Democrats must drop quest for perfection
The most famous line by far about self-inflicted damage belongs to the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, who observed about the Palestinian leadership that it “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” For their part, however, Democrats have historically also done a pretty good job of doing themselves harm, and if they are not careful, the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election may feature repeat performances.
During the 2016 campaign, the Democrats’ left wing vilified Hillary Clinton for being everything from a Wall Street tool to a virtual felon. A serious, admirable career of advocating for women, children and Americans without health care counted for nothing with these types, who instead bought and peddled overblown attacks on the Democratic nominee’s paid speeches and use of her own email server. Among Clinton’s most vitriolic — and unhinged — detractors were supporters of Green Party candidate Jill Stein and embittered acolytes of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Clinton “is not different enough” from Donald Trump to warrant progressives choosing Clinton over Trump, Stein told Al-Jazeera in September 2016. “We have two ways to commit suicide here and I say no thank you to them both.”
This bit of brilliance and others like it, repeated endlessly during the 2016 campaign, landed the United States in the disaster zone in which we presently find ourselves. The Stein vote alone exceeded Trump’s margin over Clinton in Michigan and Wisconsin, and came close to matching his margin in Pennsylvania and Florida. That, of course, doesn’t count the countless eligible voters who bought the risible nonsense that there was no serious difference between Clinton and Trump and chose not to vote, thereby guaranteeing Trump’s victory and in turn treating the nation to the debacle that is the Trump presidency.
Just as 2016 will not be the last time that self-professed progressives in their wisdom effectively prevent a progressive from becoming president, it was not the first time that they did so. Had either New Hampshire or Florida gone for Al Gore rather than George W. Bush in 2000, Gore rather than Bush would have been elected. Gore lost New Hampshire by 7,200 votes; Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s 2000 nominee, won 22,000, three times the margin. In Florida, Gore lost — famously — by a mere 537 votes. Nearly 100,000 Floridians decided that progressivism was better served by voting for Nader than for Gore. Had only a small number of voters in New Hampshire, or a miniscule number in Florida, thought a tad more deeply about the potential consequences of their vote, history would have been very different.
With their Democratic base turned sharply leftward, and consumed by a revulsion at the Trump presidency that is easily understood, Democrats seeking attention and support will be tempted to outdo one another at being bombastic. It is a temptation worth resisting. “We need to focus less on what’s wrong with Trump and the Republicans and more on what’s right with us,” cautions former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, himself weighing calls to run in 2020 from former Obama backers and others.
Professor Wendy Schiller, chairwoman of Brown University’s political science department and a former aide to Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, warns Democrats to park their impulse to self-cannibalize. “The great danger for the Democrats in 2018,” she says, “is to lose the good in search of the perfect.” She worries that “without a credible unified alternative that will inspire disillusioned wings of the party to come together and turn out the vote,” Democrats will fail in 2018 and 2020.
Democrats have spent the last 18 months scratching their heads at how they could possibly have misjudged America — and blown the 2016 election — so badly. Their path forward surely begins with a new commitment to lose the self-righteousness, and go light on their proclivity for eating their young.