It’s an unofficial weblog sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, written by yours truly, Ed Kilgore, a veteran operative with one foot in the world of ideas and another in the world of practical politics — in other words, a two-legged New Democrat, or new donkey. The word “unofficial” should be noted here. Yes, the news and views expressed here reflect the DLC’s New Democratic philosophy and outlook, and yes, if felonies are committed, the DLC will have no choice but to accept legal responsibility prior to firing my ass. But on the other hand, if what I write here annoys or offends you, don’t blame Al From or Bruce Reed. Give these men the courtesy of letting them annoy or offend you in their own words. True New Dem aficionados may wonder whether this blog overlaps with the DLC’s commentary, idea and message post (and email), the New Dem Dispatch. So here’s the deal: New Dem Dispatch — think authoritative, institutional voice, magisterially surveying the political and policy landscape and delivering op-ed length gems of wisdom; NewDonkey — think pithier, and more irregular posts, often simply linking to material of interest, varied by the occasional smart-ass riposte or high-dudgeon tirade. While NewDonkey is a mainly a political and policy blog, I reserve the right, which I regularly abuse, to delve into matters like religion and college football from time to time. While the blog will endeavor never to be “magisterial,” I have an Old School attachment to complete sentences and coherent thoughts. I know this is a violation of the months-old canons of the blogosphere, but you’ll get used to it. There’s one other thing you should know about the boundaries of this blog, which the success of sites like Wonkette makes necessary. You won’t find much gossip, and nothing at all about my, or my colleagues’ sex lives, such as they are. This is newdonkey.com, not nudehonky.com. And that reminds me of one more internal rule: no more than one bad pun per post. The bottom line is that I’m doing this blog because it’s fun, and because it may provide some useful information and entertainment to many of you. If it stops being fun for me, or informative and entertaining to you (as measured by the scientific method of weighing hearsay and buzz), I’ll shut it down faster than a Meetup when the bar closes. So please give it a regular look.Ed KilgoreP.S. — It’s come to my attention that some people frequent this site not because of anything I write, but in order to gaze at the very cool logo at the top. Credit that to DLC Art Director Tyler Stone, who’s considering a NewDonkey fashion line.
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October 22: “Red Dog” Democrats Shouldn’t Expect Big Policy Concessions
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.