according to my twitter feed it seems like the most existentially important issue of our times is canceling the student loan debt of upper middle class knowledge workers
The mechanism by which progressives got to this conclusion is interesting. They convinced themselves that there was a secret cache of voters, that actually aggressively's progressive legislation was _necessary_ to win.
"The way to get one thing I want is actually to get two things I want" is always dangerous reasoning.
I appreciate you writing this very much, Matt, even though I know you're going to get absolutely torched for it. I've been pointing out for the past several years the bizarre disconnect between the progressive rhetoric of "Trump's a *literal* fascist who's going to declare himself president for life and *literally* re-enslave black people, reduce women to the status of 'The Handmaid's Tale,' and genocide the American LGBTQ population," with the continued progressive-business-as-usual take of, "Federalism is terrible and the states as sovereign entities should be destroyed; as much governing power as possible should be transferred to the central government and administrative agencies should be given maximum discretion to pursue their missions without interference by the courts."
I mean, for about 30 seconds in fall of 2020, progressives dialed down the latter, but it's really stunning to me to witness people in progressive spaces who are unironically talking about the urgent necessity of "blue state secession" flip five minutes later to how Biden should issue executive orders on gun control, overriding whatever DeSantis is doing today on COVID, federalizing the Texas National Guard to protect access to abortion, etc., etc. A world in which the latter is happening is a world in which the former is basically impossible. If someone sincerely thinks a totalitarian dictator is inevitably going to seize the presidency in the near future, then if that person is sane they would want maximum devolution of power *away* from the central government, and the failure to adopt that logical position gives away the game -- either the speaker is deeply insincere about their fears of such a takeover or that speaker is a totalitarian at heart themself and just hopes that someone who favors their views can seize that power in the future.
Progressives often act like they're too righteous to need to worry about reality. Centrists often act like it's 1982 and a couple of drinks with Republicans can fix everything. Journalists often amplify their audience's delusions. A rising tide of Patreon/Substack grifters is telling people that progress is easy and is only not happening due to deliberate betrayals by the leadership.
It's really a very bad system and it's not surprising it's working so poorly.
I absolutely would have taken this deal, and I think progressives would have taken it too. But it was even more of a non-starter for Manchin than BBB. The Democrats didn't make a calculated gamble that BBB was more important than democracy protection - democracy protection was never possible. And it wasn't possible because Manchin (and Sinema) unequivocally refused to entertain any changes that didn't have the imprimatur of the Republican Party. However, Manchin and Sinema expressed various shades of willingness to do reconciliation bills, including BBB.
The reason the Dems didn't run in 2020 on enacting none of the Democratic Party's ideas is not only because they wanted to take advantage of Trump's unpopularity to enact their platform - it's also that there's no viable cross coalition to make. There is no democracy-supportive Republican party (or Republican people) with which to form an alliance, and the Democrats have enough votes to take control of the country themselves. And I'm not saying this because I think Republicans are evil monsters who love fascism - it's just not in their political interest to support ending gerrymandering or reforming the Senate or the Supreme Court.
Which is why the hypothetical doesn't really make sense. These aren't common sense bipartisan procedural reforms - these are perceived by the other side (in some cases, correctly) as substantive advantages for the Democratic Party that are much more dangerous to them than 10 BBBs. There's no viable coalition for political reform outside the democratic party. And even within the Democratic Party you have a handful of veto point holders who strongly believe that these reforms are so substantively favorable to the Democrats that they can't be entertained without 10 Republican senators agreeing to them.
I think there’s an under-appreciated “chicken and the egg” aspect to all of this. Republicans are acting in maniacal, anti-democratic ways because they perceive Democrats to be acting in maniacal, anti-American ways. Is their perception accurate? Personally I think it’s warped by social media and their long-standing right-wing propaganda media universe. But it helps to see that an aggressive push to the left with policy is PART OF the justification the right uses for why they need a power grab to “save America.” It’s impossible to predict if they would perceive your recommended course of action as an aggressive Democratic power grab in order to substantiate their own.
>> Democratic platforms have gotten more left-wing
Not just that, but at least in the snippets Matt pulled, they've become largely performative documents that "call out" and complain without proposing solutions or promising action.
There's a striking difference in phrasing in the 2008 vs 2020 paragraphs. In 2008, there were a lot of "we will" statements. In 2020, there were none. It's all complaining and posturing with nothing whatsoever about how they will make it better.
The motives of the extremely progressive part of the left, I think, can be summarized by one unifying theme: they want to feel as if they're living through a time of revolution. Any proposal that would help save democracy in non-revolutionary ways (as opposed to packing the courts, etc.) is unwelcome. Any policy that would help to reduce racial inequality without upending established systems is dismissed. To me, this explains why people of this particular persuasion seem to be steadfastly dedicated to strategies that will almost surely hurt Democrats.
Personally, I’m getting a bit tired of everything being called a “five-alarm fire”. There’s enough stress going on in our own lives that I’m frankly just starting to ignore stories about what bad things the republicans are going to do next. And if even self described media junkies start tuning out, imagine how it must be for the rest.
man, reminiscing about the 2008 platform & Obama always warms my heart - and leads me off on a tangent...
Isn't the real problem that Obama could be incredibly reasonable, but the GOP tried to stop him anyhow - and critically, the voters did not punish them for thwarting Obama's moderate agenda? I don't know what to do with that actual history. Like every instinct I have says Dems should try to replay "Obama 08", but really, we tried that and it didn't work out the way I would have hoped...
The U.S. has never been a democracy. Abolish the Senate, strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction, adopt the national popular vote compact, and the U.S. would still be a republic with huge House districts that only prominent, well-funded candidates could win.
I suspect MY’s true fear is that the US might become a big Wisconsin, where 45% of the voters can assemble legislative majorities because Democratic votes are inefficiently clustered in Milwaukee and Dane counties. This is actually a threat, but Wisconsin is hardly hell.
In the UK, the Tories haven’t polled over 44% since 1970. They have consistently polled less than the combined votes of the parties to their left, yet they’ve often had parliamentary majorities. Sometimes, there has been a Tory government even though 60% of the electorate voted for candidates to the Torys’ left. Britain isn’t hell either. Nor are there many formal safeguards. Nothing other than decency and maybe the queen prevents a Tory parliament from postponing the next election indefinitely.
If Matt wants to say America is at risk of a 4 to 30 year period where legislative majorities are based on a 45% vote share, I don’t disagree. It’s just that prospect is hardly terrifying.
A lot of the hypothetical "save democracy" agenda looks to me like continuing the cycle of partisan procedural escalation. Ending the filibuster is a procedural escalation both parties have contemplated when they are in power but no one has done yet. Voting reforms would be difficult to do in a neutral way - there is some fundamental disagreement on what a fair voting system looks like - and at minimum would take some kind of bipartisan commission. A single-party voting reform bill would end up partisan even if they tried not to be, and I don't think they'd try very hard. Court-packing? STATE-packing? Come on.
That agenda sounds far *more* partisan than just trying to pass favored policies under the existing system. If you want to de-escalate our spiral away from democratic norms, burning down big parts of the current institutional structure doesn't sound like the most obvious place to start?
I think what really happened is progressives convinced themselves that moderation / persuasion is for suckers- after all, the right rejected the 2012 “autopsy” report and swung to great electoral success in 2016. The problem is, as Matt has pointed out, that Trump really did moderate (at least in his campaign) - promising no entitlement cuts, and to get out of foreign wars. But it was hard to see given all the cultural red meat he was throwing.
I think a number of progressives really believe that there is a huge number of non-voters sitting on the sidelines who are discouraged by moderate timidity and just waiting to be excited by true progressive policies. I think this is also driving a lot of the anger towards Manchin and Sinema. It isn’t JUST that they are thwarting policy goals, in the progressive view they are also committing political malpractice.
If all this stuff is intrinsically popular, then there isn’t any need to prioritize. With the ACA (Obamacare) at some point most Democratic politicians realized it was electoral poison but the policy was important enough to do it anyway. If you really thought you were sending everyone down the plank, then you’d ficus on a handful of good, well designed programs that you could get by Manchin, and will stand the test of time (and Republican efforts to repeal), like the ACA But a lot of the BBB is a hot mess with a bunch of stuff done in a half assed way.
I don't think this is quite right. I think most partisan Democrats are deep enough in their echo chambers to think that a more left-wing agenda would be more popular with voters. Because that agenda is popular among their friends and online acquaintances. Many also have a cartoonish model of Republican voters where anyone who would consider voting for Trump is obviously a bigot and a moron so there's no point in trying to moderate to try to win their votes. So conveniently, the key to electoral victory is always to pass legislation that they think is good on the merits.
The GOP can, as David Abbott says below, tilt the playing field. I’m not sure that 45% is possible, but they can make it so a legislative trifecta requires them to get 48% of the vote, and preventing the Democrats from getting one requires just 46-7%.
That’s clearly and obviously bad.
But one of two things will happen: the Democrats will spend their time in the wilderness well until the GOP fucks up completely and they sweep to power prepared to make necessary changes… or the GOP will change on its own.
The contours of the current party system aren't some immutable law of nature, it will evolve out from under any attempt to lock it in permanently.
The more severe predictions of tossing election results are just going to result in an Avignon Presidency and all but the stupidest GOP leaders know it.
Matt and most of the commenters here are way too sanguine about democracy. Yes, Trump isn’t a fascist and American democracy won’t be transformed into dictatorship, but a world where Republicans further tilt the system in their favor is very imaginable. We are seeing a movement of Republicans at the state and local level that is laying the groundwork to give electors to Trump on the basis of BS claims of fraud, even if Biden actually won the state narrowly. We are also seeing Republicans further entrench their disproportionate gerrymandering advantage in the states they control. And, there’s a real risk the Supreme Court will start neutering democratically enacted laws by stripping Congress’ ability to delegate policy making to agencies like the EPA.
Plus, we have the fact that 70% of Republicans believe the election was stolen, and January 6.
Republicans are making it so that the system is stacked in their favor, and then signaling that they may refuse to accept a narrow Democratic victory, and possibly even take to the streets. It’s not the rise of facism, but it’s still scary.
according to my twitter feed it seems like the most existentially important issue of our times is canceling the student loan debt of upper middle class knowledge workers
The mechanism by which progressives got to this conclusion is interesting. They convinced themselves that there was a secret cache of voters, that actually aggressively's progressive legislation was _necessary_ to win.
"The way to get one thing I want is actually to get two things I want" is always dangerous reasoning.
I appreciate you writing this very much, Matt, even though I know you're going to get absolutely torched for it. I've been pointing out for the past several years the bizarre disconnect between the progressive rhetoric of "Trump's a *literal* fascist who's going to declare himself president for life and *literally* re-enslave black people, reduce women to the status of 'The Handmaid's Tale,' and genocide the American LGBTQ population," with the continued progressive-business-as-usual take of, "Federalism is terrible and the states as sovereign entities should be destroyed; as much governing power as possible should be transferred to the central government and administrative agencies should be given maximum discretion to pursue their missions without interference by the courts."
I mean, for about 30 seconds in fall of 2020, progressives dialed down the latter, but it's really stunning to me to witness people in progressive spaces who are unironically talking about the urgent necessity of "blue state secession" flip five minutes later to how Biden should issue executive orders on gun control, overriding whatever DeSantis is doing today on COVID, federalizing the Texas National Guard to protect access to abortion, etc., etc. A world in which the latter is happening is a world in which the former is basically impossible. If someone sincerely thinks a totalitarian dictator is inevitably going to seize the presidency in the near future, then if that person is sane they would want maximum devolution of power *away* from the central government, and the failure to adopt that logical position gives away the game -- either the speaker is deeply insincere about their fears of such a takeover or that speaker is a totalitarian at heart themself and just hopes that someone who favors their views can seize that power in the future.
Progressives often act like they're too righteous to need to worry about reality. Centrists often act like it's 1982 and a couple of drinks with Republicans can fix everything. Journalists often amplify their audience's delusions. A rising tide of Patreon/Substack grifters is telling people that progress is easy and is only not happening due to deliberate betrayals by the leadership.
It's really a very bad system and it's not surprising it's working so poorly.
I absolutely would have taken this deal, and I think progressives would have taken it too. But it was even more of a non-starter for Manchin than BBB. The Democrats didn't make a calculated gamble that BBB was more important than democracy protection - democracy protection was never possible. And it wasn't possible because Manchin (and Sinema) unequivocally refused to entertain any changes that didn't have the imprimatur of the Republican Party. However, Manchin and Sinema expressed various shades of willingness to do reconciliation bills, including BBB.
The reason the Dems didn't run in 2020 on enacting none of the Democratic Party's ideas is not only because they wanted to take advantage of Trump's unpopularity to enact their platform - it's also that there's no viable cross coalition to make. There is no democracy-supportive Republican party (or Republican people) with which to form an alliance, and the Democrats have enough votes to take control of the country themselves. And I'm not saying this because I think Republicans are evil monsters who love fascism - it's just not in their political interest to support ending gerrymandering or reforming the Senate or the Supreme Court.
Which is why the hypothetical doesn't really make sense. These aren't common sense bipartisan procedural reforms - these are perceived by the other side (in some cases, correctly) as substantive advantages for the Democratic Party that are much more dangerous to them than 10 BBBs. There's no viable coalition for political reform outside the democratic party. And even within the Democratic Party you have a handful of veto point holders who strongly believe that these reforms are so substantively favorable to the Democrats that they can't be entertained without 10 Republican senators agreeing to them.
I think there’s an under-appreciated “chicken and the egg” aspect to all of this. Republicans are acting in maniacal, anti-democratic ways because they perceive Democrats to be acting in maniacal, anti-American ways. Is their perception accurate? Personally I think it’s warped by social media and their long-standing right-wing propaganda media universe. But it helps to see that an aggressive push to the left with policy is PART OF the justification the right uses for why they need a power grab to “save America.” It’s impossible to predict if they would perceive your recommended course of action as an aggressive Democratic power grab in order to substantiate their own.
>> Democratic platforms have gotten more left-wing
Not just that, but at least in the snippets Matt pulled, they've become largely performative documents that "call out" and complain without proposing solutions or promising action.
There's a striking difference in phrasing in the 2008 vs 2020 paragraphs. In 2008, there were a lot of "we will" statements. In 2020, there were none. It's all complaining and posturing with nothing whatsoever about how they will make it better.
The motives of the extremely progressive part of the left, I think, can be summarized by one unifying theme: they want to feel as if they're living through a time of revolution. Any proposal that would help save democracy in non-revolutionary ways (as opposed to packing the courts, etc.) is unwelcome. Any policy that would help to reduce racial inequality without upending established systems is dismissed. To me, this explains why people of this particular persuasion seem to be steadfastly dedicated to strategies that will almost surely hurt Democrats.
Personally, I’m getting a bit tired of everything being called a “five-alarm fire”. There’s enough stress going on in our own lives that I’m frankly just starting to ignore stories about what bad things the republicans are going to do next. And if even self described media junkies start tuning out, imagine how it must be for the rest.
man, reminiscing about the 2008 platform & Obama always warms my heart - and leads me off on a tangent...
Isn't the real problem that Obama could be incredibly reasonable, but the GOP tried to stop him anyhow - and critically, the voters did not punish them for thwarting Obama's moderate agenda? I don't know what to do with that actual history. Like every instinct I have says Dems should try to replay "Obama 08", but really, we tried that and it didn't work out the way I would have hoped...
The U.S. has never been a democracy. Abolish the Senate, strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction, adopt the national popular vote compact, and the U.S. would still be a republic with huge House districts that only prominent, well-funded candidates could win.
I suspect MY’s true fear is that the US might become a big Wisconsin, where 45% of the voters can assemble legislative majorities because Democratic votes are inefficiently clustered in Milwaukee and Dane counties. This is actually a threat, but Wisconsin is hardly hell.
In the UK, the Tories haven’t polled over 44% since 1970. They have consistently polled less than the combined votes of the parties to their left, yet they’ve often had parliamentary majorities. Sometimes, there has been a Tory government even though 60% of the electorate voted for candidates to the Torys’ left. Britain isn’t hell either. Nor are there many formal safeguards. Nothing other than decency and maybe the queen prevents a Tory parliament from postponing the next election indefinitely.
If Matt wants to say America is at risk of a 4 to 30 year period where legislative majorities are based on a 45% vote share, I don’t disagree. It’s just that prospect is hardly terrifying.
A lot of the hypothetical "save democracy" agenda looks to me like continuing the cycle of partisan procedural escalation. Ending the filibuster is a procedural escalation both parties have contemplated when they are in power but no one has done yet. Voting reforms would be difficult to do in a neutral way - there is some fundamental disagreement on what a fair voting system looks like - and at minimum would take some kind of bipartisan commission. A single-party voting reform bill would end up partisan even if they tried not to be, and I don't think they'd try very hard. Court-packing? STATE-packing? Come on.
That agenda sounds far *more* partisan than just trying to pass favored policies under the existing system. If you want to de-escalate our spiral away from democratic norms, burning down big parts of the current institutional structure doesn't sound like the most obvious place to start?
I think what really happened is progressives convinced themselves that moderation / persuasion is for suckers- after all, the right rejected the 2012 “autopsy” report and swung to great electoral success in 2016. The problem is, as Matt has pointed out, that Trump really did moderate (at least in his campaign) - promising no entitlement cuts, and to get out of foreign wars. But it was hard to see given all the cultural red meat he was throwing.
I think a number of progressives really believe that there is a huge number of non-voters sitting on the sidelines who are discouraged by moderate timidity and just waiting to be excited by true progressive policies. I think this is also driving a lot of the anger towards Manchin and Sinema. It isn’t JUST that they are thwarting policy goals, in the progressive view they are also committing political malpractice.
If all this stuff is intrinsically popular, then there isn’t any need to prioritize. With the ACA (Obamacare) at some point most Democratic politicians realized it was electoral poison but the policy was important enough to do it anyway. If you really thought you were sending everyone down the plank, then you’d ficus on a handful of good, well designed programs that you could get by Manchin, and will stand the test of time (and Republican efforts to repeal), like the ACA But a lot of the BBB is a hot mess with a bunch of stuff done in a half assed way.
I don't think this is quite right. I think most partisan Democrats are deep enough in their echo chambers to think that a more left-wing agenda would be more popular with voters. Because that agenda is popular among their friends and online acquaintances. Many also have a cartoonish model of Republican voters where anyone who would consider voting for Trump is obviously a bigot and a moron so there's no point in trying to moderate to try to win their votes. So conveniently, the key to electoral victory is always to pass legislation that they think is good on the merits.
The GOP can, as David Abbott says below, tilt the playing field. I’m not sure that 45% is possible, but they can make it so a legislative trifecta requires them to get 48% of the vote, and preventing the Democrats from getting one requires just 46-7%.
That’s clearly and obviously bad.
But one of two things will happen: the Democrats will spend their time in the wilderness well until the GOP fucks up completely and they sweep to power prepared to make necessary changes… or the GOP will change on its own.
The contours of the current party system aren't some immutable law of nature, it will evolve out from under any attempt to lock it in permanently.
The more severe predictions of tossing election results are just going to result in an Avignon Presidency and all but the stupidest GOP leaders know it.
Matt and most of the commenters here are way too sanguine about democracy. Yes, Trump isn’t a fascist and American democracy won’t be transformed into dictatorship, but a world where Republicans further tilt the system in their favor is very imaginable. We are seeing a movement of Republicans at the state and local level that is laying the groundwork to give electors to Trump on the basis of BS claims of fraud, even if Biden actually won the state narrowly. We are also seeing Republicans further entrench their disproportionate gerrymandering advantage in the states they control. And, there’s a real risk the Supreme Court will start neutering democratically enacted laws by stripping Congress’ ability to delegate policy making to agencies like the EPA.
Plus, we have the fact that 70% of Republicans believe the election was stolen, and January 6.
Republicans are making it so that the system is stacked in their favor, and then signaling that they may refuse to accept a narrow Democratic victory, and possibly even take to the streets. It’s not the rise of facism, but it’s still scary.