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Political post-mortems
Nov. 9th, 2024 09:49 amIn the last three days I (and probably most of you) have seen a deluge of articles on "what did the Democratic Party do wrong?"
Most agree that it would have been better off if Joe Biden had publicly made, and kept, a promise not to run for re-election, and they'd held a real primary.
Some say it should have held a real primary anyway in the month before the convention. Some say it should have nominated Josh Shapiro for either President or VP to get more Jewish votes.
Some say it should have included the offered Palestinian-American speaker at the convention, and openly condemned Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza, to get more Moslem votes.
Some say Joe Biden was remarkably good at addressing ordinary people's concerns and making their lives better, but remarkably bad at taking credit for it, so millions of voters didn't know how much he had benefited them already.
Some say the Democrats leaned too heavily on identity politics, especially small minorities like transsexuals whose very existence creeps people out at a gut level. (By contrast, the Republican Party doesn't seem to have suffered at all for leaning on straight-white-male identity politics.)
Some say it took Blacks and Latinos and women for granted, while the Trump campaign actually identified and targeted some of their concerns.
Some say Harris shouldn't have downplayed her race and gender, but celebrated their significance.
Some say the Federal, New York, and Georgia justice departments (with Democratic prosecutors in all four cases) shouldn't have prosecuted him for his crimes. Or perhaps that they should have done it at least a year earlier.
Some say the Democratic and Republican Parties have both, over the past few decades, been captured by wealthy, educated, urban "elites" and lost track of what matters to actual working-class people, but Trump's cult-of-personality takeover of the Republican Party left only the Democrats facing charges of elitism and snobbery. [Yes, I know Trump himself is wealthy and from New York, but he doesn't project "educated snob" so much as "mob boss".]
Some quote Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid!" and add that "policies trump democracy": when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate whose policies you like but who acts un-democratically, and the reverse, a majority of people prefer the former.
Likewise, some argue that policies trump personal character: many voters were personally repulsed by Trump's pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (not to mention bullying and a casual relationship with objective facts) but voted for him anyway because they thought his promised policies would make their lives better.
Some say Harris was too vague and evasive about her plans and policies. [Meanwhile, Trump's policy proposals are all over the place, unconstrained by filters of rationality, legality, or effectiveness.]
Some say the campaign was too much about fear of Trump (that's playing on his preferred court), and not enough about what would actually work better.
Some say it allowed Trump to set the terms of debate and make everything about him, not only during his first term but during the Biden administration, leaving the Democratic Party defined by its opposition to Trump rather than what it's for.
Those last few form a nice cluster; let's talk about those, with occasional references to the rest.
If you're reading this, you've probably been appalled at lots of things Donald Trump has said and done over the past eight years. But what should have been done instead? For those of us who consider ourselves "on the side of the angels" while Trump obviously isn't, what do the angels stand for? What do Democrats (or, for than matter, rational and moderate Republicans) believe and do?
Suggestions welcome. Meanwhile, here's what I've come up with off the top of my head.
Starting with the Great Depression, there was widespread consensus that government, at all levels, existed to Make People's Lives Better. It started in earnest with FDR and the Democrats, but officially became bipartisan with the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. This bipartisan consensus started fraying in the late 1960's, and officially became no-longer-bipartisan with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
From then to the rise of Trumpism, this was a central area of partisan disagreement. Democrats (even when Clinton more-or-less acquiesced to the neoliberal model) still believed government can and should Make People's Lives Better. Republicans believed, rather, that government couldn't possibly do that, and shouldn't try; it should get out of the way and let people Make Their Own Lives Better. (Naturally, those whose own lives were already the best had the most resources to make their own lives even better, but that's just the way the world is; suck it.)
That classical Republican critique isn't wrong: from Adam Smith to Robert Reich, lots of intelligent and public-spirited people have condemned "regulatory capture", the phenomenon in which a rich and powerful industry harnesses government (through tariffs, government contracts, legal immunities, etc.) to make itself even more rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. The Reagan-Republican answer, on a charitable reading, was to minimize government's power over industry, so government would be less worth capturing. The FDR-Democratic answer was to make government powerful enough to counterbalance industry, but accountable to broad public interests rather than narrow private ones -- e.g. through anti-bribery, campaign-finance, and transparency laws on one hand, and broad citizen participation in democracy on the other.
(The current Republican Party, led by a cadre of billionaire bros, has no interest in either of these answers: it's all in favor of rich and powerful people harnessing government to make themselves more so.)
So what about democracy, blind justice, and all that? Democracy has never been an end in itself, but a means to an end. I think when the US Constitution was written, its authors looked at the violent dynastic successions of European history, and wanted to ensure that changes in government could take place peacefully when the people as a whole supported them.
Now jump forward 150 years. If you follow FDR's reasoning, government is more likely to make people's lives better if it hears their concerns and is obligated to address them.
If you follow Reagan's reasoning, democratic accountability is important only inasmuch as government itself is important. Over the next forty years, Reagan's successors discouraged broad citizen participation in order to induce cynicism about government.
And if you follow Trump's reasoning, democracy is an inconvenient obstacle to powerful men getting whatever they want, which is the only realistic or desirable outcome. (In his zero-sum world, there's no such thing as making the world a better place; there's only a choice between better-for-me and better-for-you, a choice whose outcome depends only on who has more power.)
Free-market capitalism, likewise, isn't an end in itself, but a means to an end: Adam Smith's warnings against tariffs and trade barriers are all motivated by the well-being of everyday people, particularly in their role as consumers of material goods. Ralph Nader's consumer-protection movement is a "regulated-market" means to that same end. For that matter, Socialism and Communism aren't ends in themselves, but different means to the exact same end. If you're sincerely interested in Making People's Lives Better, you employ market capitalism for the problems that it solves well (such as consumer goods for individual purchase), and socialism for the problems that it solves well (such as public goods and externalities).
So, one principle so far is Government can and should make people's lives better, in ways that they can't do for themselves.
Related: To do this, it needs to be transparent and accountable to the people through free and fair elections, in which everyone has a voice.
Which brings us to another point. I've spoken above about "people", but politics is often about defining who qualifies as "people". If you can persuade one group of people that they're the "real people", while another group are dangerous, "not American", "not even human", you may be able to ride that wave of superiority, fear, and hatred into power. But that's not the way we want to do things. People are people, no matter how rich or poor, no matter their skin color or language or nose shape, no matter how or whether they worship, no matter how or whether or with whom they have sex, no matter how or whether they voted in the last election, no matter where they live or were born, no matter how many years they've gone to school... If you're a person, your joy and your suffering, your hopes and fears, matter as much as those of anybody else.
Which doesn't mean everybody's opinion is equally useful. If we're trying to solve a problem, some people inevitably know more about it than others, either because they've studied it or because they live it every day. If we're dealing with an avian-flu outbreak, I'll weigh the opinion of an epidemiologist or a chicken farmer more heavily than the opinion of a computer scientist or a gas-station attendant.
Of course, almost any government policy will be good for some people and bad for others. To a first approximation, prefer policies that help lots of people over those that help a few people. At the same time, we don't want a majority simply voting a minority out of existence -- the minority are people, and as mentioned above, their joy and suffering matter as much as anybody else's. So there are some individual rights that can't be taken away even by a majority.
Most agree that it would have been better off if Joe Biden had publicly made, and kept, a promise not to run for re-election, and they'd held a real primary.
Some say it should have held a real primary anyway in the month before the convention. Some say it should have nominated Josh Shapiro for either President or VP to get more Jewish votes.
Some say it should have included the offered Palestinian-American speaker at the convention, and openly condemned Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza, to get more Moslem votes.
Some say Joe Biden was remarkably good at addressing ordinary people's concerns and making their lives better, but remarkably bad at taking credit for it, so millions of voters didn't know how much he had benefited them already.
Some say the Democrats leaned too heavily on identity politics, especially small minorities like transsexuals whose very existence creeps people out at a gut level. (By contrast, the Republican Party doesn't seem to have suffered at all for leaning on straight-white-male identity politics.)
Some say it took Blacks and Latinos and women for granted, while the Trump campaign actually identified and targeted some of their concerns.
Some say Harris shouldn't have downplayed her race and gender, but celebrated their significance.
Some say the Federal, New York, and Georgia justice departments (with Democratic prosecutors in all four cases) shouldn't have prosecuted him for his crimes. Or perhaps that they should have done it at least a year earlier.
Some say the Democratic and Republican Parties have both, over the past few decades, been captured by wealthy, educated, urban "elites" and lost track of what matters to actual working-class people, but Trump's cult-of-personality takeover of the Republican Party left only the Democrats facing charges of elitism and snobbery. [Yes, I know Trump himself is wealthy and from New York, but he doesn't project "educated snob" so much as "mob boss".]
Some quote Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid!" and add that "policies trump democracy": when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate whose policies you like but who acts un-democratically, and the reverse, a majority of people prefer the former.
Likewise, some argue that policies trump personal character: many voters were personally repulsed by Trump's pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (not to mention bullying and a casual relationship with objective facts) but voted for him anyway because they thought his promised policies would make their lives better.
Some say Harris was too vague and evasive about her plans and policies. [Meanwhile, Trump's policy proposals are all over the place, unconstrained by filters of rationality, legality, or effectiveness.]
Some say the campaign was too much about fear of Trump (that's playing on his preferred court), and not enough about what would actually work better.
Some say it allowed Trump to set the terms of debate and make everything about him, not only during his first term but during the Biden administration, leaving the Democratic Party defined by its opposition to Trump rather than what it's for.
Those last few form a nice cluster; let's talk about those, with occasional references to the rest.
If you're reading this, you've probably been appalled at lots of things Donald Trump has said and done over the past eight years. But what should have been done instead? For those of us who consider ourselves "on the side of the angels" while Trump obviously isn't, what do the angels stand for? What do Democrats (or, for than matter, rational and moderate Republicans) believe and do?
Suggestions welcome. Meanwhile, here's what I've come up with off the top of my head.
Starting with the Great Depression, there was widespread consensus that government, at all levels, existed to Make People's Lives Better. It started in earnest with FDR and the Democrats, but officially became bipartisan with the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. This bipartisan consensus started fraying in the late 1960's, and officially became no-longer-bipartisan with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
From then to the rise of Trumpism, this was a central area of partisan disagreement. Democrats (even when Clinton more-or-less acquiesced to the neoliberal model) still believed government can and should Make People's Lives Better. Republicans believed, rather, that government couldn't possibly do that, and shouldn't try; it should get out of the way and let people Make Their Own Lives Better. (Naturally, those whose own lives were already the best had the most resources to make their own lives even better, but that's just the way the world is; suck it.)
That classical Republican critique isn't wrong: from Adam Smith to Robert Reich, lots of intelligent and public-spirited people have condemned "regulatory capture", the phenomenon in which a rich and powerful industry harnesses government (through tariffs, government contracts, legal immunities, etc.) to make itself even more rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. The Reagan-Republican answer, on a charitable reading, was to minimize government's power over industry, so government would be less worth capturing. The FDR-Democratic answer was to make government powerful enough to counterbalance industry, but accountable to broad public interests rather than narrow private ones -- e.g. through anti-bribery, campaign-finance, and transparency laws on one hand, and broad citizen participation in democracy on the other.
(The current Republican Party, led by a cadre of billionaire bros, has no interest in either of these answers: it's all in favor of rich and powerful people harnessing government to make themselves more so.)
So what about democracy, blind justice, and all that? Democracy has never been an end in itself, but a means to an end. I think when the US Constitution was written, its authors looked at the violent dynastic successions of European history, and wanted to ensure that changes in government could take place peacefully when the people as a whole supported them.
Now jump forward 150 years. If you follow FDR's reasoning, government is more likely to make people's lives better if it hears their concerns and is obligated to address them.
If you follow Reagan's reasoning, democratic accountability is important only inasmuch as government itself is important. Over the next forty years, Reagan's successors discouraged broad citizen participation in order to induce cynicism about government.
And if you follow Trump's reasoning, democracy is an inconvenient obstacle to powerful men getting whatever they want, which is the only realistic or desirable outcome. (In his zero-sum world, there's no such thing as making the world a better place; there's only a choice between better-for-me and better-for-you, a choice whose outcome depends only on who has more power.)
Free-market capitalism, likewise, isn't an end in itself, but a means to an end: Adam Smith's warnings against tariffs and trade barriers are all motivated by the well-being of everyday people, particularly in their role as consumers of material goods. Ralph Nader's consumer-protection movement is a "regulated-market" means to that same end. For that matter, Socialism and Communism aren't ends in themselves, but different means to the exact same end. If you're sincerely interested in Making People's Lives Better, you employ market capitalism for the problems that it solves well (such as consumer goods for individual purchase), and socialism for the problems that it solves well (such as public goods and externalities).
So, one principle so far is Government can and should make people's lives better, in ways that they can't do for themselves.
Related: To do this, it needs to be transparent and accountable to the people through free and fair elections, in which everyone has a voice.
Which brings us to another point. I've spoken above about "people", but politics is often about defining who qualifies as "people". If you can persuade one group of people that they're the "real people", while another group are dangerous, "not American", "not even human", you may be able to ride that wave of superiority, fear, and hatred into power. But that's not the way we want to do things. People are people, no matter how rich or poor, no matter their skin color or language or nose shape, no matter how or whether they worship, no matter how or whether or with whom they have sex, no matter how or whether they voted in the last election, no matter where they live or were born, no matter how many years they've gone to school... If you're a person, your joy and your suffering, your hopes and fears, matter as much as those of anybody else.
Which doesn't mean everybody's opinion is equally useful. If we're trying to solve a problem, some people inevitably know more about it than others, either because they've studied it or because they live it every day. If we're dealing with an avian-flu outbreak, I'll weigh the opinion of an epidemiologist or a chicken farmer more heavily than the opinion of a computer scientist or a gas-station attendant.
Of course, almost any government policy will be good for some people and bad for others. To a first approximation, prefer policies that help lots of people over those that help a few people. At the same time, we don't want a majority simply voting a minority out of existence -- the minority are people, and as mentioned above, their joy and suffering matter as much as anybody else's. So there are some individual rights that can't be taken away even by a majority.
