We shouldn’t be surprised that the elite liberal
establishment (we definitely need a good acronym for it – EEL would work if we
just shifted the words around) has come out with their analysis of what
happened and why. In the last couple of days, I have been made aware of two
examples that merit response because they represent a misreading of the
historical context of this election and therefore fail to provide guidance to
how progressives can move forward.
The first, and most pernicious, is an article by Paul
Krugman, Useful Idiots Galore, that
appeared in the NYT. Krugman argues that a swing of 1% in the election sent
Sec. Clinton down to defeat. That swing, he states was due to “dirty tricks”
(my name, not his), namely the actions of Russia and James Comey in the days
leading up to Nov. 8th which produced the shift and threw the
election to Trump. And he may well be right, but …
The conclusion implied from this analysis is dead wrong. It
proceeds from the failure to locate this election in the historical context of
American politics for the last 40 years. The question he doesn’t address is why
was this election so close to begin with. And he fails to even mention the fact
that this election marks the continuation of a trend that has seen the
Democratic Party become a permanent minority party in most parts of the US.
Congress is now solidly in the hands of the Republicans. The Senate races in 2
years will be a disaster for Democrats as they must defend a large majority of
the seats that will be up for election, and the House – well’ we can forget
about that since only about 10% of the seats are even contestable. Most state
governments are controlled by Republicans. Fewer and fewer young people are
registering as Democrats. And so on.
What has been the anomaly is that, prior to 2016, Democrats
have won 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections (counting Gore’s win in 2000).
Now, even that critical office has fallen to the most reactionary forces. Arguing
that this election was stolen keeps us from analyzing the fundamental problems
of the Democratic Party that led to this loss. To quote Thomas Frank, “What
Ever Happened to the Party of the People?”
I would posit that Krugman doesn’t know because he is part
of the problem. Democrats need to stop moaning about what the Repugs (a
wonderful bastardization of their party’s name that my wife has been using for
a while) are doing and own up to what they did wrong. We don’t need to double
down on what we have always done, nor do we need to “wait” for changing
demographics to give us victory. What the Democratic Party needs is something
to motivate voters. It needs to become the vehicle for a real political revolution.
In that light, the widely-circulated article “Indivisible: A
Practical Guide to Resisting the Trump Agenda” does hit on a couple of
important points. The Congressional staffers who drew it up stress the need to
organize locally and call for resistance to every part of the Republican’s
agenda. They caution against “buying into false promises or accepting partial
concessions”. Yes and Yes! These are
critical to any strategy to reverse the losses that Democrats have sustained.
But their prescription to follow the strategy and tactics of
the Tea Party are based on both a misunderstanding of the history of that
reactionary movement and of the objective conditions we face today.
First, the Tea Party did not arise in an ideological vacuum.
Over forty years ago, reactionaries (please don’t call them conservatives,
because they are not trying to “conserve” anything) began an ideological
assault on the politics of the New Deal, particularly targeting the idea that
government should have any role outside of power to protect private property (basically
the military and the police). This assault was carried out by a large array of
think tanks, media outlets, etc. and by 1980 had successfully altered the political
debate so as to lay the groundwork for the extreme reactionaries of the Tea
Party (much to the chagrin of many of the old-line Republicans). The rules of
the game were stacked in their favor.
No such game-changing ideological work has been done to date
for the progressive movement. Despite some beginnings by progressive think
tanks and institutions and the popularization of some progressive ideas by mass
movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter and the Sanders campaign, the
reactionaries still dominate the conversation. Without breaking this strangle
hold on framing the questions which we address, the left will not be able to
build a mass movement. The beginnings of any political revolution are in
ideology, translated into program and put into place by organization. You don’t
start with organization.
Second, we need to remember that the goal of the Tea Party
was stop government from functioning, thereby proving that government was
incapable of solving problems. Success for the party of “no” did not involve
mobilizing support for programs designed to meet the needs of ordinary people.
Given our historical structure of checks and balances, it is a lot easier to
prevent things from happening than to make them happen. Keeping the government
from functioning, becoming the new party of “no” cannot be the strategy for
Democrats, it simply plays into the hands of the reactionaries. We need a
positive, not a negative, blueprint.
Third, the successes of the Tea Party came at a time when
the Republicans were the majority party in both the House and Senate. The Tea
Party activist tactics revolved around making sure that moderate Republicans (the
few that are left) towed their line. Right now Democrats are not in control of
either house in Congress and only in a few states do they have much influence in
the state legislatures; they are hardly in a position to block reactionary
legislation.
Thus, trying to influence (or annoy) Republicans in Congress
is a poor strategy. Neither Trump nor
the Congressional Republicans are about to back away from what they see as a
chance to implement their reactionary policies on a grand scale. While it may
be possible to sway a few moderate Republicans in battleground districts on a
few issues (and we must pursue that whenever we can) as a general strategy it
will fail. To recapture the hearts and minds, Democrats must become the party
of “Yes, We Can”.
Another problem with the proposed strategy (I’m not sure it
even qualifies as a strategy) is its piecemeal approach to policy. The
Democrats have played “small ball” for much of the last 40 years, trying to
build a coalition here and another one there to make limited gains. An
excellent example is the Affordable Care Act. What is needed to mobilize
Democratic voters, Independents and even some Republicans. is to merge the
populist upsurge we are witnessing with the “big-tent” strategy to create a
broad “new deal”.
For the Democratic Party, it’s time to “tell no lies and
claim no easy victories”.
Note: Part 4 will deal with the tasks ahead.
This is a very well reasoned & written essay. Krugman & his ilk are seeking to cast blame & in so doing justify the status quo, ie the Clinton wing, of the Democratic Party. Not only will it not succeed, but it wouldn't move us in the direction we need to move even if it did. This election should never have been close. The Repub establishment was in complete disarray. Desertion of the trump cause was rampant. Only the poorest possible strategy - the strategy of Krugman & his ilk, could have grasped defeat from the jaws of victory & that's exactly what they did.
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