The senior senator from Hawaii thinks it's past time to panic:
I swear there’s a whole cottage industry around telling people to not freak out even after a @&# insurrection and the number 3 R is getting ousted this week and there are voter suppression laws passing across America. It is time to be alarmed. It is not always savvy to be chill.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) May 10, 2021
Fair enough. But without aiming my response at Schatz in particular (it's a very broad response, as you'll see), what are you willing to do about it?
As near as I can tell, progressives are willing to support any idea that's completely hopeless. DC will not become a state. Neither will Puerto Rico. The electoral college will not change. The Senate will not be abolished. The filibuster will not be eliminated. Gerrymandering will not go away. Rupert Murdoch will not have his assets stripped and be hauled off to the dock in the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity.
I have said this before, perhaps enough times to be tiresome, but the basic political lay of the land hasn't changed in a century. Every state, including the small ones, gets two senators. There are 435 congressional districts, many of them in rural areas. Only 25% of Americans self-identify as liberal. The rest of them hear Larry Kudlow say stuff like this and they nod along:
Those folks on the far-left who insist that America is a bad place are trying to tear down our system. That’s why they talk about systemic racism.
And they’ll do anything. Like packing the Supreme Court, intimidating juries, ending the filibuster, defunding the police, etc. etc. Because what they really want to do is transform this country from the greatest and most prosperous democracy in the history of history into some kind of socialist command and control autocratic country that would presumably support their left-wind ideological whims.
I don't care what you think about this. It remains a fact that there are indeed some on the left who support all these things and more, and that scares the hell out of a lot of people. It makes men afraid of making one wrong move and losing their job to a charge of harassment. It makes white people afraid of accidentally offending anyone with dark skin. It makes gun owners afraid that we'll take their guns away. It makes middle-class suburbanites afraid that we really will defund the police. It makes rural communities afraid they'll be subject to a tidal wave of illegal immigrants.
But wait. This is all ridiculous, isn't it? There are extremists on the right too, and they're a lot scarier than extremists on the left. Sorry, but no they aren't. Not to most people. That may be wildly unfair, but it's the way things are.
Like it or not, there's a reason that 75% of Americans don't identify as liberal. It's because they're scared of what we liberals have on offer. And that in turn means that if we want to win, we have to do the one thing so radical, so extreme, so completely outlandish, that even the specter of Donald Trump isn't enough to get us to do it: adopt more centrist policies.
This is Politics 101, and it explains why Joe Biden is president, not Bernie Sanders. For some reason, though, an awful lot of people have forgotten it. At the very moment when liberals should be on the verge of taking on an imploding conservative movement and smashing it to bits, we've instead chosen to move leftward—usually in the clumsiest possible way—and turn every election into a nailbiter. And then we wonder why we lose elections in North Carolina and Florida and Iowa.
I can't begin to tell you how depressing this is. I sure wish I were wrong. But a century of the most basic political science says I'm not.
When Democrats start campaigning on filibuster reform or making D. C. the 51st state, I'll concede there is something to what Kevin says. Until then, color me unimpressed.
DC Statehood is a matter of justice not some lefty pipe dream. It won't be happening this cycle but ""The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". Politicians in favor of Democracy should be on board with this but work prudently in getting more folks on board the statehood bandwagon. Statehood will happen in the next ten years.
Then Texas splits into five states, 4 GOP and 1 Dem.
I suppose if you believe open land equals votes...
But by that reasoning, the Dakotas could just as easily split and become Northwest Dakota, Northeast Dakota, Southwest Dakota, and Southeast Dakota with the benefit of not giving any Democratic states.
Except supposedly there's something about Texas's constitution or something.
The Founders were entirely correct to make the governing district not a state...they knew it would just become a self-interested, self-dealing fiefdom otherwise.
Ah, still ignorant of history, I see.
Then Massachusetts splits into NINE states. All deep blue!
(We can play that game indefinitely if we want, which ultimately leads to the demise of the massively undemocratic Senate. I'd take that deal in a heartbeat. Doubt you would, though).
Totally agree that since Trump lost the electoral college it's time to dump the electoral college. MAGA!
The better to subjugate them under Jade Helm, Phase 2.
You know when DC statehood can happen? We we have a supermajority AND a Democratic president.
Maybe we should put the horse before the cart??
Anti-democratic reform is the best response according to Steven Levitsky, author of How Democracies Die, in this excellent review of where we are politically in the US and how we got here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10RQd7_dliE
“ what are you willing to do about it?”
Well, I probably can’t say what I’d like to do. And it’s really not worth the effort or the sacrifice required. I prefer to simply stop giving a darn what happens to this evil country. I’ll vote for democrats on Election Day, but I’m really not otherwise interested in doing anything to change the country. I’m living a completely comfortable life and so the status quo is fine. All these interesting programs like Obamacare or... well what else is there really? It’s interesting but it’s affects so few people that it hardly seems to have been worth the effort.
And let’s be honest about what this government really does with our tax money... war. Murder, mayhem, and destruction. Never in my life did I imagine this government and military were so completely useless and incompetent. And it’s the only thing it does which has bipartisan support! Truly bizarre.
Give it up folks. You aren’t getting anything from this government except war.
Honestly, this kind of nihilism does no one any good. Want to see a really evil country? Look to North Korea, or, arguably, the current communist gov of China.
The fact that we fail to live up to our ideals does not make us evil, it makes us tragically human. At least we HAVE ideals: and the worst possible thing we can do is to throw up our hands and give up on them.
Honestly, this kind of nihilism does no one any good.
That's why it's called nihilism.
Fortunately it's not a very common attitude. And that commenter is way off his facts, too. For starters, Obamacare affected millions of Americans, which is why the GOP hasn't been able to repeal it.
We had better figure out how to do one of DC Statehood or HR1, because if we don't, it's unlikely we'll hold power ever again.
History says we _will_ lose the house in 2022. We'll likely gain a seat or two in the senate in 22, but lose the senate in 24. Trump supporters are busy purging anyone who will operate free and fair elections in the nail biter states, so without federal changes to election laws to ensure free and fair elections, we're looking at a permanent future of dictated elections.
So we better damn well figure out this DC thing.
There was little free and nothing fair about this last election with its ever changing rules, it's 'make it up as you go along' attitude of secretaries of state, with the concentrated propaganda blitz from the MSM and NPR.
There are ways of getting what you want, it's called amending the constitution.
Walking into somebody's living room gathering with the express intent of farting and doing nothing else but farting isn't going to win you many converts, stinky.
Nothing you've written indicates that the 2020 election was unfair, and certainly does not indicate that it was unfree. The fact that the outcome was not what you desired (at the presidential level) does not, of course, constitute evidence of either.
We had a pandemic, and we tried to manage the election in a way that minimized the harm to people from the pandemic. The right throw a hissy fit because that harm minimization also meant that more people were likely to exercise their franchise. None of this makes the election unfree or unfair, if anything it ensured greater participation of legal voters which is the only morally acceptable direction voter participation for legal voters.
The problem in the election was a expressly that doing it responsibly had the side effect of making marginal voters more likely to vote, and that is unacceptable to the republican party.
Rather than adopting 'centrist' policies, Democrats should adopt fewer policies. It sometimes seems that every Democrat has their own pet project which they want to make a priority: confiscate guns, forgive student debt, free child care, Medicare for all, open borders, universal basic income, reform the police, reparations for Blacks ... the list goes on and on. People who don't follow politics closely don't understand how seriously the party as a whole is likely to push any of these. They naturally tend to believe they'll do them all if they get the chance. The Democratic Party would do well to improve its own internal policy-making processes, with associated changes to messaging.
"If we form government, we intend to do A, B and C. They will be important improvements to the lives of ordinary Americans, they will take all our time and effort to get through Congress successfully, so we won't be doing anything else." That's the kind of practical politics they should be developing.
Did anyone else hear about the "Birthing People"?
It appears that Rep. Cori Bush referred to "Birthing People," instead of "mothers," in both prepared comments and tweets. This led to headlines on sites like Yahoo news declaring that Democrats no longer want to use the word "mother."
Over the weekend, I put up a comment on the Daily Kos website about that incident. I pointed out that it should be possible to defend transgender rights without resorting to language that the majority of the country will obviously find odd (and which can so easily be attacked and ridiculed by republicans). Comments like "Birthing People," I said, strike me as an unforced error: the kind of thing we need to avoid in order to actually win more elections (congressional and otherwise) with larger margins.
And the reaction on that daily Kos website was ... well I'm not sure what to call it. My comment was flagged for ... something. There were dozens of replies, and they were all directing over-the-top outrage at what I had said. Quite a lot of them went into direct attacks on my character. One person referred to me as a "precious snowflake," and I'm not even certain why. They may have thought I was personally offended by the "Birthing People" comment. My point, however, was pretty clear: inclusive language is a lovely ideal, but it can be a terrible political strategy.
Unfortunately, Leftists simply cannot do strategy. And I think it's pretty obvious that Kevin's post would be similarly disparaged if he posted it on that website.
And yet none of those things were the most surprising element of what happened. The main thing that I found startling were the number of people who indicated that they somehow wanted my comment taken down and/or me kicked off that site altogether. And it's one thing to disagree with me, or even question my character. But their effort to just block out any potentially moderating views (from their supposedly "progressive" website) is just depressing. In that regard, the Leftists really do share some unfortunate resemblances with some on the very far right.
The only bright spot I can think of off the top of my head is that reality does occasionally still assert itself. Biden easily won the Dem nomination - and the activist Leftists ultimately didn't seem to represent much else than the conventional wisdom of twitter (not the country at large). I just wish we could always count on reality coming through for us in that way.
The bottom line on that is that if one person says something the cons don't approve of, they will exaggerate it into a mass movement. However, if zero people say something the cons don't approve of, they will still exaggerate it into a mass movement. In other words "watching your language" will not give you even the slightest protection from the outrage machine.
Most people aren’t scared of liberalism unless they watch FOX news. And yes there are some crazies on the left and sometimes they say outlandish things that aren’t embraced by the Democratic establishment unlike the downright lunacy embraced by the GOP. But people will fear liberalism less if policies are implemented that directly help the working class such as universal Childcare, universal healthcare, paid maternity leave etc. The real problem is that people see their life not improving and that is because based on policy in this country we don’t care about kids, women and poor black and brown people. Improving life for those groups will improve life for everyone.
There are 435 congressional districts, many of them in rural areas.
I continue to be mystified why expanding the House isn't talked about more. It's eminently constitutional, and the population has roughly trebled since the last expansion. It's long overdue, and there's nothing the least bit radical about it.
In general, I agree with Kevin's take on centrism with the following caveat: a lot of policies that are pretty redistributive in nature depending on funding specifics (single payer, more generous UI, bump-ups to Social Security, free community college, infrastructure jobs, etc) are all quite popular, from what I can see. So, provided they can be sold by people taking the centrist talk, this is the way to go in my view. In other words, Bidenism.
FDR did not get elected four times by being "moderate" or "centrist". The problem as I see it is that since LBJ the Democrats, when they get power, don't do much of anything with it. The result is that the voters see the Democrats doing pretty much nothing so they throw them out and put the Republicans in. Then the Republicans do pretty much nothing, so the voters throw them out and put the Democrats in.
How about Biden sends The Squad on a four year fact-finding mission in Antarctica?
I don't agree. Clinton was pretty centrist AND conciliatory while the Republicans with Gingrich at the helm just pulled more and more to the right. We Liberals got screwed in a lot of ways except for getting Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The Republicans make hyperbolic statements, ginning up the fear and anger of all their authoritarian followers who view progress as an existential threat. To hell with them. I'm tired of trying to mollify these people. They'd reanimate Hitler if they could.
The biggest issue is that no one wants to govern from the center because extremism drives news coverage from friendly media.
Right-wing media is far out to the right of mainstream America. It is full of absolutely crazy radio and internet activists who focus on absurd conspiracy theories about bamboo ballots and "the great replacement." Republican politicians want to get into these media outlets, but the only way to do so is play into the right-wing craziness.
Left-wing media (and I include mainstream media like NYTimes and CNN) is far out to the left of mainstream America. It is full of absolutely crazy TV, print, and Twitter activists who focus on absurd cultural policing about "birthing people" or dismantling the cisheteronormative nuclear family. Democratic politicians want to get into these media outlets, but the only way to do so is play into the left-wing craziness.
The center is disappearing from American life, and the media is primarily to blame. It's time to bring back the fairness doctrine, and to expand its scope to include not only TV and radio, but print and online media as well.
" It remains a fact that there are indeed some on the left who support all these things and more"
OK. How many? Are they in positions of power? If not, why do we care? If those people did not exist, the Right Wing Media would invent them, so there is no point in trying to minimize their already minimal power.
A previous commenter used the anecdote (n=1) of DailyKos people wanting him canceled. That is a very unfortunate single isolated incident of private anonymous individuals behaving badly. It is not a justification for deciding on a decades-long national strategy for the left.
"Left-wing media (and I include mainstream media like NYTimes and CNN) is far out to the left of mainstream America. It is full of absolutely crazy TV, print, and Twitter activists who focus on absurd cultural policing about "birthing people" or dismantling the cisheteronormative nuclear family."
Nope. Not true. Full? Do you want to count how many stories in the NYT and CNN appear a day? Hundreds? How many are about those crazy things? 1 a day?
There's a lotta BS in Kevin's argument.
What lefties believe in "intimidating juries"? what are you even talking about?
Why is "eliminating the filibuster" a scary proposition? Do you think anybody on the right cares about the filibuster except as a means to make their increasingly minority positions politically possible? It's not like it's an untouchable handed down by the Holy Founders.
I know you said "adopt more centrist policies", but I think what you really mean is "campaign more like centrists" - and govern however we damn well please if we win.
You know, the same things Republicans do - pretend they aren't radical and extreme, that they're reasonable and all that, and then do things like try to burn down democracy for the sake of a few bucks.
JFC, it's like reading Yglesias.
How likely is it that a Republican House would certify a 2024 democratic victory?
That's how serious this is.
How many mass shootings have been carried out by leftists this past year? How many assaults against people wearing masks have been carried out by left wing radicals? How many invasions of state houses, or the capitol have been carried out by left wing crazies?
Sorry, both sides doesn't do it when all the violence is coming from one of them.