Democrats Go for the Jugular! (Their Own)
The Republicans are led by a bigoted, incompetent president whose approval ratings are near historic lows. The Republicans in Congress embrace one unpopular policy option after another, so that all the signs pointed to a GOP bloodbath in the midterm elections.
Posted — UpdatedThe Republicans are led by a bigoted, incompetent president whose approval ratings are near historic lows. The Republicans in Congress embrace one unpopular policy option after another, so that all the signs pointed to a GOP bloodbath in the midterm elections.
All of this has left those of us in the pundit class with a frustrating problem. Obviously, the Democrats were going to find some way to screw this up. But no matter how much we pulled and stretched our imaginations, we couldn’t quite figure out how exactly they were going to do it.
Et Voilà!
In just one short week the Democrats have succeeded in failing with a brilliant five-part plan.
It’s not that people don’t like DACA. They do. It’s that they just don’t recognize themselves in a party that thinks it’s worth closing the government, destabilizing the economy and straining the military for it.
The Democrats captured this same paradoxical profundity with their superb messaging over the weekend: We bravely shut down the government to save the Dreamers even though Donald Trump is responsible for shutting down the government.
The ancient Chinese master bows in respect.
But of course the problem was not that the leadership capitulated on Monday. It was that the Democrats talked themselves into this crazy position on Friday.
The Democrats are the party that believes in government. It doesn’t do them any good to make the federal government look dysfunctional. The Democrats are trying to defend a bunch of seats in red states. This immigration über alles strategy was never going to play well there. The Democratic presidential contenders are going to be a big problem for the Democratic Senate candidates.
Democrats, when you lose a negotiation to a president who doesn’t know his own position, you’ve really impressed me.
It’s fitting that we had a government shutdown over the issue of immigration. Racially tinged conflict has been the defining feature of the Trump era. Most of the outrage has been caused by the president picking at the nation’s wounds. But by now both parties have racial identity wings, which believe that political life is inevitably a power competition between identity groups. Both parties build their coalitions by magnifying racial identity and exploiting racial difference.
But there are some of us who are uncomfortable with the whole identity-politics drill. We believe that while racism is the central stain on American history, racial conflict is not inevitable. By reducing inequalities, by integrating daily life, we can eventually make our common humanity more salient and our racial difference less so. We believe that America has already made strides in this direction and that it’s everyone’s responsibility to make racial diversity a creative spark and not a source of permanent hostility.
One of these days some party should pay attention to us folks.
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