Why Dems don’t have consensus on 2020

WAUKEE, Iowa — Bernie Sanders preaches “political revolution” to the crowds at his campaign rallies. Elizabeth Warren promises “big, systemic change” as she rolls out major policy proposals. And Pete Buttigieg warns his packed town hall audiences that the “riskiest thing we could do is try too hard to play it safe.”

But speaking to a khaki-clad crowd in the wooded front yard of Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, Joe Biden delivered a very different message: “I am absolutely convinced that there are still things people are prepared to cooperate on.”

In the days before the candidates will gather in Detroit for their second round of presidential debates, Democrats find themselves grappling with a central question: Is beating President Donald Trump enough? Or should Democrats, much like the man they hope to defeat, shake the political system like a snow globe?

Trump’s victory has prompted a wave of anxiety among riskaverse Democratic primary voters who fear the shock of waking up — once again — to find their antagonist-in-chief elected to the White House. At the same time, the president’s polarizing politics have energized the party’s progressive wing, prompting many of the candidates to embrace a series of ambitious proposals.

It is a critical question of identity for a party that has been trying to bridge an ideological schism ever since the midterms ushered in an ascendant group of lawmakers eager to challenge the establishment. It also comes as congressional Democrats have squabbled within their own caucus over issues like whether to impeach the president or whether they should compromise on border control.

Interviews with more than four dozen Democratic officials, activists and voters across Iowa found a party divided between those who felt that ousting the president and returning to a preTrump ethos in Washington was sufficient — and not worth the risk of seeking bigger change — and those who wanted to use the current political moment to fight for a fundamental reshaping of the nation’s economic, political and health care systems.

“We’d love to be thinking about creating change and progress, but honestly, right now we all just want this beloved republic to survive Trump,” said Marjie Foster, the Democratic chairwoman in Decatur County, an area south of Des Moines on the Missouri border.

Others say Democrats are also culpable for building a political system dependent on big-money interests — and now must tear it down. “It’s foolish to pretend that the problems in this country are the result of one aberrant presidency,” said Zach Simonson, the Democratic chairman in Wapello County in southeast Iowa. “Trump was the inevitable result of an economic system where both parties put the needs of wealthy donors ahead of working people.”

The push and pull over which path to pursue is playing out in tangible ways. In Iowa, interest groups are trying to push the Democratic candidates to the left. Greenpeace, for instance, stationed a field organizer in Des Moines who totes a hand-operated scoreboard to political events displaying the grades the group has awarded each of the 2020 candidates for their stances on the environment. In New Hampshire, volunteers with the American Civil Liberties Union appear at town hall events to press candidates to end the cash bail system and cut incarceration rates in half.

There are no organizations rallying early-state voters and candidates to the political middle.

The debate over what kind of candidate to run against Trump is a Rorschach test for how Democratic candidates, activists and voters see the future — and the past. The party’s center-left candidates argue that Trump is a historical comma, a four- or eightyear break from the country’s political baseline. They promise a return to a bygone political era of bipartisan cooperation and respectful political debate, with far less polarization.

Others, including Buttigieg, Warren and Sanders, view the president as the period at the end of an era in U.S. political life.