Coalition of The Sane:I'd Be Happier With The Democrats If So Many of Them Weren't Behaving Like Republicans(And Not the Way The Majority of Progressives Think)

 

 

There's this old standard about a Congressional Democrat during the long period after the Civil War when the Republicans were almost always in power. He said: "I am a Democrat still…very still."

Now unlike the overwhelming number of writers on this blog and quite a few so-called progressives I'm an institutionalist as well as a pragmatist. That means if you want to get things done you have to be loyal to some institutions and then especially includes political parties. In my lifetime it's never been easy to be a Democrat, mainly because we kept losing elections we should have won, because we kept letting the conservatives and Republicans frame the contours of debate, because to much of the time we believe in systems rather than the emotional reactions that drive politics. But I am a Democrat still – very still – mainly because in the 21^st century we've always been grownups in contrast to the increasing Republican insanity at a Congressional and particularly Presidential level. I admit that acting like an adult and being sane shouldn't be the sole qualification for being in political office but in an era where the loudest voices on the right were increasingly being the voices of lunacy I found it very appealing and I always do.

To be clear I long since stopped expecting that from the GOP  long  before the 2016 election occurred. If anything the years since have made me firmer in my commitment to the Democrats.  A Return to Normalcy helped lead the Republicans to a landslide in 1920 and it might well have been Joe Biden's slogan 100 years later. I realize now that it was probably a pipe dream for normal to ever come back but at the very least I would have preferred politics to be much less exciting and interesting, particularly from the Democrats.

Now I do get why after everything that happened in 2024 the decision to panic among the party elders and the loudest voices on that side was understandable. It wasn't held by more than a few Congressional Democrats and I really wish leadership had been willing to listen to the Jared Goldens and John Fettermans,  particularly given that the party was no longer in a position to really do anything. We were now a minority party in the House and the Senate and much as we might hate that fact the people had made their choices clear in that election. And particularly considering the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election there was something to be said for providing a contrast to the GOP in what was going to be a post-Trump America by acting with something resembling maturity and dignity.

That has not, by and large, been what Congressional Democrats have done in the last year and a half. On the contrary what their behavior reminds me of is that of the members of the Tea Party in the aftermath of the 2010 election and throughout the majority of Obama's Presidency as well as the behavior of the Freedom Caucus during Biden's administration. During that period the Democrats rightly called out this behavior as juvenile, undignified and unworthy of the political system. It now seems that's their new business model much of the time.

Because here are Congressional Democrats and state officials storming ICE rallies and courthouses and getting arrested. Here are Congressional Democrats and Senate Democrats shouting belligerently at Trump's cabinet members during their meetings before the Senate. Here they are walking out of confirmation meetings for Trump's judges to appellate courts.

Here they are shutting down the government in order to make political points with their base.

Now I'm sure that I will be told countless times over that this is what is necessary to make it clear just how horrible the actions of the current President are and that the Democrats will not stand for it, how he's running roughshod over the Constitutional process. I do get that. But the thing is, nothing the Congressional Democrats are doing is stopping his administration from rolling out their agenda and ripping up norms. Is it bad that the President is doing his agenda without input from Democrats from Congress? Sure. But he has the votes to do it.  And as I recall more than once from Democratic newsletters a minority of representatives standing in the way of the duly elected President to complete his agenda is an act of immaturity. I read that line more often then not in a group of Democratic fundraising emails during Biden's term. I didn't see in small print "Void when a Republican is President".

And I welcome anyone to explain to me what the difference between when in 2013 Republicans shutdown the government out of funding Obamacare for nearly a month and when Democrats have engaged in a similar shutdown of Homeland Security in order not to fund ICE. I'm sure I'll be told in no uncertain terms why the former was an act of immaturity and the latter is an act that is standing up to tyranny but the result is the game: one party is purposely not funding a vital part of the government for the sole purpose of scoring political points with their base in what is pure political theater. As it stands Majority Leader John Thune is in the process of forming a bill that will ended up completely funding ICE that will occur without any concessions to Democrats and will pass with solely Republican support. 

So two months have gone by with a vital part of our government not working – one that aside from ICE is vital to protecting America in countless ways and has been feeling the pinch across the board in our airports, in FEMA, in cybersecurity.  When it reopens the Democrats will have proved exactly what everyone knew at the start of the shutdown – that they are opposed to the President's policies.  In exchange they gave away their dignity, which is in short supply these days anywhere, and made it clear to civil servants who are already feeling under attack by the current administration that the Democratic Party is just as capable of using them as pawns to make points with their base as Republicans are.  All the damage that Republicans have doing to the civil servants who work in government agencies by tearing them down during the last two years, we're going to need help rebuilding them in the future – and how easy do you think it's going to be to do that now that they know either political party considers them as pieces that they will use in order to help them gain political points?

I've heard all of these arguments before – when Republicans make them. "Burn down the village in order to save it." "We have to go to the dark side." "The ends justify the means." I didn't buy them during W's administration or any Republican who has made them before and I sure as hell don't buy them when Democrats make that same argument.

But it's not merely that this demeans the Democrats and political dialogue that bothers me; it's that the very approach is the exact thing that will further isolate the average voter. Because the big difference between the Republican base and the Democratic one is that the extremists in our base have always had the effect of pushing people into the Republican tent while never winning a substantial amount of new voters to balance it out. This has been a large part of what has given the Republicans power for decades and while the left knows this, they don't really seem to think its  a problem. And I suspects that's because the loudest voices on their part are emotionally little better than toddlers.

Oh to be sure, many of them are college students, may have advanced academic degrees, write for prominent journals or have positions in the entertainment industry. But when it comes to politics they can barely comprehend it at a second grade level. And this has gotten exponentially worse with so much of how technology has changed and how much of our society is based on so-called planned obsolescence. For many of these people they think our Constitution and system of government because of its advanced age needs to be completely replaced or upgraded to a newer model. They really can't comprehend that one just can't download Constitution 2.0 on your iPhone nor that you can't bring about economic inequality or provide universal health care if you just check agree in the box and don't bother to read the terms and conditions. They think that institutions like capitalism and democracy are out of date and need to be completely replaced with something newer and by the way they view things – which is technology – better.  That you just can't trade these things in at your Apple store for better models nor that you can't ask Siri what form of government would work better and then make everyone else in the country – not just elected officials but everyone connected with the government – magically make it work isn't something they can understand. To them passing a law or amending the Constitution at most should be no more difficult then ordering a meal at Uber Eats and they get very cranky when you tell them it isn't.

No one will pretend – certainly not me – how much reform and repair our government needs and that much work must be done to do so. The problem is that too many people in this country if not the world have mistaken activism for governing. It is bad enough that one of our major political parties has essentially turned most of it into a circus; now too many members seemed determined that the only way to do gain power is to put up a rival act that is just as loud and equally destructive. That the majority of Americans either don't pay attention in the first place and when they do they are turned off by the whole thing should matter at least to the Democratic office holders. It definitely matters to me as a voter and I do think it matters to the vast majority of them, regardless of their party affiliation.

And after more than a decade on this blog I'm very clear that the loudest voices on the left can't be reasoned with on this matter and have no alternative solution to offer. Any attempt by the Democrats to appeal to them is a wasted effort because to these people everything they are doing is the bare minimum and they never credit to anybody for doing what they considers was the right thing anyway. They've made it clear they have no use for any of the Republicans or conservative commentators who have repented off their ways in the last decade which is as juvenile behavior as anything that the Justice Democrats have done. And as we saw when the Democrats attempted to shutdown the government the first time and finally agreed to reopen it all they received was contempt because "they had the GOP right where they wanted."

To be clear the Democrats had no leverage then any more then they do when they started to shutdown ICE two months ago. When the Republicans finally reopen the government even if it is done entirely absent Democratic votes they will get nothing from the left for what they've done. They've already moved on to shinier issues like everything in Iran and as I've written before, that's a whole other set of baggage the left has saddled the Democrats with for decades.

To its credit the Democrats have been doing other things that I'm in favor of it and have written about it when it comes to being focused on winning. They are attempted their most advanced campaign strategy for the upcoming midterms: one that involves competing at a state and local level in a way they really haven't since Obama became President. They have been getting back to what they used to be good at: trying to compete in states where they shouldn't be able and understanding that the strident left-wing models of the Squad and the Sanders' don't play in Iowa and Alaska. They understand something that the mostly activist wing of the party they represent refuse to comprehend: that playing the political game is the only way to bring about your goals. That it is more important to stand by your principles then forsake them for short-term goals.

We've seen this in the battles over gerrymandering in this past year. In Maryland the bluest state of the Union Governor Wes Moore attempted to lead the battle to redistrict Maryland to eliminate the sole Republican seat in the state. That movement failed because Democratic members of the statehouse refused to go along with this obviously partisan grab. If there was a sign of hope among the Republicans during this period it came in Indiana when members of the Republican state legislature refused to kowtow to their Republican governor and party and gerrymandered the state to eliminate Democratic seats.

The battle for redistricting in the last year has brought out the most juvenile aspects of both parties. You'll going to gerrymander Texas; we'll gerrymander California! You'll gerrymander Ohio; we'll gerrymander Virginia! Nyah-Nyah-Nyah! That the overall effect is to leave the voting public cold is not in consideration of either party.

It should be mentioned that while the people agreed to the referendum to redistrict Virginia, it was a much closer margin then the one in California, barely managing to pass 51 percent to 49 percent. That result, far more than the one in California, should be a message to Democrats that the voters don't think these battles matter as much to them as ones that will make their lives better economically. They wanted their elected officials to make their lives easier, not engage in political maneuvering for the national party and they were not thrilled by Governor Spangenberger's decision to do so. Spangenberger has always struck me as a mostly pragmatic woman and I can only wonder what it has to have been like to spend her first few months engaging in the kind of childish battles that won't help the people she's supposed to be leading but rather Congress who should be on her side anyway.

But she is a Democrat still…very still and she seems to have accepted reluctantly that this is how the game is being played by Gavin Newsom and Wes Moore. That both of these governors care less about being grownups and have ambitions for the highest office in the land is something that unnerves me as well. As I said if the last decade has taught me anything its that I want the grownups the run the country and by indulging in this kind of behavior governors like Moore and Newsom are only showing that they can be just as childish as the Republicans on a national stage. That shouldn't be a strength if you want to be leader of the free world.  I should know because I heard that argument the first time Trump ran for President from the Democrats.

I have to believe in my soul that the light at the end of the tunnel for America is not an oncoming train and that in a few years we will emerge on the other side, battered, heavily bruised but intact and hopefully smarter. Part of growing up is learning from the mistakes you've made and doing what is necessary to make sure they don't happen again. This is not an attitude that the left has ever held; its always been: "If you don't do exactly what I say, I'm not going to play with you anymore!" For too long my party has tried its hardest to indulge these emotionally stunted individuals who refuse to tell us what they want but are more than happy to share how much were ruining their lives just by existing. I think its well past time we told them to grow the hell up.

And that includes stop let the most childish members of the Democratic party outshout the grownups when it comes to strategy and attitude. Its time to tell Elizabeth Warren and AOC to stop acting like Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. If they led their party off a cliff would you do the same thing? You're Democrats still, very still, and I think I speak for the electorate that we really wish you'd act like it.