Tag Archives: Democratic Party

The Democrats’ Winnowing Process

15 Jan 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , , 5 Comments

On Monday, a depleted Cory Booker dropped out of the presidential race, three weeks before the Iowa caucus.  He had been running for president for nearly a year.  The senator’s departure leaves a dozen Democrats still in the race.  In the incredibly silly yet arduous process used to sift through presidential contenders, sixteen Democrats who were running have already failed.

Yes, they recruited campaign staffs, solicited donations, spoke at rallies, sought friends in wine caves, and pontificated on debate stages, only to gnash their teeth in despair over low statistics gathered through doubtful methods but taken as proof that they wouldn’t catch on.  The reasons remain mysterious, but the polls “say” that these candidates are not what the American Tigger likes.

So Marianne Williamson, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, Steve Bullock, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bill de Blasio,  Eric Swalwell, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper, Tim Ryan, Joe Sestak, Richard Ojeda, Seth Moulton, Wayne Messam, and now Cory Booker, have all dropped out—beaten before even a single vote has been cast.

Meanwhile, likely voters (and donors) are being looked to determine what the Democratic Party needs.  The Democratic National Committee  is being decidedly hands-off when it comes to the all-important matter of picking a standard-bearer who can beat Trump.  Given the divide that has opened up between progressives and moderates, the candidate who wins the nomination will fatefully determine the tilt of the entire party.

It’s left to the voters to judge the vast assemblage that has shown up in response to what is essentially an open casting call.  The debate stage is an audition for the presidency (a crude test, given what being an effective president actually involves).  Not surprisingly, many voters are holding off in picking a favorite, until they can see what other people think.  Who is a winner?  This is what ordinary voters expect someone else to decide.

Am I a typical voter, I who could imagine voting for Sanders, or Steyer, or Bullock, or Bloomberg?  Even very well-informed voters may well yet be holding fire.  Which makes me wonder about the meaning, at present, of those all-important opinion polls that sites like FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics keep track of for us, and which have caused so many interesting Democratic talents to drop out.

Image: from this source.
Joseph Keppler’s 1884 “An Unpleasant Ride through the Presidential Haunted Forest,” shows Uncle Sam and Dame Democracy riding in terror through a woods haunted with the ghosts of some twenty “dead” presidential hopefuls. Click to enlarge.

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The Second of Two Thoughts (Bernie Sanders and Turnout)

8 Jan 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , , 9 Comments

I watched Judy Woodruff interview Bernie Sanders on the PBS Newshour last night and saw something different in his demeanor.  His speech was just as direct as ever, just as ardent, but he was unusually composed and calm.  Maybe it was the heart attack that changed him, or maybe it has occurred to him, “I can win this thing.”

New public opinion polling shows Sanders’ popularity among likely Democratic voters beginning to exceed that of moderate front-runner Joe Biden.  In addition, Sanders is an unmatched powerhouse among Dems when it comes to fund-raising.  He is estimated to have raised $100 million in 2019, roughly forty million dollars more than Biden, and far surpassing even the enthusiastically backed Pete Buttigieg, who reportedly raised about $75 million last year.

After years of being a long-shot candidate, Bernie suddenly seems a lot more viable—even more mainstream.   His talking points haven’t changed, but the political atmosphere and the wishes of the American people have.  To a citizenry weary of the bizarre outbursts and imbroglios President Trump is so fond of, Sanders’ consistency and plain speech are almost soothing.  He comes across as an aging hippy uncle who has mellowed and acquired good manners over the decades by rubbing elbows with people of wildly different persuasions on Capitol Hill.  His views are reassuringly humane and, from his having repeated them over and over, no longer sound as crazy as they did at first.  He is a peacenik who believes that the US can figure out how to be fairer and deliver national health care and education more affordably.

His remarks on the Newshour zeroed in on the issue of voter turnout and political energy.  Sanders argues that he is the Democratic candidate best suited to oppose Trump because he’s most capable of energizing voters, especially young voters, and getting them to turn out.  “To beat Trump,” he was saying, “you’re going to need a massive  voter  turnout. And the only way you do that is through a campaign of energy, of excitement. You have got to bring working people. You have got to bring young people into the political process.”  In short, the nominee must inspire voters to get involved.

A crucial point.  Candidates’ varying ability to galvanize voters in the general election is a factor completely left to the side in primary polling.  A positive excitement, a charismatic appeal: precisely the ingredients missing in the Hillary debacle.  This time around, I hope to God Democrats will refrain from choosing a “meh” candidate who can’t rouse the electorate to go to the polls.  If the Dems make this mistake again—a mistake they have made innumerable times, as they did with Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary—Trump and the Republicans will almost certainly prevail.  Then a disappointed nation will be feeling the burn.

Getting To Know The Democratic Field

31 Jul 2019 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , 4 Comments


I had barely walked in the door from a long car trip when the second round of Democratic presidential debates began.  So I grabbed the nearest note pad and sat down to begin assessing the candidates in the Democratic field.  Unlike the first round of debates, which were too dizzying to make sense of, the presidential candidates are beginning to come into focus in this second round.

Most Americans are centrists, so it was heartening to see several of the lesser-known candidates pointing out the dangers of falling into line behind the so-called “progressive” policies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  To my mind, at least, these two appeared to function last night less as rivals than allies, a relationship visually reinforced by their position together at center stage.  The main axis of the debate, no matter what topic the candidates were discussing, had to do with whether the policies Sanders and Warren are advocating are either fair or achievable, or genuinely appealing to Americans at large.  Particularly controversial is their embrace of Medicare for All, which in their formulation would do away with the nation’s current reliance on private medical insurance.

As the night wore on, Warren, Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and John Hickenlooper all drifted lower in my estimation, partly because the challenges that Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar, and Tim Ryan mounted against Warren and Sanders were sensible and to my mind represented the interests of a wide swath of the electorate.  These more moderate and pragmatic candidates circled back time and again to the issue of what was achievable and what kinds of government help the public will truly appreciate and need.  Whereas Warren and Sanders thundered away, waving their arms and insisting that nothing but radical change could rescue the nation, Klobuchar, Ryan, Delaney, and Bullock voiced innumerable objections, in some cases questioning the desirability of the outcomes; in others, skeptically probing progressive assumptions; in still others, arguing that progressive policies were unworkable and would fail.

Governor Bullock of Montana, who entered the race only belatedly, made a good impression, if only because his presence reminded viewers of how important it will be for Democrats to choose someone who can do well in the “new West” and in purple states.  Amy Klobuchar improved over her first debate performance, exuding confidence and holding to a spontaneous style.  She easily eclipsed Beto O’Rourke, who was trying too hard to look and sound presidential, and Pete Buttigieg, who, in trying to differentiate himself from the competition, ended up marginalizing himself as a niche candidate representing the young.  Some viewers were turned off by Klobuchar’s touting her own record of electoral achievement, but others will take to heart her underlying message, which is that, to beat Trump, Democrats will need to nominate someone who can capture more votes in the moderate Midwest than Hillary did.

John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland, came across as accomplished, thoughtful, and in command of the facts.  I was glad to see him standing up to Warren and Sanders and objecting to plans that will pull the Democratic party completely off the rails.  He managed to stay calm and listened politely while Elizabeth Warren lectured and whined her way past rules meant to prevent any one candidate from hogging an undue portion of the available time.

Which brings me to Marianne Williamson, who, despite not being an ideologue, perfectly articulated the central ideal of republican government both on the debate stage and in a post-debate interview with CBS.  She comes across as an authentic voice for using government to help individuals reach their full potential, which can only happen when the political class remembers that its job is to help “the people.”  Though she is not likely to become the party’s nominee, her impassioned and spontaneous riffs on environmental injustice and the dark psychic force of hatred that Donald Trump is unleashing stirred listeners’ hearts as nothing else did.  Somehow, this off-beat outsider is channeling the old soul of the Democratic party, delivering jeremiads to the complacent and prodding Americans everywhere to “stay woke.”  I found her refreshing and wouldn’t be surprised to see her star burning brighter for a while.

Why The Parties Don’t Die

20 Jul 2019 By in Politics Tags: , , , 1 Comment
  1. They are mature bureaucracies.
  2. Incumbency: the desire of those in power to remain in power.
  3. Monied interests support and reinforce the existing structure.
  4. The absence of good alternatives (no viable insurgent parties that look like winners).
  5. At the state level, hostile conditions, along with sheer lassitude, prevent new parties from forming.
  6. The specialized intellectuals (editors, ideologues, strategists) needed to create new parties have grown up with the existing parties and are loathe to abandon them.  Professional loyalty to party interests perpetuates their power.
  7. Candidates know it’s easier to get votes through one of the two major parties: this is what Trump and Sanders both discovered.  So grass-roots/breakaway movements that might formerly have chosen to build something new from the ground up are instead aspiring to rehab the old parties from within.  Both major parties are living off of the parasitic energy of actors who are cannibalizing them (e.g., the Tea Party, the current-day progressives).
  8. Parties used to coalesce around outstanding individuals and their ideas (e.g. Jacksonian democracy; “radical Republicans”) but this customary way of organizing politics, which was risky and instinctive, has been superseded by methods that are bureaucratic and “scientific.”  Dependence on a bureaucratic establishment tends to become a substitute for reliance on the public will.  The monolithic character of the Republican and Democratic establishments and their tendency to thwart political innovation has become an open target of frustration and rage on both the right and left (embodied in Trump and Ocasio-Cortez).
  9. The old parties, burdensome though they are, stabilize national politics.  Americans are accustomed to the order and the limited choices they provide.  So we resist acknowledging that we should abandon these parties.  The parties no longer harmonize sentiment: they no longer stand for a single set of non-negotiable goals.  Ideologically, both parties are fractured.  Their tents are so big, what they stand for is no longer clear to the people.  They struggle to exert discipline over their supposed standard-bearers.  Iconoclasts overwhelm them.  Nonetheless, they live on because politics without these parties would open up new realms of possibility, giving American both more to hope for—and more to fear.

A Legitimately Elected President

26 Mar 2019 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Michele Obama, and Jill Biden among dignitaries on inauguration dias.
The conclusion of the Mueller investigation presents leading Democrats with a fateful choice: whether to continue digging into the past in hopes of hobbling or delegitimizing Trump’s presidency, or to concentrate on the present and the future, when all their ingenuity will be needed to beat Trump and deny him a second term.

Though the latter would be better for the party and nation, turning away from the special investigation requires fortitude.  The Mueller report hasn’t been made public, and the pundits and pols who are against Trump aren’t satisfied with Attorney General William Barr’s disclosures and conclusions.  The Democrats want more information.  This desire, as reasonable as it is, distinguishes them from the mass of American citizens who are really tired of this subtle affair and who are dying for evidence that the government is still capable of . . . . GOVERNING.

If the Democrats want someone new in the White House in 2020, they need to persuade voters that their nominee and their vision will be better for the nation than what Trump offers.  Yet they are so far from presenting this impression that one can scarcely imagine their unifying around a tenable candidate and winning.

Democrats are procrastinating.  They are shirking the hard work that follows from acknowledging that Trump won office legitimately.  He enjoys an authority that is foolish to argue with: In 2016, he understood the rules of the electoral game and exploited them more effectively than did Hillary Clinton.  He won the electoral votes he needed by persuading enough citizens to go to the polls and vote for him in key states.  Two years later, most of the president’s opponents have yet to reckon with this reality, even though any political strategy leading to Trump’s defeat must be designed with this geography in mind.  To defeat Trump, Democrats must peel away moderate and independent voters in states fed up with stale Democratic memes.  The Dems face an uphill battle, even with teamwork, ideological innovation, and the right nominee.

And where is Democratic rage when it comes to the real bogeyman, Russia–the real villain who prejudiced American voters against Hillary by waging a campaign of misinformation, who smeared her and deployed assets to promote Trump, a candidate who, for various reasons, Russia wanted instead?  What is Congress doing to ensure that foreign nations don’t infiltrate and corrupt American political discourse in the future?

While real danger looms over American democracy, one wonders whether the Democrats will ever look up from their game of Clue and do something.

Image: Screen shot of leading Democrats attending Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.
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