It’s funny. I’m currently listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast and he’s currently doing the French Revolution. It’s really amazing to see the the original revolutionaries go from being ultra hardcore to moderate to enemies of the revolution all without changing their political positions. The revolution just completely overcame them. It sounds a little like this in US politics.
At this point, we just have to assume that these types of folks aren’t 51% of the voters, and call their bluff. They’ve become so extreme that they’re probably the biggest threat America has faced since the Great Depression.
They’re basically morons, who have essentially zero idea how our government or economy functions. They are operating entirely on macho bullshit and bravado.
I don’t think there’s any question that hard-liners (on either side of the aisle) aren’t 51% of the overall voters, or even two-thirds. But between the electoral system and the way that Congress works, a fairly small minority can have a big impact if everyone else isn’t united in efforts to stop them. The whole system is pretty much designed that way, and as a general rule I think that’s a good thing since ignoring minorities is bad, too. It’s just that when that small minority’s platform is “let the world burn” economically, and “go back 100 years” socially…well, then it’s not so good. And they’ve cleverly (or by accident, who knows) locked themselves in politically with a big chunk of folks (the rest of the Republican party) who know that opposing the crazies will hurt their own chances to come to power for years to come. We haven’t yet come to the point where the GOP is willing to chew off its own foot to escape the trap.
The only way to deal with the freedom caucus.
Great. Thanks for that particular cheery thought this fine autumn morning. ;)
David Brooks has an editorial/rant on this again today in the NYT, but doesn’t manage to include any suggestions for solutions.
This is an extremely good piece.
Can you please point to the hard liners on the Democrats’ side of the aisle? If not, be careful of the false equivalency trap.
This is starting to feel like a more European-style of government, with multiple parties that need to caucus together to get anything done. The moderate Republicans are currently caucused with the Freedom Caucus, but they don’t agree enough with them to get anything done. What we need to happen is to have out political parties truly fracture and form for real caucuses, so that the moderate democrats and moderate republicans can get this country moving again, which the far left and far right crazies wither on the vine.
That will never happen, of course. The politics of “us vs them” is too entrenched in our system. If a Republican goes against the party line, the Koch brothers fund their opposition candidate the next cycle. The only way to survive in politics is to follow the party and paint the other side of the aisle as demonic. To the point where almost nothing gets bipartisan support. Both parties are guilty of it.
I almost want the crazies to win this time. Bring the government to its knees until the changes that need to happen become the only way out. Fracture the 2-party system. Reform “big money politics”. Change the culture.
I’m not sure there are any in Congress right now. We’re living in a world of Republican-controlled gerrymandering. But surely no one thinks that hard-line liberals don’t exist?
Of course they EXIST, just like flat-earthers exist. But they don’t have any political clout or factor into American politics in any way except as as Internet boogiemen for the Far-Right wingnuts.
Well anyone they don’t like at all in either party is always identified as a hardline liberal-socialist. This has been the case since Reagan somehow demonized these words without the Democrats fighting back against being pilloried. That always mystified me, by the way. But since the Democrats are so conservative, it’s going to be tough to pin the “liberal” label on anyone noteworthy in party apart from Sanders and Warren. And it’s hard to call them “hard-line” because they have not obstructed government or in fact ever done anything very objectionable. But the majority of Democrats, people like Reid and Pelosi and Clinton, are pragmatic establishment centrists with no left-wing ideology to speak of.
They aren’t anywhere near the aisle tho. They aren’t even in the building. Most of them aren’t even in the country.
Hence false equivalency. The closest you might get are the fringes of black lives matter and they aren’t important enough to even know their names much less run for office and win. It’s like giving equal time and weight to the flat earth society when NASA is discussing a mission to Mars.
OK, fair enough, you’re right: there’s no equivalent to the Tea Party craziness in today’s Democratic party. Don’t see how it matters for the purpose of the discussion. Point still stands: the reason the Freedom Caucus representatives are able to use 40-some folks to bring things to a grinding halt in the House is that the rest of the (presumably more sane) Republicans are locked together with them. If all 390-ish other Congresscritters united against them, there’s no issue.
I really loved the piece, thank you. “We’re still here” … I think that capture the feeling of rural voters perfectly.
the English left should understand that if you’re going to take a people’s story away from them, you need a better one to replace it with
And this too… you have to give people a positive story. You can’t just tear down their heroes and give them nothing in return.
I was also deeply sympathetic to his worries about growth. The rural county that I grew up in has been bulldozed to make way for McMansions. The old culture was born from the land, and was built around a love for the country - that was extinguished.
I sometimes feel like I’m in the middle of a war on the past.
The missing piece here though and especially in the US is the role that right wing media play. If the RWM continues to be unmoored from reality so to will those who follow it to the exclusion of all other sources. Until and unless that changes it won’t really matter how the left (or in our case Democrats) change their story - it will simply remain ignored.
I studied the American Civil War at university, and the ante bellum period. I’m wary of seeing too many parallels, that’s far too easy, but I think we’re dealing with similar structural and cultural issues.
When Jackson created the Democratic Party, he was trying to build a coalition that would appeal to voters north and south of the Mason Dixon line. He worried that a strictly regional party, built around southern (or northern) values would pull the young country apart. The regions had much in common, but they were in many ways culturally alien to each other - a direct result of their colonial cultures, and the preferences of the original settlers*. The big issue of the day was slavery and free labor, but Americans were also deeply divided on issues of personal liberty and federal power.
South Carolina was a bit of a menace in that period. Every state had its radicals, but in no other state were radicals in charge - not like Carolina. And it wasn’t that they were more numerous, the problem lay in state politics. Democrats faced no real opposition in the state, and in a story that may sound familiar, the primaries had turned into general elections - general elections in which only the most dedicated voters participated. These fire eaters understood the situation perfectly, they ran on firebombs and they knew that compromise would get them thrown out of office - and so they acted accordingly.
Again, I don’t want to make too many facile comparisons, but I think we’re dealing with a similar problem here. And the media certainly plays a role in this. There are a host of publications that cater and develop this us versus them world view - publications that push legislators to take extreme stands, and punish them for compromise.
I would say the cultural reformers. There isn’t much budge room there.
The problem is that they are really not Republicans at all. They have their own ideals, their own leadership, their own caucus, their own agenda, their own voting block, etc. They campaigned and were elected as R, and the establishment is glad to have them since it allows them to NOMINALLY have the majority. But as time goes on, the power plays are crippling both parts of the R via party civil war. The classic Republicans are afraid to give up their majority with a D president, and the Tea Party knows that as a third party they wield much less power. So each group despise the other, but clings together.
Ah, they’re Republicans In Name Only. But secret RINOs!
Normal non crazy Republicans and Democrats need to band together and say, “look, we don’t agree on much, but we agree on SOME stuff, and don’t think the country should shut down” and just say fuck you to the extreme right tea party fools.
It’d be nice, but Republican incumbents are terrified of getting ‘primaried’ – attacked from their own right flank. Used to be that Republicans incumbents in safely red districts didn’t have too much to worry about. Now, no one wants to be the next Eric Cantor.