The term, “at a crossroads” is often overused. It is often misused too. Sometimes people forget the origin of the phrase goes back to the play Oedipus Rex. Specifically, it describes the scene where Oedipus unknowingly kills his father Laius, at a crossroads. He then sells his soul to the devil in order to play the blues lyre so he can bring his wife back from Hades. The band Cream made a song about it. But the truth is the Democratic Party has to decide what it believes and what it wants to fight for. Opposition to Trump isn’t enough. Although Trump might be at the top of the ballot, there’s so many other races to consider. The Democrats have to get people out to vote for them. This requires a unified vision and platform people can get excited about.
The party can’t assume people will vote for their slate of candidates just because of Trump. Given our polarized state-by-state elections, there’s plenty of people who might not come out to vote for the Democratic candidate for President if they think the state they live in will go out for him or her anyway. But in doing so, they will ignore all the races down-ballot the Democrats need to win. You know, the races the Democrats used to care about winning. I’m talking State Senators. Aldermen. Comptrollers. Clerks of the Court. (and no, not dog catcher. That’s not an office that’s actually up for the ballot anywhere.)
The Democrats can’t win these without someone who gets people excited, even in blue states. The leaders of the DNC will deny it and the pundits will ignore it, but the truth about politics these days is that you don’t win by appealing to some mythical center. You win by getting your base out to vote. The Democrats, ostensibly being the party of “the people” should have more voters in this scenario. You’d think they’d understand that and push for it, but alas that seems to be beneath the current leadership. As we saw in 2016, they were more interested (as in Chuck Schumer’s analysis) to give up blue collar votes in the Rust Belt in favor of mythical Republican moderates in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Cleveland.
In this portion of my ongoing series on the candidates, I’ll look at the candidates who are…well…meh. These are the men and woman running who can’t really articulate what they will do differently in the White House and what makes their approach to the issues and the electorate more than just a repeat of Hillary’s disastrous run in 2016. They can’t even really explain what makes them unique from one another. Why so many of them are running might be the biggest mystery of the 2019-2020 primary. Here are their names, the absolute meh tier:
Seth Moulton
Eric Swalwell
Michael Bennet
Steve Bullock
Amy Klobuchar
Cory Booker
Beto O'Rourke
Wayne Messam
…and sometimes
Pete Buttigieg
Are they being goaded to run by some entity within the party? Is the DNC or some faction thereof responsible? And if so, are they failing to communicate with one another? It’s hard to explain this phenomenon. We have so many people running for such a small piece of electoral real-estate. Sure, the big donors are all there, but the voters? They’ve largely gone over to the more liberal, progressive, or outright leftist wings of the party. Yet here we have several candidates essentially trying to resurrect Clintonian triangulation and the 1990s. The trouble is, Bill could only do what he did thanks to a particular combination of demographic and economic factors three decades ago. Plus, he had charisma. None of these people running in the Neoliberal lane have anything approaching the personality Bill Clinton displayed.
They also seem to collectively forget how much of a disaster Bill was for the long-term health of the party. Sure, they won the presidency. Then they lost Congress. That consolation prize seemed to be worth it, until they lost the presidency under Al Gore anyway. As a result, America ended up with an emboldened right-wing Republican Party in control of this government, and the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was a brief window of opportunity to realign the country again under Obama’s first term, but what happened? More triangulation, more surrender to Wall Street, and more foreign entanglements. Instead of breaking with Clinton’s Neoliberalism, Obama sought to reinforce it with a kinder face. Now we’re reaping the proceeds of this continued failed strategy. Trump is in the White House. The Conservatives have hijacked the Supreme Court. The GOP controls the preponderance of state houses and governorships across the country.
It is true that once more, the Democrats have Congress to try and stand athwart the Republicans and yell “stop!” But the victory in the 2018 midterms had more to do with disgust and frustration over Trump and the Republicans, than any genuine enthusiasm for the Democrats or their policy. It can’t be used as a barometer for the voters, or would-be voters in 2020. It certainly shouldn’t be seen as a desire to return to the triangulations of the 1990s and the compromises of the aughts. However this first batch of candidates are clamoring for the presidency under the assumption that what Americas want are grand bargains, entitlement cuts, endless “smart” wars, and the last full half-measure of devotion to the New Deal.
Now I’m being generous. I’m assuming they’re running because they believe in all that and believe that’s what’s best for the country. Maybe they really all want to Vice President. Maybe they are hoping to get a book deal out of their runs. Maybe it’s just pure ambition, which most politicians have, and it only seems like so many mediocre people are running because the Democratic Party has a surplus of mediocre people. It could be that an army of overpaid consultants see them as easy marks, and have goaded them to run in order to line their own pockets.
Sure they will argue they have certain advantages and offer up diversity to the field. In some cases, like Cory Booker, it’s true. Buttigieg too, we can’t forget him (because the media won’t let us). In others, they do represent regions of the country outside the usual “Blue States,” though how that will translate to victories in other states (or even just their own) is unclear. Then there are candidates running on their youth, despite not believing in anything young people want. There’s a veteran or two in there as well. They want to be John Kerry 2.0 it seems.
Collectively their problem is a lack of substance, that points to new ideas, a clear vision, and how to restructure and rebuilt America. At best, what they have are piecemeal reforms. At worse, they will put a happy face on privatization and austerity. This might be the solution to the mystery I mentioned earlier. Maybe so many of them are being encouraged to run by the party so they can put a damper on the whole race. That would explain the strangely high number of them throwing their lanyards in the ring. They are here to crowd out the debate stage and tell us we can’t have nice things. If things get too rowdy in the primary, their role is to remove the punchbowl.
To give any of them the presidency would be a disaster for the party, for the progressive movement, and for the country at large. Given the looming ramifications of Climate Change, they are also a disaster for the world. Why? Because they are the apotheosis of the two trends that have been ruining the Democrats since 1992. The first is ideological. They are proud defenders of Neoliberalism, although their version is just a rehash of an already dated revival. They want laissez faire at home and intervention abroad, open boarders to capital and gated communities for labor. The market over all, yes, and that means you. The Democratic Party not only gave free reign to “free” markets in the 1990s, it did so back in the 1890s as well. That was the heyday of the Bourbon Democrats. But these Democrats are worse than Bourbons, at least the Bourbon Democrats opposed imperialism and interventions. These are Backset Democrats.
The second tend they embody is functional. This pertains to what the role of the Democratic Party should be in our system, regardless of its ideology. Instead of being a vehicle and a catalyst for change, these Backset Democrats want a party that acts a gatekeeper to activist groups. Within the party, they want to defend the leadership up at the Dais from challenges coming up the aisles. Whether these movements are for labor, civil rights, peace, or the environment doesn’t matter. It’s a familiar story that’s happened since the 1960s. Activists and movements reach out to the party and in the end get co-opted by it. Seeking power to effect change, they find themselves blocked by the Democrats who now demand votes from them in exchange for progress. In the end, the Democrats capture these movements and hold them hostage. The threat of a Republican victory is used to keep them in line.
The Backset Democrats want to maintain this version of the Party. To a lesser extent almost all the Democrats except Sanders and Warren want to too. But the Backset types, along with Biden and his clones believe this is the only way the party can function. It is the Divine Right of the DNC. They want a party that is muddled, confused, and watered-down. They want a party constantly compromised by itself. While they may think this makes the Democrats seem reasonable, or that this will make their proposals look better, in effect, it just leaves things open for a further compromise with the Republicans to drag everything farther right. What the Backset Democrats fail to realize is that no one is impressed by how much debate occurs within the Democrats to produce a policy. It certainly has no bearing on the further dialectic with the Republicans.
In a way, it is a good thing so many of this type of Democrat are running. It might deprive Biden of some support, especially in regards with endorsements. However as I mentioned above, so many Backset Democrats on the Debate stage might just add more opportunities to prevent an actual discussion of the issues. If there has to be constant debate within the party, it should occur without their hand in it. It is true that the only serious discussion of politics in this country is happening within the Democratic Party. It’s an unfortunate situation. I’d rather have a Republican Party where all the Neoliberals could dwell, leaving a Progressive Democratic Party behind for good. But that doesn’t mean the Democratic Party should support a failed consensus in the meantime or weaken its commitments.
Some of these men and women running have tried to be dream candidates by checking off what they assume to be a list of boxes in the minds of voters. Mayor Pete is probably the most egregious example of this. It’s an unproductive exercise for candidates and the voter. What is needed are not dream candidates, but candidates who dare the voters to dream of a better world. The Backset Democrats don’t want that and we shouldn’t want them because of it.
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