The Progressive Activists want Biden to do precisely the kinds of things they hated Trump for doing.
I am pro-choice and am distressed by the consequences of the abortion decision. But that is what happens when you have part of the Left running off and screaming about how there was no real difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Tr…
The Progressive Activists want Biden to do precisely the kinds of things they hated Trump for doing.
I am pro-choice and am distressed by the consequences of the abortion decision. But that is what happens when you have part of the Left running off and screaming about how there was no real difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (looking at David Sirota and Nina Turner). And much of the Left *still* went all-in to get Turner into Congress.
The future is not looking good for abortion rights in the US. As soon as there is a Republican in the WH and Republican majorities in Congress, the filibuster will get nuked and abortion will be banned everywhere in the US. The Left never really cared about that; it really has been about class warfare.
Yep, the GOP just doesn't want the Dems to nuke the filibuster while there is even as little a majority as a 50-50 Senate with a Dem VP. It will be the first thing they do if (notice I said if, not when) they get a majority.
I think something else might be contributing, and wanted to see what you all think:
I can’t help but wonder how much of this stems from how large & constant a presence Trump was. I had never in my life wondered “what has the president has done today” just about every day of the year before Trump. Because he did do something damn near every day.
Personally, I find Biden a blessed relief from the continuous chaos. But many people might perceive what I see as a return to sanity as “Biden isn’t doing much of anything.” (Which I don’t believe is the case.)
Did we get so conditioned to a president who was in our collective faces all the time that we now unconsciously interpret anything less as somehow inadequate in the president?
One reason Biden's approval ratings are low is his lack of buzz. The public derided Trump's constant noise but when the got the buzz-free president they asked for, turns out they miss the excitement. So the answer to your last question is YES.
No, I truly think it is primarily that (1) Dems NEVER go for the jugular; don't have it in them; don't know how; refuse to hire the Lincoln Project who DOES; and (2) Dems have NEVER known how to message; ditto re hiring someone who DOES ie who used to be in the GOP.
A distant (3) Dems still think policy matters to the voter, to the public; it does not. And it is always THE ECONOMY, STUPID.
Yes, and many of them are the same people who thought there was no real difference between Gore and Bush and Democrats and Republicans and who therefore thought it would be a good idea to vote for Nader. If they're not the same people (young voters, for instance), they're cut from the same cloth.
GWB was nowhere close to as bad as Trump was/is-- I still maintain he's a good man but was a bad president-- but much of where we are now can be traced back to the 2000 election.
GWB is the reason many Texas Hispanics vote Republican but almost no California Hispanics do. While Pete Wilson, supposedly more liberal than GWB, was fanning the flames of nativist bigotry, GWB was purging the worse bigots from the Texas Republican Party and encouraging a long time Democratic voting bloc to switch.
GWB should have let John McCain be the nominee in 2000. McCain would have won and woukd have been a great leader after 9/11. And McCain would not have invaded Iraq. In fact GWB would have been a good VP for McCain.
Provocative comment, Charlie, and possibly even true. I believe Al Gore would have been a good president, too, if all the votes had been counted. It’s even possible that 9/11 would not have happened with either of them in the Oval Office, as they both had a tendency to read intelligence reports that were placed on their desk.
P.S. You have a common name, but a rather unique set of descriptors.
While I generally agree, I suspect 9/11 would have happened. We generally are surprised by something completely unexpected - and 9/11 changed forever how hijackers were seen.
Actually I'd take it a step further and credit Newt Gingrich in the early- to mid-1990s for creating the environment that made the 2000 election outcome and so much else possible in our modern toxic politics. His widespread introduction of grievance, anger, and outright hatred of opposition into the political process on the right set the table for MAGA and the sort of dysfunctional, win-at-all-costs GOP mindset that now prevails after marinating for a couple of decades. Nothing has been the same since he weaponized conservative victimization and the need to blame every conceivable ill on liberals, and making it personal, as an either-or proposition rather than the consensus-building process that had prevailed.
I do not like to see the word grievance used in association with the GOP without a modifier. It makes it all too easy to dismiss any criticism as irgnorable grievance. If there is a real grievance, it needs to be addressed and rectified. However, what we see is a lot of fake grievance like the guy I was talking to today who was upset that it was unfair (according to him) that blue state residents pre-2018 got to deduct a lot more for state taxes paid and mortgage insurance and therefore cut down on their tax liability because then red state taxpayers were subsidizing blue state. Fake grievance.
Other than that I agree that Gingrich's widespread introduction of FAKE grievance to stoke anger and hatred set the table for MAGA.
I with you on the blame-Gingrich bandwagon. Assume you read the Atlantic piece on him ("Man Who Broke Politics"). One of the ways that I can tell the analysis is spot on is how poor the conservative rebuttals to it were.
Yes, good point. I've long felt that the two most influential Republicans of the modern era, without ever attaining the White House, are Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. Some good books and documentaries are waiting to be made about how profoundly they have reshaped the fate of our nation through their guidance, Newt for the reasons cited above and Mitch for his own many actions, foremost essentially seizing the Supreme Court for his side and reshaping its impact for at least a generation to come. I often think about how 5-4 conservative rulings, including abortion recently, would be different if Merrick Garland had not been jobbed out of the seat by McConnell's gamesmanship. Given his goal of owning the libs lock, stock, and barrel, I suspect he relishes the fact that millions of them aspire to piss on his grave once he is gone.
I'm sorry, listening to people who refuse to play by the rules Republicans set, tell "The Left" what we do and don't care about is totally obnoxious and also wrong.
Too many Democrats have this attitude of learned helplessness about them that they rationalize away as "being realistic".
Realistically, Democrats had nearly 50 years to protect abortion rights and they failed to do so. Yet, people like you will keep saying we should keep nominating the same kind of candidates who have demonstrably failed at obtaining the goals they claim to aspire to and defending the rights they claim to want to defend.
Edit: I can't respond to everyone. I'll just say, you're all right. I'm completely wrong. There is nothing Democrats could have done better that would have prevented or mitigated this outcome.
This is so tiring. What would the government have done to “codify” a fundamental constitutional right? SCOTUS said it existed, therefore it existed. If you’re talking about Congress enacting a sweeping law, please identify any period where there were sixty pro-choice Dem senators.
You cannot. The Left favors a revisionist version of history for which they were not present.
They didn't have to codify it at the federal level to actually fight for the issue. The bigger problem is that they took a 50 year strategy of trying to appease Republicans by moving ever so slightly to the left of them on issue after issue, instead of trying to engage in persuasion. After they did that, people like you come along and act as if nothing could have been done differently.
It's true. We gave the Republicans far too much credit when it came to common decency, civility, honesty, honor... stuff all Americans used to be proud of. Now they just want to be ugly bullies and force us to live like sharia christians? Or some really awful perversion like that? Anyway, we do need to stop giving totem the "benefit of the doubt"... there is no more doubt about who republicans are.
To say that Democrats have simply been appeasing the GOP all this time is inaccurate. The moderate left is pragmatic and seeks to pass legislation - and to win. The nation is not bright blue - it is a red, blue, and purple.
I dunno, the Partial Birth Abortion Act was a pretty clear case of attempting to yield in order to win over the Republicans. Here we are, 20 years later, and they're still howling about ""UP TO THE MOMENT OF BIRTH!"
That's certainly the story they tell themselves. As if nothing differently could have been done. As if they didn't control the Senate through the Reagan years. As if they didn't control the House for nearly 50 years before Newt Gingrich came along.
Leaders matter and everyone defending the Democratic establishment seems completely unwilling to admit they made any mistakes whatsoever.
Actually, Dems did not control the Senate through the Reagan years. The GOP had the majority for 6 years. Not to mention there was a large percentage of Conservative Dems (like Sam Nunn, John Breaux, Bennett Johnston, Al Gore, etc.) who were generally pro-life. They would not have gone along with a "codification of Roe" or whatever the heck that would have entailed.
Again, the Left often ignores actual history in exchange for what I call, "fantastical thinking".
The reason why the Democratic Party "walked away" or "abandoned" the working class is simple politics. Fact is, there were simply not enough votes in that group to help win elections. First off, labor unions were already losing members due to plant relocations to right to work states, not to mention shifting overseas. Secondly, the drop in manufacturing and low-skilled labor jobs coincided with an increase in "knowledge jobs". While the northern and midwestern manufacturing working class lost jobs and wages, their college educated children saw increasing wages. We now have a large scale upper middle class in the US (people making a $100K or more). Bill Clinton and the DLC understood this. You know who else understood this? That old conservadem, George McGovern! In fact, many of the members of the DLC, including Bill Clinton, Gary Hart and Tony Cuehlo, worked on McGovern's campaign!
Fact is, Clinton's brilliance was in his ability to both increase Dem's percentages in the Northern, West Coast and Midwestern Suburbs while maintaining or even winning back many of those very working class voters that many like you say we abandoned. Look at Clinton's reelection in 1996. He won every state along the Mississippi River as well as every state in what I call the PAC 12, plus NV and NM. He was the first Dem to win FL since LBJ and he won Appalachia. He won a majority of the vote in LA and TN for goodness sake. Bush won many of these states back in 2000 and 2008, mainly due to his religion and the War on Terror. Also, Bush ran as a moderate GOPer and won many Latino votes, which helped him win NM, NV and CO.
The Left needs to ask themselves how did Clinton do this? How did he win Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley? Social issues, not economic ones. He won by championing welfare reform, being tough on crime, and economic fairness. He ran on raising taxes on the rich, while cutting taxes for the middle class. Dems too often focus on the last one here, when without the first two, most of these people will not even listen to the pitch on the last one. My family is working class, and I will tell you that for them working is a social issue. Even among the poor, people who work resent those that don't. People who play by the rules resent the criminal element in their midst.
Bill Clinton said it best, and all Dems and the Left would do well to remember this: "We are for people who work hard, play by the rules, and want a fair shake, an opportunity to make their lives better."
This should be the Democratic Party's mantra and they should repeat it over and over. Instead, if you say something like this, you will immediately get some Left winger who will complain about the rules, what does fair mean, and all other BS.
The problem here is that the Supreme Court would still have overruled anything else you suppose the Dems should have done, and you are unclear as to exactly what they should have done.
It was 44 years, and until about 1992 a huge chunk of their caucuse was pro-life.
Roe v Wade was a 7-2 decision in which five of the seven were Republican appointees.
Casey v Planned Parenthood, in 1992, awas a 5-4 decision in which ALL FIVE VOTES(!) were Republican appointees.
The realignment of parties around abortion politics wasn't complete until John Paul Stevens, a Republican appointee who was in the Roe majority, stepped down in 2010 for Obama to appoint his replacement.
Nonsense. The Democratic Party has moved to the left over my lifetime, not toward the increasingly autocratic right wing. Unless you were either around for Gingrich or well-versed in The Contract for America, your interpretation of the past fifty years is stunningly naive.
I find that in civilized argument, avoiding the ad hominem “people like you,” to be the wiser course if you’d like anyone to listen to you.
The Dems have moved slightly left, while the Republicans have lurched rightward. then they call anyone who opposes Trump a "leftist." even though there are nearly zero actual leftists among the Dems.
Okay, I won't use that language again if you find it offensive. If you'd prefer, "apologist for the strategic errors of the democratic party" I can say that as well.
Anyway, I'm well aware of Newt Gingrich and his antics. I'm also well aware that Democrats had a majority in the house for nearly 50 straight years before he came along. Republicans were convinced they were a permanent minority, until they weren't. Yet, I'm still told there was nothing that could have been done differently.
A House majority may enable the first step in passing a bill, but the real ability rests in the very cantankerous Senate whose will has generally been to either pigeonhole it in committee or invoke the filibuster if it gets to the floor. The latter has an interesting history.
"The filibuster as a legislative tool was accidentally created in 1806, when the Senate, at the urging of Vice President Aaron Burr a year before, eliminated the "previous question" motion, a rarely used rule that allowed the Senate to vote to move on from an issue being debated."
Filibuster, explained: What it is and how does it work in Co…
Okay, I misstated the exact number of years, which I have edited.
That said, I don't see what exactly your point is. I believe the Democrats made strategic errors for decades at a time if they actually cared about defending abortion rights. The fact that so many House Democrats were pro-life is only more evidence of that.
I think that abortion has been an issue that the Dems were happy they didn't have to touch with legislation on the federal level. Roe bailed them out. The Democratic coalition could be strongly pro-choice, but not have to hang their hat on a divisive law. And they didn't have to, until now. They had their cake and were eating it too, but the party's over.
All I'm going to say is, "infantile morons", is not a good faith way to have a discourse. I've seen comments like this deleted before, but I guess if it's a popular enough opinion though, then the staff at the Bulwark think this kind of language is fine.
It may still get deleted. The Bulwark staff figure that paying money to post comments promotes self-moderation. They come across comments; they do not monitor them. Anyone is always free to report a comment. All you have to do is click on the three dots.
I agree with Peter T. Can we cut back on the ad hominem attacks. They don't help your arguments (which I generally agree with) and just create an atmosphere of unpleasant partisanship.
Some people are irritating and unpersuadable, but others who aren't can be turned off by what are unnecessary personal attacks.
I happen to agree with you like 80% of the time, including the sentiment here. But...you do tend to yell and scream a lot. If this were Breitbart, I'd get it. But it ain't. It'd be nice if we could keep our swell little Bulwark community civil.
Yeah, OK, intervention over. Mind my own business, yada yada.
And precisely how was the federal government supposed to have "protect abortion rights"? The Roe vs. Wade decision said that states could not ban abortion. What needed to be done was to eliminate the STATE laws that made abortion a crime. And in fact, there is a long list of states did just that, so you blast at Democrats is yet another example of an unjustified slander from the Left. For example, Virginia codified the Roe v. Wade decision way back in the 1970s, and it was a legislature full of unreconstructed conservadems that did that.
Compare these maps and withdraw your pro Jill Stein propaganda:
Actually Roe v Wade said that a woman had a right to obtain an abortion, because a woman had a right to privacy regarding her medical care.
The Dobb's decision basically said that no right to privacy exists because it is not an enumerated right, conveniently ignoring the 9th amendment, therefore the right to an abortion does not exist. Meanwhile they, except for Clarence Thomas, claim that this doesn't apply to other Court decisions, based on privacy, because a 3rd party is not involved.
Just repeating what I have stated again and again. The problem is not that they didn't codify Roe at the federal level. The problem is they adopted a 50 year strategy of appeasing the Right by moving ever so slightly to the left of them and deriding anyone who thought that was a bad idea as "unrealistic".
Ok gotcha. I’m getting closer to fighting fire with my fire. It may utterly fail but I feel (this is truly a feeling) that if democrats don’t play hardball the republicans will steam roll them (basically argument for deterrence)
During all those 50 years they had a filibuster proof majority for just three months, in 2009, and that included several pro-life Democrats like Ben Nelson and pro-life independent Joe Lieberman.
Side note: The country had 50 years to make abortion as unnecessary as possible but that didn’t happen either. At least the Dems talked a good game on taking care of our children. All this fight over Roe vs. Wade so nobody had to be serious about a decent safety net for mothers and children.
Wrong about Joe Lieberman. He has always been pro-choice on abortion. There was even a really nutty rabbi in Brooklyn that tried to excommunicate him for that position.
Yes and who's fault is that? They adopted a strategy to cater to the Right and to be ever so slightly left of Republicans on issue after issue. Republicans set a big goal and kept working towards it, never giving an inch, never refusing to give up until they got what they wanted.
Where has THAT energy been for the past 50 years?
So many people want to act like there was nothing they could have done differently and then when some of us say "Hey, you could have done these things" they say "No, no, no, that's not realistic."
You would have the Democrats be a permanent minority in the Senate and House of Representatives. When has Nebraska ever elected a progressive Democrat to the Senate? Nelson was the best Democrats will ever get there.
You say this as if people can't be persuaded at all, as if they weren't persuaded to vote for a demonstrable imbecile, completely unqualified for the presidency, just 6 years ago. Democrats could have taken a different strategy and fought for the things they cared about.
This is the part where I do what you're doing and say that they never actually cared about those things.
No one is saying the Dems never made mistakes, but your characterization of them as not caring about issues important to liberals and assigning motive to them is unfair and inaccurate.
We have to deal in the reality that the Electoral College and the Senate tilt the field dramatically in favor of the GOP. JVL has written about this.
If you want to take a stroll through 50 years of history, I’d be glad to, because you are overlooking a lot of major facts that have affected how the Dems have acted.
In 1972, the Dems lost the presidential election by losing 49 states. We won in 1976 largely because of Watergate & we won with a moderate southern candidate. In 1980, we not only lost the WH, we lost the Senate. And in 1984, we lost the presidential election in another 49 state debacle. In 1988 we lost the White House again & it wasn’t close. Bill Clinton led an inspired effort to get us back in the game & it’s likely that without that effort no Democrat would have seen the inside of the White House in the last 25 years except to go on a tour.
Disclaimer—I worked in the Clinton WH for 8 years. Despite what the left likes to say, we accomplished a lot of good things. We restored progressivity to the tax code without one GOP vote. We banned assault weapons & passed the Brady Bill. We expanded child health care. We also made mistakes. I believe the biggest one was deregulation of the financial system. But we were not a bunch of people who didn’t care nor were we GOP lite. And for 6 of the 8 years we faced a hostile GOP/Gingrich-led Congress.
The Supreme Court we have today is the direct result of left wing voters who didn’t think Al Gore was pure enough & voted for Nader or sat the 2000 election out. That got us Alito & Roberts. And it’s a result of left wing voters who hated Hillary & voted for Jill Stein or Trump or who didn’t vote. That got us Gorshuch, Kavanaugh & Barrett. Hillary talked about the Supreme Court a lot during that campaign. She warned us. The left was clearly unmoved.
So before you blame Democrats who haven’t been pure enough to suit you, maybe look to your left for the reason we are stuck with this dangerous, horrible Court.
Without Bill Clinton, there would have been no Barack or Joe. The problem is, those who constantly complain about the lack of progressivism under the elected Democrats, they would rather have lost those races in the unprovable belief that a "True Progressive" could have won and saved the Dems and therefore the Country. It usually ends with some reference to FDR, and the like. It is, as with most LW discussions, absolute gibberish with no basis in history. It is the Susan Sarandon view of politics that only serves Susan Sarandon.
This sort of silliness is the exact reason why no sustainable left wing movement in this country has ever arisen. In a country like the US, where people have an innate distrust of large institutions, the people will be highly skeptical of a "cradle to grave" system that many of those on the Left want. This is a country where people want to succeed, value hard work and economic attainment, not social safety. If safety was our main guidepost, then guns would not be ubiquitous, internet porn would not be free and accessible to all, we would have no video games, rap music and violent movies, and drinking would be outlawed.
Again, the Left often forgets what country they are trying to run. This is what leads to their failure. It is also why on too many occasions, people on the Left find themselves increasingly disdainful of the American people.
You see this same thing on the Right by the way, mainly around social issues.
I’m honestly lost with what you are arguing here. Are you saying that “democrats could have done x but didn’t” and that is why we are here? Or are you arguing that we would be here anyway? I just don’t see how democrats could have stopped the overturning of roe without winning more presidential elections (2 of which they won the popular vote in and one of those was decided by said Supreme Court on a questionable doctrine)
Trump got elected because of a quirk in the electoral college that allowed him to win with 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. That has never happened before. In 2020 he almost won despite losing by 8 million votes.
If you think that's the strategy Democrats should pursue -- "but he fights! who cares about the popular vote" -- then make that case.
Who exactly are the 80,000 persuadables in swing states that care enough about abortion to pull the lever for Hillary -- who, in the debates with Trump, made a big deal that choice was on the ballot, and which Trump also bluntly promised -- instead of Jill Stein or Gary Johnson?
Maybe those Stein voters could have taken the predictions of the Trump threat seriously and voted for Hillary instead. Then Hillary would have won the electoral College. They learned their lesson and after seeing the Trump threat in action, they voted for Biden. Same story in 2000. If the Green voters had voted for Gore in Florida, bush would have lost.
There was nothing to fight about regarding abortion on the Left because it was protected by Roe. Do you think that pushing for a federal law regarding abortion would animate voters for decades? Broadly speaking, though, Democrats do need to improve on messaging and rallying the troops.
Don't waste your time. Tom must have gotten lost on the way to Daily Kos. His attitude is just the kind of brain dead, lack of reality thinking that predominates that site. (Why I left).
When they are not arguing over whether those who oppose continued use of the term "Latin X" are more racist or sexist, or, whether AOC should run for POTUS in 2024 or 2028, they spend much of their time yelling at the Democratic Party for not being progressive enough. Yet, when it is pointed out that every time a "true progressive" runs for the Dem Nomination for POTUS they lose, they start yelling and saying the process was rigged because something.....
Its like arguing with my teenager, who is a big Bernie supporter. Ultimately, I just stopped trying to talk to him about it and decided to respond to each of his half-witted diatribes with "will see". That has the benefit of (i) keeping my blood pressure down, and (ii) raising his, which puts a smile on my face :)
There is plenty to pile on Dems for. I am unimpressed with their national "leaders" overall. But we are piling on because they seem to be ignoring the fix we are in.
So let's be clear: we are in the fix we are in because REPUBLICANS are ruthlessly dishonest cheaters led by Mitch McConnell (and with Putin's help).
I'm old. I remember when both parties had leaders, even statesmen, who could bust heads when needed. For ME, that time was over the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill (I don't recall it's name) and other protections for voters and voting. And Dems didn't even try as far as I can see. And I think that may have spelled the death knell of democracy and two-party politics in fact as well as fiction. I do hope I'm wrong but I see no signs of it.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 is recent legislation. It passed the House on August 24, 2021 in a straight party-line vote. The Senate voted 50-49 to pass the bill, falling well short of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.
I am old enough to remember quiet bipartisan agreements that got legislation done. And a day when voting rights passed. And other bills, thanks in part to lbj arm twisting. And a time when there were those who did their jobs and had at least basic courtesy for others and at least pretended people and voters mattered.
Yes the 60s were violent and scary and I recall thinking as the 70s arrived that the 60s had "killed all our heroes " and I worried there would be no more. The violence then was based on ideals or passions, positions or even political beliefs, rather than cold blooded grasp of raw power personally. I worried as we left the 60s and rightly so as it turns out. I agree 100% with your last sentence.
It is sad. I finally banned politics talk with sister.
Remember that old saying about "if you're not liberal when you're young you have no heart; if you're not conservative when you're old you have no brain"? It seems age (and financial responsibilities) tends to make one more conservative at least fiscally. But we have gone way beyond anything like policy matters into tribal hatreds. Maybe it's in the water....
It is certainly hard to imagine how they can be after the last six years.
I'd hope that most anyone who has said there's no difference in the parties has had their eyes opened. Even if once somewhat true, it certainly isn't now. One party is the party of Trump, performative cruelty, and your great grandfather's supreme court. The other party might be either too much or not enough progressive for you (generic you), but I don't see how that can be a hang up given the alternative.
The Progressives are working at taking over local party leadership. They are a minority of Democrats but they are better organized. They won 3 out of 4 of the major party positions in my area.
The Progressive Activists want Biden to do precisely the kinds of things they hated Trump for doing.
I am pro-choice and am distressed by the consequences of the abortion decision. But that is what happens when you have part of the Left running off and screaming about how there was no real difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (looking at David Sirota and Nina Turner). And much of the Left *still* went all-in to get Turner into Congress.
The future is not looking good for abortion rights in the US. As soon as there is a Republican in the WH and Republican majorities in Congress, the filibuster will get nuked and abortion will be banned everywhere in the US. The Left never really cared about that; it really has been about class warfare.
Yep, the GOP just doesn't want the Dems to nuke the filibuster while there is even as little a majority as a 50-50 Senate with a Dem VP. It will be the first thing they do if (notice I said if, not when) they get a majority.
As always , excellent analysis from Tim.
I think something else might be contributing, and wanted to see what you all think:
I can’t help but wonder how much of this stems from how large & constant a presence Trump was. I had never in my life wondered “what has the president has done today” just about every day of the year before Trump. Because he did do something damn near every day.
Personally, I find Biden a blessed relief from the continuous chaos. But many people might perceive what I see as a return to sanity as “Biden isn’t doing much of anything.” (Which I don’t believe is the case.)
Did we get so conditioned to a president who was in our collective faces all the time that we now unconsciously interpret anything less as somehow inadequate in the president?
One reason Biden's approval ratings are low is his lack of buzz. The public derided Trump's constant noise but when the got the buzz-free president they asked for, turns out they miss the excitement. So the answer to your last question is YES.
No, I truly think it is primarily that (1) Dems NEVER go for the jugular; don't have it in them; don't know how; refuse to hire the Lincoln Project who DOES; and (2) Dems have NEVER known how to message; ditto re hiring someone who DOES ie who used to be in the GOP.
A distant (3) Dems still think policy matters to the voter, to the public; it does not. And it is always THE ECONOMY, STUPID.
As far as abortion rights and the filibuster are concerned, the right has already told what they will do!
So, people pushing for Black civil rights or gay rights only care about class warfare?
Yes, and many of them are the same people who thought there was no real difference between Gore and Bush and Democrats and Republicans and who therefore thought it would be a good idea to vote for Nader. If they're not the same people (young voters, for instance), they're cut from the same cloth.
GWB was nowhere close to as bad as Trump was/is-- I still maintain he's a good man but was a bad president-- but much of where we are now can be traced back to the 2000 election.
Or really, a bit further back... Reagan set it up for tRump to knock it all down. And he did.
GWB is the reason many Texas Hispanics vote Republican but almost no California Hispanics do. While Pete Wilson, supposedly more liberal than GWB, was fanning the flames of nativist bigotry, GWB was purging the worse bigots from the Texas Republican Party and encouraging a long time Democratic voting bloc to switch.
GWB should have let John McCain be the nominee in 2000. McCain would have won and woukd have been a great leader after 9/11. And McCain would not have invaded Iraq. In fact GWB would have been a good VP for McCain.
Provocative comment, Charlie, and possibly even true. I believe Al Gore would have been a good president, too, if all the votes had been counted. It’s even possible that 9/11 would not have happened with either of them in the Oval Office, as they both had a tendency to read intelligence reports that were placed on their desk.
P.S. You have a common name, but a rather unique set of descriptors.
While I generally agree, I suspect 9/11 would have happened. We generally are surprised by something completely unexpected - and 9/11 changed forever how hijackers were seen.
Actually I'd take it a step further and credit Newt Gingrich in the early- to mid-1990s for creating the environment that made the 2000 election outcome and so much else possible in our modern toxic politics. His widespread introduction of grievance, anger, and outright hatred of opposition into the political process on the right set the table for MAGA and the sort of dysfunctional, win-at-all-costs GOP mindset that now prevails after marinating for a couple of decades. Nothing has been the same since he weaponized conservative victimization and the need to blame every conceivable ill on liberals, and making it personal, as an either-or proposition rather than the consensus-building process that had prevailed.
I do not like to see the word grievance used in association with the GOP without a modifier. It makes it all too easy to dismiss any criticism as irgnorable grievance. If there is a real grievance, it needs to be addressed and rectified. However, what we see is a lot of fake grievance like the guy I was talking to today who was upset that it was unfair (according to him) that blue state residents pre-2018 got to deduct a lot more for state taxes paid and mortgage insurance and therefore cut down on their tax liability because then red state taxpayers were subsidizing blue state. Fake grievance.
Other than that I agree that Gingrich's widespread introduction of FAKE grievance to stoke anger and hatred set the table for MAGA.
I with you on the blame-Gingrich bandwagon. Assume you read the Atlantic piece on him ("Man Who Broke Politics"). One of the ways that I can tell the analysis is spot on is how poor the conservative rebuttals to it were.
Agree re Gingrich. This was when moderate Republicans (like those in NJ) were pushed out of Congress - made irrelevant.
Yes, good point. I've long felt that the two most influential Republicans of the modern era, without ever attaining the White House, are Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. Some good books and documentaries are waiting to be made about how profoundly they have reshaped the fate of our nation through their guidance, Newt for the reasons cited above and Mitch for his own many actions, foremost essentially seizing the Supreme Court for his side and reshaping its impact for at least a generation to come. I often think about how 5-4 conservative rulings, including abortion recently, would be different if Merrick Garland had not been jobbed out of the seat by McConnell's gamesmanship. Given his goal of owning the libs lock, stock, and barrel, I suspect he relishes the fact that millions of them aspire to piss on his grave once he is gone.
I'm sorry, listening to people who refuse to play by the rules Republicans set, tell "The Left" what we do and don't care about is totally obnoxious and also wrong.
Too many Democrats have this attitude of learned helplessness about them that they rationalize away as "being realistic".
Realistically, Democrats had nearly 50 years to protect abortion rights and they failed to do so. Yet, people like you will keep saying we should keep nominating the same kind of candidates who have demonstrably failed at obtaining the goals they claim to aspire to and defending the rights they claim to want to defend.
Edit: I can't respond to everyone. I'll just say, you're all right. I'm completely wrong. There is nothing Democrats could have done better that would have prevented or mitigated this outcome.
This is so tiring. What would the government have done to “codify” a fundamental constitutional right? SCOTUS said it existed, therefore it existed. If you’re talking about Congress enacting a sweeping law, please identify any period where there were sixty pro-choice Dem senators.
You cannot. The Left favors a revisionist version of history for which they were not present.
They didn't have to codify it at the federal level to actually fight for the issue. The bigger problem is that they took a 50 year strategy of trying to appease Republicans by moving ever so slightly to the left of them on issue after issue, instead of trying to engage in persuasion. After they did that, people like you come along and act as if nothing could have been done differently.
It's true. We gave the Republicans far too much credit when it came to common decency, civility, honesty, honor... stuff all Americans used to be proud of. Now they just want to be ugly bullies and force us to live like sharia christians? Or some really awful perversion like that? Anyway, we do need to stop giving totem the "benefit of the doubt"... there is no more doubt about who republicans are.
To say that Democrats have simply been appeasing the GOP all this time is inaccurate. The moderate left is pragmatic and seeks to pass legislation - and to win. The nation is not bright blue - it is a red, blue, and purple.
I dunno, the Partial Birth Abortion Act was a pretty clear case of attempting to yield in order to win over the Republicans. Here we are, 20 years later, and they're still howling about ""UP TO THE MOMENT OF BIRTH!"
That's certainly the story they tell themselves. As if nothing differently could have been done. As if they didn't control the Senate through the Reagan years. As if they didn't control the House for nearly 50 years before Newt Gingrich came along.
Leaders matter and everyone defending the Democratic establishment seems completely unwilling to admit they made any mistakes whatsoever.
Actually, Dems did not control the Senate through the Reagan years. The GOP had the majority for 6 years. Not to mention there was a large percentage of Conservative Dems (like Sam Nunn, John Breaux, Bennett Johnston, Al Gore, etc.) who were generally pro-life. They would not have gone along with a "codification of Roe" or whatever the heck that would have entailed.
Again, the Left often ignores actual history in exchange for what I call, "fantastical thinking".
The reason why the Democratic Party "walked away" or "abandoned" the working class is simple politics. Fact is, there were simply not enough votes in that group to help win elections. First off, labor unions were already losing members due to plant relocations to right to work states, not to mention shifting overseas. Secondly, the drop in manufacturing and low-skilled labor jobs coincided with an increase in "knowledge jobs". While the northern and midwestern manufacturing working class lost jobs and wages, their college educated children saw increasing wages. We now have a large scale upper middle class in the US (people making a $100K or more). Bill Clinton and the DLC understood this. You know who else understood this? That old conservadem, George McGovern! In fact, many of the members of the DLC, including Bill Clinton, Gary Hart and Tony Cuehlo, worked on McGovern's campaign!
Fact is, Clinton's brilliance was in his ability to both increase Dem's percentages in the Northern, West Coast and Midwestern Suburbs while maintaining or even winning back many of those very working class voters that many like you say we abandoned. Look at Clinton's reelection in 1996. He won every state along the Mississippi River as well as every state in what I call the PAC 12, plus NV and NM. He was the first Dem to win FL since LBJ and he won Appalachia. He won a majority of the vote in LA and TN for goodness sake. Bush won many of these states back in 2000 and 2008, mainly due to his religion and the War on Terror. Also, Bush ran as a moderate GOPer and won many Latino votes, which helped him win NM, NV and CO.
The Left needs to ask themselves how did Clinton do this? How did he win Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley? Social issues, not economic ones. He won by championing welfare reform, being tough on crime, and economic fairness. He ran on raising taxes on the rich, while cutting taxes for the middle class. Dems too often focus on the last one here, when without the first two, most of these people will not even listen to the pitch on the last one. My family is working class, and I will tell you that for them working is a social issue. Even among the poor, people who work resent those that don't. People who play by the rules resent the criminal element in their midst.
Bill Clinton said it best, and all Dems and the Left would do well to remember this: "We are for people who work hard, play by the rules, and want a fair shake, an opportunity to make their lives better."
This should be the Democratic Party's mantra and they should repeat it over and over. Instead, if you say something like this, you will immediately get some Left winger who will complain about the rules, what does fair mean, and all other BS.
The problem here is that the Supreme Court would still have overruled anything else you suppose the Dems should have done, and you are unclear as to exactly what they should have done.
It was 44 years, and until about 1992 a huge chunk of their caucuse was pro-life.
Roe v Wade was a 7-2 decision in which five of the seven were Republican appointees.
Casey v Planned Parenthood, in 1992, awas a 5-4 decision in which ALL FIVE VOTES(!) were Republican appointees.
The realignment of parties around abortion politics wasn't complete until John Paul Stevens, a Republican appointee who was in the Roe majority, stepped down in 2010 for Obama to appoint his replacement.
I'm just going to copy and paste what I said to this exact same comment:
https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/but-he-doesnt-fight/comment/7671048
Nonsense. The Democratic Party has moved to the left over my lifetime, not toward the increasingly autocratic right wing. Unless you were either around for Gingrich or well-versed in The Contract for America, your interpretation of the past fifty years is stunningly naive.
I find that in civilized argument, avoiding the ad hominem “people like you,” to be the wiser course if you’d like anyone to listen to you.
The Dems have moved slightly left, while the Republicans have lurched rightward. then they call anyone who opposes Trump a "leftist." even though there are nearly zero actual leftists among the Dems.
Okay, I won't use that language again if you find it offensive. If you'd prefer, "apologist for the strategic errors of the democratic party" I can say that as well.
Anyway, I'm well aware of Newt Gingrich and his antics. I'm also well aware that Democrats had a majority in the house for nearly 50 straight years before he came along. Republicans were convinced they were a permanent minority, until they weren't. Yet, I'm still told there was nothing that could have been done differently.
A House majority may enable the first step in passing a bill, but the real ability rests in the very cantankerous Senate whose will has generally been to either pigeonhole it in committee or invoke the filibuster if it gets to the floor. The latter has an interesting history.
"The filibuster as a legislative tool was accidentally created in 1806, when the Senate, at the urging of Vice President Aaron Burr a year before, eliminated the "previous question" motion, a rarely used rule that allowed the Senate to vote to move on from an issue being debated."
Filibuster, explained: What it is and how does it work in Co…
usatoday.com
It was 44 years, and for more than half of that 44 years, a large chunk of of them were pro life.
Roe v Wade was a 7-2 decision in which five of the seven justices were Republican appointees.
Even in Casey vs Planned Parenthood, decided in 1992, ALL FIVE justices in the 5-4 decision were Republican appointees.
It's almost like the 30 year transition of the south from Democratic to Republican took a while to manifest in the Supreme Court.
Okay, I misstated the exact number of years, which I have edited.
That said, I don't see what exactly your point is. I believe the Democrats made strategic errors for decades at a time if they actually cared about defending abortion rights. The fact that so many House Democrats were pro-life is only more evidence of that.
I think that abortion has been an issue that the Dems were happy they didn't have to touch with legislation on the federal level. Roe bailed them out. The Democratic coalition could be strongly pro-choice, but not have to hang their hat on a divisive law. And they didn't have to, until now. They had their cake and were eating it too, but the party's over.
that was an exhaustingly roundabout way to call Tom a moron...
please take it down a notch. Or just take it down.
All I'm going to say is, "infantile morons", is not a good faith way to have a discourse. I've seen comments like this deleted before, but I guess if it's a popular enough opinion though, then the staff at the Bulwark think this kind of language is fine.
Duly noted.
It may still get deleted. The Bulwark staff figure that paying money to post comments promotes self-moderation. They come across comments; they do not monitor them. Anyone is always free to report a comment. All you have to do is click on the three dots.
TCinLA... then why are you here? Why engage with any of us? I'm genuinely asking...
I agree with Peter T. Can we cut back on the ad hominem attacks. They don't help your arguments (which I generally agree with) and just create an atmosphere of unpleasant partisanship.
Some people are irritating and unpersuadable, but others who aren't can be turned off by what are unnecessary personal attacks.
I happen to agree with you like 80% of the time, including the sentiment here. But...you do tend to yell and scream a lot. If this were Breitbart, I'd get it. But it ain't. It'd be nice if we could keep our swell little Bulwark community civil.
Yeah, OK, intervention over. Mind my own business, yada yada.
And precisely how was the federal government supposed to have "protect abortion rights"? The Roe vs. Wade decision said that states could not ban abortion. What needed to be done was to eliminate the STATE laws that made abortion a crime. And in fact, there is a long list of states did just that, so you blast at Democrats is yet another example of an unjustified slander from the Left. For example, Virginia codified the Roe v. Wade decision way back in the 1970s, and it was a legislature full of unreconstructed conservadems that did that.
Compare these maps and withdraw your pro Jill Stein propaganda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_States_by_state#/media/File:Map_of_US_abortion_laws_pre-1973.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law_in_the_United_States_by_state#/media/File:US_state_abortion_trigger_laws.svg
Actually Roe v Wade said that a woman had a right to obtain an abortion, because a woman had a right to privacy regarding her medical care.
The Dobb's decision basically said that no right to privacy exists because it is not an enumerated right, conveniently ignoring the 9th amendment, therefore the right to an abortion does not exist. Meanwhile they, except for Clarence Thomas, claim that this doesn't apply to other Court decisions, based on privacy, because a 3rd party is not involved.
Just repeating what I have stated again and again. The problem is not that they didn't codify Roe at the federal level. The problem is they adopted a 50 year strategy of appeasing the Right by moving ever so slightly to the left of them and deriding anyone who thought that was a bad idea as "unrealistic".
I’m lost by Tom’s arguments. What is he recommending should have done? What does “appeasing” the right mean functionally?
Me too
Ok gotcha. I’m getting closer to fighting fire with my fire. It may utterly fail but I feel (this is truly a feeling) that if democrats don’t play hardball the republicans will steam roll them (basically argument for deterrence)
During all those 50 years they had a filibuster proof majority for just three months, in 2009, and that included several pro-life Democrats like Ben Nelson and pro-life independent Joe Lieberman.
Side note: The country had 50 years to make abortion as unnecessary as possible but that didn’t happen either. At least the Dems talked a good game on taking care of our children. All this fight over Roe vs. Wade so nobody had to be serious about a decent safety net for mothers and children.
Wrong about Joe Lieberman. He has always been pro-choice on abortion. There was even a really nutty rabbi in Brooklyn that tried to excommunicate him for that position.
Yes and who's fault is that? They adopted a strategy to cater to the Right and to be ever so slightly left of Republicans on issue after issue. Republicans set a big goal and kept working towards it, never giving an inch, never refusing to give up until they got what they wanted.
Where has THAT energy been for the past 50 years?
So many people want to act like there was nothing they could have done differently and then when some of us say "Hey, you could have done these things" they say "No, no, no, that's not realistic."
You would have the Democrats be a permanent minority in the Senate and House of Representatives. When has Nebraska ever elected a progressive Democrat to the Senate? Nelson was the best Democrats will ever get there.
You say this as if people can't be persuaded at all, as if they weren't persuaded to vote for a demonstrable imbecile, completely unqualified for the presidency, just 6 years ago. Democrats could have taken a different strategy and fought for the things they cared about.
This is the part where I do what you're doing and say that they never actually cared about those things.
Tom,
No one is saying the Dems never made mistakes, but your characterization of them as not caring about issues important to liberals and assigning motive to them is unfair and inaccurate.
We have to deal in the reality that the Electoral College and the Senate tilt the field dramatically in favor of the GOP. JVL has written about this.
If you want to take a stroll through 50 years of history, I’d be glad to, because you are overlooking a lot of major facts that have affected how the Dems have acted.
In 1972, the Dems lost the presidential election by losing 49 states. We won in 1976 largely because of Watergate & we won with a moderate southern candidate. In 1980, we not only lost the WH, we lost the Senate. And in 1984, we lost the presidential election in another 49 state debacle. In 1988 we lost the White House again & it wasn’t close. Bill Clinton led an inspired effort to get us back in the game & it’s likely that without that effort no Democrat would have seen the inside of the White House in the last 25 years except to go on a tour.
Disclaimer—I worked in the Clinton WH for 8 years. Despite what the left likes to say, we accomplished a lot of good things. We restored progressivity to the tax code without one GOP vote. We banned assault weapons & passed the Brady Bill. We expanded child health care. We also made mistakes. I believe the biggest one was deregulation of the financial system. But we were not a bunch of people who didn’t care nor were we GOP lite. And for 6 of the 8 years we faced a hostile GOP/Gingrich-led Congress.
The Supreme Court we have today is the direct result of left wing voters who didn’t think Al Gore was pure enough & voted for Nader or sat the 2000 election out. That got us Alito & Roberts. And it’s a result of left wing voters who hated Hillary & voted for Jill Stein or Trump or who didn’t vote. That got us Gorshuch, Kavanaugh & Barrett. Hillary talked about the Supreme Court a lot during that campaign. She warned us. The left was clearly unmoved.
So before you blame Democrats who haven’t been pure enough to suit you, maybe look to your left for the reason we are stuck with this dangerous, horrible Court.
One of the best posts on this site.
Without Bill Clinton, there would have been no Barack or Joe. The problem is, those who constantly complain about the lack of progressivism under the elected Democrats, they would rather have lost those races in the unprovable belief that a "True Progressive" could have won and saved the Dems and therefore the Country. It usually ends with some reference to FDR, and the like. It is, as with most LW discussions, absolute gibberish with no basis in history. It is the Susan Sarandon view of politics that only serves Susan Sarandon.
This sort of silliness is the exact reason why no sustainable left wing movement in this country has ever arisen. In a country like the US, where people have an innate distrust of large institutions, the people will be highly skeptical of a "cradle to grave" system that many of those on the Left want. This is a country where people want to succeed, value hard work and economic attainment, not social safety. If safety was our main guidepost, then guns would not be ubiquitous, internet porn would not be free and accessible to all, we would have no video games, rap music and violent movies, and drinking would be outlawed.
Again, the Left often forgets what country they are trying to run. This is what leads to their failure. It is also why on too many occasions, people on the Left find themselves increasingly disdainful of the American people.
You see this same thing on the Right by the way, mainly around social issues.
Thanks for this synopsis. I wish that there was more historical perspective in our opinion articles!
I’m honestly lost with what you are arguing here. Are you saying that “democrats could have done x but didn’t” and that is why we are here? Or are you arguing that we would be here anyway? I just don’t see how democrats could have stopped the overturning of roe without winning more presidential elections (2 of which they won the popular vote in and one of those was decided by said Supreme Court on a questionable doctrine)
You are the kind of person Tim is talking about.
Trump got elected because of a quirk in the electoral college that allowed him to win with 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. That has never happened before. In 2020 he almost won despite losing by 8 million votes.
If you think that's the strategy Democrats should pursue -- "but he fights! who cares about the popular vote" -- then make that case.
Who exactly are the 80,000 persuadables in swing states that care enough about abortion to pull the lever for Hillary -- who, in the debates with Trump, made a big deal that choice was on the ballot, and which Trump also bluntly promised -- instead of Jill Stein or Gary Johnson?
Maybe those Stein voters could have taken the predictions of the Trump threat seriously and voted for Hillary instead. Then Hillary would have won the electoral College. They learned their lesson and after seeing the Trump threat in action, they voted for Biden. Same story in 2000. If the Green voters had voted for Gore in Florida, bush would have lost.
There was nothing to fight about regarding abortion on the Left because it was protected by Roe. Do you think that pushing for a federal law regarding abortion would animate voters for decades? Broadly speaking, though, Democrats do need to improve on messaging and rallying the troops.
Evan:
Don't waste your time. Tom must have gotten lost on the way to Daily Kos. His attitude is just the kind of brain dead, lack of reality thinking that predominates that site. (Why I left).
When they are not arguing over whether those who oppose continued use of the term "Latin X" are more racist or sexist, or, whether AOC should run for POTUS in 2024 or 2028, they spend much of their time yelling at the Democratic Party for not being progressive enough. Yet, when it is pointed out that every time a "true progressive" runs for the Dem Nomination for POTUS they lose, they start yelling and saying the process was rigged because something.....
Its like arguing with my teenager, who is a big Bernie supporter. Ultimately, I just stopped trying to talk to him about it and decided to respond to each of his half-witted diatribes with "will see". That has the benefit of (i) keeping my blood pressure down, and (ii) raising his, which puts a smile on my face :)
I agree.
There is plenty to pile on Dems for. I am unimpressed with their national "leaders" overall. But we are piling on because they seem to be ignoring the fix we are in.
So let's be clear: we are in the fix we are in because REPUBLICANS are ruthlessly dishonest cheaters led by Mitch McConnell (and with Putin's help).
What makes you think they are ignoring the fix we are in? Because they don't act like Republicans? Don't normalize the GOP.
I'm old. I remember when both parties had leaders, even statesmen, who could bust heads when needed. For ME, that time was over the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill (I don't recall it's name) and other protections for voters and voting. And Dems didn't even try as far as I can see. And I think that may have spelled the death knell of democracy and two-party politics in fact as well as fiction. I do hope I'm wrong but I see no signs of it.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 is recent legislation. It passed the House on August 24, 2021 in a straight party-line vote. The Senate voted 50-49 to pass the bill, falling well short of the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.
I am old enough to remember quiet bipartisan agreements that got legislation done. And a day when voting rights passed. And other bills, thanks in part to lbj arm twisting. And a time when there were those who did their jobs and had at least basic courtesy for others and at least pretended people and voters mattered.
I agree with you about M and M.
Yes the 60s were violent and scary and I recall thinking as the 70s arrived that the 60s had "killed all our heroes " and I worried there would be no more. The violence then was based on ideals or passions, positions or even political beliefs, rather than cold blooded grasp of raw power personally. I worried as we left the 60s and rightly so as it turns out. I agree 100% with your last sentence.
It is sad. I finally banned politics talk with sister.
Remember that old saying about "if you're not liberal when you're young you have no heart; if you're not conservative when you're old you have no brain"? It seems age (and financial responsibilities) tends to make one more conservative at least fiscally. But we have gone way beyond anything like policy matters into tribal hatreds. Maybe it's in the water....
Another part of Biden's low approval rating is the widespread lack of knowledge about what Dems and Biden have done in the last year and a half.
And that is solely their own fault!
It is certainly hard to imagine how they can be after the last six years.
I'd hope that most anyone who has said there's no difference in the parties has had their eyes opened. Even if once somewhat true, it certainly isn't now. One party is the party of Trump, performative cruelty, and your great grandfather's supreme court. The other party might be either too much or not enough progressive for you (generic you), but I don't see how that can be a hang up given the alternative.
The Progressives are working at taking over local party leadership. They are a minority of Democrats but they are better organized. They won 3 out of 4 of the major party positions in my area.