It's not just people but direction of the Democratic Party. Who is in control?
Here’s my Cliff’s Notes version. It leaves out a lot:
The Democratic Party has been drifting away from what I consider to be its modern New Deal roots since Carter/the Vietnam War, and paying the consequences. The unions were powerful then. They didn’t win all the time and never were able to reverse Taft-Hartley, but they represented a big slice of the American workforce and their contracts lifted the boats of many other non-union workers as well. Pensions, sick time, vacation, holidays, weekends, all the rest … were common before Reagan’s late-stage extractive capitalism took over.
But many unions were not as progressive on civil rights as liberals wanted. An argument could be made that the unions overplayed their hand. Whether they did or did not, it’s hard to argue that the pendulum hasn’t swung much too far the other way.
Deregulation started in the mid-70’s and even a stalwart liberal, Ted Kennedy, was instrumental in one of the earliest efforts, deregulating trucking. Once, a job that paid well and could support a family, trucking today is generally considered to be not a good job to have. The truckers are brutalized in many ways, not the least of which, they are expected to stay with their cargo and freeze to death … if Mr. Justice Gorsuch had his way.
Deregulation spread like wildfire. Southerner Carter hated unions. So did one-time union head Ronald Reagan, who fired the air traffic controllers who had supported his 1980 election. Reagan received zero pushback and that gave business a green light to come after unions. Which they did. A lot of other elected Democrats hated unions, too. The race to the bottom continues. Union racism cannot be discounted as a factor driving that hatred. But that was a broad brush with which to paint unions that also applied to American society at the time.
In 1988 Tony Coelho formalized the divorce between the Democratic Party and unions. He chose Wall Street because that’s where the money was. Democrats saw Reagan’s success and there was great pressure from the DLC, and people like Al From and Bill Clinton to push the party to become Republican-lite. Temporarily that worked. It’s still working to a degrees. Reform is difficult and the Goldman Sachs/JP Morgan Democrats like Gina Raimondo or Jamie Dimon still hav a loud voice whereas Katie Porter, Elizabeth Warren, and Lina Khan have to tread carefully and pick their battles. Your average suburban Democrat is a centrist - socially liberal, economically conservative and wanting to keep what they have. In toto they are barely more liberal than a 1960 Eisenhower Republican.
Clinton-era neoliberalism, dependent on market based solutions for practically everything, only served to cement in place some of the most horrible things that Republicans had been trying to achieve for generations. And how we are paying for that today. Bush “won” an election he shouldn’t have. We have never recovered.
The corporate wing of the Democratic Party grew and grew to the point where there were always enough Democratic votes to pass whatever the Republicans wanted to do. The crime bill, welfare “reform”, bankruptcy “reform”, are the worst examples of laws that harm us to this day. Another is a failure to keep the courts neutral and protect the Earl Warren legacy. Sure, the Democrats stopped Bork, but they let Clarence Thomas on, and over the years a whole host of Republican wingnut nominees. Much could have been done to stop all this but Democratic institutionalists thought that they should go high when the Republicans went low. Democrats don’t know how to fight, or wield power.
And the Democratic pursuit of the mythical “independent voter” blunted any serious effort to stop Republican efforts to completely dismantle the New Deal. Inexplicably, Obama put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block in 2011 because, once elected, he forgot to spell “audacity” but he could spell “Grand Bargain”. We escaped from that one only because Boehner wanted more and most Democrats rose up in opposition.
In 2016, establishment Democrats & Clinton illuminati united behind coronating Hillary while folks who wanted something different backed Bernie. The establishment wasted no effort to demonize Bernie and rig the game against him, even though his ideas - once you strip the name “Bernie” off of them - command the support of majorities of the American people. Those establishment Democrats, as well as Republicans, united behind the idea that we can’t have nice things. They differed only as to why. Democrats said we couldn’t afford it, whereas the Republicans were ideologically opposed to practically anything that could help the average American, much less the poor.
That effort continues to this day. Weak tea Democrats let Obama kill the public option, with some help from Joe Lieberman. Obamacare is a start but we need cost control and single payer Medicare for all. As presently structured, it’s a giveaway to hospitals and Big Pharma although it was probably what was possible in 2010, considering the type of Democrats we had elected (ie, Blanche Lincoln). Many Democrats today, depending on who their donors are, oppose one or both. Many reforms are decried as “Socialism!” with zero pushback from the Democratic intelligentsia. And for many Democrats, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Anything less than 100% is unacceptable, anything less than getting their particular flavor of Maypo, any deviation from their peculiar strain of orthodoxy, is punishable by political death. Look how Gillibrand took out Al Franken, an immensely more effective senator than she will ever be.
And then we have faux Democrats like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Josh Gottheimer et al.
So the soul of the party is up for grabs. As is this country. In 2008, Americans were screaming for radical reform. They didn’t get it; centrists say they can't have it. It’s still not on the table. The New Deal could be updated to deliver widely shared prosperity to all Americans, the way FDR and Harry Truman tried to do, and that Joe Biden is trying to do. Biden is not perfect but he is the best Democratic president since Harry Truman, IMO. He’s a start. We need to do more.
There are some good names on your list … Warnock, Wittmer, Pritzker, are great. Others less so. IMO, both Harris and (not on your list) Buttigieg are a definite step backward, as are the obvious corporatists: Schiff, Coons, and Hochul. The rest fall somewhere in between.
I would have expected to see California Gov Gavin Newsom at near the top of your list. He is my secret expectation for the Democratic Presidential Candidate in 2024. Then there is Sen Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota. Heard her talk up in New Hampshire back around 2020 (Amb Smith and Wife invited me, and the Producer of a local Lowell TV Talk Show).
But, who is Senator Lieberman and No Labels going to put up as the third candidate? Joe Manchen? Tulsi Gabbard?
Thanks, Cliff. This is why I crowdsourced the question!
It's not just people but direction of the Democratic Party. Who is in control?
Here’s my Cliff’s Notes version. It leaves out a lot:
The Democratic Party has been drifting away from what I consider to be its modern New Deal roots since Carter/the Vietnam War, and paying the consequences. The unions were powerful then. They didn’t win all the time and never were able to reverse Taft-Hartley, but they represented a big slice of the American workforce and their contracts lifted the boats of many other non-union workers as well. Pensions, sick time, vacation, holidays, weekends, all the rest … were common before Reagan’s late-stage extractive capitalism took over.
But many unions were not as progressive on civil rights as liberals wanted. An argument could be made that the unions overplayed their hand. Whether they did or did not, it’s hard to argue that the pendulum hasn’t swung much too far the other way.
Deregulation started in the mid-70’s and even a stalwart liberal, Ted Kennedy, was instrumental in one of the earliest efforts, deregulating trucking. Once, a job that paid well and could support a family, trucking today is generally considered to be not a good job to have. The truckers are brutalized in many ways, not the least of which, they are expected to stay with their cargo and freeze to death … if Mr. Justice Gorsuch had his way.
Deregulation spread like wildfire. Southerner Carter hated unions. So did one-time union head Ronald Reagan, who fired the air traffic controllers who had supported his 1980 election. Reagan received zero pushback and that gave business a green light to come after unions. Which they did. A lot of other elected Democrats hated unions, too. The race to the bottom continues. Union racism cannot be discounted as a factor driving that hatred. But that was a broad brush with which to paint unions that also applied to American society at the time.
In 1988 Tony Coelho formalized the divorce between the Democratic Party and unions. He chose Wall Street because that’s where the money was. Democrats saw Reagan’s success and there was great pressure from the DLC, and people like Al From and Bill Clinton to push the party to become Republican-lite. Temporarily that worked. It’s still working to a degrees. Reform is difficult and the Goldman Sachs/JP Morgan Democrats like Gina Raimondo or Jamie Dimon still hav a loud voice whereas Katie Porter, Elizabeth Warren, and Lina Khan have to tread carefully and pick their battles. Your average suburban Democrat is a centrist - socially liberal, economically conservative and wanting to keep what they have. In toto they are barely more liberal than a 1960 Eisenhower Republican.
Clinton-era neoliberalism, dependent on market based solutions for practically everything, only served to cement in place some of the most horrible things that Republicans had been trying to achieve for generations. And how we are paying for that today. Bush “won” an election he shouldn’t have. We have never recovered.
The corporate wing of the Democratic Party grew and grew to the point where there were always enough Democratic votes to pass whatever the Republicans wanted to do. The crime bill, welfare “reform”, bankruptcy “reform”, are the worst examples of laws that harm us to this day. Another is a failure to keep the courts neutral and protect the Earl Warren legacy. Sure, the Democrats stopped Bork, but they let Clarence Thomas on, and over the years a whole host of Republican wingnut nominees. Much could have been done to stop all this but Democratic institutionalists thought that they should go high when the Republicans went low. Democrats don’t know how to fight, or wield power.
And the Democratic pursuit of the mythical “independent voter” blunted any serious effort to stop Republican efforts to completely dismantle the New Deal. Inexplicably, Obama put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block in 2011 because, once elected, he forgot to spell “audacity” but he could spell “Grand Bargain”. We escaped from that one only because Boehner wanted more and most Democrats rose up in opposition.
In 2016, establishment Democrats & Clinton illuminati united behind coronating Hillary while folks who wanted something different backed Bernie. The establishment wasted no effort to demonize Bernie and rig the game against him, even though his ideas - once you strip the name “Bernie” off of them - command the support of majorities of the American people. Those establishment Democrats, as well as Republicans, united behind the idea that we can’t have nice things. They differed only as to why. Democrats said we couldn’t afford it, whereas the Republicans were ideologically opposed to practically anything that could help the average American, much less the poor.
That effort continues to this day. Weak tea Democrats let Obama kill the public option, with some help from Joe Lieberman. Obamacare is a start but we need cost control and single payer Medicare for all. As presently structured, it’s a giveaway to hospitals and Big Pharma although it was probably what was possible in 2010, considering the type of Democrats we had elected (ie, Blanche Lincoln). Many Democrats today, depending on who their donors are, oppose one or both. Many reforms are decried as “Socialism!” with zero pushback from the Democratic intelligentsia. And for many Democrats, perfect is the enemy of good enough. Anything less than 100% is unacceptable, anything less than getting their particular flavor of Maypo, any deviation from their peculiar strain of orthodoxy, is punishable by political death. Look how Gillibrand took out Al Franken, an immensely more effective senator than she will ever be.
And then we have faux Democrats like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Josh Gottheimer et al.
So the soul of the party is up for grabs. As is this country. In 2008, Americans were screaming for radical reform. They didn’t get it; centrists say they can't have it. It’s still not on the table. The New Deal could be updated to deliver widely shared prosperity to all Americans, the way FDR and Harry Truman tried to do, and that Joe Biden is trying to do. Biden is not perfect but he is the best Democratic president since Harry Truman, IMO. He’s a start. We need to do more.
There are some good names on your list … Warnock, Wittmer, Pritzker, are great. Others less so. IMO, both Harris and (not on your list) Buttigieg are a definite step backward, as are the obvious corporatists: Schiff, Coons, and Hochul. The rest fall somewhere in between.
I would have expected to see California Gov Gavin Newsom at near the top of your list. He is my secret expectation for the Democratic Presidential Candidate in 2024. Then there is Sen Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota. Heard her talk up in New Hampshire back around 2020 (Amb Smith and Wife invited me, and the Producer of a local Lowell TV Talk Show).
But, who is Senator Lieberman and No Labels going to put up as the third candidate? Joe Manchen? Tulsi Gabbard?
Cheers — Cliff