It’s become almost commonplace in recent years, and especially in the last four months, that the divisions among Democrats are less progressives vs. “centrists” or liberals than one between institutionalists and what we might call Team Fight. There’s a separate issue which is that there needs to be a lot more elaboration or articulation about just what “centrists” or “moderates” even are. The language is typically used as an electoral self-definition for the purposes of intra-party dynamics. But let’s leave that topic for another day. So we have the mounting knowledge that the divisions are more Team Fight vs. Team No Fight than the more ideological definitions. At the same time, though, you have non-progressives (see the problem of definitions?) worried that the highly polarized climate of 2025 will “push the party to the left.” (I have my own thoughts on that latter question.) A lot of those voices came to the fore during the Bernie and AOC barnstorming tour, which I guess is paused, at least for the moment. But for “centrists” or non-progressive liberals, if it’s really true that the real issue is Team Fight vs. Team No Fight (and I believe it is), you’ve got to get out there and do your own barnstorming tours or find other ways to demonstrate the fight.
This is just obvious. In a period of high polarization and high threat, the center of gravity of the party and inevitably the ideological center of gravity of the party will move to those fighting hardest, most successfully, with the fewest apologies.
Here’s an anecdote from my reporting travels. Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-MD) is by common consent a fairly normal liberal senator from a safely blue state. Everybody gets that he scored a big coup both for himself and for the fight against immigration abuses and unlawful detention by his trip to El Salvador. I know there’s been a push from biomedical researchers and, for lack of a better word, Team Science over at the NIH to have members come over to the building and meet with some researchers who can explain just the scope of research and new cures that are being tossed in the garbage each day. Just think one of your family members may end up needing one of those cures the garbage truck picked up just this morning.
That’s how you focus attention. You create kinetics and visuals and actions that reporters gravitate toward. I’m not saying exactly that model is the only way. Let a thousand flowers bloom. But a press release ain’t it. Do a thing that seems out of the norm, man bites dog, and draws attention to an issue in which the public doesn’t like what the White House is doing. Boost the salience, spread the word. Reps and Sens, fucking help me here? Good lord.
But my understanding is that those emissaries have basically been told some version of, “it sounds like a bit much, a bit out there.” “That’s not how we roll.” Or, “it doesn’t fit with the comms strategy.” That is both highly surprising to me (surprising and not surprising) and deeply disappointing? What are we doing here? Are we worried that young people are getting increasingly open-minded about supporting cancer and degenerative disorders? Really? No one supports this shit.
It is true that Democrats need to create room for candidates to depart from party orthodoxies in parts of the country dominated by Republicans. But the big and overwhelming issue that Democrats face right now has very little to do with this. The overriding problem Democrats have today is a general belief that they’re not effective at fighting for what they believe in or what the country needs to be protected from. There’s a related, but secondary issue that they worry that Dems are most focused on issues that are obscure or not connected to the lives of the great majority of people struggling to make ends meet. That lack of fight is shattering for self-identified Democrats as well as highly damaging for genuine independents and low-information voters who genuinely flip from party to party from election to election. That is overwhelmingly the challenge Democrats have right now.
The idea that up-for-grabs voters are waiting for important signals out of a bizarre intra-party score settling over Joe Biden’s age is just such unreal bubble thinking that it beggars belief. Democrats may have gotten ahead of the public on the language they used about trans issues or DEI. But the idea that voters are waiting for signals about that rather than wanting to see people stand up for the country against the current onslaught is again just some bizarre insider/consultant circle jerk.
For those of us who are never privy to the insider-think, we should be looking for Democrats who are willing to drive attention and find creative ways to cast even more light on things the White House is doing that are wildly, wildly unpopular.