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.
One other comment in response to Doyle’s very good questions:
Using McDonald’s measure of the voting eligible population (at elections.gmu.edu), I find that turnout increased markedly in battleground states but not elsewhere. Turnout rose about 5 points in 11 battlegrounds but was essentially flat elsewhere. In the most hotly contested states such as OH and FL, turnout was up more like 7-8 points. But in lopsided states like CA turnout actually fell. This prevented the national turnout total from setting any records.
OK, here’s a question I hope someone can answer:
Let’s say voter turn-out actually WAS ~60%. Let’s say it was ~50% in 2000. That’s 20% more people – a good-sized increase, but not HUGE. So why were there ENORMOUS lines? I live in Ohio (sorry everyone – we tried) and I’ve never waited in line before, but this time it took almost 90 minutes, and I was one of the lucky ones. I’m sure everyone has seen or heard about the people (in mostly minority and/or college-age precincts) who were in line for 6 hours or more.
But I’m not really accusing anyone of anything (though I’m not letting them off the hook either); mostly I’m just looking for why 20% more people = 1000% more waiting in line.
There are some interesting analyses of data being performed on voting boxes in Florida. I hope you’ll be reading them before further concluding that the compass is properly calibrated towards true NORTH.
A compass isn’t much good if it is off, and while presuming the integrity of the electoral process is one approach, another is to look at the data and see what they say.
Well, one thing is absolutely clear from this election. Higher turnout in and of itself would have meant absolutely nothing.
Some experts predicted that turnout would reach 120 million. So far, with the latest figures it’s at 115.4 million. So, if there were an additional 4.6 million votes and if they broke 55-45 for Kerry (according to the conventional wisdom about new voters), Kerry would only have picked up an about an additional 2.5 million votes.
So Bush would STILL have won the popular vote by about 1 million votes.
Nothing could be clearer. Technical strategies to boost turnout simply won’t work.
There must be a new strategic campaign to give voters a reason to vote FOR democrats and not just against Republicans, starting now and culminating on election day, 2008.
Randi Roades (Air America Radio) has some very important
information on their web site, regarding e-machines and steps that are being taken to have the Black Boxes audited for possible irregularities, several of which have already been found in Georgia and Ohio.
http://www.airamericaradio.com (link The Randi Roades Show)
or
randiroadesshow.com
I certainly want to be careful with this story, but there seem to be some troubling numbers with regard to exit polls being way off in ‘E’states and way accurate in paper ballot states… is anyone watching this? My latest post provides some interesting numbers…
To compare “apples to apples” so to speak (turnout in ’68 vs. ’04), don’t you have to adjust for the larger number of inelligible voters in both years?
I’m sure in the contested swing states that the percentage was very high. In my county in Wisconsin, turnout was around 80% of the census estimate for adults 18 and older.
Was the national average dragged down because CA, NY, TX, and IL were not competitive for the presidential contest?
Shouldn’t we simply be talking about the voting eligible population?
Brookings has something:
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/20040909mcdonald.htm
This was useful:http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm
And this was an valuable collection of state by state voter turnout against the number of eleigible voters….
http://elections.gmu.edu/Voter_Turnout_2004.htm
I wanted to see how being a “swing state” influenced voter turnout–e.g., Ohio was much higher than neighboring Indiana. I’d be interested to see a discussion of the entire 50 if someone is motivated and has time.
More than that, I was interested in how the averages would project. So, if we took the margin in California, and assumed it was representative of the real feelings of the state, and then calculated from the number of eligible voters how many would have supported each candidate, how does it spell out nationa wide? Is it enough to overcome the small-state bias?
Is the difference in turnout between swing states and safe states enough to explain the deviation between polls and the final electoral results?
Sorry, but for what possible reason would anyone quote turnout as a fraction of a population that includes ineligible voters? The only statistic that makes any sense is the fraction of voting-age American citizens, and I’m sure that’s what the Times meant when they wrote “voting-age population.” Perhaps they chould have been clearer, but I can’t interpret it any other way. And the fact that their number agrees with yours when interpreted that way seems to bolster that interpretation.
To be fair to the Center that put out the estimate, I’m pretty sure they first reported the 59% number as a percentage of “voting eligible population,” not voting age, and this was reflected in the first wire stories I saw on it. It may be that the later newspapers that wrote it up didn’t notice the distinction.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/deanfordnc
Howard Dean for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee
By Jason Gooljar
It was a solemn day the crowd gathered around the stage where the candidate was to give his concession. Smiles were on the faces of some, while tears fell from the cheeks of others. Rhythmic applause could be heard erupting from the people all in unison. No, this was not the election night of November 2nd , 2004. This was Howard Dean back in the winter about to end his primary bid. For some this moment can now be looked back on as the day we really lost the presidency to our own party.
It has been said “When you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values — so you keep losing.” The truth has never been more clear than it is now. We must strengthen the newly found spinal transplant of the Democratic Party. We must now take a stand with our democratic values in tow. First, I’ll tell you what we should not stand for anymore. We can no longer be a party who has to move to the center. The right has never had to do it and neither should we. We can no longer be a party who is beholden to special interests. No more of the big money donors, there is a better way. Raise the money from the grassroots.
We need real campaign finance reform. We need to be the party of inclusion and the party of the poor and the middle class. We need to go to middle America and talk to them about what we stand for. We need to show them that we truly have their interests at heart. We need to go to the evangelical Christians and have a real discussion about America. We need to have a real discussion of religion in America. We need to re frame the debate from our perspective and not reinforce the conservative frames already in place.
When Goldwater lost, his backers did not give up. Goldwater actually lost badly. We have not been greatly defeated like they were. It took them forty years to build the machine they have in place now. We let them do it while we snickered at them and laughed at them for being extremists who would never hold power. They continued to work and they continued to organize. They started winning locally at the state level throughout the middle states and then they went national. They threw the moderate republicans out in favor of the new conservatives. There is much to learn from our opponents indeed.
As we rebuild our party we must keep some things in mind. The neo conservatives do not have absolute power. There were millions of Americans who voted against this President. We still have the power, you still have the power. We as the progressive movement can no longer be afraid of losing. In order to win you must loose. As long as you keep your values when you loose you can continue to fight on. If you give them up you have nothing. Either we as the democratic party stand for something or we stand for nothing at all. After all why vote for a right wing lite party when you can vote for the real thing as middle America did.
Terry McAuliffe’s strategy had major flaws in my opinion. The tactic of a shorter primary in my opinion was not a good idea. We could have used the time to truly prepare our national agenda. We could have used that time to allow our democratic ideals to take forefront in the media. Chairman Mcauliffe is an incredible fund raiser this has been said but he lacks the vision to take this party in the direction it has to go. It has also been said that his agenda did not truly involve the south.
With all of this being said I’m asking the people who voted against this President to ask the DNC to elect former Governor Howard Dean as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Howard Dean has a clear vision of where this party needs to be headed. We need his guidance to achieve our goals as a progressive movement. If we loose in the interim if we stay together as a movement we can shoulder the losses and eventually trumpet the wins. I’m asking for the people to write letters to the media and call elected officials in the democratic party to push for election of Howard Dean as the new chairman of the DNC.
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
If you care to know why we’ll lose again in 2008, read Thomas Frank’s essay in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/opinion/05frank.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Frank is the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?