Over the past few days I’ve seen much commentary about how the Democratic Party is still unpopular and what it must do to win elections. And IMO a lot of this advice is really terrible. A lot of it is just variations of the don’t-scare-the-chickens, appeal-to-the-center crap that Dems have been telling each other since the debacle of 1972.The Democratic Party has spent the past 50+ years trying to appeal to the “center” and running in terror from anything remotely resembling the muscular New Deal liberalism that had once been its strength. And too many Dem candidates fail to offer a clear contrast to what the Republicans are offering. “Centrism” apparently translates into Republican Lite; mostly right-leaning, but nicer.
I’ve said this before, but I’m damn tired of Dem candidates in television ads promising to “reach across the aisle” to “get things done.” What things?
Nobody in the Dem party notices that the Republicans have been promising BIG RADICAL CHANGE, often in reactionary terms, meaning change going backward, since Reagan. And that wins for them. The electorate isn’t as afraid of change as Democrats are.
Bernie Sanders recently spoke in Ireland:
He stated that America is broken as a country, and that Trump came in with promises to fix a system that needed fixing – and people believed him.
Speaking in Ireland, Sanders said: “Understand that most young people in America will have a lower standard of living than their parents.
“When you want to understand Trumpism, and why people are angry, they are angry because in America over the last 52 years, despite huge increases in worker productivity – the average American worker is worse off in inflation-accounted-for dollars than he or she was 52 years ago.”
He continued: “When it comes to elections, Democrats say that they’re going to tinker around the edges, but they ultimately feel the status quo is pretty good.
“Then Trump comes along and says ‘The system is broken, and I Donald Trump will fix it’. Well, he got half of that right. The system is broken, he’s correct. But his solutions will only make a terrible situation even worse.”
At the other end of the scale is Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. There’s an interview of Slotkin by David Leonhardt in the New York Times. (I’m debating whether to use my last gift link for the month on it. I think I’ll use a “regular” link, but let me know if you can’t live without reading it.) The thing is titled “How to Turn the Middle Against Trump.” What she says isn’t necessarily awful — it’s basically “focus on middle-class issues” — but added up it’s the same tepid, let’s not scare the chickens stuff that has been eroding the Dem brand lo these many years. And while she and Leonhardt dismiss Bernie Sanders as a “socialist,” she doesn’t offer any concrete ideas about what she wants to do for the middle class, or even whether she understands what’s happening to the middle class. And, frankly, I think Kamala Harris did focus almost exclusively on middle-class issues last year.
(You may remember Slotkin from her response to the SOTU this year, in which she said “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s.” She was trying to draw a contrast between Reagan and Trump, but as far as I’m concerned Reagan paved the way for Trump.)
Another thing that Leonhardt says (after talking about Bernie Sanders):
I agree with you that most Americans don’t want socialism and they want to believe in the country that we have. I also can’t help but notice that when you think about the most successful politicians of our modern era, they’ve basically all run as change agents. It’s true of Bill Clinton, it’s true of Barack Obama. It’s obviously true of Donald Trump. And it seems to me that one of the things that the Democratic Party is sort of groping for is some way to develop a message that is authentic, anti-establishment and also gives people some hope that the future can be better than the present. I’m interested if you see any ways to tie an anti-establishment message to the hunger that Americans want for fixing these pretty deep problems that we have.
Bill Clinton was a “change agent” for sensibly raising taxes to reduce the federal deficit and balance the budget for the last time that ever happened. And as soon as he took office George Dubya Bush blew that change out of the water and turned the clock back to Reaganomics. But I mostly remember Clinton being a non-change agent, someone who was okay with prevailing conservative ideas about a lot of things. Clinton was a leader of the neoliberal “third way,” New Democrat crowd that pretty much cut all remaining ties to the New Deal tradition and pulled the party to the right. And as much as I like Barack Obama as a person, in a lot of ways he was over-cautious as a president and didn’t really deliver on the promise of “yes we can.” Perhaps the fight to get the Affordable Care Act passed discouraged him from trying much else. I acknowledge he didn’t get much help from Congress. But I do think that he didn’t so much win re-election as Mittens Romney lost. Nobody could mistake Mittens as a “change agent,” I guess.
I don’t disagree with Slotkin about the Dems needing a message that is anti-establishment and promises hope for the future. But the only members of the Dem party who have anything tangible to offer in that regard are the progressives — e.g., Liz Warren, AOC. And independent Bernie Sanders. And note that Slotkin has voted for about nine of Trump’s nominees. The only senator with a worse record in that regard is John Fetterman. She’s trying to cast herself as a leader in the fight against Trump, but in other recent interviews she’s advised Dems to stop being “woke” and also drop the term “oligarch” from their vocabularies. So, yeah, she’s starting to annoy me.
At least it’s almost sorta kinda being acknowledged by Dems that they have a communication problem. I don’t think the way to solve that problem will be found in seminars on “how to speak to young men.” They need a better understanding of why so much of the electorate is frustrated with them and speak to that. And they need to see the nation through the eyes of Americans who are trying to square their day to day lives with the image of America as a land of opportunity. The future I expected as a young person, which isn’t necessarily what I got, was much nicer than the one young people are looking forward to right now. And I don’t think a lot of the Dems in Washington understand that.
Of course, it’s also the case that a lot of Trump’s appeal is just old-fashioned racism, sexism, and jingoism. Maybe a really nasty recession caused by Trump’s policies will persuade people they have more dangerous things to be afraid of than too much diversity.
Update: This just happened.
A federal court on Wednesday ruled President Trump does not have the authority under economic emergency legislation to impose sweeping global tariffs.
Why it matters: The U.S. Court of International Trade’s ruling could bring the administration’s trade war to a screeching halt.
By blocking entirely most categories of tariffs, the court effectively wiped out most of the regime Trump put in place since taking office.
Driving the news: The court, ruling in two separate cases, issued a summary judgment throwing out all the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
Poor Trump’s going to be up all night POSTING IN ALL CAPS and using up most of the nation’s supply of exclamation points.
Taco* is the word on the street, anyway, referring to the fearless leader's tendency to always chicken out in trade negotiations which of course fearless leader denies. Denial only works if the glove does not fit. With fearless leader it fits like a glove. What it does not fit is his inflated self-image. The Taco trade works for now because, at least at present, the fickle authoritarian is predictable at one thing.
*Taco=Trump Always Chickens Out
Re Update: What will the USSC do? The case is going to the USSC, I predict, on Constitutional grounds. The trade court decided Trump does not have the authority under IEEPA. There's a narrow opportunity under Section 122 for Trump to impose up to 15% for up to 150 days and then Congress has to decide.
At first glance, one would expect the Robert's court to hand the power back to Trump. I'm not so sure. There's a decision that legal experts found contradictory and revealing.
“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President … he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf, subject to narrow exceptions recognized by our precedents.” That was their legal basis for allowing Trump to fire Wilcox and Harris.
But the court was careful to say this did not mean Trump could do the same thing to people running the Federal Reserve…
The ruling stressed that the Fed is not like other federal boards. It’s a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.”
The ruling of the USSC was that Trump CAN fire the heads of independent federal boards even when the law says otherwise. BUT the court decided based on "the distinct historical tradition" of the Fed, it's out of bounds. The court is engaged in directly deciding politics, not the law. The USSC wants Trump to be able to fire people in the position to protect federal employees. But Trump is an idiot, a fact not lost on 7 of 9 justices. He will wreak economic disaster on the economy if he's given direct control ot the Federal Reserve Board.
I expect the same political reasoning to be applied here. Inflation is starting and will get worse. At my job, they are cutting hours – people are cutting back on spending. It won't end overnight – China can't crank up production overnight and there's a two-month lag between shipping and product making it to the shelf. Prices will go up everywhere there's been an interruption. There will be a slump – for how long and how deep we do not know. If the USSC takes tariffs away from Trump, like they did the Fed, they limit some of the economic mayhem. If the USSC is as political as I say, they want the GOP to remain in power. An economic depression puts that control in jeopardy regardless of how much electoral meddling the USSC allows.
If the USSC disallows tariffs, Trump will (likely) denounce the authority of the USSC to limit his power, setting up a direct confrontation that the voters will ultimately decide in 2026 and 2028.
"Reagan paved the way for Trump": YES!
"Tax the Rich" is the obvious platform for winning elections, but it's also the quickest way to lose the 'Money Primary'. I don't see a way around that problem at the national Party level. Bernie, AOC, and her Squad can bring in enough money to keep a small but stalwart presence of Progressive Dems in Congress, but not enough to build an alternative Party infrastructure.
I was going to write a comment re strategy for Democrats built around the slogan, "Tax The Rich" but you beat me to it.
Sanders' analyses have proven correct over the years. Unfortunately the "centrist" wing of the party has been effective within the party in marginalizing Sanders, dismissing anything he says, for the most part, as "socialism" even though its obvious they know what socialism is and know that's not what Sanders is proposing, as he's even made clear many times. (they’re doing a similar thing to AOC, and Crockett, all they are being more careful with her) He's consistently had the highest approval rating as a senator, and his popularity is evident. The policies Sanders proposes are popular with voters, some are even popular with right-leaning voters. The democrats would have some success with more of the voters they want to attract if they embrace these policies, but the centrists are afraid of losing the financial support of donors that don't like them. I don't know if this is a real either/or situation, embrace Sanders and lose the donors, or this is one where the centrists are more politically aligned with the right and they' just don’t want to split the difference.
That said, this time around I believe voters are going to be looking for a restoration agent, someone who is going to restore what Trump/Musk has destroyed, at a minimum, but at best, looking for someone who will add real value to their day to day lives. I believe after all Trump's lies to that effect, and all that he'll have taken away by then, democrats will have a real opportunity to take power. But they have to stop fighting themselves first.
Up to this point in time Democrats found ways to tolerate if not emulate or even assimilate diversity. No chance now. Republicans of the MAGA type have mutated to a form even hard-core GOP members find intolerable. Gauche elitism…with the elevation of the worst characteristics of both words. Not to be tolerated by even those who pride themselves on their tolerance of different people.