While mulling some recent material from The Bulwark, I thought I’d explain something to the converted “Never Trumpers” the outlet represents, and did so at New York:
For a while now I’ve had a guilty-pleasure reading habit: The Bulwark, that semi-official outlet of Never Trumpers who view themselves as having definitively broken with the GOP thanks to their former party’s thralldom to Donald J. Trump. I share its contributors’ belief that they (the tribe usefully described by Miller as Red Dog Democrats) represent not just a self-promoting claque of elite scribblers but a real if marginal faction of the Democratic Party, having burned a lot of bridges on their way out of the GOP. Their views appear to parallel those of a significant number of suburban Republicans and independents who voted Democratic in 2018 and 2020. And given the very close balance between voters of the two parties, as reflected most recently in 2020, Democrats really can’t afford to contemptuously reject any potential adherents, however alien or even repugnant they might find their backgrounds.
So it’s understandable when Bulwark co-founder Charlie Sykes expresses frustration that Democrats refuse to consider their pleas for policy concessions on grounds of holding old grudges:
“The spending. The wokeness. The repeal of the Hyde Amendment. I could go on …
“These are difficult times for folks on the center-right, who’ve tried to join Democrats in a loose alliance to protect the Republic from Trumpism …
“Litmus tests are applied: it’s not enough to be pro-democracy, NTers are also expected to embrace the elements of the progressive agenda — from free community college, to abortion, rent moratoriums, police funding, transgenderism, CRT, social spending, and the candidacy of Greta Thunberg for sainthood.”
Sykes fears it’s all very personal, and warns, “If you cancel moderates/conservatives for their past sins, you don’t have a coalition.”
Here’s the thing, though: It’s not really about the Red Dogs. Yes, I’m sure it’s been tough for them to watch Democrats largely come together around a legislative program that’s significantly more progressive than the one advanced by the Obama administration. But Democrats have been coalescing around the basics of the Build Back Better agenda for some time now. That the famously moderate Joe Biden now embraces it is a sign of how the party has slowly evolved, not some sort of betrayal or surrender to the left. And anyone who paid close attention to the 2020 presidential primaries should have understood that there is less distance between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders than between Joe Biden and the Joe Biden of the 1990s.
Part of what has happened is simply a resolution of internal conflicts among Democrats that left them defensive and at times incoherent. A classic example is one that Sykes mentioned: abortion policy. For years, Democrats claimed to value reproductive rights even as they accepted significant limitations on them: e.g., the Hyde Amendment, which made abortion services, unlike any other medical services, ineligible for any sort of federal support. That amendment, along with acceptance of some largely symbolic restrictions on rare late-term abortions, and the whole “safe, legal, and rare” messaging introduced by Bill Clinton, represented concessions to a significant bloc of Democratic voters and Democratic pols who did not recognize reproductive rights at all.
That has changed over time. Anti-abortion Democratic politicians are a rare and shrinking breed, and there are now significantly fewer anti-abortion Democratic voters than there are pro-choice Republicans. Most Democrats, including Joe Biden, have made the leap into a more coherent and unified position. They aren’t going to turn back the clock to satisfy ex-Republicans, but they aren’t insisting on a “litmus test” just to annoy or exclude them, either. The same could be said for other policy tenets once beloved by a significant number of Democrats — from fiscal hawkishness to armed interventionism to an openness to “entitlement reform” — that remain attractive to the newest proto-Democrats. As for the idea that Democrats are some sort of rigid ideological cult: Come on, seriously? Look at what’s going on with the attempted enactment of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. If this is an intolerant and exclusive political party, I’d hate to see a loosey-goosey one try to function. It may just be that the issues Red Dogs fret about may lie outside the still relatively loose bounds of party unity.
This doesn’t mean Red Dogs should despair, but it may mean another painful reevaluation of priorities, recognizing that most have already had to sacrifice a lot of old allegiances and even the habitual language used to make sense of the political world. In many respects, the Never Trumpers resemble their spiritual (and in some cases biological) predecessors, the neo-conservatives. These were people who broke with the Democratic Party out of a conviction that Democratic views on national security made continued party loyalty impossible. But most of them retained many views that horrified their new Republican allies until they accepted the inevitable role of a factional minority and grew to accommodate or even share the policy positions and ideological language of the GOP, which was increasingly dominated by conservatives with their own ideological-consistency demands.
Most Red Dogs have no illusions about the party they’ve left and understand their constituencies are too small to form a third force or demand concessions from a position of strength. Most, I suppose, will get used to the strange and sometimes lurid landscape of the Donkey Party. Others will embrace the posture of the gadfly, the people of no party or coalition. But it’s really not personal. It’s just politics.
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Charlie is a great dog!
Charlie is a great dog!
Minnesota will be close, but it is not “in play” in the usual sense. Polls are snapshots of a particular moment in time, and unless you know how to contextualize them — meaning you know something of the details of relevant political history at the local level — they have their limitations. MN is a good example of this.
I would really discount anything about 2002 results in Minnesota — remember, less than two weeks before the election, Paul Wellstone — our ticket topper was killed in a plane crash, and then followed the Republican induced flap over his memorial. The whole GOTV thing fell apart — it had been part of Wellstone’s campaign, and election law blocked all his funds. Turn out in key areas went south without it. Add to this the Independence Party (Jesse Ventura) which had recruited a former 5 term DFL member of congress, Tim Penny — to run for Governor.
In 2000 the Green were making their effort to get at least 5% of the vote so as to become an official party with automatic ballot access, and access to public funding for legislative and state candidates. This was their rational for support, and they did achieve that. They lost it in 2002.
The most recent poll in Minnesota gives Kerry a two point lead over Bush with about 8% undecided. The DFL has to work at it, without question, but assuming they have their act together this time (no statewide offices — no senate campaign) they clearly can deliver for Kerry. The caucus delivered well for Kerry, and everyone is pretty easy with that, even though much of the activist former Wellstone clan had worked hard for Dean.
I suspect every state needs to be characterized in these local dynamic terms, and without it, races can be misunderstood.
Well, I would put TN in red, WA and PA in blue though. I’m also not at all convinced MN is in play, hasn’t it voted Dem in like 5 straight presidential elections? Oregon also seems to have gone Dem 3 straight times, maybe I’m wrong. I would say Arizona, CO, FL, MO, NV, OH, WV, and WI are in play, but I think WV and WI lean our way.
I think it all comes down to if Kerry wins 1 of the following 3 – Ohio, Missouri, or Florida – any of those and he’s in. I’m an optimist; I see him winning FL and Ohio. But things could change.
Bush is in such bad shape for March, I’m pretty sure the elder Bush didn’t trail in ’88 until after the Dem. convention – and he wasn’t an incumbent.. I’m surprised all these pundits on the air act like he’s such a strong incumbent. I think he’s a very weak one. It it weren’t for his “war on terror” approval numbers, there’d be nothing propping Bush up.
Zogby’s analysis seems off to me, I’d put CO and TN in red, WA in blue, and PA in the toss-ups.
Yes I am, very much.
We need to keep the pressure on though, and keep the Rove team on the defensive.