There's So Much To Learn From Catastrophes That Grow Out Of Your Own Shortcomings— But Few Ever Do

After the 2016 fiasco, the DNC chose not to do an autopsy. I mean if you already know everything there is to know why bother? But RootsAction do one for them. Judging by what just happened, I’ll guess no one at the DNC ever read it. Among the key findings the DNC missed in 2016… and relived last week:

·      The Democratic National Committee and the party’s congressional leadership remain bent on prioritizing the chase for elusive Republican voters over the Democratic base: especially people of color, young people and working-class voters overall.

·      One of the large groups with a voter-turnout issue is young people, who encounter a toxic combination of a depressed economic reality, GOP efforts at voter suppression, and anemic messaging on the part of Democrats.

·      Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and corporate domination. Siding with the people who constitute the base isn’t truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them. 

·      The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people. 

·      Operating from a place of defensiveness and denial will not turn the party around. Neither will status quo methodology. 

·      What must now take place includes honest self-reflection and confronting a hard truth: that many view the party as often in service to a rapacious oligarchy and increasingly out of touch with people in its own base. The Democratic Party should disentangle itself— ideologically and financially— from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs.

On Friday, Norman Solomon, the founder of RootsAction wrote that Biden has already begun “to blaze a post-election trail of conciliation toward the extremist politics of the present-day Republican Party. If congressional Democrats follow along that path, they will compound their grievous error of serving as yes-men and yes-women for Biden’s insistence on running for reelection, until his disastrous debate performance. A huge looming question now is whether Democrats in office will fold up their tents and retreat— or fight back against the Trump forces that are on the march. It’s long past time for Democrats on Capitol Hill to stop playing follow-the-leader and start providing actual leadership worthy of their constituents. For one thing, members of Congress should refuse to echo Biden’s post-election rhetoric and instead speak plainly and forcefully about the rough road ahead to protect civil liberties and the rule of law.”

He urged Democrats in the Senate to “make full use of the two months ahead. Those who can wield committee gavels before the changeover should hold high-profile hearings to spotlight vital facts about the Trump record, his threats to democracy and the enormous dangers that the Project 2025 agenda poses. Looking ahead to next year, Democrats should jettison the standard rhetoric about reaching across the aisle. Voters who elected Democrats will not take kindly to odors of capitulation to the GOP. And in 2026, those who behave as quislings will risk vigorous primary challenges.”

Among next year’s Democratic freshmen will be moderates Adam Schiff (CA), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Angela Alsobrooks (MD), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE) and two House members who have been both progressive and “moderate” from time to time, Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Andy Kim (NJ). My guess is that Schiff, for one, will be on board with Solomon’s ideas, at least when it comes to all-things-Trump. I’m not so sure about the others.

Solomon reminded his readers that “what the Democratic base has been yearning for— leadership— needs to emerge from the party’s lawmakers who have been tragically willing to go along with the catastrophic political edicts from the Biden White House and the Democratic National Committee. What’s past is prologue, but retrospective understanding could help light a fire under elected Democrats who wasted years publicly supporting the idea of Biden running for reelection while privately bemoaning it… The futures of the Democratic Party and the nation as a constitutional republic are inextricably intertwined. To be sure, that’s not because of any great virtue to be found within the Democratic Party. The reality is that in the two-party system, the Democrats are the only bulwark against the runaway power of the Trump-MAGA Republican Party— and the transformative agenda so clearly and ominously mapped out by Project 2025. Right now, huge numbers of Americans are holding their breath, with great trepidation, to see if ‘the system’ can withstand the massive stress test ahead. The Democratic Party has failed to avert this existential crisis for our nation as the vaunted land of the free. To avert irreversible catastrophe, the historic burden now falls on Democrats in elected positions to step up to their responsibilities at last.”

Quoting E.B. White— “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day”— Jamie Raskin offered that hope to his followers. Let me share some of that hope here:  

They say that defeat in politics is a far more profound experience than victory, and we have all traveled through a swirl of profound emotions and ruminations over the last few days, with more thoughts and feelings surely to follow. 

…The loss hit us like a ton of bricks. The last few days have been a blur of grief, disbelief and denial, regret, despair, resignation, estrangement and loss, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, the first stirrings of acceptance and renewed resolve to fight for the people and the true principles at stake in this fight. 

If you want to start to feel better, think about this:

Just as we feel demoralized by the Harris-Walz loss to Donald Trump by four million votes in 2024, Trump’s supporters felt demoralized by Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes in 2020. 

But, operating as constitutional patriots— and not partisan zealots, we have responded honorably to the loss of the presidency.  

We’ve expressed our disappointment civilly and our hopes for the future honestly. 

We’re not telling sinister judicially-debunked lies about who won the election to divide America. We’re not concocting disinformation and propaganda about imaginary election fraud in the states. 

We’re not committing fraud by trying to get state election officials to fabricate thousands of nonexistent votes to change the results. Nor are we preparing counterfeit electoral college slates.

We’re not summoning mobs and violent extremist groups to attack police officers and destroy the peaceful transfer of power. 

We’re not out inciting mob violence against Capitol police officers, Montgomery County and D.C. police officers, federal law enforcement officers, Members of Congress, the Vice-President or anyone else in order to overthrow the election and block the peaceful transfer of power. 

We are modeling true democratic citizenship without jettisoning our principles and values. 

As Democrats we undoubtedly made strategic and tactical mistakes in this campaign. We need a rigorous analysis of what worked and what did not work against the dreadfully effective tactics of our homegrown authoritarians and oligarchs. 

This is a process all of us should be engaged in— not just the Harris-Walz campaign or the Democratic National Committee— but all of us who have skin in the game. 

But our values have never been a mistake. We have defended constitutional democracy against right-wing coups and violent insurrection. We have defended the freedom and health care of women against theocrats. We have fought for children and opportunity against the defenders of inequality and the promoters of chaos who vow to destroy Head Start and the Department of Education. 

We have championed the right to health care and cheaper prescription drug prices, Social Security and Medicare, the work of climate scientists. We have defended libraries against book-banners, the right to vote against vote suppressors and fair elections against the lords of gerrymandering. We have insisted upon a foreign policy based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. 

We are among 68 million Americans who voted for these principles and values, and we’re not going anywhere. 

But I know it's no fun to lose an election contest between the bright hopes of democratic progress and the dark promises of MAGA authoritarianism. 

…For as long as I am alive, I am going to honor and participate in this urgent fight for strong democracy, freedom and progress for all. Regardless of all the attacks on the January 6th Committee and threats against Democrats in Congress, I’m not going anywhere and I will never back down to the bullies and the oligarchs, the autocrats and the theocrats, the extremists and Russian bots.

This is our country and I’m going to fight alongside you to defend it every day. 

I should leave it at on that inspirational note but… well, you know me and I was reading this essay— The parties learned what they always learn— by Seth Masket and he’s also thinking about the lessons Democrats will think they’ve learned from the 2024 debacle. “Democrats,” he wrote, “are convinced that they lose when they nominate someone who is too ideologically extreme and makes working class whites uncomfortable, and when they pivot toward the center they tend to win. Republicans are convinced that they lose when they try too hard to please centrists, but win when they stand up for what they believe in... Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 completely threw Democrats… The narratives were pretty diverse, but a lot of them led to a common set of beliefs: they had erred in nominating Clinton, she was somehow too unconventional a candidate, and they needed to find a bland relatively moderate white guy if they were ever going to defeat Trump. The outcome of 2020 confirmed those Democrats’ beliefs. No, we can’t re-run 2020 with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Cory Booker on the ticket, so we can never prove it, but as far as many Democrats were concerned, they needed to moderate (both ideologically and symbolically) to win, and they did and it worked.”

“…Democrats are already wrestling with the lessons of 2024, and this will go on for some time to come. Some are focusing on Kamala Harris’ race and sex, suggesting that they need to nominate a white guy to win the White House back. Some maintain that they must win back working class whites through better messaging or policies. Unless I’ve missed it, no prominent Democrats are arguing for doubling down on the party’s message of inclusion or nominating someone more extreme [huh?????] than Harris… It's still early and far from clear what Democrats will end up doing over the next few years. But what we’ve really seen so far from both sides is a great deal of confirmation bias. Each party perceives the political world as it perceives itself. And, remarkably, each party still has a roughly 50-50 shot of winning national elections.”