The story I’m
about tell was used in reference to Henry Jackson a very skilled Democrat
Senator could never ascend to national prominence. Jackson was a conservative Democrat – the kind the left
would never consider being associated with – but the anecdote can easily apply
to so many progressives over the years.
The chairman
of the board of a well-known dog-food manufacturing company called in his
directors, sat them around a long table and, somberly, said to them:
“Gentlemen,
we make the best dog food. We use the best ingredients. We have the best
container. We have the most attractive label. Why doesn’t it sell?”
There was silence
in the board room for several minutes, and then a solitary voice is heard at
the far end of the table:
“Dogs don’t
like it.”
This
basically describes the problem with what the Justice Democrats attempted to do
when they were founded in 2018. They were attempting to sell the kind of
product they have tried to sell to the voters periodically over America’s
history. They were attempting a repackaging of the progressive ideals – which are
good ones – with a newer message and a more attractive label. It was certainly
a more diverse one, featuring an overwhelming number of female, minority, and
LGBTQ+ candidates. And in 2018 the voters basically gave the same message they inevitably
give the left whenever they make a concerted effort into electoral politics on
their own. They told them, in no uncertain terms, they don’t like the product.
Those on the
left constantly refer to politics, usually in regard to Republicans but
frequently to the two-party system, as a ‘rigged game’. That very well may be
the case. It is also the case that for nearly two centuries whenever the left
makes an effort to play the game that is American democracy they invariably
lose. And as much as the game may be rigged the fact is the left never wants to
play the same game both major parties are – assuming they want to play it at
all.
In my lifetime,
particularly in this century the Republican party has prioritized victory over
principles. Say what you will about that method – and the left has plenty to
say – it has helped them to great electoral success in the last half century.
The Justice Democrats, the left’s most recent version of it, seem to have
decided that their approach was going to be the opposite: principles over victory.
For people who constant mock the intelligence of both the Republican
politicians and the people who vote for them the attitude held by Jamaal
Bowman, Cori Bush and those who support both them and the politics they stand
for is at best incredibly naïve and at worse, desperately foolish. But it is in
keeping with an attitude that the left has had towards electoral politics dating
at least as far back as the Radical Republicans.
The
Republican Party over the last half century, if nothing else, must be credited
with being extremely good as sales. They’ve convinced a significant group of
the American people that the policies they have that work against their own
interest are in fact the best thing for them. To use the story I gave earlier,
they’ve not only convinced these people to buy their dog food but to make it
part of their own nutritious breakfast.
Much of this
is based in the old talking points the left constantly brings up – the Southern
strategy, the Heritage foundation, the rise of cable news – but it also speaks
to the Republicans willingness to play the long game to affect their strategy.
This is something that the left not only doesn’t seem to want to do but thinks
it beneath them to even consider doing. Politics and democracy is based on that,
if you want to get something done, you have to get elected to office and
convince your colleagues and the voters to get on board. Nearly two centuries
since direct democracy began the left is still convinced it is everyone else’s
job – not just their colleagues or opposition but America - to come around to their way of thinking
without them having to compromise their principles or even if the people want
it. Jamaal Bowman and the Squad are just the latest version of this – and the
fact that they are the most successful version to this point in American
politics speaks less to their own abilities then to the left’s perennial
failure to have their ideas enter the political mainstream.
And as I
keep repeating Bowman and the Justice Democrats have failed on a nationwide
scale to convince all but the smallest fragment of the Democratic primary voter
that their vision is the correct one for America. Not the Democratic Party,
America. It would be the height of hubris for twelve elected Congressional
representatives of deep blue districts in mostly blue states to believe that
speak for the entire population. Yet as I have illustrated Jamal Bowman, Cori
Bush and so many members of their ilk – successful and failures – not only think they do but know they do.
That the Democratic Party has spent so much of the last few years letting them
believe that fact has does nothing to help their long-term electoral health as
a party.
And it’s not
clear its even done much to help those elected to Congress. Those who work in leftist
journals and columnists – many of whom write for this blog - genuinely don’t consider even AOC and Bernie
true leftists. They cheer people like Jamaal Bowman when they sink Biden’s
legislation because he didn’t compromise and excoriate his colleagues like
Jaypal when they do for a greater good. They will argue that when Sanders chose
to work with the Biden administration to help further the principles he’d
campaigned for even in a compromised setting that he’d betrayed his platform. They
will berate Republicans as the root of all that is wrong with society and will tell
you in the same breath that the Democrats, by not agreeing to their principles,
are just as bad. They’ll argue the game is rigged and the people who try to
play it – even the ones who agree with them – are suckers.
That is why,
for much of the 20th century, the left’s grade in the political
process has almost always been a mark of ‘absent’. They will write extensive
books, yell on their own columns about the right wing’s rise and then say with
a straight face it’s everyone’s fault but theirs. Bowman and the Squad are
considered by many as iconoclasts for the kind of performative stunts they will
in the same breath mock Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert for. And it
is clear that this attitude was shared by Justice Democrats, certainly those of
Cori Bush. After she was defeated a member of her campaign staff acknowledged
that she could have made herself less vulnerable had she more pliable to the
Administration. “But those aren’t the kinds of candidates we’re trying to send
to Congress,” that staffer said.
How does
that make Bush and Bowman any different from the Freedom Caucus? Their
defenders will say that the Freedom caucus only has loyalty to a single man who
doesn’t return it while AOC and Ilhan Omar are fighting for a greater good. But
if the end result means that no legislation gets passed, that the polarization
of DC and America continues, that more and more Americans suffer, then what is
the difference really?
I know I
will be met with condemnation by so many people on this blog for even writing
this last paragraph, considered a MAGA extremist myself. I keep saying I agree
with the principles of progressives and I want them to succeed. But unlike
them, I’m a pragmatist. I know that democracy is about the half-loaf and taking
what you can in the short term. Progressives have never seemed to grasp that
concept. They want everything now and won’t accept anything less. If that means
their district, their state or the country suffer as a consequence, that seems
to be a price they’re willing to be pay rather than compromise their
principles.
And its
worth noting that progressives while they don’t deny the results of elections,
are as bad losers as conservatives are. After Paula Jean Swearngin lost the
Democratic primary to Joe Manchin as a Justice Democrat in 2018, she managed to
win the Democratic nomination to run against Shelly More Capito, West Virginia’s
Republican Senator, in 2020. She was destroyed by Capito, only getting 30
percent of the vote. (For the record she got that much against Manchin two
years later.) Having been rejected that soundly by the voters of West Virginia
Swearengin might have realized that her far left message – which included EPA
hearings in a state where the major industry is coal mining – might not be the
right one for her state. She might have considered a way to moderate her views
going forward.
Instead less
than one year later, she chose to leave the Democratic Pary. She wrote in July
of 2021 that ‘she couldn’t support racism or them ignoring Appalachian children
dying or suffering.” In other words, it wasn’t her fault the voters had
rejected her or her message soundly, it was ‘the system.”
That year
she joined the Movement for a People’s Party, which had tried to get Bernie
Sanders to run in 2020 after he lost the Democratic nomination. He had declined
because he considered beating Trump more important then his principles. Members
of the party expressed distaste for both candidates but chose not endorse a
candidate. The People’s Party has yet to achieve any of his professed goals,
not running any candidates in either the 2022 midterms or this year. The most they
have accomplished is an organization in Maine, which was designed to focus on
pushing Congressional officials into supporting a floor vote for Medicare for
All, a key principle of the Squad and Justice Democrats. They haven’t achieved
that in four years. In four years they have yet to even manage to get a single elected
official to accept their backing or run with their endorsement. They have
ballot access in Florida but it is September and they don’t have a candidate on
the ballot. They have many Sanders’s supporters but as with the Justice
Democrats, Sanders has ignored them. Swearingin was the only Justice Democrat
candidate who was part of their organization and she left in February of 2022.
Nick Brana, the man who founded in 2017 was accused of sexual harassment in
2022. He denied those claims and forced out several members.
In June of 2023
Cornel West announced his candidacy to run for President. The last of access
forced West to first seek the endorsement of the Green Party and then
eventually run as an independent. Brana left the party later that year to work
for Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s. Presidential campaign and as of May of 2024, served
as their ballot access director.
Both Brana
and West’s action really make the point clear at the end of the day, the principles
claim to have are stage dressing for people who are mirror images for their
equivalent on the far right. They know they can’t stand on their own, they know
their message is outside the mainstream. But they won’t accept that. No matter
how many times they are rejected by the public, no matter how many elections
they lose, they will claim they just have to change the labels or the
ingredients or the packaging and then, finally, the voters will buy what they’re
selling. The rise and fall of Bowman and Bush make it very clear that this is a
product the voters will only take in small doses and not very long. The
question is, can they realize they have to do more than cosmetic changes or
will they just keep eating their own food, not able to understand why no one
else likes the flavor?
I do have
ideas as to an antidote but I’ll save them for a different series.
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