Grass-roots Democrats know what’s worth fighting for
Here is a party fresh off a series of big election triumphs all over the country.
The nation faces an unprecedented challenge brought on by President Trump’s breathtaking irresponsibility. Republicans are pushing through the most reactionary tax bill since the 1920s.
And what do leading Washington Democrats want to do? Theywould have us engage in the “move left” vs. “move to the center” squabbles that have obsessed the party for at least three decades.
Old arguments feel comfortable but they’re inadequate for the moment. And new research is finding that this bickering does not match the mood of local antiTrump activists.
Ever since Trump’s surprise victory, the distinguished Harvard University scholar Theda Skocpol has been spending a lot of time in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Ohio with her colleagues Mary Waters and Kathy Swartz.
They are talking to leaders and rank-and-file citizens in two counties in each state to track changes in our politics wrought by the 2016 outcome.
All the counties they are studying voted for Trump, yet in every one of them, new anti-Trump organizations have risen up.
What’s struck Skocpol is how irrelevant the Democrats’ tired quarrels are to these freshly engaged citizens.
“At the grass roots, people are dealing with the crisis Trump’s presidency presents to America, and they’re not refighting the election of 2016,” she said in an interview. “They’re not talking about whether the Democratic Party should be more progressive or more centrist.”
This activism, as Skocpol sees it, is motivated by a simple but powerful civic sense that Trump is violating basic norms and principles of American life.
The troops on the ground don’t need programs or litmus tests imposed from on high, she adds.
This was also the lesson of this month’s elections, which saw victories by Democrats across the party’s spectrum of opinion. In Virginia, Gov.-elect Ralph Northam ran a moderate statewide campaign, while downticket winners in legislative races included a member of Democratic Socialists of America as well as the first openly transgender person elected to a statehouse.
Voters in Virginia (and New Jersey and elsewhere) said to Washington Democrats: Stop it with your stupid fights. We have work to do.
The combatants in the intraparty arguments might usefully start by acknowledging the merits of some of the insights their opponents offer.
Jared Leopold, the communications director of theDemocratic Governors Association, said that Northam’s approach resonated with Virginia voters who “were looking for a calm and strong leader in themidst of chaos in Washington.”
Moderates have a pointwhen they say that voters nationally are similarly seeking steady and reliable leadership.
But progressives, in turn, are right to argue for clear, compelling and comprehensible policies to deal with the economic inequalities that are hurting many in the ranks of Clinton and Trump voters alike.
Bold, not bland, is the way to go.
For now, the imperative is to check Trump’s abuses and to stop the truly radical agenda that Republicans are advancing, including their continuing efforts to wreck Obamacare and an unpopular, budget-busting corporate tax cut that redistributes large sums of money to society’s wealthiest.
The grass-roots activists know how important these battles are. The ideological infighters should learn from them.