Tag Archives: party politics

What The Democrats Must Do

10 Feb 2026 By in Politics Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A group of four individuals dressed in early 20th-century formal attire, including hats and coats. The group consists of two men on either side, a woman in the center, and another man on the right. They are posing outdoors, with trees visible in the background.

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The Democratic Party is, at present, the only political organization in the nation capable of defeating Trump.  In the last election, voters looked to the Democrats to rise to the occasion, and Democrats let us down.  I’m looking for signs that the party as a whole has absorbed the lessons of 2024, but so far its leaders don’t seem to see the need to unite and act in concert; they don’t seem to realize how ideologically broken and blown they are.

The Trump era will end when his many opponents unite in a disciplined way around an adequate, innovative ideology. An “adequate ideology” would map out an alternative path to achieving prosperity and security for American citizens, while reviving a sound and balanced federalism. Given Americans’ grave dissatisfaction with both political parties, success depends on peeling away support from the Republicans, while embracing ideas that will induce independents to join a majoritarian coalition.

    As we all know, Trump’s outrageous style of governing tends to dominate the national discourse, leaving little room for the growth of this oppositional vision. Living in the Trump era is like having a neighbor blasting your least favorite music 24-7 while you are trying to write beautiful poetry. Instead of writing your master-work, you are screaming at the neighbor to stop with the noise. Trump distracts you from your own virtues, your own manners, and, especially, your own ambitions. Instead of figuring out how to restore civic trust and reform Congress, you are talking about Greenland, Venezuela, and—the newest distraction—the Epstein files. We’re all spending a lot of time thinking and talking about matters that are tangential to the survival of American self-government, even as Trump is diminishing our capacity to govern ourselves and knocking down the pillars of civil society.

    It’s very difficult to ignore and look past Trump, but the only way to vanquish him and his Republicans is to treat their actions as irrelevant to the nation’s future. It’s necessary to dream a constructive and counterfactual dream. If Trump were not in power, what could the future of the United States be? Democrats must retreat to a tranquility chamber together and dream that dream. They mustn’t be haters, critics, or skeptics: they must recall the good deeds that American government has done. They must extol everything that’s still good and sound in American society, and they must map out how its people can propel this country to a new modern high.

    For, where do ordinary voters fit in to the American equation any more? Individuals are increasingly extraneous in a technological mass society that, in the form of “the AI revolution,” is bifurcating the nation’s economy into a hyper-capitalized empire run by an investor class, who are engrossing all the goodies, at the majority’s expense. This out-of-control juggernaut is flattening the lives and hopes of a vast range of workers and property-owners. Media companies are turning our lives into data mills at the expense of our privacy and freedom to associate—to act, to argue, and to organize.

    Meanwhile, since Kamala Harris’s undemocratic nomination, voters recognize that their traditional power to choose their own party’s leaders, and to bring those leaders to heel, has somehow disappeared. The process the Democrats relied on to anoint Biden’s successor was an untoward event that the party’s leaders have yet to reckon with or formally acknowledge. They owe the voters and state-level pols an apology. The elite of the Democratic Party should reform its convention rules and restore delegates’ freedom to choose a representative presidential nominee. Every effort should be made to be a party that runs on commitment not cash. Reliance on the collective will and power of the people must be restored.

    Ideologically, Democrats cling to a globalist perspective out of step with the most pressing problems facing the US now. Trump’s vision for this country, no matter how antagonistic to its founding principles, prioritizes nation-state survival and acknowledges that changing demographics and other geopolitical conditions (such resource scarcity) threaten the integrity of the US, both as a republic and the world’s biggest economy. Democrats have yet to accept and get in front of trends that are transforming attitudes toward national security and identity all across Europe and the western world. Western liberalism must survive, but to do so it must take on a nationalist form, mindful of the special circumstances (including property ownership, cultural homogeneity, and limited government) that have historically been productive of personal liberty. Democrats have yet to accept that we are no longer in a period of boundlessness: we are in a period of consolidation.

    Whether we like it or not, borders will be closed; trade alliances will be confined to countries that are ideologically similar to ours; immigration policies will be more discriminating; and the quest for natural materials and energy will grow ever keener and more problematic, given the overcrowding and degradation the planet is suffering. Democrats are not practicing realpolitik, though. They’re stuck in a reactive, defensive mode, clinging to the ideals of FDR and LBJ, still fighting for the Great Society. Democrats are fighting battles that they’ve lost already, when they should be totting up their losses and stomaching the ideological tradeoffs they must make to attain solid majorities in the states and take control of Congress again. To do so, they must look past the superficial traits of identity and concentrate on what will enhance the dignity and security of all Americans, without respect to living condition or creed.

    Prevailing over Trump requires advocating for border control and for new immigration policies that are stricter yet fairer to all involved. It means restoring the substance of ordinary Americans’ power over their representatives. And it means doubling-down on resource conservation and asserting Americans’ common right to essentials such as land and water that data-center developers and other corporate interests are engrossing with frightening speed.

    Whether Democrats are high-minded enough to reshape American politics in the people’s interest, though, remains to be seen.

    Image: Delegates, including
    Elizabeth Dunster Gibson Foster of Washington State,
    at the 1916 Democratic National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri,
     from this source.

    The Politics of Procedure

    20 Jan 2022 By in Politics Tags: , , , 4 Comments

    The Republican and Democratic parties remain locked in a struggle against one another.  Their parity produces an agonizing see-sawing that distracts officials from their true representative function.  Careerism and the fate of partisan “teams” dominate the national narrative, coloring the news.

    Every issue, including that of the role and condition of citizens in a republic, assumes a fantastical shape when seen through partisanship’s unreliable lens. Continue reading →

    Day 21: The “Dangerous” Democrats

    13 Oct 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

    The backbone of Republican rhetoric is that Democrats are dangerous. Republicans claim the Democratic party is filled with people who are going to destroy what you depend on and take it away.  It is nearer to the truth to say that Democrats want to give more to ordinary Americans. They want to lift up ordinary citizens and commit government to their general well-being.  That is what makes Democrats so “dangerous.”

    Republicans don’t want you to vote your interests.  They assail reasonable, equitable, policy goals as somehow subversive, un-American.  Too good to be true.

    The Democrats want to give you something. The Republicans want to demonize that aspiration; they have been doing it for years, acting as though, in the richest nation on the planet, there isn’t enough to go around.  Republicans want you to believe in scarcity, in the hardship that will follow if the government tries to “lift all boats,” even as the tide has crested to record highs for the nation’s most wealthy.  Two days ago, the Federal Reserve released data showing that the wealth of the fifty richest Americans is roughly equal to that of half of the population.  That’s right: just fifty people have as much wealth as the poorest 165 million Americans, combined.

    Republicans want you to believe that the Democrats’ more generous vision for America is dangerous.  They want you to believe that the US can’t afford to a system of universal health care, that it’s too much to hope for coverage that continues when you lose your job.  They want you to believe that efforts to ensure that you can see a doctor more easily and cheaply will harm you: that you will be harmed, your freedom destroyed, if American policy so much as ventures that way.

    Republicans want you to believe the US can’t afford to have a thriving economy while mitigating climate change.  They want you to believe that protecting vital natural resources is going to leave you broke or unemployed.  Trump has rolled back every protection he can, adding pollutants to the water you drink and the air you breathe.  The truth is that going green will safeguard your community, your health and your property while creating a gravy train of new and socially meaningful jobs.

    Trump is a master at demonizing the Democrats, repeating lies about Biden over and over again, such as that Biden wants to defund the police and get rid of fracking.  Trump groundlessly claims Biden’s recovery plans will destroy the economy, whereas Moody Analytics says that Biden’s plans are far superior to Trump’s, that they will promote a faster economic recovery while creating an estimated 7 million jobs.

    So don’t believe the Republicans. Let yourself believe in a better, fairer, and more vibrant America.  Vote for the “dangerous Democrats.”  It’s better for America, and it’s better for you.

    Image: “The Ring of Thanks”
    from this source.

     

    Day 49: The People Without A Party

    15 Sep 2020 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , 5 Comments

    The national struggle to defeat Donald Trump in November is going forward amid an exodus from the Republican Party and a paradoxical crisis in the two-party system.  The paradox is that, even as the parties and their candidates raise more and more money and draw the battle lines between one another more sharply, they excite more animus and aversion in the population at large.  It’s hard to be mindful of the huge swath of the American population that is withdrawn and disenchanted, unaffiliated and uncertain, especially given the hype that keeps Democrats and Republicans ever before our eyes.

    This hype inadvertently sustains Trump’s power, a president whose popularity ratings are shockingly low relative to every other modern president.  Trump’s “base”– the amoral and low-information voters who continue to approve of him–lacks the geographic spread to prevail.  Meanwhile, legions of prominent and rank-and-file Republicans have either left the party, gone silent, or endorsed Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

    The pool of voters available to put Biden in the White House is unusually large.  Let’s remember this as we work to get out the vote against Trump.  Innumerable voters besides those who are Democrat want Trump to go.

    The millions of people currently without a party are something like “a silent majority.”  They do not need to be convinced to join a party: they only need to be persuaded to vote once for Biden and, by ending Trump’s disastrous presidency, save what’s left of our Constitutional system.  For that matter, the Senate Republicans (with the exception of the noble Mitt Romney) have so failed in their duties to the Constitution and the nation that the voters must try to depose them, too.

    Image: Albert Levering’s “Republican Voters Revolt” (1910),
    from this source.

    The Costs of an Unresponsive Politics

    12 Feb 2020 By in Politics Tags: , , , 3 Comments

    A team of Democrats and a team of Republicans playing basketball.

    This is the very picture of American politics: two parties playing for points, often in view of spectators, in an environment closed off from the ordinary world.

    Individual lawmakers lack the autonomy that statesmen enjoyed in earlier times.  Most officials today are suited up for a game of party supremacy.  For its sake, they have lumped themselves together in the cadres of two warring tribes.  Personal stardom is the goal, but unfortunately it’s attainable only by playing on one of these powerful teams.  Fitting in with the pros is far more important to every politician than being true to the amateurish fans and mentors who gave them their start at playing back home.

    The leading class in the US has gradually broken free of its traditional dependence on ordinary voters and local institutions.  It’s no longer necessary to be personally known and liked, no longer essential to win the approval of veteran politicians to get in the game.  Politicians no longer need friends.  They can rise with the help of consultants.  Using what is essentially a corporate model, they look for seed money, then hire and recruit and posture their way into office.  It’s a grueling, strenuous affair, impossible without the right coaches, communications people, and above all statisticians.  Using data and a bunch of sociological stereotypes, modern American politicians strive to make the right plays and garner the support needed to stay on in the brightly lit arena.

    So it happens that local constituencies have very little influence over their ostensible “representatives.”  Their powers are amazingly puny when it comes to reining in politicians who forget about the people’s needs.  Once in power, officials who like it there can harvest money from sympathetic backers and use the media to project the right image back to their harried, perplexed, or complacent base.  As long as they do nothing objectionable, they may stay put longer than their achievements warrant.

    George F. Will has rightly observed that there are two types of politician: the type that seeks office in order to do something, and the type that seeks office in order to be something.  In the tumultuous weeks of the impeachment and since, we’ve seen that the latter type of politician prevails.  As the Republicans, in particular, make an ever more desperate effort to maintain power and ignore inconvenient demands, the game drags on, as if it will produce what the nation needs.

    Image: from this source.

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