An instant-classic Make America Boring Again Democratic plea

These days we typically date the beginning of neoliberal dominance in the US and Britain to the Reagan-Thatcher era. In the US, that has resulted in an asymmetric polarization of the two main political parties. The Republicans have embraced the market-fundamentalism of neoliberal economics with a political Christian fundamentalist view on social and legal issues and a steadily building authoritarian orientation. At the present moment – specifically the weekend after the Senate voted not to call witnesses in Trump’s (first?) impeachment trial – the Republican Party has established a form of the “illiberal democracy” with which Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. At the moment, the 2020 elections still offer a promising opportunity to reverse that trend. But the Republican Party is now an authoritarian, white nationalist party.

The Democrats have also embraced the basics of neoliberal market-fundamentalism, although they try to put a more human face on it. The two parties do lean toward different segments of the American oligarchy: the Democrats tend to favor the finance and digital segments while the Republicans have a famous affection for the extractive industries, for instance. But the Democrats are on board with the basic neoliberal economic menu: lower wages, weaker unions, reduced social services, privatization of government service (even including prisons!), lower pensions, weaker safety regulations, an so on.

As Andrew Bacevich helpfully describes in The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory (2020), the Democrats combined their embrace of market fundamentalism with a surprisingly strong embrace of formal legal rights and representation for women, African-Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ people, and other groups long discriminated against. Surprising, because even in 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton considered same-sex marriage too controversial to endorse. And, in general, the Democrats have shown more concern for preserving democratic and Constitutional procedures and limits.

But that formal reverence for diversity also coexisted with harsh law-and-order measures with which the Clintons and Joe Biden are particularly identified, notably due to Clinton’s Crime Bill and the “war on drugs” generally. There was a bipartisan consensus on a legal regime that put large numbers of black men in prison for relatively small drug offenses, i.e., marijuana possession. Such convictions have been used by many states to support the Republicans’ Orbanist/segregationist project of suppressing minority votes by banned formerly convicted felons from voting.

The Democrats’ commitment to formal legal and symbolic equality also didn’t prevent the Obama Administration from pursuing a draconian policy against national-security leaks or giving officials of the Cheney-Bush Administration a pass on criminal conduct, mostly strikingly on the torture crimes.

Bacevich takes the post-1989 world as his age of illusions, which was famously characterized as The End of History. While both parties made their adaptation to the neoliberal era, for the Democrats it meant abandoning their New Deal/Great Society orientation and moving far toward conservative Republicans positions. For the Republicans, it meant that they could more enthusiastically pursue the conservative, pro-corporate, anti-labor politics with which they were already very comfortable.

David Edward Burke provides us an example of where this has put the Democratic Party in current politics in How Bernie Sanders Broke the Democratic Primary Washington Monthly 01/31/2020.

Burke clearly has contempt for Sanders and his political program:

But by running again and proposing many of the “boldest” but least viable plans in the Democratic field, such as arbitrarily cancelling all student loan debt, or implementing national rent control—both of which have tepid support even among Democratic members of Congress–he has shifted the debate of serious issues in an unserious direction.

Much like Donald Trump in 2016, Sanders is standing out in a crowded field by making promises he can’t keep. He’s not giving voters an honest assessment of how he will improve their lives. Like an airbrushed magazine model who makes real people look bad by setting an impossible standard of beauty, Sanders is harmfully distorting our view of other candidates by refusing to stick to reality.

But later he writes, "Needless to say, it is not fair or accurate to compare Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump." Huh. Cute.

There’s nothing original about this. It’s the same kind of condescending sneering that has been standard rhetoric of conservative Democrats against those to their left. Including ones that didn’t specifically call themselves democratic socialists. It’s not worth wasting energy to be irritated or get huffy over it. Because not only is it unoriginal. He gives away the meaning here:

Sanders is not offering aspirational goals and saying he will try his best; he is making promises. He has directly told voters: “We will pass Medicare for All. We will eliminate co-pays, premiums and deductibles.” His website doesn’t say he will work to reduce medical debt. It says flatly: “We will eliminate all past due medical debt in this country.” He also promises to “Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million Jobs,” provide guaranteed, universal, affordable child care, and more.

In other words, Democrats should have no grand visions. No serious commitments to reform. No willingness to address serious existing and developing problem head-on. And, most importantly, they should be acting like they intend to fight for their own positions.

This is the asymmetric polarization on full display. The Republicans are willing to pursue radical positions, even ones that are unpopular, and fight to push them through. They haven’t been shy about pursuing a Reagan Revolution or a Gingrich Revolution.

While the Democrats, on the other hand, have spent a large part of the last four decades in a defensive crouch, adopting Republican framing of issues and afraid to aggressively push for their own expressed goals, campaigning as though they were embarrassed by their own supporters. We saw a particularly notable example in 2019, when Nancy Pelosi was swept into the House Speakership by a stunning Democratic turnout in the 2018 midterms, and then spent her first half year as Speaker strongly arguing against impeaching Trump. She even gave the Republicans a perfect talking point, that impeaching Trump would hurt the Democrats politically. She didn’t abandon that defensive crouch position until Democrats newly elected in swing districts insisted that their reelection prospects would be politically damaged if the House didn’t move on impeachment.

One of her arguments was that the House Democrats should pursue impeachment only if they had assurance beforehand that they would get a 2/3 majority for removal in the Republican-dominated Senate. “Don’t fight unless we already know we can win” is anything but an inspiring battle cry. Burke makes the same kind of argument against basically everything about Bernie Sanders:

Sanders is often praised for his honesty and authenticity. But in this respect he is actively misleading voters. Most of his promises depend on Congress to keep them. There is virtually no evidence that, even if he becomes President, he will have the votes necessary to enact any, let alone all, of these ideas. Critically, that isn’t just because Republicans are standing in the way—it’s because there is not enough support among Democrats either.

For almost any important political issues to which there is any kind of opposition, “Don’t fight unless we already know we can win” is the same as “Don’t fight at all. Don’t even try.”

For the Make American Boring Again Democrats, the sentiment of the Pete Seeger song that became a major anthem for the civil rights movement in the 1960s is incomprehensible:

The only thing we did was wrong
Staying in the wilderness too long
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on

The only thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on

Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band - Eyes on the Prize (Live In Dublin) 03/08/2019:

Burke's version is more like:

Don't keep your eyes on the prize
Don't even think there is a prize
Keep your eyes on defeat, give up

This unfortunately is a good statement of what Pelosi's opposition to impeaching Trump means

What more can we really say?

Caitlin Oprysko, Trump: ‘I greatly appreciate’ Pelosi’s opposition to impeachment Politico 03/13/2019:

“I greatly appreciate Nancy Pelosi’s statement against impeachment, but everyone must remember the minor fact that I never did anything wrong,” Trump wrote in part in a pair of tweets that also touted accomplishments his administration has claimed. “How do you impeach a man who is considered by many to be the President with the most successful first two years in history, especially when he has done nothing wrong and impeachment is for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’?”

Pelosi’s hard line on impeachment has divided congressional Democrats, who have launched sprawling oversight probes of Trump and his inner circle. Some Democrats have insisted that they fully intend to introduce articles of impeachment against the president and force a floor vote on them.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #65:

A well constituted court for the trial of impeachments, is an object not more to be desired, than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly, or inimical, to the accused. In many cases, it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side, or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger, that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. [my emphasis in bold]

Nancy Pelosi: Golly, gee, we can't impeach a President for even outrageous misconduct, criminality, and incompetence because that would be divisive.

("Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it." (my emphasis) - Interview with Joe Heim, Nancy Pelosi on Impeaching Trump: ‘He’s Just Not Worth It’ Washinton Post 03/11/2019)

This is the corporate Democrats' theme song when they're facing Republicans (Monty Python-The Tale of Sir Robin):

When they're trashing Democratic Party progressives, it's a whole different story. As we see from Politico, In this case Donald Trump is happy and it's only the Democrats who are "divided."

When Democratic officials use the word "bipartisan," 99 times out of 100 they are in the process of surrendering to Republicans. I hope it's not "divisive" to say that.

In the last post, I referred to a Matt Bors cartoon on the Democrats' Hundred Years Of Darkness strategy. And it turns out that just today, he did an update on what things might look like 15 years or so in (Trump's fourth term, no impeachment! Daily Kos 03/13/2019), opening with this panel: