The editors of The Economist have lurched uncontrollably onto a view of the present political situation here in the United States that roughly approximates my own:
The country needs parties that actually represent voters, few of whom belong to the extremes. And yet Democrats too have fallen prey to their activists.
Fringe and sometimes dotty ideas have crept into Democratic rhetoric, peaking in the feverish summer of 2020 with a movement to “defund the policeâ€, abolish immigration enforcement, shun capitalism, relabel women as birthing people and inject “anti-racism†into the classroom. If the Democrats are defined by their most extreme and least popular ideas, they will be handing a winning agenda of culture-war grievance to an opposition party that has yet to purge itself of the poison that makes Mr Trump unfit for office.
The Democrats have begun to put this right, but they lack urgency. That may be because some of them blame their problems on others—as when the White House points to “Putin’s price hike†or the negativity of Republican politicians and the conservative media. Although there is something to this, the party also needs to ditch cherished myths that empower its idealists.
One is that a rainbow coalition of disaffected, progressive voters is just waiting to be organised to bring about a social revolution. The truth is that those who do not vote are politically disengaged and not very liberal. Some black, Hispanic and working-class voters may well see each other as rivals or have conservative views on race, immigration and crime.
Another myth is that winning over centrist voters is unnecessary, because Democrats’ fortunes will be rescued by grand structural reforms to American democracy that are tantalisingly within reach. The constitution biases the Senate and electoral college towards rural America, and thus away from Democrats. Some in the party dream of using a congressional supermajority to shift representation in Washington towards the popular vote by adding states to the union, amending the constitution or packing the Supreme Court. Yet even in better times, there is a slim chance of that actually happening.
The greatest myth is that the party’s progressive stances invigorate the base and are off-putting only to the other side. Consider the governor’s election in Virginia in 2021. After favouring Mr Biden by ten percentage points in 2020, voters elected a Republican whose signature campaign pledge was ridding schools of critical race theory (crt). That concept has become a catch-all term for conservative gripes, some real and some fantastical. Republican attacks on Democrats as out-of-touch socialists ring true to many voters in the centre.
The good news is that Democrats are showing signs of turning back from peak progressive. In San Francisco irate voters have recalled their district attorney as well as three school-board members whose zeal for ideological coups de théâtre neglected bread-and-butter problems with crime and schooling. Last year Minneapolis defeated a referendum to defund the police and New York chose a former police captain as mayor. All these causes were backed by non-white voters, including Asian-Americans in San Francisco and African-Americans in Minneapolis. Prominent Democrats running in battleground states are steering clear of the rhetoric that enthralled the party in 2020.
My primary disagreement with them is that I think they’re overestimating the sincerity of both the Republican and Democratic leaderships. I don’t believe that the Republican leadership has any particular fondness for Trump. Their fondness is for power and money. They support Trump because they see him as a means to those ends. The Democratic leaders for their part don’t have any particular fondness for democracy or reform. Their fondness, too, is for money and power.
But other than that I think they’ve pretty much nailed our political conundrum. Our political parties are completely controlled by those who staff and donate to political campaigns and those people are much more extreme than rank-and-file party members.
“Our political parties are completely controlled by those who staff and donate to political campaigns and those people are much more extreme than rank-and-file party members.”
Some are extreme. Some aren’t. But they are focused and willing to pay money to buy their politicians. By definition these are minorities. The only way I can see to resolve this is for the majorities to vote out the politicians; the politicians would get the message real fast. But the dirty little secret is a large number of voters believe they are getting goodies as well. Stimulus checks. “Free” health care. Loan forgiveness. And so on. Free beer works.
We are the problem. Politicians are just being politicians, to coin a phrase.
I remain unconvinced by that argument. What I see are four candidates in the primaries, each backed by a different public employee union or other similar interest group, all supporting the same policies. You can get cyan, navy, aqua, or turquoise but your only choice is blue. Under the circumstances I think it’s unreasonable to blame the voters for electing blue—it’s the only choice they have.
I know you are. But you are using the defeatist “what choice do I have” argument.
I think where your analogy falls down is that voters don’t throw out incumbents. Rather, they perceive that “their” incumbent will deliver on his/her free beer promises.
Politicians aren’t citizens going to Washington or state governance without an eye towards a career. Getting voted out terrifies them. If cyan got elected, but didn’t perform, and voters throw cyan out and elect aqua the future cyans would get the message.
My conclusion is that too many voters don’t really care about good governance. Just what’s in it for them. When it backfires (and black America is the saddest example I know of) and a voter or block voting group doesn’t react, its on them. Politicians understand this and just play the game.
If voters won’t do it, term limits is the only solution I can think of. Good luck with that. We seem to understand this with the Presidency, but not the legislative. Look at what we have, just to name a few: Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer, Hoyer, Waters, Inhofe, Feinstein. That’s a national embarrassment.