That doesn’t mean endorsing the cultural left. What it does mean is talking about things that voters actually care about and that will decide elections. In some states and districts, if Democrats need to create some distance from the national party, the occasional cultural left denunciation should suffice.
On economic matters, I think Democrats did a great job of passing legislation in 2021-2022. The author acknowledges they passed those things, but then proceeds to find a way to downplay it. He’s right to advocate for an abundance agenda that entails making building things easier. He’s wrong to say because that hasn’t happened yet everything else isn’t important.
All of these debates about what Democrats should/shouldn’t do are important, but they only talk about things within their control. The state of the economy isn’t one of those things nor is what happens with Russia and China. Elections frequently turn on things that individual candidates have no control over. Someone can run a perfect campaign and still lose because of things having nothing to do with them.
My hope is for Democrats to win elections so they can enact policies that I think are good. Whatever their coalition looks like, as long as it can win Congress and the presidency, I don’t care. If it’s a coalition centered around working class voters that the author envisioned, that’s fine. If it’s a coalition like the one that exists today, that’s also fine. Democrats do better with some groups than they did in the past and worse with others. What matters is whether they win elections and get things done.
[i] How do we know issues like transgender athletes don’t matter? Just ask Senator Herschel Walker from Georgia and Governor Tudor Dixon of Michigan.
[ii] Yes, it was 100% worth doing. No coalition is worth keeping together if it means relegating a large number of people to second class status. The Civil Rights Act may have handed the south to Republicans, but it’s one of the best pieces of legislation ever enacted. That goes to illustrate the tension between legislating and maintaining a dominant coalition. Without civil rights legislation, the New Deal coalition may have lasted a while longer, but it wouldn’t have been worthwhile. I would gladly take a majority that lasts for 2 years and gets things done over a majority that lasts for 50 years and does nothing.