In case you missed it, the ever-so-lame-duck session of the Republican-controlled Congress is about to ride out of town after dumping roughly a half-trillion dollars in appropriations decisions on their Democratic successors. To put it another way, having once again failed to pass appropriations bills during the regular session (often because of internal GOP wrangling), they got another bite at the apple and decided to make these decisions a toxic little Christmas present for Democratic legislators. And as Kevin Drum at Political Animal notes, it’s clear this is a deliberate tear-up-the-tracks gesture for Republican solons still petulantly angry about their loss of power.After suggesting, accurately, that this ultimate abandonment of responsbility isn’t getting much attention, Kevin also reminds us of the big media furor that surrounded alleged (and ultimately unsubstantiated and/or small potatoes) “sabotage” by outgoing Clinton White House staff back in 2001. Yeah, I’d say deliberately leaving the federal government in fiscal limbo, and in a continuing budget crisis, is a bit more egregious than removing the “W” key from a couple of White House computers. But this stroll down memory lane did get some old synapses firing, and I suddenly remembered an example of real intraoffice sabotage.Many years ago, I met a guy who had been the first landing craft to hit the State Capitol on Inaugural Day in a southern state where one party was supplanting another in the governorship, after an especially bitter campaign. First off, he discovered the locks had been changed in the Governor’s Office. So he had to track down a building supervisor to let him in. Then he found that the light bulbs had all been removed from the overhead lights and lamps. So he had to deal with that. The phones were totally screwed up; he couldn’t get a dial tone. And when he tried to boot up a computer, it became apparent the operating systems had been deleted.Now that’s sabotage, friends. But it was nothing more than a minor nuisance compared to the current batch of bitter congressional Republicans, who want to make sure the fruits of their long reign of fiscal irresponsibility create a ripe, rotting smell around the Capitol when Democrats take over in January.It would have been far, far better if the GOPers had screwed up the phones and computers after doing their jobs and deciding how to fund the federal government.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 21: Don’t Leave the Party, Progressives!
Bernie Sanders said something this week that really upset this yellow-dog Democrat, so I wrote about it at New York:
At a time when plenty of people have advice for unhappy progressive Democrats, one of their heroes, Bernie Sanders, had a succinct message: Don’t love the party, leave it. In an interview with the New York Times, he previewed a barnstorming tour he has undertaken with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but made it clear he wouldn’t be asking audiences to rally ’round the Democratic Party. “One of the aspects of this tour is to try to rally people to get engaged in the political process and run as independents outside of the Democratic Party,” Sanders said.
In one respect, that isn’t surprising. Though he has long aligned with the Democratic Party in Congress and has regularly backed its candidates, Sanders has always self-identified as an independent, even when he filed to run for president as a Democrat in 2020. Now, as before, he seems to regard the Democratic Party as inherently corrupted by its wealthy donor base, per the Times:
“During the interview on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders repeatedly criticized the influence of wealthy donors and Washington consultants on the party. He said that while Democrats had been a force for good on social issues like civil rights, women’s rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, they had failed on the economic concerns he has dedicated his political career to addressing.”Still, when Democrats are now already perceived as losing adherents, and as many progressives believe their time to take over the party has arrived, Sanders’s counsel is both oddly timed and pernicious. Yes, those on the left who choose independent status may still work with Democrats on both legislative and electoral projects, much as Sanders does. And they may run in and win Democratic primaries on occasion without putting on the party yoke. But inevitably, refusing to stay formally within the Democratic tent will cede influence to centrists and alienate loyalist voters as well. And in 18 states, voters who don’t register as Democrats may be barred from voting in Democratic primaries, which proved a problem for Sanders during his two presidential runs.
More fundamentally, Democrats need both solidarity and stable membership at this moment with the MAGA wolf at the door and crucial off-year and midterm elections coming up. Staying in the Democratic ranks doesn’t mean giving up progressive principles or failing to challenge timid or ineffective leadership. To borrow an ancient cigarette-ad slogan, it’s a time when it’s better to “fight than switch.”
That said, there may be certain deep-red parts of the country where the Democratic brand is so toxic that an independent candidacy could make some sense for progressives. The example of 2024 independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn of Nebraska, who ran a shockingly competitive (if ultimately unsuccessful) race against Republican incumbent Deb Fischer, turned a lot of heads. But while Osborn might have been a “populist” by most standards, he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a progressive, and in fact, centrist and progressive Nebraska Democrats went along with Osborn as a very long shot. They didn’t abandon their party; they just got out of the way.
Someday the popularity of electoral systems without party primaries or with ranked-choice voting may spread to the point where candidates and voters alike will gradually shed or at least weaken party labels. Then self-identifying as an independent could be both principled and politically pragmatic.
But until then, it’s important to understand why American politics have regularly defaulted to a two-party system dating all the way back to those days when the Founders tried strenuously to avoid parties altogether. In a first-past-the-post system where winners take all, there’s just too much at stake to allow those with whom you are in agreement on the basics to splinter. That’s particularly true when the other party is rigidly united in subservience to an authoritarian leader. Sanders is one of a kind in his ability to keep his feet both within and outside the Democratic Party. His example isn’t replicable without making a bad situation for progressives a whole lot worse.