We're not a Mean Nation because the Democrats aren't running on a hard left agenda
While it looks that Biden will win--not just the bare minimum of electoral votes, 270, as the addition of Nevada and Arizona to his win column looks quite certain, but because it appears that while extremely close, Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) are likely to move to the Biden win column as well, giving him a comfortable total--there are plenty of negative indicators:
- the failure to flip Republican-held Senate seats
- the loss of Democratic-held House seats in conservative leaning districts
- the fact that in losing, Trump garnered more votes that Obama did in winning the 2008 election (although the US population is 27 million people greater today, 12 years later).
In the Guardian, Nathan Robinson, editor of Current Affairs, argues that the reason the election is so close is because the Democrats didn't run a truly progressive, hard left campaign ("Trump should have lost in a landslide. The fact that he didn’t speaks volumes").
The headline is right, but the argument, while righteous and I'd love to believe it, is flawed.
Sure, that the election is close speaks volumes, there are plenty of lessons for messaging and programming.
But if 69+ million people voted for Trump, it's not like a goodly number did so because they didn't think that the Democrats weren't progressive enough--that they thought that the Republicans can do a better job bringing about universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, and a strong public health response to the coronavirus ("The Counties With The Worst Coronavirus Surges Overwhelmingly Voted For Trump," AP).
Senate. I am floored at how many Democratic Senate candidates that were touted as able to win got absolutely crushed:
- Montana, Bullock got 45% of the vote
- Iowa, Greenfield got 45% of the vote
- Kansas, Bollier got 41% of the vote
- Maine, Gideon got 43% of the vote
- South Carolina, Harrison got 41% of the vote
- Texas, Hegar got 44% of the vote
- + reporting on Espy in Mississippi said he had a chance in Mississippi. He got 42.5%.
House. And many Democrats lost Congressional seats in Republican leaning seats (" Even if Trump loses the election, the next Congress will be even Trumpier," NBC)..
There's no way the disaffected but voting segment of the electorate voted Republican because they offer a better agenda for the working class, one that is more progressive.
For example, Republican Will Hurd barely won his Texas border district last election. By fewer than 700 votes. He didn't run again. But the Republican easily won, by not quite 10,000 votes, which is much more than a handful. Xochitl Torres lost in Arizona. Some of the seats in Southern California that went Democrat in 2018 appear to reverting back to Republican this year (although maybe those seats will see saw from election to election?)
Can a progressive agenda succeed? Do I think that a progressive agenda can resonate with good chunks of the Republican-leaning precariat electorate? Yes I do.
These two graphics show the Presidential vote ("Let’s get ahead of it: A map of the early 2020 results by population, not acreage," Washington Post). The first is by county or "acreage." The second is weighted for population.
But there's no question it's not being articulated particularly well ("Why Joe Biden is better than Donald Trump for the US economy," Guardian). And that includes people like AOC and Elizabeth Warren, not just Biden
People live precarious lives because economic forces favor capital, not labor.
The Republicans have been successful at wedge politics in creating a "coalition" made up of a chassis of angry mostly white and/or rural voters, topped with a body comprised of corporate ("How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of," Guardian), wealthy ("How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump," New Yorker), and other conservative interests ("The Unseen Agenda Behind Trump: Destroy the Public Realm to Free the Rich," CounterPunch; "Dark Money Funds Campaign Pushing Supreme Court to the Right," Between The Lines).
As long as the white precariat doesn't want people other than themselves to benefit from government programs ("Why More White Americans Are Opposing Government Welfare Programs," NPR), it is difficult to define a unifying progressive agenda.
For Democrats and Progressives to be successful going forward, especially at the level of the House and Senate and state legislatures, Democrats and Progessives must redefine and re/build a positivist consensus about what the USA is about.
After all, the US motto is e pluribus unum--from many, one.
Instead we're very much a divided nation.
-- "This Election Highlights How Divided the Nation Remains: In many places, the results confirmed that red America is growing more red and blue America more blue," Wall Street Journal
Labels: conservative political ideology, elections and campaigns, electoral politics and influence, progressive urban political agenda, urban vs. suburban vs. rural
posted by Richard Layman @ 10:00 AM&Permanent Link
7 Comments:
So you other entry on polices"changes in vote" is excellent, this one is based on a post that is just confirming prior views.
I mean, lets wait a week or so to actually see what happens before saying the hard left agenda is needed in.
I was going to say this the earlier thread "mean nation" but I think the question about federalism is very important.
What really struck me is that people polled (prior to voting) who have lived in different states were +17 for biden.
(And yes, polls are breaking down and just because because say that doesn't mean they are doing it).
But what you also see is the "democratic" view is one where we are moving away from federalism - both formerly (Senate sucks!) and informally (we need national standards for everything).
Now this is a fashion that comes and goes, but what I'm saying is that people who have moved around and experienced mobility tend to be more pro-democratic than people who have only lived in one state their entire lives.
Goes back to the "metropolitan vote" that Rahm Emmanuel tossed out as a term in 2018, with the caveat that a lot of people in the DC metro area (as an example) have spent 95% of their lives in the DMV.
As I said a fashion. In MJ legislation federalism has been very key. if the S.Ct strikes down Roe v Wade, you can bet the ability of a state to legalize abortion is going to be very important.
On this question (hard left) I'd frame it differently. democratic answers to problems have been overly abstract. As far as I can see the only thing I've seen from $1T in 2009 Stimulus has been a bikeshare program. If you want to be the party of government you have to touch peoples lives and actually make it easier.
(and no, pro renewable corporate subsidies, higher taxes, and income redistribution don't cut it. Government run hospitals might -- if someone had the balls to run against insurance companies that would work).
(And expanding the VA to all veterans has been a disaster -- the money just wasn't there).
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/2020-election-results-prove-density-destiny/617027/
One of the better pieces although I'l admit it shares a lot of my prior views.
This is really important:
On this question (hard left) I'd frame it differently. democratic answers to problems have been overly abstract. As far as I can see the only thing I've seen from $1T in 2009 Stimulus has been a bikeshare program. If you want to be the party of government you have to touch peoples lives and actually make it easier.
Yes, it has to be meaningful stuff. And highly visible. (Like my point about new transportation infrastructure. Initiate it where you know it will be wildly successful, and build it out from there, rather than gamble, even on equity grounds -- "we should do this there because the area is underserved". Because if you fail, you're not going to get many more chances to improve it or extend it. Look at the H Street streetcar as an example.
One problem is that infrastructure takes a long time.
A lot of the ARRA was road projects.
So infrastructure can't be the exclusive focus. FDR could have more than 2 terms. You can't do that now. And the Depression lasted for almost a decade. So people were focused, and they could build a lot of stuff. Even so the Depression took longer to get out of because of an austerity response ("debt"! is too high, we have to cut back) when things started getting a little better.
2. Messaging and positioning is really bad.
3. In a comment on a Post article, I wrote about ACA that Obama should have spent two years building the consensus for the need, then the legislation, then 5 pilot states to work out the kinks, plus common software, rather than making each state develop its own thing (some states did work together on that I think).
I do think health care is key, at the very least, separating it from employment, because that makes people very vulnerable when the economy goes bust or you lose your job for any reason.
Funny you mention government hospitals. I was thinking that the "government" should step in on the rural hospital issue, and take over or at least fund, these hospitals so they don't close, not unlike how the f*ed up rail franchise system in the UK has the option of the "Operator of Last Resort" being the government if a franchise doesn't get bids or is taken over.
Since there is the state capacity issue, the money issue, and the need to do visible stuff issue, I guess the point should be to focus on a few things and really execute them.
While I believe in the concept of a GND e.g., because the infrastructure built during the New Deal was a significant source of economic energy in the post-war period, the reality is that there aren't as many "green jobs" produced from that stuff as people argue. I looked at that while writing that Walter Reed concept paper.
was I not clear in arguing against the idea of a super progressive agenda? I think the election is proof that didn't resonate, even though I don't think that made a difference in many districts, but it did in some.
I think we need a progressive agenda, sure, with a lot of attention to messaging and positioning.
e.g., not "defund the police" but "expanding our public safety options"
not "Obamacare" per se, but "we need a healthcare system that protects us when we have jobs, when we don't have jobs, when we're in need, in rural areas, in the inner city, etc." A public option could exist for those who want it.
It's Republicans who've prevented the federal government from negotiating for cheaper prescription drug prices, etc.
Clearly we need to come up with a rural agenda, if only to get a few Senate seats like in Iowa or Montana or the Dakotas, like we used to.
But also because it's the right thing to do.
wrt the Atlantic article. Not sure what I think.
I do think wrt "minorities" it's not unlike the problem of McDonald's or GM.
They were #1 for decades. They couldn't stay so dominant forever, even if they executed superlatively.
Eventually competition would develop, and take some (a lot or less depending) of their market share.
"Minorities" aren't monolithic (just like I was surprised when you communicated the views of your Anglo-Indian relatives about immigration). And you can expect over time that the Republicans will be able to slice off some segments.
E.g., Young Kim, a Korean American Republican in Orange County lost in 2018, looks to win 2020. That PBS documentary I mentioned a couple weeks ago featured an Asian American Republican running for the State House in Evanston (!).
Because part of the appeal of the Democrats to blacks and Hispanics has to do with poverty, I can see why Asian Americans might gravitate to Republicans (not on the culture stuff, at least I hope, but on the other stuff--business, low taxes, work hard, etc.).
Malaika Jabali is a progressive black lawyer that thinks the Democrats are piss poor. She wrote an interesting article about the Ice Cube thing, saying that it's worth looking at what he's talking about. (I mean to do so, but haven't yet.)
And she's right.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/21/ice-cube-trump-democrats-politics
(Porn stars supported Trump too in 2016. Taxes.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/porn-stars-worry-about-publicly-supporting-donald-trump-and-s-sin/
Or maybe because he was a customer?)
2. But the density thing is facile. It's not density per se, its urban vs. rural. It has been this way for a few thousand years--the cosmopoles go to the cities, and as you say, mobility, and interaction with people different from you, exposure to more information and ideas, agglomeration, etc., widens your perspective.
The challenge, based on one of your earlier comments, is to have relatively cool cities in every state, so that people don't move away to NY, DC, LA, and SF more exclusively.
But SLC and Denver attract people from other intermountain states. Maybe Boise does. Portland and Seattle too, from the Intermountain and PNW. Etc.
In Michigan, I used to say that only Chicago and Ann Arbor are attractive, although then many people would counter 'and Madison' although I like it, I'd rather live in Chicago.
Minneapolis is cool and probably attracts people from Iowa and the Dakotas. Etc.
2. But the other thing is to make all communities more attractive and less parochial.
I can't claim to have the answer for that.
3. Except mandatory national service, which I'll publish a piece about in the coming week.
It's certainly not something I'd recommend Biden focus his attention on, sadly.
My face block in DC.
- black (13)
- white (5) (one with out of wedlock mixed race child)
- mixed race (white/Hispanic) (1)
- Hispanic (1)
- mixed race (white/black) (1)
- mixed race (white/white/Asian) (1)
One one side of us was a Black family, on the other side, Hispanic. (Both, totally awesome neighbors.)
My 18 household face block here is all white. Although a few doors past that is a cluster of Asian households. There is at least one black household within the few block area. Maybe a Hispanic household.
Limited non-white households are pretty common in the rural US.
-----
FWIW, while I am not surprised about South Florida and Trump, I was surprised about the borderlands of Texas.
Eg. Texas 23 went much more heavily Republican this go round. But maybe that's because the previous Republican was black, and this year the election featured Hispanics running for each party.
But while that rural borderland result surprised me, I wasn't surprised about Xochitl Torres in New Mexico. I guess after awhile, the rural identity might supersede the Latino identity?
sorry. wrt "density" I meant to include this link about the book _Well Tempered City_, which starts out discussing how cities came about thousands of years ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/a-theory-of-well-tempered-cities
The forces that created cities then and why people clustered there are similar to the reasons people move to cities today.
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