Musings on the Democratic Party’s Future

Musings on the Democratic Party’s Future

This is written from the other side of the pond, so feel free to tell me I’m wrong (as long as you say why I’m wrong.)  It was also written in a hurry so sorry for any mistakes.

If you lose at something – anything, from a football game to a war – and there are serious consequences for failure, you must hold a post-mortem inquest into why you lost, what mistakes you made and what you can do to fix them for next time.  You cannot lie to yourself.  You cannot afford to be blinded by your preconceptions when you’re picking up the pieces after a disastrous defeat.  You cannot allow yourself any sacred cows.  Everything you did – and failed to do – must be considered; your weaknesses, whatever they are, must be removed as quickly as possible.  If that means, for example, firing the person who bears the blame for the disaster, that is what you do.  You cannot allow sentimentality or self-interest to stand in your way.

It has been nearly four years since the Democratic Party lost an election it’s candidate – Hillary Clinton – was heavily tipped to win.  The defeat was shocking, unanticipated by the political and media elite.  (Those who did predict Trump’s victory were often shunned for daring to suggest things weren’t as rosy as they seemed.)  It should go without saying that the Democrats should have taken a good hard look at themselves, worked out what they did wrong and set out to fix the problems before 2020.  They did not.  Instead of an admission they screwed up, they have indulged in a three-year-long temper tantrum, a desperate series of attempts to blame Trump on everything from deeply-racist countrymen to the Russians, a pointed attempt to delegitimize Trump’s government and, most recently, an attempt at impeachment that anyone with a hint of political awareness knew wouldn’t do more than waste time.  In the wake of endless slanders and conspiracy theories, it was unlikely that anyone outside the echo chamber would be convinced.  Thanks to the Democrats, Trump has become immune to almost any charge that can reasonably be levelled at him.

And yet, the failure to consider what they what they might have done wrong in 2016 is entirely understandable.  Hillary Clinton was merely the tip of an iceberg of dysfunction, a political party that cannot admire fault – let alone failure – and is utterly incapable of reforming itself.  The Democratic Party is steadily tearing itself apart, even as it careens towards another general election.  2016 was Hillary Clinton’s to lose.  2020 is Donald Trump’s.

The root of this dysfunction, as I see it, is that the Democratic Party is divided into a number of de facto factions.  These factions are not, by and large, enshrined within the party’s formal structure.  There is a great deal of overlap between the groups.  That does not make them any less real, unfortunately, and it doesn’t stop them from casting a baleful shadow over the party’s proceedings.  Put crudely, they both hate each other and need each other.  As the cracks in the party grow bigger, the factions are starting to forget that they need each other, spurring what is – to some extent – a civil war.

The factions do not, as I have said above, exist as formal structures.  The ‘Elitists’ see themselves as a political and media aristocracy, positioned at the top of the system and in position to rule the rest.  (Their preferred candidate is Joe Biden.)  The Corporatists/Wall Street want stability above all (Bloomberg).  The Socialists want massive wealth redistribution (Sanders/Warren).  The Minorities want a bigger piece of the pie (uncertain – Yang or Warren?).  What complicates this is that the each of the four factions regards the others as its ideological enemies and, perhaps just as dangerous, the factions are not united themselves.  The Minorities are the most scattered of the four; African-Americans have different priorities to Asian-Americans, let alone homosexuals and transgenders.

This may require a little explanation.  The Elitists hate the Corporatists for wanting a say in how the money is spent, the Socialists for wanting redistribution and the Minorities for wanting to join the elite.  The Corporatists hate the Elitists for being massively out of touch (i.e. pushing for laws that harm the Corporatists), the Socialists for wanting redistribution and Minorities for demanding diversity and otherwise impeding corporate paradise.  The Socialists hate the Elitists for not delivering on their promises, the Corporatists for being money-grubbing capitalists and the Minorities for disuniting the faction.  The Minorities hate the Elitists because of years of broken promises, the Corporatists for doing as little as possible for minorities and the Socialists for not focusing on Minority interests. 

This would be bad enough, but it gets worse.  The Socialists believe – rightly or wrongly- that Bernie Sanders was cheated out of the nomination in 2016.  They’re on the alert for any signs of a second rigged nomination – and Iowa provided all the proof they could want.  Maybe it was a genuine stroke of bad luck.  It still looked bad.  (One of the weaknesses of the Elitists is that they honestly don’t understand how their actions are seen by people outside their bubbles.)  There are good reasons to be suspicious of the outcome, whoever wins the nomination.  The Socialists will probably not move to support anyone other than their preferred candidate if they think he’s been cheated again.

I’m not saying that any of them are right to feel this way.  I’m just saying that many of them do.

We might, therefore, end up with a situation like this:

If Biden wins the nomination, the Socialists will assume they were cheated and refuse to turn out for him.If Bloomberg wins the nomination, ditto (only worse, perhaps, because of the money Bloomberg has been tossing around.)If Sanders or Warren win the nomination, the Corporatists will probably throw their support to Donald Trump.If there is no clear winner, the party will probably fracture.

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This tends to lead to a bigger problem.  The Democrats are increasingly out of touch with the mood of the nation.  They’ve already lost most of the white working class.  They’re certainly losing a number of African-American and Hispanic voters, the former because of the broken promises and the latter because not all Hispanics are in favour of illegal immigration.  (The Elitists prefer to listen to academics and radicals.)  They propose projects that will give far more power to the government, while being both incredibly expensive and largely ineffective.  The only real winner out of Iowa is Donald Trump because he can say, quite rightly, that if they can’t program a simple app how can they govern the entire nation?

And even without that problem, none of the candidates appear to be remotely capable of bridging the gap and speaking to the entire nation.  They all have more baggage than an army of holiday-makers heading to Rome.  There isn’t one of them who’s invulnerable to all sorts of charges, all of which will be true (or at least true enough.)  Trump will have a field day when the candidate is finally selected.   He doesn’t have to be super-president to win.  He just has to be better than his opponent.

Because of this, they’ve resorted to slander instead of understanding.  They’ve blasted Trump’s voters as racists, sexists, etc.  That does nothing for their standing amongst those voters.  It also increases frustration amongst undecided voters who dislike Trump, but have to admit he’s better than whoever – finally – wins the nomination.  The simple truth is that people are tired of broken promises and endless insults.  They want change, real change.  And the Democrats are no longer capable of realising they have to change.

It’s not easy to see where the party can go from here.  The cracks in the edifice are growing larger.  They may be impossible to patch, even with an Obama-level candidate.  The denial there is a problem is making them worse.  Worse, perhaps, some of their ideas are dangerously unrealistic.  The suggestion that demographic change will create a permanent Democratic majority is probably untrue.  Indeed, it reflects the blindness of the elites:

            First, if the Republicans fear demographic change, they’ll push for steps to counter it.

            Second, as the newcomers integrate and grow more prosperous, they may no longer           give their vote to the Democrats.

            Third, as the newcomers get more numerous, they’ll start asking precisely why they            should support a political elite that isn’t them?

The crux of the problem is that the Democrats have lost touch with the majority of their voters (and undecided voters).  They don’t understand the challenges facing people who aren’t part of the elite.  They don’t grasp that vast numbers of Americans view socialism as a cancer.  They don’t realise that their actions are driving countless undecided voters to Trump – he may be a rump, but he’s better than the alternative.  And they don’t realise that they’ve lost most of their credibility in the last four years.  They have no room to claim there was a mistake, when something goes wrong.

And something will go wrong.  It always does.

The Democrats need to rejuvenate their party.  This means, at a minimum, discarding ancient elites and socialists and going back to the little men, pushing for localised social programs, improved schools and hundreds of other small projects that might improve their lives.  It means accepting, right from the start, that things have changed.  It means cutting down on government power.  It means giving the culture wars a rest and embracing, once again, calm and rational debate.  It means learning to accept that disagreement is part of life and people who disagree with you have a right to do it.

But I don’t think they will.  Because that would mean admitting that they were at fault and, perhaps worse, giving up their stranglehold on the party. 

And yet, the more they tighten their grip, the worse things will become.

(I can do one on the Republicans too if anyone’s interested.)