John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, co-authors of “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” are back with a new book that argues that the Democrats are imperiled by a “shadow party” that is forcing them into “radical” positions on cultural issues and diverting them away from their core economic issues.
Part of that is the democrats fault for only placating the left with issues that are free and don’t threatent current power structures. Like letting people use any bathroom they want, or allowing the LGBTQ communities to be part of the Military. When it comes to the progressive economic policies, M4A, Federally legal weed, or Lawmaker stock trading bans, they drag their feet because these things challenge the profits of their donors and their status quo. Those first two have have over 65-70% of popular support since the study the libertarian foundation did that proved M4A would save money. I’d also argue all those hard policies would have an immediate and profound impact on literally every prospective voter. They used the progressive movement and only conceded what they thought to be strategically necessary.
I definitely agree the Democrats are doing that, but if they weren’t and were instead advocating for all the things progressives want, that would still be alienating some working class voters, so the authors’ argument remains the same.
Sadly, I don’t see a way around this that actually gets progressive causes greater backing from anyone. We literally just have to work on changing the culture via education and patient advocacy and discussion. If anything, the tack of some activists makes things worse, because their solution is to be more aggressive, which just makes those on the fence more skittish about all this stuff.
I agree doing simply everything the progressives want, especially quickly would alienate a lot of voters, and I don’t see eye to eye with elected progressives on everything, but I suppose I do more so than any other group in congress, low bar I know. I just kind of wish the progressives got like one nice decisive win with some of the popular policies that would immediately help people, specifically things like M4A or legal weed. I know I’m no pollster I just feel like it’s a layup in terms of getting voters.
Cannabis legalization has been doing fairly well, actually. It’s already legal in half the states in the country. Slowly, but surely, I see this becoming federal law relatively soon. And even if it doesn’t become federal law, if it only remains illegal in a handful of states, I’d say that’s already a decisive win.
Medicare for all is a much harder sell and still doesn’t have the publicity it needs to gain traction. But this is always the case with progressive policies. Gains are small and slow, but build momentum with time. Personally, I’m looking forward to a future congress making abortion legal again, this time without a nod from SCOTUS. I always said if SCOTUS ever did overturn Roe, it would simply galvanize the public to demand it actually gets codified into law. We’re already seeing Republicans suffer for this, and I have full confidence we’ll get back to nation-wide legal abortion well within my lifetime (and I’m already half-dead).
One of the reasons the Right has resorted to drumming up conspiracy theories is that they know they can’t win on arguments against modern issues Leftists are bringing up, not in the long term. So, they try to distract their base from said issues and have them focused on bullshit that doesn’t actually matter. This won’t work forever though. It’s a stalling tactic at best.
I know it can seem grim sometimes, but keep the long game in mind and remember that in free societies (and yes, the U.S. still qualifies) there’s a natural bias towards progress.