There’s an old saying, usually attributed to Joseph Heller: “Sometimes you have to rise above principle and do what’s right.” President Joe Biden and the Democrats should heed that advice.
A new NBC poll out this week found that a whopping 75 percent of voters are more likely to support a candidate who wants to fully “fund the police.” The second biggest finding? That 69 percent prefer a candidate who supports expanding domestic oil and natural gas production. Embracing these issues would not only be the right thing for Democrats to do, it would also be the smart thing to do.
Democrats are already facing stiff winds in November’s midterm elections. “All the political signals are screaming: Democrats must move to the center, both to mitigate their losses in 2022 and to keep alive their hopes of retaining the presidency in 2024 and building political power thereafter,” writes Ruy Teixeira, a left-leaning author and political scientist.
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In fairness, Biden during his State of the Union address loudly proclaimed his intention to “Fund the police,” and his new budget does just that (by taxing billionaires). But this needed to be hammered home two-and-a-half years ago, when The New York Times was running opinion pieces by progressives titled, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish The Police.”
Changing perceptions takes time, and issues like funding the police are about more than just literally funding the police. Dig deeper, and you’ll find attitudes about law and order—and fears about violence and chaos. In this regard, the writing has been on the wall for eons. Voters who are looking for pro-police (and pro-energy) candidates are more likely to find that in the Republican Party.
So why focus so much on topics swing voters and average Americans don’t prioritize? In recent years, it has become accepted that the way to win is by hyping base turnout (which, based on the enthusiasm gap, isn’t working anyway). But, according to a recent Pew Research survey, Democratic voters are much more interested in topics like climate change, racial equity, and COVID-19 than the general public.
It’s unclear how this penchant for base-pandering started. Maybe it was Karl Rove’s tacit admission that base turnout, not persuasion, was the only way to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004. Maybe it was the rise of talk radio, cable news, or Twitter, which can make money or drive the discussion without that pesky business of having to persuade 50 percent (plus one) of the public. Perhaps it’s just a generational shift.
For most of my lifetime, the cliché held that pragmatic (if cynical) politicians and party insiders always wanted to run poll-tested, focus-grouped campaigns that frequently left the base feeling unsatisfied. But in recent years, an ethos has emerged on both sides of the aisle that prioritized purity and casts extreme views as authentic, while labeling centrism as tantamount to selling out.
Could this self-defeating Gen-X attitude be the primary contribution my generation makes to politics? If so, Dems may well find out that reality does indeed bite.
Whatever the reason, too many of the young-ish Democrats who now call the shots on Democratic campaigns want to please the cool kids on Twitter instead of the much more numerous hoi polloi. In doing so, they alienate working-class voters, who are more culturally conservative and less online. But at least they get to look cool to their progressive friends.
In a sense, this reminds me of CBS’s “rural purge” of the 1970s, wherein the “Tiffany network” canceled rural-themed shows, despite the fact that they were winning in the ratings. The theory is that the decision-makers were more interested in appearing “hip” than in winning (a similar theory explains why Wilt Chamberlain refused to shoot free throws underhanded).
Of course, none of this would have mattered had the fabled “coalition of the ascendant”—a supposed emerging and quasi-permanent Democratic majority of Hispanics and other minority groups—not failed to emerge as an electoral behemoth. This coalition was supposed to offset the working-class attrition by voting in lockstep with their college-educated, progressive thought leaders.
Of course, it has been clear since at least 2016 that this progressive cavalry was not going to ride to the rescue any time soon. Indeed, Biden won the 2020 election by assembling a very different “Biden coalition.” Upon being sworn-in, he promptly forgot the lesson.
I’m not implying that progressives could magically fix all their political problems by simply toning down their radical rhetoric, championing oil exploration, and ignoring the Squad. Multiple factors have conspired to all but guarantee that 2022 will be a bad year for Dems. The question now is, how bad? And what about 2024?
Again, to anyone looking at the shitshow that is the GOP, such pessimism on Dems’ electoral hopes might sound confusing. But to average Americans, worries about preserving liberal democracy may seem esoteric when compared with more pressing fears about increased street violence, rising gas and grocery prices (according to Quinnipiac, inflation is the top issue), and worries about the cultural values taught to their kids in school.
Despite all the chaos on the right—attempted coups, white nationalist rallies, cocaine-fuelled orgies (according to Madison Cawthorn, before he walked it back in bizarre fashion)—Democrats are on the wrong side of too many issues that many Americans prioritize. Indeed, according to Kevin Drum, the liberal journalist formerly with Washington Monthly and Mother Jones, “Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues [such as immigration, guns, taxes, abortion—and even religion] while Republicans have moved only slightly right.”
In a sane world, Democrats would look at the polls and panic. If you were running a business, this sort of feedback would demand serious and aggressive efforts to rebrand and reassess everything—from your business model to your public relations efforts. Imagine the changes that might manifest if Democrats viewed this in urgent terms.
Looking at the NBC polling data, conservative writer Jonah Goldberg observes that “Joe Manchin is the least popular Democrat among Democratic Party activists and the base but [he is] the Democrat with the most popular positions in the country.” Goldberg then concludes, “A party that cared about winning would think seriously about running him for president.”
Here in the real world, Manchin is despised by the left, despite playing an instrumental role in Biden’s past (and future) victories, including the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as the likely confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice nominee. I’m not trying to glorify Manchin; I’m simply pointing out how disconnected Democratic politics is from mainstream public opinion.
Democrats currently have a wildly unpopular and aging president. His heir apparent, Vice President Kamala Harris, does not yet appear to be ready for primetime. Meanwhile, Biden and Harris are all that separates us from another term for Donald Trump—which many on the left view as an existential threat to the country. And yet, despite the context and the stakes involved, everyone knows that Manchin (and anyone remotely in his philosophical orbit) would have ZERO chance of winning the Democratic nomination.
Since nominating someone like Manchin will never happen, Democrats will have to settle for half measures. To win back the public’s trust, Joe Biden should push back on the left and govern the way he campaigned. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and their accomplices in the media should pump the brakes on their efforts to radically transform American life.
A rational party would do this. But to paraphrase Meat Loaf, progressives would do almost anything to stop Trump from getting a second term and ending American Democracy as they know it. But they won’t. Do. That.
