Wayne O'Leary

Random Thoughts on Democratic Dissonance

I don’t recall a presidential nominating process decided on the basis of fear, but that’s where the Democratic Party appears to be headed going into 2020. There’s a saying, generally attributed to Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of Germany (1871-90), that God protects fools, drunkards and the United States of America. But Democrats seem dubious about God’s likely intervention next year, so many of them are taking out political insurance against a catastrophic Trump reelection.

The insurance policy on offer is the nomination of Joe Biden, and about a third of Democrats have signed up so far, putting him in first place according to the pollsters. Another third (or slightly more) are holding out for either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the progressive populists in the race; the final third have scattered their support among more than a dozen also rans. Things remain fluid and anything can happen, but as of this writing, Biden still occupies the catbird seat.

Uncle Joe is the safest bet, so the conventional wisdom goes; this is premised on his leading margin over Trump in the polls (although Sanders, Warren and others also whipsaw the Donald). Biden’s a “moderate,” of course, and to a certain type of Democrat, no other ideological stance is practical or permissible in a nominee.

And there’s the rub; the establishment wing of the party — its congressional leadership, its national committee membership, its large-donor class — wants a so-called moderate for ideological reasons, as does the aging portion of its base nostalgic for the Clinton-Obama era of incremental progress and bipartisan outreach. The same interests, pragmatic to a fault, see no alternative if the great bogeyman Donald Trump is to be defeated. Yet, increasingly, that’s not where the heart and soul of the party, encompassing its left-leaning activist wing and the mostly younger, more progressive portion of its base (rapidly becoming a majority), now resides.

The moderate Biden — let’s call him what he is, a centrist — both represents and personifies a yearning for the orderly politics of the recent past. His campaign rhetoric suggests he would like to return to the 1980s or 1990s, when Democratic third-way triangulation and minimalist bipartisanship were in vogue. But he’ll settle for the Obama years, a golden age for Biden and his supporters. In fact, every other sentence the former veep utters seems to begin with the phrase “Barack and I.” He wants to preside, evidently, over a third Obama term.

So, suppose Joe Biden is nominated and elected. If Republicans retain the Senate under Mitch McConnell’s obstructionist leadership, his every mildly progressive initiative, however modest, will be either stymied or deformed. Obama’s vice president will fare no better legislatively than Obama himself, who was regularly snookered by McConnell. Disregard Biden’s naïve claim to have forged a cordial insider working relationship with McConnell. No Biden agenda item will pass unless it conforms to good buddy Mitch’s priorities. Always remember, a “compromise” acceptable to today’s hard-right Republicans means giving them most or all of what they want.

Suppose, on the other hand, Biden reaches the White House and Democrats take both houses of Congress. In that case, we’ll see an internecine conflict of stunning ferocity, as circular firing squads form up around the capitol. Biden will be presiding over a Democratic Party at war with itself — left progressives against centrist moderates. Fundamental party splits on policy will break into the open over health care, climate change, immigration, and much more, all of it exacerbated by generational differences. The question would then become whether Biden could manage the situation.

There are reasons to doubt he could. The Biden of 2019 seems backward-looking and timeworn. Bernie Sanders is two years his senior, yet appears sharper and more youthful. Biden projects an inability to recognize that the Obama interim he celebrates was politically underwhelming — from the inexcusable failure to sanction the corporate interests responsible for the financial crash and Great Recession to the flawed and inadequate Affordable Care Act, whose creators can’t admit needs major statutory surgery, or a decent burial.

But the prospect of an uninspired (and uninspiring) Biden administration is not the only problem facing Democrats. Why, for instance, won’t more prominent party members run for the US Senate when failing to control it will neuter Democratic policy hopes for the foreseeable future, even if Trump is overthrown?

In this regard, at least one prominent Democrat is running for the Senate, but for the wrong seat at the wrong time. That would be Congressman Joseph Kennedy III, grandson of RFK, who promises to be the skunk at the 2020 garden party for progressives by taking out not a conservative Republican, but a fellow liberal Democrat, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. Call it a case on Kennedy’s part of blind ambition.

Markey, 73, a one-term senator with 12 prior terms in the House, has an impeccable progressive record. Kennedy, 38, is a four-term congressman with not much of a record at all, but he’s good-looking and has great hair. And, of course, he’s got that name. Markey is one of the most liberal members of the Senate (the single most liberal by some measures), and he’s been a longtime leader in addressing the environmental crisis and climate change, partnering with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, N.Y.), the redoubtable AOC, to introduce the Green New Deal in Congress. She has unequivocally endorsed his reelection.

Kennedy, by contrast, has been a relative latecomer in support of the Green New Deal, as with other progressive causes. Initially a single-payer skeptic, he held off supporting Medicare for All legislation until this year. (Markey was an original co-sponsor of the bill in 2017.) The congressman is liberal, but unlike Ed Markey, he’s never been on the principled cutting edge of issues.

Kennedy’s decision to challenge Markey on flimsy generational grounds bordering on ageism highlights another unattractive personal trait, raw opportunism blended with a sense of entitlement. So far, Democratic progressives in Congress and in the Bay State aren’t buying it. Besides AOC, Markey has the support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California’s rising star Rep. Ro Khanna, and a host of activist environmental and social-justice organizations.

So Democrats have some defining choices to make, both at the presidential and congressional levels. Nevertheless, for a self-identified progressive party, those choices shouldn’t really be that hard.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2019

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