The New York Times has a piece today with the title “Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left.” Specifically it’s about the centrist pressure group Third Way and a plan with a budget of $15 million to, as the group’s president Jonathan Cowan puts it, “prepar[e] for the next war that is coming.” I’ll note that during the first two years of the Biden administration Third Way was notably and consistently supportive of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. It was a sign of the remarkable party unity that allowed Biden to push through a remarkably progressive agenda with a tied senate. I’ll also note that you place an article like this because you want to show the people who gave you the $15 million that you mean business. So talk of “going to war” is sort of what you want to show them.
That said, this is remarkably ill-conceived and a misunderstanding of the current moment.
First, to the extent people you define as “far left” are winning primaries for statewide office in swing states like Michigan, you’re talking about going to war with your own voters. That’s destructive and foolish. Any party, but especially the Democratic Party, is a coalition of very different elements. People who are really invested in intra-party conflicts often have ideas about “destroying” other factions or driving them out of the party. But that seldom makes any sense if you’re talking about groups or factions that speak for substantial numbers of voters. This applies every bit as much to the progressive left as it does to Third Way-type groups in the center who often talk of toppling the “moderates” or “establishment” or “centrists” (none of these labels make a lot of descriptive sense) when in fact those terms apply to maybe half or more of the party’s voters, though they never use those terms themselves.
But there’s a more particular reason this is ill-conceived and a focus of attention that is significantly misplaced.
Let’s start with my agreeing that it’s basically a disaster for Democrats to be nominating people for statewide offices in purple states if they won’t move away from records of wanting to “defund the police,” bring about socialism, abolish Thanksgiving or various other things that — regardless of their inherent merits — big majorities of Americans find alien, weird, sometimes incomprehensible or simply dumb.
But why are at least a few of those candidates winning? And let’s be clear we’re basically talking here about Francesca Hong. This isn’t like a widespread thing. But why is that? I would argue — and I think there’s tons of evidence for this — that we are in a very anti-establishment, disenchanted political moment in which Democrats especially feel that the civic democratic order is being destroyed. They’re scared and they’re angry and they want people to signal and commit to fighting back in a way that seems commensurate to the scale of the threat. They’re simply not hearing that from most current Democratic officeholders in Washington, D.C. For many Democratic voters today, their elected representatives are showing up at a horrific auto accident with aspirin, a few salves and maybe a pillow. It’s a total disconnect. So they’re going to voices that are embodying a more defiant, pugilistic and confrontational approach.
This is an argument I’ve made numerous times. Mainstream Democrats are ceding the “fight” lane to the progressive left, and voters are responding in kind despite there not necessarily being a strong ideological move to the left. Parties of course always have factional conflict, intra-party debates, arguments about degrees of pragmatism and ideology. That all makes perfect sense. But what it sounds like Third Way is the existing establishment digging in its heels and going to “war” against the progressive left — an inherently disruptive and destructive plan — without any focus on addressing why the progressive left is having the success that it is. That truly seems like the worst of all possible worlds: not addressing the actual issue while also sowing intra-party friction and conflict in a way that makes party unity and effective political action incredibly difficult when it’s needed most. Needless to say, there is and will continue to be factional jockeying and conflict between more middle of the road liberals and more the more ideological left. That’s fine. But the drama of the current moment is much more about fight than their own voters.
