John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, co-authors of “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” are back with a new book that argues that the Democrats are imperiled by a “shadow party” that is forcing them into “radical” positions on cultural issues and diverting them away from their core economic issues.
Ahh yes, labeling the progressives a problematic ‘shadow party’ for wanting . . . checks notes popularly supported human rights . . .
We’re so selfish for wanting a functional and supportive society.
What gets me is that were seeing rising hate crime numbers, resurgences of certain groups being extremely targeted, and the amount of random acts of violence the trans community suffers, and this papers response is to placate the voters who think those issues aren’t very important.
Their point isn’t that it’s wrong to want what the progressives want, merely that it’s presently alienating working class voters and making it more difficult for Democrats as a party to be effective at getting any of their goals accomplished. Frankly, I agree with that assessment, and I’m pretty progressive. I think the problem is that we’re advocating for too much change, too quickly. I know that sucks to hear, because in most cases we’re talking about fundamental human rights, but I do think that’s a major barrier we’re running into.
Take gay and transgender rights for example. Back in the 80’s/90’s, the fearmongering cry around gay rights was that “this is just the beginning,” and “soon they’ll be saying you can marry your dog,” and “this will destroy the nuclear family as we know,” blah, blah, blah. Obviously, none of this is true, but to a conservative or conservative-leaning independent who is old enough to remember that time, when they hear a progressive today argue that “gender is just a social construct” and “it takes a village to raise a child” and “trans women are women,” it really does sound like a certain amount of that old fearmongering was correct—maybe it didn’t predict the future exactly, but close enough, this shit’s crazy! And that contributes to the myth that there’s a “gay agenda,” because it makes it seem like there’s a long-term plan at work that’s being enacted gradually in order to sneak it’s final, horrible form in under people’s noses.
And that sucks, because I know plenty of people are sick of waiting to be treated the same as everybody else and morally speaking they shouldn’t have to wait. But I increasingly see that it’s not just conservatives that are opposed to some of what progressives are lobbying for. I know plenty of Democrat-voting Black and Hispanic people who are nonetheless (albeit quietly) opposed to gay and transgender rights, or who are suspicious of Asians or Arabs, due to COVID and 9/11. I know legal immigrants who are staunchly in support of Trump-style immigration policy, because they don’t think it’s right that people sneak into this country when they took the long, laborious, legal route. There was even a poll I read not long ago that indicated about 25% of Democrats aren’t in favor of completely legal abortion (e.g. they’re fine with it under certain circumstances, but don’t think women should be allowed to use it as a form of birth control outside of those circumstances).
The article is saying that by catering to it’s Far Left progressives, the Democratic party is hamstringing itself in terms of its effectiveness, and thus limiting its ability to get anything done, much less what the progressives want. It’s a pragmatic argument, I think its correct. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Part of that is the democrats fault for only placating the left with issues that are free and don’t threatent current power structures. Like letting people use any bathroom they want, or allowing the LGBTQ communities to be part of the Military. When it comes to the progressive economic policies, M4A, Federally legal weed, or Lawmaker stock trading bans, they drag their feet because these things challenge the profits of their donors and their status quo. Those first two have have over 65-70% of popular support since the study the libertarian foundation did that proved M4A would save money. I’d also argue all those hard policies would have an immediate and profound impact on literally every prospective voter. They used the progressive movement and only conceded what they thought to be strategically necessary.
I definitely agree the Democrats are doing that, but if they weren’t and were instead advocating for all the things progressives want, that would still be alienating some working class voters, so the authors’ argument remains the same.
Sadly, I don’t see a way around this that actually gets progressive causes greater backing from anyone. We literally just have to work on changing the culture via education and patient advocacy and discussion. If anything, the tack of some activists makes things worse, because their solution is to be more aggressive, which just makes those on the fence more skittish about all this stuff.
I agree doing simply everything the progressives want, especially quickly would alienate a lot of voters, and I don’t see eye to eye with elected progressives on everything, but I suppose I do more so than any other group in congress, low bar I know. I just kind of wish the progressives got like one nice decisive win with some of the popular policies that would immediately help people, specifically things like M4A or legal weed. I know I’m no pollster I just feel like it’s a layup in terms of getting voters.
Cannabis legalization has been doing fairly well, actually. It’s already legal in half the states in the country. Slowly, but surely, I see this becoming federal law relatively soon. And even if it doesn’t become federal law, if it only remains illegal in a handful of states, I’d say that’s already a decisive win.
Medicare for all is a much harder sell and still doesn’t have the publicity it needs to gain traction. But this is always the case with progressive policies. Gains are small and slow, but build momentum with time. Personally, I’m looking forward to a future congress making abortion legal again, this time without a nod from SCOTUS. I always said if SCOTUS ever did overturn Roe, it would simply galvanize the public to demand it actually gets codified into law. We’re already seeing Republicans suffer for this, and I have full confidence we’ll get back to nation-wide legal abortion well within my lifetime (and I’m already half-dead).
One of the reasons the Right has resorted to drumming up conspiracy theories is that they know they can’t win on arguments against modern issues Leftists are bringing up, not in the long term. So, they try to distract their base from said issues and have them focused on bullshit that doesn’t actually matter. This won’t work forever though. It’s a stalling tactic at best.
I know it can seem grim sometimes, but keep the long game in mind and remember that in free societies (and yes, the U.S. still qualifies) there’s a natural bias towards progress.