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Democrat Joe Biden appears to have ousted Donald Trump from the White House, yet for many Democrats and progressives the results of the election have produced mostly disillusionment, even despair.

The reason isnt hard to decipher. They expected the end of the Trump era to be marked by a blue wave, a surge of progressive political power that would sweep away not only Trump but right-wing obstructionism in the Senate and, in time, even the Supreme Court.

But the wave isnt visible in the results, so whats consumed the left is pessimism and gloom.

The model for this take comes from the liberal writer Eric Levitz of New York Magazine, who pronounced the election a nigh-catastrophic setback for progressive politics in the United States.

Levitz declared the Senate lost to Democrats for at least a decade to come and even cast doubt on the partys ability to hold on to the White House in 2024. All this before all the votes have been counted in 2020.

History has some advice for the despairing: Settle down and take a deep breath. Things arent nearly that bad.

You dont need a message that will only appeal to the Rust Belt or only appeal to the Sun Belt. You can run on a broad message that has appeal ... to those voters in Southern states, to younger voters, to non-whites all over the country.

Progressive political analyst Ruy Teixeira

A couple of fundamental points need to be made at the outset. One is that a progressive trend in American politics has been building for years; evidence of it was visible in many down-ballot contests on election day and obscured by exotic conditions in others. More on that in a moment.

Another is that its foolish to be defeated by ones own exaggerated expectations. Political waves dont happen all that frequently, and when they do, theyre often evanescent, in part because they can provoke equal and opposite reaction.

It may be better for progressivism to continue to infuse itself into the body politic in stages, rather than all at once.

The notion that American politics moves in waves is an artifact of analytical hindsight. Jack Balkin, a constitutional law scholar at Yale, recently cited his colleague Stephen Skowroneks categorization of political cycles for a Washington Post op-ed.

These eras are the Federalist (1789-1800), Jeffersonian (1800-1828), Jacksonian (1828-1860), Republican (1860-1932), New Deal-Civil Rights (1932-1980) and Reagan (1980-the present).

In each political era, Balkin observes, a new dominant party arises, forms a winning coalition, promotes its interests and ideology, and eventually decays and collapses, often the victim of its own past success.

Reagan Republicanism has run out its string, Balkin writes, setting the stage for a new regime with a new dominant coalition and a new dominant party, most likely the Democrats.

Yet its important to note that changes of political eras usually dont occur so abruptly or at least that such changes are often visible only in a rearview mirror.

One might be inclined to think of the New Deal-Civil Rights era, for instance, as nearly a half-century of unbroken progressivism, but it didnt appear full-blown with the 1932 election and took decades to fully play out. As Ive written, the New Deal itself was a mlange of liberal and conservative policies under Franklin Roosevelts leadership.

The second item on FDRs legislative list during his vaunted first Hundred Days, after closing the banks and arranging for their reopening under sturdier financial circumstances, was the Economy Act, which slashed the pay of federal employees and cut veterans benefits, all in the name of balancing the federal budget.

During the 1932 presidential campaign, Marriner Eccles, the Utah banker who would help FDR remake the Federal Reserve System, was perplexed by the spectacle of the conservative Herbert Hoover touting the dynamism of his public works spending while the ostensibly progressive Roosevelt castigated him for his spendthrift ways.

The campaign speeches, Eccles reflected, often read like a giant misprint, in which Roosevelt and Hoover speak each others lines.

The New Deal often institutionalized the racism in federal programs, and FDR resisted to the last Black activists pleas for an anti-lynching law. Roosevelt almost torpedoed Social Securitys old-age program on the very eve of its enactment in 1935 (his priority for the law was an unemployment relief program).

The progressive rethinking of the federal governments relationship with the people that began with Social Security didnt reach its full flowering until three decades later, with Lyndon Johnsons creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. In other words, these things take time.

Another problem with shoehorning political history into discrete eras is that political parties are rarely monoliths.

The Republicans of Skowroneks 1860-1932 period encompassed the stolid pro-business politics of William McKinley and the progressivism of McKinleys vice president and successor, Theodore Roosevelt who would eventually splinter from the GOP by forming the Progressive or Bull Moose Party to run for President in 1912. The progressive cause was carried on by President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, in 1913-1921.

After the 1932 election, FDR wavered between liberal and conservative policies in part because some of his strongest progressive supporters were Republicans and some of his most powerful critics were Southern Democrats, whom he could not afford to alienate with civil rights initiatives.

This years election reminds us that not all states or regions are as ideologically monochromatic as they appear on the surface. Florida voters went for Trump, but also passed a $15 minimum wage law. Only two years ago, moreover, Floridians opted to restore voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences.

That would have added as many as 800,000 voters to the rolls had not Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature not worked hard to undermine the law by imposing fees and conditions to the restoration.

Other apparent retrenchments from progressive trends may have other explanations than ideology.

Take Californias Proposition 22, which seemed to reverse the progressive trend toward better workplace benefits and protections by allowing ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft to continue treating their drivers as independent contractors with substandard rights.

A key to the initiatives passage was plainly the more than $205 million spent by those companies and other gig employers to draft and promote the measure.

California Democrats may have given back a couple of the congressional seats they wrested from the GOP in 2018 (as we write, the outcome is still unclear), but they may also have solidified their control of the state Senate by adding some seats to their preexisting supermajority.

Voters also approved a progressive proposal to restore voting rights to parolees, while rejecting a measure that would have increased penalties for minor offenses.

The trend toward a more progressive American electorate has been developing over the long term. Democratic presidential candidates have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections, from Bill Clintons first victory in 1992 through Bidens win.

In two of those elections, however, the popular vote loser became president George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 due to the peculiarities of the electoral college (and in Bushs case, the meddling of the Supreme Court).

Many progressives have been wringing their hands over the thought that some 69 million Americans could have cast their votes for a candidate as manifestly unfit for reelection as Donald Trump. Here its also worth examining the record. Over the last 200 years of American history, the presidential vote has almost never broken down by more than about 60-40.

Thats true even in elections viewed as landslides. The largest percentage of the popular vote secured by a winning candidate since 1820 belonged to Lyndon Johnson in 1964, when he trounced Barry Goldwater by winning 44 states; even then, his share of the popular vote was only 61.05%

A similar story unfolded when Richard Nixon lost only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia to George McGovern in 1972 but collected only 60.67% of the popular vote and in FDRs commanding victories over Herbert Hoover in 1932 (FDR won 42 out of 48 states, and 57.41% of the popular vote) and over Alf Landon in 1936 (losing only Maine and Vermont to Landon yet 60.8% of the popular vote).

In other words, with few exceptions presidential elections have been fought for voters in the no-mans-land of the middle 20 percentage points, no matter how plausible or implausible any candidate has been.

The 2020 contest, judging from the current numbers, was no exception: Bidens record-setting popular vote, which is approaching 72.5 million, still amounts to only about 50.4% of the total votes cast.

Over the last couple of decades progressive projects have materially advanced in American politics. The nation has embraced gay rights including same-sex marriage, the legalization of marijuana and moved toward universal health coverage. Immigration policies were becoming more liberal.

None of this happened without significant pushback from reactionary elements in all three branches of government and at all governmental levels. As has been often observed, the path to justice is not a straight one.

If theres a silver lining in the blue wave that never came, it may be that the outcome will prompt Democrats to take stock of their approach to building a lasting political edifice. Thats the view of Ruy Teixeira, whose 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority, co-written with John Judis, examined the demographic trends underlying Democratic power.

Teixeiras thesis, as he told Greg Sargent of the Washington Post before election day, was that a Democratic coalition uniting non-whites, professionals and people who live in cities and suburbs could only be dominant and stable if it managed to retain a substantial share of the white working class.

These are people who havent been doing well for decades, Teixeira says. Their communities have suffered declines, jobs problems, healthcare problems. Democrats have to speak to these people.... You dont need a message that will only appeal to the Rust Belt or only appeal to the Sun Belt. You can run on a broad message that has appeal not only to persuadable members of the white working class in the Northern-tier swing states, but also has appeal to those voters in Southern states, to younger voters, to non-whites all over the country.

For Democrats, this is still a work in progress. There has been progress; what the election tells us is that the destination hasnt been reached, just yet.

Link:
Hiltzik: The end of Trump and a new progressive era - Los Angeles Times

As former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden edged closer to winning the presidency, Democratic lawmakers descended into a fresh round of recriminations, with some establishment Democrats charging that the partys swerve to the left helped fuel a surprisingly strong showing by President Donald Trump that helped Republicans maintain control of the Senate and forestall an expansion of the Democratic majority in the House.

Democrats still have a slim chance of gaining control of the Senate in a pair of Georgia runoffs in January, but for the time beingand potentially for two yearsRepublican Sen. Mitch McConnell has maintained his grip on the upper chamber. That will make it more difficult for a Biden administration to satisfy progressive demands for cabinet picks, pass progressive legislation, or impose new checks on the power of the presidency.

The mixed outcome of the race threatens to diminish the influence of Sen. Bernie Sanders and other members of the partys left flank, and may well ease pressure on Biden to offer progressives key positions in a new administration, according to interviews with several establishment and progressive Democrats. It also raised concerns among progressives that Biden will seek to forge a bipartisan governing consensus with McConnell, his former Senate colleague, at the expense of progressives who helped energize the partys more liberal base that helped deliver Biden the presidency.

Democrats fear Republicans will threaten to block the appointment of progressives in a Biden administration, prompting the new president to bypass worthy candidates for government office. Of course, the Trump administration simply ignored Congress and placed acting officials in cabinet roles for extended periods of timea possible playbook for the next administration.

Look, at the end of the day, Joe Biden received more votes than anyone in the history of this country. President Trump, with a smaller victory, installed radically conservative folks in the administration, said Stephen Miles, the executive director of the progressive advocacy group Win Without War. The last four years have been a master class in how to staff your administration even with an uncooperative Senate.

Several Democratic Senate aides conceded that it would be difficult for Biden to tap prominent progressive figures to senior administration posts, including the secretary of state position, for which some on the left had hoped that a progressive leader like Sen. Chris Murphy would be a front-runner. This week, Murphy predicted that Mitch McConnell will force Joe Biden to negotiate every single cabinet secretary, every single district court judge, every single U.S. attorney with him, according to Politico. My guess is well have a constitutional crisis pretty immediately.

The Senate aides also said it might be difficult to enact more ambitious foreign policies, such as broad-scale nonproliferation efforts or increasing foreign aid after four years of what they described as neglect under Trump. In the past, however, Republicans have fended off some of the White Houses calls for more draconian cuts in the foreign aid and State Department funding.

Still, other election observers are more hopeful, saying that Biden would come into office with the mandate of securing the most votes of any presidential candidate in U.S. history and a lot can get done with control of the White House and the House alone.

I think you have to look at the specific issues. A bipartisan majority of senators has already voted to halt U.S. military involvement in Saudi Arabias war in Yemen, and I expect they will again in 2021, said Andrew Albertson, the head of the advocacy group Foreign Policy for America. Its clear the Biden administration will extend New START. Its going to restore U.S. leadership in combating the climate crisis. Trumps Muslim ban, his family separation policy, his rejection of refugeesall thats going to end, he added. Im excited about all we can accomplish.

Despite the likely defeat of Trump, the Democrats failure to secure the Senate and expand their majority in the House led to a fresh round of finger-pointing between the partys establishment and progressive flanks.

In a leaked private exchange among Democratic lawmakers, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who narrowly beat her Republican challenger in Virginia, charged that the partys shift to the left had nearly cost her the race.

We lost members who shouldnt have lost, Spanberger said in a heated internal conference call with members of the House Democratic Caucus, according to an account in the Washington Post. The No. 1 concern and thing that people brought to me in my district [because of attack ads] was defunding the police. And we need to not ever use the word socialist or socialism ever again.

And in Florida, the partys left wing proved to be something of a liability, according to some Democratic congressional staffers. Republican candidates portrayed establishment politicians, including Donna Shalala, a former U.S. secretary of health and human services, as socialists in the mold of left-wing Latin American autocrats from Cuba to Venezuela.

Progressives pushed back, noting that initiatives like a $15 minimum wage performed well in Republican districts, and that Democrats neednt sacrifice their convictions and govern from a position of fear. They cite the case of Rep. Katie Porter, who won reelection in Californias conservative Orange County.

Dear centrist friends, the progressive left put differences aside and worked extremely hard to help get Biden elected, Sanderss top foreign-policy advisor, Matt Duss, tweeted. If you want to keep folks energized and mobilized maybe dont blame them for your tough races.

We have to be thinking about 2022. If we want to mobilize voters for the midterms, we have to keep all our constituencies energized, Duss told Foreign Policy on Friday. Remember who helped get us here.

Progressives said there are areas of convergence, even with a Republican-controlled Senate, citing the growing consensus across party lines for the withdrawal of more than 4,600 U.S. military forces in Afghanistan by the end of 2021.

There is also a lot the president can achieverejoining the Paris climate accord, restoring humanitarian funds to Palestinians, reopening nuclear talks with Iran, and rebuilding a demoralized State Departmentwithout agreement from the Republicans.

But some key progressive goals, like greater oversight of presidential war powers, seem harder to achieve now. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) has been the bedrock of Americas forever wars, but some congressional Democrats say it will be difficult to rein in the AUMF under a Republican-controlled Senate. Others suggest that too few lawmakers are willing to run the political risk of tying the presidents hands, particularly a Democratic president.

Do you want to be blamed for tying the presidents hands in the event of another terrorist attack and leave him with no ability to respond? one congressional staffer said. Weve controlled the House for two years, and there has not been a credible effort to move something like that. I dont think the Biden administration will come up with legislation to undo his ability to conduct a war whenever he wants.

A President Biden would have considerable leeway to offer concessions to Iran, including by easing sanctions imposed by Trump, in an effort to jump-start nuclear talks and to convince Tehran to return to compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. But it is unlikely that Biden would be able to persuade the U.S. Congress to endorse such a dealand that kind of iron-clad ratification might be whats needed to get the once-burned Iranians back to the negotiating table.

Read the original:
Democratic Progressives Fear Being Left Out in the Cold as Biden May Be Forced to Govern With a Republican Senate - Foreign Policy

Social democracy dies in Bangor. Photo: Robert F Bukaty/AP/Shutterstock

This week, the American left clambered out of hell, only to find itself condemned to political purgatory.

Barring an act of malign intervention, Donald Trump will be a one-term president. As of this writing, Joe Biden has won 253 Electoral College votes, with expected wins pending in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and decent odds of eking past the president in Georgia. If youd told Democrats one year ago that their nominee would reassemble the partys blue wall in the Midwest and make long-awaited gains in the Sun Belt, to boot they would have been ecstatic. Today, theyve brought less ecstasy to blue America than an amalgam of relief and despair. And for good reason: The 2020 election was likely a nigh-catastrophic setback for progressive politics in the United States.

If America were the kind of republic where a party could govern by winning the most votes, Democrats would be in excellent shape: The party has won the popular vote in all but one election since 1992; no other party in U.S. has ever won popular backing for its standard-bearer as many times in a three decade period. But we are not that kind of polity. Instead, we operate under an archaic Constitutional framework that awards individual voters wildly different levels of political power, depending on where in the country they happen to live: A voter in Wyoming enjoys 70-times as much influence in the U.S. Senate as one in California, due to a population disparity between the two states that is much larger than any that existed at the time of the founding (at which point, many framers already found the concept of equal representation for states in the upper chamber, irrespective of population, to be an outrageous if necessary compromise).

Due to the abundance of thinly populated, rural, overwhelming white states in the South and West, the Senate currently has a 6-point bias in favor of the Republican Party; which is to say, given the existing major party coalitions, Democrats are unlikely to win the tipping point state in the Senate (i.e. the one need to secure a bare majority) unless the party is winning nationally by 6 percent or more. Of course, this is an illustrative abstraction: In real life, all 100 Senate seats arent on the ballot in a single election cycle, and Democrats have longtime incumbents like Joe Manchin and John Tester, whove managed to hold their own in increasingly Republican states.

But urban-rural polarization is steadily intensifying in the United States, while ticket splitting the practice of voting for one party at the presidential level and another down-ballot is becoming less common (though its possible the data from this election will reveal an uptick). Taken together, this has made it harder for Democrats to retain seats in Republican territory (even in the wave election year of 2018, Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill got evicted from the Senate), or to mint new Manchins and Testers (Montana governor Steve Bullock lost by nearly double-digits in his Senate race last night).

This state of affairs makes it exceedingly difficult for the Democratic Party to win control of the Senate, while remaining faithful to the aspirations of its predominantly urban base. In the view of Democratic data scientist David Shor, 2020 was the partys last, best chance to win a Senate majority for the foreseeable future: Red-state incumbents Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Sherrod Brown held onto their seats in 2018 with the help of a historically Democratic national environment but are unlikely to be so lucky when they are on the ballot again in 2024. Thus, the partys best hope was to eke out a majority in 2020, while it still had votes in unlikely places and then, to use that majority to award statehood to Democratic leaning territories like D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, thereby mitigating the coalitions structural disadvantage.

On Tuesday, Democrats likely missed their shot. To win a Senate majority (after Doug Joness inevitable loss to a non-child molester Republican in Alabama), Democrats needed to flip four Republican seats without losing any more of their own. Their most plausible path for hitting that mark was to win races in Maine, Colorado, Arizona, and North Carolina. But Susan Collins won handily in Maine, and Thom Tillis appears to have bested Cal Cunningham in the Tar Heel State. That leaves Democrats two seats short of a bare majority.

The party still retains an outside shot at capturing those two seats: It looks like both of Georgias Senate races are headed for January run-off elections between the top two finishers, with Republican Kelly Loefller facing off against Democratic pastor Raphael Warnock, and Republican David Perdue taking on former Barack Obama impersonator Jon Ossoff. The odds of Democrats sweeping these races arent great. Generally speaking, in special elections held right after presidential ones, the party thats just lost the White House tends to enjoy a turnout advantage, as winners get complacent while losers thirst for vengeance. Further, if Ossoff forces Perdue into a run-off, he will do so only barely: Perdue needed 50 percent plus a single vote to win reelection Tuesday; he appears likely to finish with something in the neighborhood of 49.9 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, anyone with remotely progressive political commitments should contribute anything they can to winning these two races.

If Democrats fail to pull off an improbable triumph in the Peach State, then the Biden presidency will be doomed to failure before it starts. With Mitch McConnell in control of the Senate, Biden will not be allowed to appoint a Supreme Court justice, or appoint liberals to major cabinet positions, or sign his name to a major piece of progressive legislation; and that may very well mean that the U.S. government will not pass any significant climate legislation, or expansion of public health insurance, or immigration reform, or gun safety law this decade.

With Biden in the White House, there is a good chance that Republicans will grow their majority in 2022, as the GOP will enjoy the turnout advantage that almost always accrues to the presidents opposition in midterms. Two years later, Democrats are more likely than not to lose their aforementioned red-state incumbents. Extrapolate from current demographic trends, and Democrats dont take the Senate again until 2028 or later.

To be sure, one interpretation of last nights results is that one should not presume that existing voting patterns will carry forward. Ten years ago, Republicans built their gerrymanders around the presumption of suburbias conservatism; the faultiness of that presumption is a large part of why Democrats now have a House majority. Four years ago, the growing Hispanic share of the electorate was seen as an existential threat to the Republican Party; in 2020, it was a critical source of strength for Donald Trump.

All this said, urban-rural polarization is a phenomenon with deep roots in the United States, and most other advanced democracies. The Democratic Party has always derived disproportionate support from big cities and densely populated industrial centers. During the New Deal era, this liability was offset by northern liberals uneasy alliance with the white supremacist South, an arrangement that (thankfully) proved unsustainable. Democrats certainly have room to moderate on issues that divide urban and rural America. But whether such triangulation will be sufficient to compensate for their partys association with urban liberalism is far from clear; the fact that Joe Bidens unceasing apologias for the private insurance industry were insufficient to prevent much of southern Florida from deeming him a socialist is not encouraging on this point. At the very least then, progressives must treat the notion that Republicans now have a hammerlock on the Senate as a serious possibility.

The Electoral College is a bit less problematic for blue America. Contrary to the claims of its defenders and detractors alike, Americas bizarre approach to electing presidents does less to empower rural voters, or balance regional interests, than to inject an extra dose of contingency into history. Yes, the number of Electoral College votes afforded to each state is not proportional to population. But the bigger bias comes from the winner-take-all nature of the system: whichever party happens to be at 51 or 52 percent of the (major party) vote in whichever populous states happen to be close at that point in time enjoys an arbitrary advantage. At the present moment, that advantage accrues strongly to Republicans. But its plausible that Georgia, North Carolina, and eventually, perhaps, Texas, will become light blue states, at which point, the partisan bias will reverse.

Nevertheless, Bidens narrow margins in the Electoral College in a contest against a Republican incumbent with historically high disapproval, high unemployment, a declining stock market on the eve of the election, and a pandemic that he spent the final weeks of the campaign conspicuously spreading and advertising his indifference about containing cant help but make Democrats nervous about their odds of retaining power in 2024. Further, the aforementioned rightward shift in Hispanic voting patterns adds to such anxieties. If Biden wins the popular vote by 5 points quite plausible given the vote left to count while flipping Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by slim margins, then one might reasonably categorize those states as light red in a more neutral national environment. For a few years now, Democratic strategists have seen an emerging blue majority in the Sun Belt as a potential replacement for an increasingly tenuous Rust Belt coalition. But the former was and is highly dependent on the party retaining the lions share of the Hispanic vote. If non-college-educated Latinos assimilate into Republicanism like the white ethnics of yore, the Democrats electoral math in Nevada and Arizona could become more challenging.

The bad news for Democrats extends to the one site of federal power where they had appeared to be building strength, if not a structural advantage: The House of Representatives. As the borders of blue America extended farther into the suburbs, it was possible to imagine that Republicans would eventually see their base of support become more geographically concentrated in rural areas than the Democratic Partys base was in cities, leading the GOP to waste more votes by running up the score in exurban districts. But, contrary to expectations, Democrats did not fortify and expand their caucus Tuesday night; rather they surrendered recently won suburban districts on their way to a significant loss of seats.

Making matters worse, as of this writing, Democrats have failed to flip control of any state legislative chambers ahead of next years House redistricting. To the contrary, Democrats lost control of the New Hampshire state Senate and Alaska state House. Now, the GOP boasts full control of state government (and thus, of redistricting) in 22 states, while Democrats control only nine. This will enable Republicans to produce a new and improved gerrymandered House and state legislative maps for the next decade of elections (gerrymanders that may be further enhanced by a shoddy Census that undercounts Democratic constituencies).

Finally, although liberals can take heart at a major victory in Floridas $15 minimum wage referendum, and various drug decriminalization or legalization ballot measures across the country, some of the most basic premises of progressive politics were rejected by voters in the bluest of U.S. states. In California, voters rolled back the labor rights of rideshare drivers and rejected a proposal for affirmative action, while in Illinois, a majority of voters refused to free their state from a constitutional obstacle to raising taxes on those who earn over $250,000 a year in the middle of a fiscal crisis. There is little reason to think that the latter outcome reflects the unpopularity of raising taxes on the affluent; heaps of polling indicate that there is broad, bipartisan support for soaking the rich. But the outcome does testify to the fact that moneyed interests are capable of poisoning even the most broadly appealing of progressive ideas in the minds of the public through well-funded propaganda campaigns.

So, what is to be done? How are we to make this country less cruel and unequal at home, and a less destructive force on the world stage? How are we do so within a political culture so pathological, a president can shamelessly abet the spread of a fatal disease and still come a few lucky breaks short of reelection? How, when increasing voter turnout to levels unseen in a century did not produce a Democratic landslide as progressives have long told themselves high turnout would but rather, a down-ballot disaster? How, through political institutions that systematically underrepresent the constituencies most sympathetic to the progressive project?

I did not sleep enough the past two nights to muster well-considered answers to these questions. But I can offer a few ill-considered intuitions: Progressives should redouble their efforts at making change at the state-level and, at leveraging state-level power for national change. Democrats are underrepresented in the Senate. But they are overrepresented in the centers of American economic power. Californias authority to set its own emission standards helped nudge national carmakers towards cleaner vehicles, lest they lose access to the Golden States massive market. This seems like it could serve as a potential model for more audacious assertions of state level regulatory authority. Republican administrations will doubtlessly challenge such assertions, as they have challenged Californias power to regulate emissions. But given that multiple states nullified the federal prohibition of marijuana for years with little consequence, embracing a defiant, states rights progressivism may be the best of the lefts bad options.

Meanwhile, Democrats must put serious time, energy, and resources into discerning whether there are any low-harm concessions to rural opinion and sensibilities that could staunch the partys bleeding outside of metro areas. To the extent that Democrats can win elections by running candidates in red areas who are anti-gun control in the same sense that Susan Collins is pro-choice loudly proclaiming the ideological stance on the campaign trail, while effectively abetting the cause one purports to oppose while in power progressives might be wise to give such heretics some latitude. Separately, something must be done to counter the benefits that the GOP derives from Fox News, rightwing talk radio, and crypto-conservative news broadcasters like Sinclair. Bleeding-heart billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer might be well-advised to bankroll newspapers in swing state capitals, with hefty budgets for investigating Republicans. They could also attempt to emulate Sinclairs strategy, and buy up local news stations, or even sports channels, and lightly season their programming with progressive propaganda.

Regardless, Democrats shouldnt avert their eyes from the bleaker aspects of last nights returns, or from the most ominous portents for the partys future. There were plenty of heartening small victories last night, and some positive structural trends for the party, which Ive given short shrift here (the rising generations unprecedented hostility to conservatism, chief among them) And, of course, Democrats shouldnt deny themselves a moment of congratulation for (probably) cutting short the presidency of an authoritarian ignoramus. Whats just ended is worth celebrating; barring a down ballot triumph in Georgia, whats just begun is not.

The bittersweetness of Bidens victory consists precisely in the fact the Trump era is dying and a progressive one cannot be born. If we are to find our way out of this interregnum, well need to face up to our republics morbid symptoms.

The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected byNew York's editors.

The rest is here:
The 2020 Election Has Brought Progressives to the Brink of Catastrophe - New York Magazine

A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against racial inequality at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., June 6, 2020.(Lucas Jackson/Reuters)

On a House caucus call today, Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger, reportedly in an agitated state, warned that Democrats lost races we shouldnt have lost. She further claimed that defund police almost cost me my race because of an attack ad. Dont say socialism ever again. Need to get back to basics. . . . If we run this race again we will get f***ng torn apart again in 2022.

Elsewhere, former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill had this to say: Whether you are talking guns or . . . abortion . . . or gay marriage and rights for transsexuals and other people who we as a party look after and make sure they are treated fairly. As we circled the issues we left voters behind and Republicans dove in.

I see other Democrats grousing today that their candidates in Florida and elsewhere were falsely labeled socialist. Im sorry, if thats not the message you want to send, perhaps Nancy Pelosi shouldnt pose with a gaggle of Marxists on the cover of Rolling Stone. Perhaps Democrats should treat Bernie Sanders as a fringe crank rather than a comrade whos just moving a tad too quickly. Maybe arguing democratic socialism is the good kind doesnt quite do it for the folks in Des Moines.

What are voters in Texas supposed to make of every major presidential Democrat presidential candidate, including Joe Biden, giving their blessing to the authoritarian Green New Deal? Boy, fact-checkers had to work overtime to help Biden walk back those endorsements of fracking bans, of defunding the police, and of confiscating guns.

We may well have a president in a few months who says there are at least three genders. Which probably seems sane on Twitter, but less so in Jacksonville, Fla. McCaskill has already apologized for her use of the word transsexuals. Unlike progressive urban dwellers, one suspects the vast majority of suburban Americans have zero clue what McCaskill is sorry about. They may even believe that letting genetic boys compete with their daughters in track and field is ridiculous. They probably wouldnt be crazy about being accused of being transphobic for taking this rational position.

Now, of course, most Americans arent obsessing about transgender issues when voting if they even think about them at all. But hundreds of these woke inanities tend to add up.

The same thing goes for the identitarianism thats now overwhelmed left-wing politics. The constant obsession with race isnt working. We just went through an alleged racial reckoning and four years solid of liberal pundits accusing every political opponent of being a crypto-Nazi, and yet Democrats lost ground among black and Latino voters. For any useful purpose, that well is nearly dry.

There are, no doubt, some populist redistributive economic ideas that might well be popular. Minimum-wage hikes seem pretty innocuous, I imagine. Raising taxes on the wealthy is always a winner. At some point, though, a white working-class dad in suburban Pittsburgh or the Latina daughter of a Venezuelan immigrant in Miami is going to hear the tragically ludicrous ravings of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and learn what modern progressivism is really about.

One day, maybe soon, Democrats will be rid of Donald Trump. But the hardcore progressives they welcomed into their party during the Resistance arent going anywhere.

These people, as Yarom Hazony has noted, believe in a Marxist ideology in which class is swapped out for wokeism but economic pseudoscience is still intact. Many mainstream reporters, some of whom spent four years championing the Squad, probably struggle to comprehend why anyone sees its views as extreme. Exit polls tell us that many other Americans do not.

But now that races are increasingly nationalized in part, because Democrats made everything about Donald Trump the culture war matters again. As a political matter, that war may have been a drag on Republicans in the past. Its one they should be fighting today.

See the original post:
Progressivism, or Why the Culture War Is Turning in the Republicans Favor - National Review

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THE BIG DEALBiden wins America's economic engines: President-elect Joe BidenJoe BidenBrewery launches new Biden beer described as 'inoffensive and not too bitter' Deb Haaland says 'of course' she would serve as Interior secretary under Biden State Department won't give Biden messages from foreign leaders: report MOREs victory last week came on the strength of his performance in the strongest parts of Americas economy, the latest sign of a growing economic and cultural divide thats increasingly shaping the nations political debate.

That chasm will make reconciliation between bitter partisans all the more difficult in the years ahead. The Hills Reid Wilson tells us why here.

The growing divide: The partisan gap between the nations economic powerhouses and its laggards has widened dramatically over the last two decades.

Why its happening: The growing Democratic advantage is a reflection of the evolution of an economy that was once based on agriculture and manufacturing but is now dominated by services and information.

That shift has concentrated economic power in big cities and among younger, more diverse and better-educated workers all groups that favor Democrats over Republicans.

LEADING THE DAY

Progressives praise Biden's picks for economic transition team: President-elect Joe Biden is earning praise from progressives for tapping a wide range of government veterans and academics to help form an economic team that will be tasked with trying to advance Democratic policies in a deeply divided Washington.

While Biden has not announced any Cabinet nominees, the scholars and economists he picked to lead agency review teams included familiar names in progressive circles. I explain why here.

The transition team:

Biden has also enlisted leading experts on racial economic disparities and discrimination within the financial system, such as University of California Irvine law professor Mehrsa Baradaran and Michigan State University economics professor Lisa Cook.

I think some of this reflects that this administration, for the next two years, will likely rely heavily on administrative reform to help redirect the priorities of the nation and push more fairness and more economic reach for working families and families of color, said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending.

Restaurants go seasonal with winter shutdowns during pandemic: Congressional inaction on COVID-19 relief combined with rising coronavirus cases is prompting more restaurants to close up shop for the winter and go into hibernation until warmer weather returns.

Shutting down a restaurant temporarily is never going to be a perfect or elegant solution. There is still going to be workers or suppliers that rely on that restaurants operations that are going to be left short, said Sean Kennedy, executive vice president of public affairs at the National Restaurant Association.

The Hills Alex Gangitano has more here.

GOOD TO KNOW

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On The Money: Biden wins America's economic engines | Progressives praise Biden's picks for economic transition team | Restaurants go seasonal with...