After Richard Nixon's 49 state
landslide in 1972 both political parties went to the right and both parties
enjoyed electoral success by doing so. For the Republicans it would be part of
5 out of 6 presidential elections between 1968 and 1992, gaining control of
both houses of Congress in 1994 and maintaining a lock on the House for 18
years in the 21st century so far and the Senate 14 of so far this
century. The Democrats by contrast would manage to win the White House in the
rest of the twentieth century when they
elected centrist Southern governors (Carter in 1976, Bill Clinton in 1992) and
control of the White House with Obama in 2008.
The left has essentially been on
the outside looking in with only a few exceptions during the next half a
century and have never regained the influence they had during the forty years
of mostly Democratic control of both Congress and the White House between FDR's
first term and the end of LBJ's presidency. They know the reasons why this
happened but they basically refuse to accept reality, instead yearning for a
simpler time when Democrats had all the power and Republicans were perfectly
docile and happy being the minority party and having no real power to change
policy. The fact that many of these years many of those who were Democrats were
more conservative than some Republicans at the time is a fact they've chosen to
erase from their collective unconscious.
In fact I suspect many are openly
hostile that during Republican administrations, that Democrats chose to work
with Republican Presidents. Much as they hold men like Mitch McConnell and Newt
Gingrich with his visceral hatred I suspect that they wish Tip O'Neill or Nancy
Pelosi had openly refused to work with Reagan or W. or that Tom Daschle had
used the filibuster with the same reckless abandon to stall Republicans. Like so many other things the left thinks
bipartisanship should only apply to Republicans reaching across the
aisle to Democrats when they have power and never the other way around.
I suspect the left has much of
the last twenty years angry at how so many Congressional Republicans have
thwarted the agendas of first and Obama as much out of envy as frustration.
"Why didn't our guys think of that when W. was in charge?"
must have gone through every left-wing thinker during that period. Furthermore
their outrage over a permanently stagnant Congress that accomplishing nothing
only bothers them as far as it allows them to play into their own outrage. To
them Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court only get in the way of the
true left-wing agenda which everyone wants. That they've never bothered to
define what it is, only what it isn't, is just a minor detail.
In the left's mind the American
dream died when Democrats decided to abandon the liberal dream for the trivial
reason that they'd been told in no uncertain terms in 1972 that the voters
didn't want it. Watergate officially erased every single flaw in George
McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972 and indeed every single flaw that had
made so many in the Democratic establishment think – rightfully, I should add –
that the voters would send them to electoral disaster that year. The fact was
that in the Congressional election in state after state that Nixon won
Democrats were able to either run ahead of Republicans.
If you win a landslide as
sweeping as Nixon you should have huge coattails. And yet despite that four
Republicans who'd been in the Senate for two terms years lost their elections.
Margaret Chase Smith got 47 percent of the vote in Maine as Nixon got 61
percent of it for President and lost. Gordon Allott who'd been in the Senate in
Colorado since 1954 narrowly lost by one percent to Democrat Floyd Haskell even
as Nixon carried the state by 22 points. Jack Miller lost Iowa by ten points as
Nixon carried by 38 points.
And here's the biggest sign of
McGovern's weakness. In his home state of South Dakota McGovern lost with 46
percent of the vote. Yet Democrat James Abourezk won election over his
Republican opponent with 57 percent of the vote. In South Dakota George
McGovern was less popular then a freshman Democrat.
And just to drive the point home
when McGovern managed to win reelection two years later he only beat his
Republican opponent by 6 points. McGovern's very left-wing positions might have
been popular with a certain group of Americans but they were out of touch with
the rest of the Democratic Party and his own state. When he ended up losing as
part of the Reagan landslide it was by 19 points to James Abdnor. McGovern actually
outspent Abdnor by nearly 2 to 1 but Abdnor made it very clear that McGovern's
liberal voting record was out of context with the involvement of the people of
South Dakota. And just to make that point clear McGovern, who was pro-choice,
actually faced a primary from an anti-abortion Democrat that year. He beat it
back, to be sure, but it demonstrated the validity of Abdnor's point: even
South Dakota Democrats thought McGovern was too far to the left.
As I've said before the 1980 Senate
election sent a message just how much liberalism in its current form was dead
as some of the most famously liberal senators such as Frank Church, Birch Bayh,
Warren Magnuson and Gaylord Nelson lost their seats. The Democrats would
eventually take the Senate back by a big margin by gaining eight seats,
including Tom Daschle defeating Abnor. Many of the Democrats who gained office
would be forces in the Senate for years to come such as Barbara Mikulski and
Harry Reid. But given how narrowly many of them managed to win election as well
as how difficult it was for some incumbents, the Democratic Party had received
the message: liberalism as they knew it was no longer a winning sales pitch.
This was true even when Bill
Clinton won election in 1992. The Democrats managed to lose 9 seats in the
House and made no gains in the Senate. Clinton was a minority President having
gotten barely 43 percent of the vote and was no doubt helped by victory by
Independent Ross Perot's historic third party run. The key to Clinton's success
had been by his arguing liberalism was dead and that his approach was 'a Third
Way'.
But a freshman senator from
Wisconsin didn't get the message. That year Russ Feingold had run as a
progressive who had made it very clear that his way was the only way. During
the campaign he unveiled an 82 point plan to eliminate the deficit by
the end of his first term. The plan called for a raise in taxes and cuts in the
defense budget. He was viewed as an extremist by Republicans and two liberal by
Democratic opponents.
When Feingold won election he
quickly became a bigger pain in the ass to the Clinton administration then the
Republicans were. He frequently broke with his own party to the detriment of
the President. He opposed NAFTA and other Free Trade, actually was the only
Democrat Senator to vote against a motion to dismiss Congress's
impeachment charges (he would vote against conviction, he thought Clinton's
approach to health care wasn't progressive enough and voted against the Defense
of Marriage Act
Say what you will about Feingold
he was an equal opportunity pain in the ass to Democrat or Republican. He was
the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act, voted against Timothy
Geithner being confirmed as Treasury Secretary and was the only Democratic
Senator to vote against Dodd-Frank both times it came before the Senate. He
moved to amend an appropriations bill that would have given emergency relief to
Katrina to require troops withdraw from Iraq. He voted to censure W in 2006 and
most Democratic Senators wouldn't give him the time of day. He led a filibuster
against extending the Patriot Act in February of 2006. In one of the biggest
examples of bipartisanship in the 21st century, the Senate voted
96-3 to break it up.
I won't deny that Feingold was
behind many major important Congressional acts included McCain-Feingold and
co-sponsored the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency act. But
Feingold's position basically put him at odds with his own party most of the
time. And there's a clear difference between both he and John McCain being
considered 'political mavericks'. When
McCain did it, he went across party lines to help the opposition. When Feingold
did it, he was hurting his own party to make a point.
And I think one of the reasons
for Feingold's popularity came in December of 2004 when he went on a golfing
trip to Greenville Alabama. Afterwards he'd wrote about it for the left-wing
publication Salon. After noting
how nice the people were and that Wisconsin had similar places he expressed
sorrow that 'such a poverty-stricken area was the reddest spot on the map
because of policies that Feingold considered destructive to the poor and middle
class." He talked about the trailer parks, check cashing stores and a
rundown used car lot.
The Republican mayor of the city
and the Republican governor of Alabama were perturbed by his description and
invited him to make a tour of the city to make amends. I suspect that the
readers of Salon were upset that he apologized. If he had doubled down on his
remarks as I suspect they wanted, he might very quickly have become the
frontrunner among left-leaning Democrats for 2008 as he was considering running
at the time. In fact there was a Draft Feingold campaign starting in 2005. But
after the midterms of 2006 he announced he would not seek the nomination in
2008. Having done so he told his supporters not endorse anyone for the
Presidency who voted for the Iraq War. Considering that only 23 Senators had
voted against going to war and he had accused his fellow Democrats of being
timid this was as close as he came to calling members of his party sellouts.
I suspect his support of Obama in
2008 was because he was the only candidate who met that criterion and as I
listed when Obama became President he was no more of an ally to him on his
agenda unless it suited his own purposes. When he lost reelection in 2010 to
Ron Johnson there's a part of me that wonders how many Senate Democrats who
basically said: "Good riddance'.
Say what you will about Feingold,
he was even more of unhelpful to Democrats out of the Senate then in it. He
formed a PAC called Progressives United to raise money for 50 Progressive
candidates which for its label supported as many non-progressives as progressives
– it gave money to help reelect Jon Tester as it did to elect Elizabeth Warren.
It didn't help four progressives running in Wisconsin. And he saw no problem
breaking his pledge about campaign finance reform the moment Citizens United
decision becoming just as willing to spend as much money as the conservative
PACS did – though to less success.
Nor did he agree to run in the
recall election of Scott Walker after it happened which might very well have
helped the Democrats take the seat back after the recall took place. And as a
result Walker became the first governor to survive a recall and the people of
Wisconsin suffered under him. In fact he won by
a bigger margin then when he was elected the first time.
Scott Walker was as much a
boogeyman to all progressives during the first half of the 2010s as Russ
Feingold had been their hero during the 1990s and 2000s. But during the decade
Feingold lost reelection to Ron Johnson in 2010 and again in 2016 while Scott
Walker won three elections. Which would seem to argue that the state of
Wisconsin had a clearer idea of what they wanted from elected officials then
the left wanted from theirs. Of course by that point the left had long
forgotten Feingold and moved on to their most recent standard bearer who wasn't
even a Democrat but was more than willing to play one on college campuses.
Bernie Sanders' first four years
in the Senate overlapped with Feingold's final term and by the time Feingold
had lost Sanders' had taken the torch from him and run even further to the left
as the biggest problem the Democrats. Unlike Feingold Sanders has spent 20
years in the Senate and has been a bigger failure by any metric you want to
use.
He has not passed any major
legislation during that period. Both his runs for the Presidency in 2016 and
2020 ended in him losing the nomination to more centrist candidates. The
various movements inspired by his candidacy, the Justice Democrats and his own
Progressive Democratic PAC have pretty much failed to create a significant bloc
of progressive elected officials outside of a few Representatives in deep blue
districts. During the peak of his influence between 2016 and 2024 the Democrats
have controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress just once in Biden's
first two years in office and many left-wing candidates and his own followers
were more upset that he chose to work with the administration.
And just as with McGovern and
Feingold Sanders has frequently had little influence even within his own state.
In 2018 Christine Halquist was the Justice Democrat candidate for Governor in
Vermont. She was running in one of eight states that Hilary Clinton had won in
2016 that had a Republican governor. And yet in the midst of the national blue
wave Halquist got just 40.3 percent of the vote, the worst performance for a
Democratic Party candidate in Vermont since 2008. Sanders received 67 percent
of the vote running for reelection which means that 27 percent of Sanders
voters chose Republican Phil Scott for Governor.
To drive the point home in 2024
Scott won his fourth term getting 73 percent of the vote. Esther Charlestin,
his opponent had the endorsement of both the Democratic and Progressive Party
in Vermont and only received 21 percent of the vote. By contrast Bernie
got 63 percent of the vote winning reelection which was still over 37,000 fewer
votes than Scott got for governor. The good people of Vermont think Bernie's
too far to the left for their liking.
The reason for Sanders' continued
influence in the Democratic Party for the last decade is mainly due to the
Democratic Party's determination to crack the reason for why Sanders's is so
popular with young people. And that reason is the same one that McGovern did so
well with college people in his 1972 primary campaign.
It's never been that complicated.
Young, college educated, white voters are more left-leaning then the average American
and will always vote for the most progressive candidate running in a primary.
That's the real link as to why this cycle Democratic primary voters chose Abdul
El-Sayid in Michigan, Angie Nixon in Florida and Ed Markey in Massachusetts to
be the party's nominees for Senate. Race, gender and age aside they were by far
the most left leaning candidates running for their office and that is why they
won the nomination.
But as been the case with
McGovern, Feingold and Sanders, what is popular with these kinds of progressive
voters in primaries has never really carried over with the electorate at large
in the last half-century. It may make these candidates popular nationally among
certain circles because of the stands they take but as I've illustrated the
electorate at large and in every case the voters of their states have a different opinion of it of what
they want from their elected officials.
For the last half century left-leaning
scholars and ideologues have increasingly devoted themselves to a way of life
that not only perished before many were even born but was in fact the same kind
of nostalgic view of the past that is far more common among their equivalents
on the right. They've spent far more time and energy arguing why the progressive
dream was destroyed by the conservatives then they have finding a way to reverse
engineer a similar takeover of the Democratic Party. That the voters, even a
decade after Trump's arrival, by and large still have no desire for these
ideas, may be part of the reason; that they can't define what it is, only what
it isn't, may be a bigger one.
For that reason George McGovern,
Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders have been among the very few elected officials
they respect, not because they succeeded in established a left-wing agenda for
the nation but because they met the metric of what the left really wants from
its elected officials: to not give into the establishment doctrine. That this
doctrine was rejected by the electorate, either nationally or by their own
states, is actually part of the reason for their being lionized. The left has
never really escaped the activist model for how it wants to get things done and
these Senators were far closer to being activists then they were being
effective senators. And while they make you heroes to some it just pisses off
the people you need to work with if you want to get things done.
As we enter the midterms it's
important not to let extremists on either side of the aisle continue to define
what government and representatives should be rather than what they want
them to be. A Senator is theoretically supposed to serve the voters of their
state, their party and their country. The leftist believes an elected officials
is only supposed to support the progressive agenda, even if that is in direct
opposition to what all three of these masters tell them to do and even if
it means the voters reject them at the polls. They've always been indifferent
to the idea of any form of public service in the first place, so it's never as
important to them if these officials lose and therefore can no longer do good
for anybody.
Republicans, for all their flaws,
do understand something of party unity and often have a better reading of what
the voters of their states want then the left does. (I'm not having the debate
the left wants to have about why that is here.) To a left that considers the
Democrats and the Republicans two sides of the same bad coin, they don't care
if a centrist Democrat loses to a Republican. To people like Hakeen Jeffries
and Chuck Schumer it's something they take very seriously because it's
their job too. And for half a century these kinds of Senators have made it so
much tougher for Democratic Presidents to get anything done. That hasn't
exactly helped the brand of a party that's considered ineffective and
disorganized even by its members.
I refuse to indulge the progressive
dream any longer, certainly not when so many years of losing having proven the
reality to be otherwise. The left is going to bitch that nobody is doing what
they believe is right no matter who wins so its time to stop indulging them.
They want to vote for left wing candidates who speak their language – and no
one else's – well, that's what they've always done. The voters have told a
different story and I think it's time we started listening to where they
actually are rather than where the McGovern's and Feingold's and Sanders's say
they should be. If that means betraying 'the cause', well, it hasn't worked out
for those guys so why I should I trust that they know what they're talking
about anymore?
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