Quick Hit: Dems Let Trump Outflank Them on the Left
The Desire for Compromise and Action Continues to Leave The Party — and the Nation — Vulnerable to an Ugly Right-Wing Populism
Democrats are terrible at reading the populace. They allowed themselves to be co-authors of a bad stimulus/relief bill that includes foreign aid and some really questionable provisions — he return of the three-martini lunch? — but offers a pittance to the American public.
I wrote about the flaws he other day, which include the tiny relief payments, a smaller-then-needed unemployment benefit, and rental assistance that amounts to almost nothing. By allowing Mitch McConnell to set the terms, they’ve managed to join McConnell in looking like uncaring political hacks.
The key issue here is that they have allowed President Trump to use the paltry stimulus checks as his final act, moving to the Democrats’ populist left and asking for $2,000, or more than three times what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer agreed to.
Memes like the one above and this one
are among the many making the rounds of Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media. Most contain questionable information, or misconstrue the stimulus/relief bill. But that doesn’t matter. The argument embedded in these memes is what matters — that Congress used the stimulus checks as cover for a corporate and special-interest giveaway. That argument, which contains a kernel of truth, implicates not just McConnell but the Democrats, and posits Trump as the bastion of populist defenses.
It won’t matter that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised concerns throughout that he check were insufficient. Democrats dismissed them and attacked them as impediments to compromise — even though they were right.
Trump has been a menace to the nation, our institutions, and to the already vulnerable. He is anti-science and a megalomaniac. But he has a large base of support. The election of Joe Biden as president was important and needed. But his call for essentially returning to a status quo ante does nothing to reset the political and economic battle lines.
There is a deep and legitimate populist strain in the American psyche that has manifested itself in both left and right-wing movements throughout our history. The abandonment by Democrats of their left-populist elements has left the nation vulnerable to a right wing populism that sees egalitarianism and economic equity as dirty words. This right-populism uses the language of democracy to divide. It is deeply selfish and disdains any use of government that is not punitive, that is not authoritarian.
It is not going away, especially if the Democrats hold to their desire for comity and compromise, which they have raised to an ideology of sorts.
Compromise and constructive dialogue are tools, not ends in themselves. They are useless if the end result is bad policy.