Corruption could be the key
Much commentary on the 2018 midterm campaign has focused on a drift or a lurch left in the Democratic Party, the measurement of the portside tilt varying from analyst to analyst. In fact, more moderate progressives have done well in the primaries so far, but Democrats are certainly less enamored of centrism than they were in the 1990s.
What’s missed in this sort of analysis is that many, maybe most, of us don’t think in simple left-right terms, and countless issues are not cleanly identified this way. The same is true of elections. When the returns are tallied in November, the results may be better explained by the reform/corruption dynamic than any other.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait was one of the first journalists to suggest how important corruption could be in this year’s campaign. Writing in April, Chait argued that it “should take very little work” for Democratic candidates “to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed.”
The advantages of the corruption issue are (1) “corrupt” really is the right word to describe the Trump administration; (2) a concern over corruption transcends philosophical dispositions; and (3) the failure to “drain the swamp” is one of President Trump’s most obvious broken promises. Instead, Trump has turned the swamp into an immense toxic waste dump. The stench emanates from Cabinet officials driven from office by egregious behavior and from Trump’s own violations of longstanding norms limiting business dealings by presidents and their families.
But the corruption issue goes beyond meat-and-potatoes sleaze. Our democracy itself is in danger from the overpowering influence of money on our politics, unchecked foreign intervention in our elections and an increasing willingness of Republicans to bias the system in their favor through gerrymandering and restrictions on access to the ballot.
And Trumpian corruption has shown that we counted too much on the decency of public officials. Alas, we now know that basic expectations — from the release of tax returns by presidential candidates to the avoidance of blatant conflicts of interest — need to be codified. Scandals are like that: They teach us where existing laws fall short.
A program to renew self-rule is coming to a congressional campaign near you. In late June, Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., introduced a resolution outlining a broad agenda that has been cosponsored by 163 House Democrats. It’s a promissory note to the electorate outlining areas where the party is working on legislation it pledges to enact should it win a majority.
They would start by restoring the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013; providing for nationwide automatic voter registration; ending purges that disenfranchise many citizens; and outlawing gerrymandering by requiring states to establish cross-party commissions to draw district lines.
Sarbanes said in an interview that the goal is not simply to have a campaign theme that appeals to conservatives, independents and progressives alike, but also to commit his party to specific actions. “This is not a message you wear,” he said. “This is a message you own.”
E.J. Dionne is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group.