Meet the Democratic misfits

Plus: Biden warns of ‘slight’ recession

msnbc tulsi gabbard
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard speaks to Chris Matthews of MSNBC in the Spin Room after the Atlanta debate
Share
Text
Text Size
Small
Medium
Large
Line Spacing
Small
Normal
Large

Misfit Democrats
This week, almost identical critiques of the Democrats’ midterms strategy came from two surprisingly different sources.

Leftist senator Bernie Sanders expressed his “alarm” at the idea that Democrats could “cut the thirty-second abortion ads and coast to victory.” It would, he said, “be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy.”

Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville agreed: “A lot of these consultants think if all we do is run abortion spots that will win for us. I don’t think so. It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re…

Misfit Democrats

This week, almost identical critiques of the Democrats’ midterms strategy came from two surprisingly different sources.

Leftist senator Bernie Sanders expressed his “alarm” at the idea that Democrats could “cut the thirty-second abortion ads and coast to victory.” It would, he said, “be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy.”

Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville agreed: “A lot of these consultants think if all we do is run abortion spots that will win for us. I don’t think so. It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on the cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word.”

The third way consultant and the socialist talisman agree. For all their differences, Carville and Sanders play similar roles these days as gadfly critics of Democratic Party received wisdom.

Another such gadfly quit the party altogether this week. 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is an unusual, heterodox politician and has never been a neat fit with the Democratic Party. But her departure is still notable. Announcing the move, she took aim at “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” and complained of a preoccupation with racial politics, hostility to the police and people of faith, belief in open borders and “above all, dragging us closer to nuclear war.”

As Ben Domenech notes, few could have foreseen that a one-time “squad-adjacent” politician would end up “accused of being a stalking horse for Republicanism within Democratic ranks.”

Gabbard, Carville and Sanders: none of these three figures owes the party establishment anything. One has left the party, another other is happily semi-retired, and the third is officially an independent and contemptuous of the DNC apparatchiks. Something similar could be said of Joe Manchin, whose political future depends on his distance from the Democratic mainstream.

These gadflies make for an interesting comparison to the Democrats running as self-styled moderates in the midterms. Much has been written about the candidates keen to distance themselves from their party’s unpopular resident. From time to time, a candidate coveting the moderate label will stick their head above the parapet and make a mealy-mouthed request that their party take the “concerns of voters” more seriously on immigration or inflation or crime. But beyond acknowledging political reality, what do these moderates actually want? And how does that distinguish them from, say, Joe Biden?

For all the talk of the moderate path to victory for Democrats after their recent excesses, the lack of a remotely coherent, distinct moderate bloc within the party is surprising — and notable. The irony is that the defining Washington showdown of the first year and a half of the Biden presidency was between the president and two moderate senators. But no moderate bloc would coalesce around Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

At the other end of the ideological spectrum sits the Squad and the House progressive caucus: noisy, troublesome, clear about their goals and their problems with the current leadership. But outside of that group, the Democratic Party is striking for its conformity.

Nowhere is the homogeneity of the party more striking than on the issue that its candidates hope will save them come election day. The demise of the pro-life Democrat is a well-reported trend. Congressman Henry Cuellar may be the only one left. Dig deeper and the uniformity only gets more striking. “Pro-choice” encompasses a wide range of positions, and yet Democrats are all clustered at the permissive end of that spectrum.

Elsewhere, occasional eccentricities are indulged: Northeastern suburbanites are allowed to complain about SALT, border-state representatives can contemplate the case of secure borders, Rust Belt hopefuls can utter a few rude words about China and trade.

Missing, though, is clear ground being staked out by the party’s moderates. Until that changes, internal opposition comes not from a group of an ideologically cohesive group of elected officials, but a grab bag of oddballs and gadflies. They may happen to be right — but are easy to ignore.

White House party poopers

Next month, Joe Biden will turn eighty. He will be the first sitting president to do so and the White House is approaching the milestone with all the anxiety of an aging Hollywood actress worried she’ll no longer get the starring roles. Don’t expect a big bash, warns Politico. Jake Tapper was the latest to ask the president’s age amidst discussion of whether he should run again in 2024. “It’s a matter of can you do the job,” said Biden. “And I believe I can do the job. I’ve been able to do the job.”

Biden warns of ‘slight’ recession

“I don’t think there’ll be a recession,” Biden told Tapper last night. “If there is, it will be a slight recession. That is, we’ll move down slightly.” On the same day, the IMF warned of “storm clouds gathering” and downgraded its forecasts for the global economy.

Read this

Charles Lipson: Russia’s brutal strategy of war is failing

The editors: The Biden ultimatum

Teresa Mull: Loretta Lynn’s music celebrated tough wives

Farnaz Fassihi and Jane Arraf, New York Times: Protests in Iran spread, including oil sector, despite violent crackdown

Paul Schwartzman, Washington Post: What does Madison Cawthorn do now?

William McGurn, Wall Street Journal: The real Asian-American race issue

Poll watch

President Biden Job Approval

Approve: 43.0 percent

Disapprove: 53.2 percent

Net approval: -10.2 (RCP Average)

Georgia Senate Race

Raphael Warnock (D): 46 percent

Herschel Walker (R): 43 percent (AJC)