This post and thread is a distillation of several months of thinking and observations I’ve done so it will almost certainly involve my repeating themes and ideas from previous occasions.
Before Trump announced in the summer of 2015, I had fairly modest expectations and hopes for the 2016 election. I thought that given demographics, that Hillary Clinton would probably win a 2012-style victory over whoever her Republican opponent (who would be a conventional conservative in the mold of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or perhaps Scott Walker) but that Congress and state governments would remain in Republican hands extending a deadlock that existed all throughout the second Obama administration. I was aware that there was a narrow chance that Clinton might not win after all which would bring about a triumph of traditional fusionist conservatism with all the horrendously reactionary policies that would entail. On the whole, however, I believed that we’d be indefinitely stuck in the dichotomy between the bourgeois social liberalism represented by the Clintons and Obama and the Reaganism of the GOP with little prospect of any sort of breakthrough. Thus I was moderately pleased when Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy in the spring of 2015 but believed he’d be a short-lived protest candidate in the mold of Bill Bradley or Howard Dean. Similarly, I was more amused then anything else by Donald Trump’s announcement that summer, remembering him mostly for his conduct in the Rosie O’Donnell and Obama birth certificate controversies.
The autumn of 2015 began to dispell these initial illusions. I saw that Donald Trump’s candidacy gain traction, partially on the basis of a radically populist platform that significantly deviated from Republican orthodoxy on issues such as foreign policy, trade, and entitlement programs. I confess that even with Trump’s blatant appeals to xenophobia already evident at the time that I became impressed with his iconoclastic campaign which boldly could declare that the emperor was indeed naked as exemplified when he attacked Jeb Bush for his brother lying about WMDs in Iraq and not “keeping us safe” during 9/11 during a televised Republican candidates debate, something even no major Democratic Presidential candidate had dare said. I also saw a clear Trump coalition of Scotch-Irish Appalachians, Southern rural evangelicals, and Northern “ethnic” whites coalescing, leading me to conclude that Trump would do significantly better in the primaries then most expected. While I do not wish to boast, I think it’s clearly evident my predictions about the results of the primaries were more accurate then those of my opponents. Similarly, I saw that Bernie Sanders was a candidate who even if he couldn’t win could at least gain significant traction and actually win states. Even more importantly, he was heading a radical ideological revolution by making social democratic ideas plausible in American political discourse for the first time in decades and assembling a new multiracial coalition that could win over both young Millennials and the white working-class. This was in clear contrast to previous Democratic protest candidates ranging from Eugene McCarthy to Howard Dean whose main appeal was limited to white college students. All this buoyed my hopes that we could finally break free of that accursed trap the nation was stuck in and finally make the necessary leap to a new political future.
Even earlier then I expected, Trump won while Sanders fought all the way to the end gaining the support of white workers as well as younger Americans of all races. In the end, I never seriously considered Trump over Clinton a view which was reinforced as the former’s corruption, demagougery, narcissism, and other objectionable factors became increasingly evident. My new worry was that while Hillary Clinton might be a shoo-in to the White House, that her increasingly weakening campaign would mean she would have a disastrous Presidency in the face of Republican opposition and possibly a new recession leading to disastrous Democratic losses in 2018 and 2020-just in time for the next cycle of redistricting and putting in power a unified Republican government that would have the power and will to utterly eviscerate the New Deal, Great Society, and the Affordable Care Act. Here again I was wrong, as Trump made a decisive breakthrough with the white working-class which few had expected and so flipped states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin which Republicans haven’t won for over 20 years ago. Clinton failed miserably with the historic working-class core of the party, losing by far larger margins then Obama had done despite being a white Methodist woman of middle-class Midwestern background rather then a Hawaiian-born black man with the middle name of “Hussein”. This was also despite a near constant barrage of attacks upon Trump including “Pussygate”, accusations of him stiffing contracters, allegations of sexual assault, and so on that would have destroyed any “normal” candidate. Clinton did not just bring down herself but also other downballot Democratic candidates with individuals such as Feingold, Kander, Bayh, and others losing what were very winnable contests. Yet it seems to me this disaster may in fact be a blessing in design-Democrats have lost to a relatively inexperienced Republican candidate who can be projected to come into conflict with a Republican-majority Congress and before the key midterm elections of 2018 and the decennial race of 2020. So what is the answer to a Democratic Party that is seemingly in retreat across the nation and at its lowest ebb since the 1920s?
That is where a new, “alternative left” that can face the potent nativist nationalism of the alternative right comes in. Broadly speaking an alternative left would seek to create a left populist opposition that would form a coalition of the multiracial middle and working-class. As many moderates have pointed out Democrats did make significant gains in diverse Sunbelt states such as Arizona and Texas, even winning my native Orange County for the first time in 80 years. Here we must distinguish between two potential elements of the coalition in these areas. Democrats should without reservation welcome the incorporation of Hispanic and Asian Americans into the body politic and seek to increase their turnout in future elections in these areas. While we should similarly not turn up our nose at upper middle-class voters in these areas who are turning to the Democratic Party, we must fight entryism that threatens to undermine a strong commitment to socioeconomic populism in favour of a bourgeois ideology of “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” that will only alienate the most loyal elements of the party. In turn, this commitment to the heritage of Jacksonian democracy, Bryanite populism, the New Deal, and the Great Society requires us to win back the white working-class. The white working-class is bearing the brunt of a systematic socioeconomic and psychological collapse in much of American society that in many ways parallels that of Russia’s in the 1990s. Most tellingly, mortality rates have increased and life expectancy has declined for white Americans without college degrees, primarily due to significant increases in incidences of drug/alcohol abuse as well as suicide. In turn, much of this is attritbutable to a wide array of factors including deindustrialization, wage stagnation, social atomization, and so forth. It was this pain which Trump (not entirely implausibly) blamed mass immigration and free trade for that produced Trump’s victory. To win again, especially given the presence of gerrymandering and laws hindering voting, Democrats must have a robust agenda.
With some reservations, the most plausible agenda I’ve found is outlined here. In broad terms I would advocate for:
[1] Universal Welfare State-Americans dislike means-tested benefits programs that can be agitated against on the grounds of it going to “undeserving” people while social insurance programs such as Social Security that everyone pays into and everyone benefits from are strongly popular. Thus Democrats should advocate an increase in Social Security benefits by removing the income tax cap, propose universal paid leave, and possibly look seriously into a universal basic income.
[2] Social Patriotism-For too many Americans, Democrats especially those of a more left-wing variety are seen as “un-American” if not “treasonous”. Democrats should counter this by adopting the language of patriotism and declare (quite correctly) that true patriotism is not to an abstract concept of a nation but to the people which compose a nation. It should be seen as a national disgrace that life expectancies for millions of Americans are declining, that many part of the country such as Indian reservations live in conditions nearing Third World poverty, that corporations can jack up prices for drugs, and so on. The poor and others in want should be seen as fellow citizens, not as objects of charity.
[3] Populism-The strongest left-wing movements in both America and the rest of the world have been populist in character, by empowering the people themselves to undertake political action. After Trump, many liberals seem to think the opposite is the case and that the people cannot be trusted with political power despite the fact that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. Liberals must recognize that even “experts” have unconscious biases that lead them to favour their own personal interests when setting policy and that having a college degree in say 18th Century Chinese Literature or Molecular Biology might make them an expert in that given field but not give them any particular enlightenment in regards to government. In tandem with this, the left should favour radical democratization through automatic voter registration, abolishment of the Electoral College, reform of the US Senate, ending gerrymandering of the House of Representatives, and otherwise removing all archaic and reactionary barriers to the pure expression of the popular will.
[4] Solidarity/Communitarianism-Americans have always been an individualistic people but simultaneously as observers from Tocqueville to Putnam have noted, they have often been equally devoted to the life of the community as well. In an era of social atomization and increasing isolation of individuals, Democrats should do everything to counteract such trends and strengthen civil and social institutions that serve as intermediaries between individuals and the State or the Market such as families, friendship ties, social clubs, churches, and the like. The left must appropriate the language of the right and declare that only an ideology that recognizes limits to the all-encompasing claims of the market even when it breaks town social ties can allow for humans to flourish as social beings.
[5] Big Tent without Pandering-To get laws passed, Democrats must retake the House and state governments which are already biased in favour of rural Middle America. Thus to do so, Democrats should adopt a big tent towards particularly sensitive issues. Gun control in general should be dropped given that most plausible gun control measures yield little return in exchange for large-scale political losses while Democrats should be allowed to vote their conscience on the most contentious issue of abortion which unlike many other battles of the Culture War looks unlikely to go away even 40 years after Roe v. Wade. It’s clear that the extreme pro-abortion legalization approach adopted by Hillary Clinton last year which theoretically rejected limitations on abortion even after viability and supporting repealing the Hyde amendment alienated significant numbers of Catholic and evangelical voters, leading to the spectacle of Trump winning the highest percentage of the evangelical vote of any Republican candidate despite all his past history. While it’s unlikely a national Democratic candidate will be pro-life anytime soon, any pro-choice candidate would do better to emphasize reducing abortions through better availability of contraception and more robust social safety net for families. This does not mean Democrats should cede the ground on “Culture War” issues or “identity politics”-in particular Democrats should stand for the equal protection in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, and so forth. Indeed, Democrats should be taking leadership on certain cultural issues such as marijuana legalization and copyright reform where the public has moved ahead of them.
I realize this post is somewhat incoherent and rambling due to the late hour at which I write this. If anything is unclear, I will be more then happy to answer the points. While I don’t expect Dopers to agree with everything written here, I hope that my “Alternative Left” provides a framework for where the Democratic Party should go in the years ahead.