This is what divided government looks like
Many Democrats want transformative change — but they don't have enough votes
I recently read a piece by David Graham of The Atlantic that has been bugging me ever since. “The Democrats Are Now America’s Conservative Party,” claims the headline. “Liberals find themselves in the strange position of having won most of their major battles of this century.”
As the subhed suggests, Graham’s use of “conservative” is wordplay. His allegation is not that the Democrats are politically conservative, but that they are “emerging today as the party of a status quo”; a party that has “shifted toward defending and consolidating” the various victories it has won, which are threatened by a radicalized Republican Party and conservative Supreme Court. “To borrow a phrase,” he writes, “today’s Democratic Party stands athwart recent history, shouting, ‘Stop!’”
In specific policy areas such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, this rings true: Democrats have sought to stave off the erosion of existing rights by the Supreme Court and Republican state governments. But Graham’s broader diagnosis of the party is questionable. He leaves out the existence of plenty of noteworthy and yet-unattained policy goals shared by large majorities of the party. He does not reckon with one of the most important realities of present-day American politics: increasing partisan polarization along ideological lines. And many of the examples he points towards are not necessarily reflective of a party that has grown more conservative or content with political stasis. They are just symptoms of a party that lacks the ability to unilaterally pass laws.
Graham claims that part of the reason for the Democrats’ newfound “conservatism” is that within the set of policies the party might seek to implement, much of the low-hanging fruit is gone:
“Defending the way things are now is also probably safer for the party than pursuing new ideas. Progressives have long complained that the population supports more liberal policies but can’t get them, but that may no longer be so true. A Democratic wish list at this moment would start with immigration reform and higher taxes on the wealthy, but although both poll well, neither seems within reach. After that, many of the remaining ideas pushed by activists divide the party’s elected establishment and are unpopular with the public at large, such as Medicare for All, defunding the police, and open borders—all policies advocated by candidates whom Biden defeated in the 2020 Democratic primary.”
I am not convinced that the pickings are so slim. For one thing, we actually have a fairly good idea of some items that are on the Democratic wish list — the long list of provisions in the Build Back Better framework, which passed the House in 2021 and for a time looked as though it could pass the Senate. It included universal pre-K for three and four year olds; would have extended the temporary Child Tax Credit expansion that lifted well over one million children out of poverty; and included funding for the construction of a million affordable homes. It also would have raised taxes on the ultra-wealthy, and included some funding for immigration reform.
Build Back Better failed not because Democrats as a party decided to turn away from these various policies — which were backed by the White House and nearly every Democratic member of Congress — but because the deciding vote, Joe Manchin, was a conservative Democrat, and because a handful of moderates opposed scrapping the filibuster. I could go on. The PRO Act, for instance, which would have greatly empowered unions, languished not because it lacked broad support among the party (Manchin himself was a cosponsor), but because a handful of senators did not want to change Senate procedure for it. Something similar could be said of election reform.
One election later, Republicans control the House. Of course Graham is correct that immigration reform and raising taxes on the wealthy do not seem within reach, but that does not reflect who the Democrats are: it reflects the constraints that exist when mainstream Democrats don’t have the requisite numbers to pass what they want.
This leads to the most perplexing part of Graham’s argument. It would be one thing to claim that because they would need Republican votes to enact any laws, federal Democrats have been put in a position where their focus must necessarily be on defending elements of the status quo. But he goes so far as to argue that Democrats have actually become less progressive thanks to coalitional changes. Pointing to a shift in favor of Democrats among highly educated voters, he writes: “[T]he changing demographics of the parties mean that some of the Democratic Party’s most powerful backers are the winners of society as it exists now. Why would they want transformative change?”
Here, he is out of step with relevant literature and news coverage, which rightfully assert that since the 70s, our political parties have grown more ideologically distant from each other, and that the Democrats shifted leftward on a variety of issues post-Obama. But his account is also inconsistent with the reality of what Democrats’ legislative priorities have looked like in the past several years. Even as the share of highly educated urbanites and suburbanites swelled among the Democrats’ ranks, the party has put forward progressive policies that would have been far more controversial, if not outright disfavored, among its establishment just a handful of years prior.
Graham’s claim is frustrating because he examines the outputs of a few years where Democrats faced tricky inputs at the federal level and concludes that the incremental politics made necessary by those constraints reflect the party’s essence. But this obscures what most members of the party want.
So what happens when today’s mainstream Democrats have legislative majorities and face reasonably good political and economic conditions? The example of this year’s legislative session in Minnesota, where the party recently achieved unified control of state government, provides us with some ideas. It doesn’t remind me much of the status quo. MinnPost reports:
“Democrats codified abortion rights, paid family and medical leave, sick leave, transgender rights protections, drivers licenses for undocumented residents, restoration of voting rights for people when they are released from prison or jail, wider voting access, one-time rebates, a tax credit aimed at low-income parents with kids, and a $1 billion investment in affordable housing including for rental assistance.
“Also adopted were background checks for private gun transfers and a red-flag warning system to take guns from people deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others. DFL [Democratic] lawmakers banned conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, legalized recreational marijuana, expanded education funding, required a carbon-free electric grid by 2040, adopted a new reading curricula based on phonics, passed a massive $2.58 billion capital construction package and, at the insistence of Republicans, a $300 million emergency infusion of money to nursing homes.”
If you only look at battles that have already entered the realm of immediate political feasibility, it’s easy to miss many more that liberals are eager to fight and win.
I’ve been reading:
Bertrand Cooper and Jay Caspian Kang on affirmative action
Black Hills/White Justice, Edward Lazarus’ account of the legal battle between the Sioux Nation and the US
I’ve been listening to:
God Save the Animals by Alex G (more on this in a future post, probably)
“Vampire Empire” by Big Thief
The three singles that have been released so far from Alan Palomo’s forthcoming album, World of Hassle
Girl With Fish by Feeble Little Horse