The World Is Cracked
The fissuring of the Democrats is becoming more obvious. They must make an end to make a new beginning.
The world is cracked, but we still have to live in it.
| Alana Newhouse, Brokenism
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Alana Newhouse seems to be the source of the term ‘brokenism’, which David Brooks used recently in a panel-style interview with Patrick Healey and other NY Times contributors:
Patrick Healey: Why do so many Republicans like the direction Trump is taking the country in? Is it about his style or his policies or the mind-set and mood of the G.O.P. or something else?
David Brooks: I’d start with the world we’ve been living in for the last decade or so. According to an Ipsos survey last year, 59 percent of Americans think our country is in decline. Sixty percent believe “the system is broken.” Sixty-nine percent believe the “political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people.” If those are your priors, then you’re going to be happy with a president who wields a wrecking ball.
Healy: As Trump liked to say while campaigning, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
Brooks: I’d add another phrase: “brokenism.” This was popularized by Alana Newhouse in Tablet magazine in 2022. It’s the idea that everything is broken, and we just need to burn it all down. Personally, I think some things are broken and some things are OK, but most of my Trump-supporting friends are brokenists.
I will return to a deeper analysis of brokenism in a later post (and it doesn’t lead to ‘let’s burn it all down’), but let’s take as a given, for today, that Newhouse’s observation — ‘Everything is broken’ — is true.
As a hedge, if you need one, just smudge that by saying, ‘a lot of people believe, deeply, that everything — our institutions, the economy, the healthcare system, education, housing, child-rearing — is broken’.
You don’t have to be one of those people to read the rest of this note, but you might be. I know I am.
So, if the world is made of two kinds of people — those who think that everything is broken and those who don’t — the Democratic Party is likewise split in two. If their numbers reflect the national mood, 60% of elected Democrats would be brokenists. Because the group skews old and elite, let’s cut it in half: if so, perhaps a third of elected Democrats are brokenists. Whether they admit it publicly is another matter.
This younger, less hidebound cadre believes that institutions like the government are broken, and this reaches every level and aspect of government, like Congress, your city council, and most specifically, the Democratic Party.
This belief has been accelerated by the humbling defeat to Trump and MAGA in 2024, where Democratic leadership maintained the mindset of ‘status-quoists’ (again, from Newhouse) who believed in the establishment — and its old narrative and machinations — and that the electorate would be ok with a bit of modest tinkering to various party policies and positions.
And those status-quoist policies and positions were embedded in the elite worldview of white-bread progressivism. Not full-fledged, far-left, dark-rye socialism, whose adherents advocate free college for all, free healthcare for all, free childcare for all, subsidized housing for all, and more. Party leaders may mention those utopian ideals occasionally — or at least Bernie and AOC do — but mostly not. The party is not advocating socialism but, instead, an uncomfortable fusion of social liberalism and market-based economics that doesn’t scratch the itch that the party’s supposed base — working- and middle-class Americans — actually have. The party’s worldview lines up pretty well with those who were left in 2024: wealthy, well-educated professionals.
Mostly, the electorate’s dreams are more modest than the socialists’ or the elite’s: food on the table, stable jobs, lower crime, affordable housing, decent healthcare, and better schools. But the mainstream Democratic leaders continue to close their eyes and block their ears to what ordinary people say they want.
And those leaders seem to speak out of the wrong side — or both sides — of their mouths about what is important. Is it ‘democracy’ or the cost of living? If it’s both, which comes first?
When everything is broken, what do we fix first?
Our leaders should be able to tell us that, at least.
A great many commentators are following this split in the party. Here’s a sample, with my commentary:
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The Democrats Are in Denial About 2024 | The NY Times Editorial Board
Party leaders have embraced convenient excuses. This perilous political moment requires more self-reflection and honesty.
This essay provides good positioning of the conflict between the ‘on left’ -- the establishment Dems -- and the emerging ‘off left’ counter-establishment. The on left believes they have the right message:
“We’ve got the right message,” Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said while campaigning for the job. “What we need to do is connect it back with the voters.”
From the viewpoint of the off left this is completely wrong, and reflects the fact that the Democratic leadership are out of touch with the electorate: their concerns, needs, and beliefs.
The spirit of the on left is captured in this quote:
“I don’t think we’re going to win over those 77 million that voted for Donald Trump,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s 2024 vice-presidential nominee, said this month. “I’m concerned with the 90 million who stayed home.” It was an unfortunate echo of Hillary Clinton saying that millions of Trump voters were “deplorables” and “irredeemable.”
This is echoed by Jake Auchinclos, Democratic representative of Massachusetts,
There are two different parties. We have to start by understanding who our voters are not and then understanding who our voters could be — and go and try to win them over. If you’re walking to the polls and your No. 1 issue is guns, immigration or trans participation in sports, you’re probably not going to be a Democratic voter. That’s OK. There are two parties.
So they are writing off millions of Americans who may have voted for Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Obama and who have simply broken with the on left about border security, gun rights, or the identity politics behind trans rights.
There are many Americans who reject the domination of the Democratic platform by the groups -- the special interest organizations, think tanks, academics, non-profits -- that have appealed to wealthy, well-educated professionals that make up the majority of the Democratic Party's donors and voters, but who are focused away from basic kitchen-table economics, like inflation, cost-of-living, housing, and jobs.
The editorial board proposes three steps for the Dems:
'They should admit 'that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age'. They covered up his incapacity and then lied about it. They are still lying about it. The party grandees also should turn their attention to a range of issues where they didn’t listen to the electorate before November 2024: they cite 'crime, illegal immigration, inflation and Covid lockdowns', with immigration being most critical and most antithetical to the status-quoist narrative.
'Democrats should recognize that the party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017.' Perhaps to go so far to express off left sentiments as being the will of the people, as opposed to on left positions coming from the groups: the progressive, identity-politics end of the left, like defunding police and the trans molehill. As the Editors put it: 'Even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences — by race, gender, sexuality and religion — rather than our shared values.'
'The party has to offer new ideas.' 'Ms. Harris failed to do so in last year’s campaign, and few Democrats are doing so today.' 'One benefit of being out of power is that it offers time to develop ideas and see which resonate. It is not a time to say, “We’ve got the right message.”'
It looks like the Editorial Board of the NY Times are calling for an off-left movement to reanimate the Democratic Party, and realign it with what Americans are worried about.
As a concluding aside, we need a candidate like Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy (senior, not Jr, Trump’s lackey), about whom Richard Kahlenberg wrote, 'His appeal was a liberalism without elitism, and a populism without racism.'
You can't have new ideas without new leaders to espouse them. Where are the RFKs in today's Democrats? Where are the new voices?
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a new beginning.
| T. S. Eliot
The Dems must make an end if they want a new beginning.
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Declaring Their Party ‘Spineless,’ Democrats Try an Economic Populist Pitch | Annie Karni
A group of House Democrats referred to as the New Economic Patriots introduced themselves on Capitol Hill promising to lead their party out of its funk. It wasn’t clear how they planned to do so.
I presume this ‘spineless’ gibe is directed toward Chuck Schumer, after he backed down from standing against Trump's Continuing Resolution.
Looks like a group of House Dems are setting up shop to act as, at the least, a centrist and activist voice for the party. At the most, they might be an off left splinter in the House, promoting policy positions antithetical to the Biden-era progressive, on left agenda. Members of the group mention moving away from the interests of the elite, embracing support for the working class, fighting the depredations of large corporations, and calling mainstream Dem leaders 'spineless'.
This article did not detail the shibboleths of the Dems: support for Gaza v Israel; limiting immigration; or specific economic policies to benefit working-class people. The article mentions the clearly off left Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, but does not contrast this new group with the Blue Dog Coalition, which she's aligned with.
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‘Of Course People Are Angry’: Four Columnists Unpack What the Democrats Are Missing | Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Nicholas Kristof, Zeynep Tufekci
Why has fighting and opposing Trump proved so hard? It’s not just because Republicans hold all the cards in government.
I'm leaving out all commentary about the slide to authoritarianism, Trump's venality, and his administration's corruption. I get it, and agree, but it obviously did not put the Dems in the White House or Congress.
Kristof correctly points out that fighting for 'democracy' doesn't catch fire with people outside the on left bubble. Many disaffected voters, after all, associate 'democracy' as a set of status quo, establishment policies, and they are alienated from institutions, generally, and so ‘democracy’, specifically. He says, 'The problem is that Democrats are outraged over Trump eroding our democracy and system of laws — but that isn’t an issue that has as much resonance with many Americans.'
M. Gessen has some good insights about the disaffected: 'The Democrats (or anyone) cannot move forward without really addressing the deep dissatisfaction, the sense of being systematically let down and even betrayed that so many people in this country feel. I think that defending the status quo is precisely what cost the Democrats the 2016 and 2024 elections. Saying “don’t break the system” when people feel, with good reason, that the system is broken signals that the Democratic Party is out of touch.'
But later on, M. Gessen acts as an apologist for the on left, touting Sanders and AOC as exemplars. But they are socialists, not Democrats, really, at all.
And this: 'These [GOP claims about immigrants stealing American's jobs] effectively channeled voters’ economic and social anxieties, and I don’t think that the way to respond to them is to embrace the idea that people want tighter controls on immigration.'
But if you ask people, they say they want that, so Gessen's just tuning them out. Gessen goes on:
'For one, these controls won’t help — either with job security or with votes for Democrats. The problem isn’t not listening to voters on immigration; the problem is failing to understand that voters feel anxious and abandoned by their government.' Gessen, later on, says it again, with more cowbell: 'I think it would be a huge mistake to look for a more moderate Democratic politics or to try to out-Trump Trump on issues such as immigration.' Gessen explicitly argues against off-left tendencies bubbling up in the party. He wants to ignore the Dems that win in Trump territory or get them to stfu.
This is Hirschman's thesis of futility, asserting that dealing with people's concerns about immigration won't work -- either as policy or politics -- so we should ignore them. However, the weakness here is that dealing with citizens' disaffection in general won't mean that people will embrace immigration, specifically.
And then Gessen explicitly promotes moving left, which is a constant refrain of the on left:
'I believe that it is not only possible but necessary to address these anxieties with a politics of humanism and justice — which would mean moving left.'
Gessen argues for the Democrats to move even further left, despite the rightward drift of working-class people. Who does he think the Democrats should pull into the tent? No one that voted for Trump, like Jake Auchincloss has said out loud? He seems to want to talk people into moving to the left, instead of talking to them about they want. He is the quintessential status quo on-left progressive.
Are there voices in this panel nodding toward an off left response to the debacle of 2024?
Zeynep Tufekci: 'As an immigrant myself, I don’t see what’s so difficult about understanding that uncontrolled mass waves of immigration are destabilizing to any country while also forcefully advocating for humane treatment and the rule of law for people already here.' This is the sort of off left balancing act that Dems running in Trump districts have to make to win.
Kristof seem to be leaning off left: 'I think it’s accurate to portray Trump as authoritarian; I just don’t think it’s particularly helpful politically, and that should have been one lesson of the November elections. The Democrats who outperformed in swing districts were those who mostly focused on local and economic issues about well-being. Trump is enormously vulnerable in that respect, for his economic policies are a mess and will probably exacerbate the inflation that helped elect him. He benefited from working-class frustration, but Medicaid cuts and squeezes on Social Security will amplify the struggles of the working class.' Again, an off left stance.
Those democrats did advocate strengthening the border, the economy, and how institutions have failed people, like the VA not doing enough for veterans, etc.: again, pointing the finger at failed or failing institutions is very off left.
The moderator, Patrick Healy, has the best one-liner: 'Talking about town halls feels a little like bringing a ham sandwich to a knife fight.' And Tufekci is runner-up: 'The rule of law is the foundation of modern civilization.'
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I will continue this theme going forward: ‘the rise of the off left’.
The status-quoist Dems tried to talk the voters into becoming more progressive than they believe themselves to be… and failed.
Something like the emergence of an off-left movement has to happen if the Democratic party is to win national elections. Oh, and the party needs a slew of charismatic and pragmatic off-left candidates running for public office at every level. Starting now.
Starting now, the Dems must make an end if they want a new beginning.