The recent Dobbs decision is, without doubt, the greatest civil rights tragedy of my lifetime. Tens of thousands of women will be forced into motherhood against their will. They will be forced to have their bodies changed against their will. They will be forced into the unknowable psychological strain of parenthood without regard to their circumstances. And most of them are poor and many of them are of minority background. There is no other word for it — there aren’t enough words. The tragedy of this is all I keep thinking about. This was not inevitable. This was enabled through bad practice — indeed laziness — on the part of the Democratic Party and liberals everywhere.
But this is the darkness before the dawn. This will be the catalyst for a Democratic resurgence.
Progress and an expansive view of civil rights are not and were never inevitable and undeniable. The idea that being virtuous is enough in electoral politics is a lesson liberals should not have needed. Nonetheless, here it is and this realization will trigger a whole new Democratic majority. The backlash to the backlash is coming.
Democrats and progressives have many reasons to be disappointed; indeed their leaders have failed them. They’ve fed their followers a weird formula of grievance and inevitability with a sprinkling of phoney panaceas (like abolishing the electoral college) instead of focusing on effective strategy and basic electoral politics.
None of this should have been a surprise. For more than four decades, Democrats have been playing checkers while Republican leaders in Congress and on the beltway played chess. Republicans told us that they intended to do this; they told everyone. And they gradually, systematically and publicly constructed an anti-choice backlash apparatus to undermine this basic right.
And, when compared to the forceful and determined movement that is the present-day right-wing of American politics there is almost zero dynamism and no intellectual depth to the Democratic Party today. So-called conservatives have a clear ideology and countless think tanks and magazines to grow and enforce their plans. Liberals have practically nothing of the kind. There is no organized infrastructure for progressive ideas.
But something like this has happened before.
In many ways, today’s Democratic Party is much like the Democratic Party of the 1920s or the Republican Party of the early-to-mid 1960s. Adrift, without ideological or policy coherence, these parties suffered frequent defeats and often seemed incapable of coming together behind a strong coherent set of principles and policy goals. And if there’s one thing that holds true in American politics it’s that mushiness rarely plays well. And that’s what’s characterized the Democratic Party these last decades: mushiness.
They’re for free trade, except when they’re not. They are against foreign wars unless they aren’t. They are for the working man and woman, but also for the big businesses that drive down their wages. They are for unions, but are often unsupportive of strikes. They are for wokeness and minority rights, but can’t make a clear argument for how their vision of equity actually helps the majority of voters.
Neoliberalism broke America and both of its political parties. In many ways, the Trump phenomenon is a reaction to that failure and the central role that modern American conservatism has played in neoliberalism’s collapse. On the Democratic side, the end of the Cold War, inconsiderate globalization, and Clinton-era hyper-mushiness broke the ideological underpinnings of the party. Democrats and Republicans both effectively abandoned small-town and non-megacity working people in or around 1995.
Donald Trump‘s Republican Party has done a great job using cultural issues to entice unhappy and apathetic working- and lower-middle-class voters to their party. What Democrats have yet to do is adequately adapted to this new reality. Over the next couple of electoral cycles, they will. Losing will ensure as much and the result of these losses in the real world — like this horrific Roe decision — will push them to re-evaluate their goals quickly. This will lead to a new Democratic majority.
Our duty now as liberals is to encourage Democrats to speed up their adaptations to get there as quickly as possible. We need to get them to focus on electoral politics and little else for the time being. I am not completely sympathetic to David Shore’s “electoralism” argument (it’s somewhat of an oversimplification) but at its core, it’s right. All efforts should be made to win state- and national-level elections. Figuring out ideology and building the infrastructure for it is an important secondary concern.
Efforts to change the rules of the game are useless. Democrats need to stop talking about the filibuster, statehood for San Francisco (I made that oneup, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they propose it as the newest fix), or the electoral college. These initiatives are pointless and do nothing to move the party forward. First, they won’t be successful. Second, they offer the promise of a quick fix without acknowledging the hard work ahead.
These pie-in-the-sky plans for systemic changes will come to nought, but holding onto them is preventing them from making difficult but critical coalitional and ideological choices.
Ultimately, these choices, when oriented back to making winning elections primary, the Democrats will end up doing four big things that will enable the new Democratic majority.
First, they must jettison identity politics. Adapt it to a clearer and more coherent ideological framework. You can keep most of the same policy goals, but orient your public statements toward offering a good life for every American. Indeed, the Good Life, should — objectively — be what life in the 2020s ought to be about. We have effectively conquered scarcity. The pandemic proved as much. Liberals should more directly argue for how we can get everyone a fair shot at the Good Life. And that needs to specifically and directly include white people in the Plains and Appalachia.
Second, they need to simplify their messaging and their policy positions. They should adapt their messaging on federalism. Too often the Democrats are way too federally focused. They should embrace federalism and let some of their governors step forward. They need just a few big ideas, but some small implementations with which to demonstrate them. Go back to making the federal government about setting direction, not determining the precise route. Connect a few policy ideas to The Good Life messaging. Then repeat them. Don’t show up with 10,000 page omnibus bills. They need to be explainable in one sentence.
Next, become the defenders of liberalism. Not wokeism or progressivism, real pluralistic liberalism. Stand up to bigots while also standing up to the woke mafia. It’s disgusting to watch Democrats decry Republican book banning and then jump onto Twitter to condemn a GOP figure or celebrity for using an incorrect pronoun. Be the party of open discussion and respect. The “ignorant” still vote and a good portion of them are having real trouble adapting to a new world. After all, liberalism is about protecting someone’s right to protest against abortion rights as much as it is about protesting against the police or the Supreme Court. Democrats will win people over if they are consistently for free and open debate. I know Republicans will call Democrats hypocrites on these issues anyway, but the actual behavior does matter.
Finally, embrace some populist messaging. FDR was a populist for crying out loud! Populism is a political method, not an ideology in and of itself. Dems need to be more second-term FDR and less either term of Obama. Call out the super-rich while talking up American dynamism and hard work. Stop talking about single-payer healthcare or the public option and talk about “competition that keeps insurance companies in line.” Talk about unions as protection against elite capture of institutions and business. Talk about CEO wealth and not just CEO pay. And do it in the context of a “Good Life” for all, not about punishing the rich. Stop being Bernie Sanders or AOC and be a little more Thomas Piketty.
In various combinations, these things will secure Hispanic Americans’ place in the Democratic coalition and begin to chip away at the Republican lead with non-college-educated white working-class voters. This doesn’t need to be about getting 80% majorities. Most state legislatures and a whole bunch more House and Senate seats are there for the taking with a 3 to 5% swing through these changes. It’s about clear and simple communication and picking just a few policies that exemplify them and to focus on those.
Stop talking about identity, simplify and focus on The Good Life, embrace liberalism and tolerance, and be less afraid of populism.
By embracing these four things, over one or two cycles, a new Democratic coalition can be created to really win elections. The 1920s Democrats evolved into the New Deal coalition after the Great Depression made clear the emptiness of the dominant Republicans’ laissez-faire ideals. The Democrats of 2020 must now adapt to the clarity the Dodds ruling provides. Republicans have shown where they want to take the country. Democrats will focus and a new majority will be born.
Now is the time for hard work. It’s time to shake ourselves off and build the new Democratic majority.