US Democrats and their chronic difficulty in fighting for their own side

It shouldn’t be a surprise when Democrats fight for their own side. But it often is!

Nicole Lafond of TPM notes that the Dems were very quick to start using their own position in defense of abortion rights against the new Christian-nationalist Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

No, you’re not alone in thinking you’ve never heard of Mike Johnson before. Apparently, some Republican members of the House barely knew who he was before this week. But the Democrats were quick to realize that his anti-abortion-rights position was something that could be used against the whole Republicans Party:

As my colleague Kate Riga noted repeatedly in today’s live coverage of the speakership shenanigans, Democrats are already happily pinning the new speaker’s abortion absolutism on the backs of the entire party as a messaging strategy against vulnerable Republicans heading into 2024.

As DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene (D-WA) told Kate just moments ago, “there are no moderates left on the Republican side.”¹ [my emphasis]

But basically ever since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the Democrats had tiptoed around their own support of abortion rights, even though it was far more popular than the Republicans’ Christian-nationalist, anti-abortion, anti-women’s-rights stance.

Then in 2021, the corrupt, rightwing Supreme Court overturned the Roe position in their ruling in the Dobbs case.² The grassroots outrage that translated into votes for Democrats and raised voting participation among women finally convinced the Democrats nationally to start leaning in to their own very popular, democratic, and pro-women’s-rights position on abortion rights.

The Democrats are still suffering a kind of “phantom limb” syndrome of the now-long-gone days when the left/right, liberal/conservative lines in Congress cut across the two parties. In the days of Sens. Jacob Javits (R-NY) and Jim Eastland (D-MS), there actually were Republicans who were generally liberal and Democrats who were conservative. In the case of notorious jerks like Eastland, downright reactionary.

Here below is a post I did in 2009, during the first year of Obama’s Presidency. It may be hard to remember now. But progressives had high hopes for Obama because he had given them cause during his 2008 campaign to think that he was a serious reformer. And the honeymoon with Democratic progressives actually ended fairly quickly. Because Bipartisanship with the already staunchly rightwing Republican Party turned out to be a far more important priority for Obama as President. Even though the Republicans’ position was to use that desire of his to play him for a sucker.

Of course, very practical considerations of campaign contributions played and still do play a major role in Democrats’ hesitancy to fight for their own side, i.e., the side of the people who vote for them. Billionaire donors as a rule aren’t terribly interested in pro-labor reforms, anti-poverty efforts, or reducing spending on armaments.

Here is the 2009 post³:

Joan Walsh on adjusting to Obama's disastrous Afghanistan policy

There has been some amount of grumping among antiwar Democrats about whether Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is a betrayal of his campaign and of the trust his supporters put in him.

(I can't help but think in this connection about the phony hissy fit the Republicans threw about MoveOn.org's "General Betray-us" ad. Although that ad was a clumsy conception, no one actually has any trouble distinguishing between the concept of "betraying" the trust of supporters - in fact American politicians routinely accuse their opponents of betraying their supporters' trust - and accusing someone of betraying the country or of being a traitor to the nation.)

Other Democrats who also oppose the Afghanistan War are saying, weren't you people listening to what Obama was actually saying in his campaign of 2008? He said as clear as day that he intended to put more emphasis on the Afghanistan War and to send in more troops. I always expected to disagree with his Afghanistan policy because I disagreed with it during the campaign last year. I had hoped he would reassess his intent to escalate. But this is a campaign position that Obama is keeping and following through with. I hope in 2010 he's as eager to follow through on his 2008 support for the Employee Free Choice Act to protect workers' rights to organize unions. [⁴]

Phyllis Bennis in her well-argued analysis of President Obama's Afghanistan Escalation Speech 12/02/09 at the Institute for Policy Studies site puts the case fairly, if a bit disingenuously, when she writes that his escalation speech Tuesday did not reflect "accountability ... to President Obama’s base, the extraordinary mobilization of people who swept this anti-war and anti-racist candidate into office."

But Joan Walsh has the better part of this particular little argument in The poster boy for progressive self-delusion Salon 12/02/09 when she scolds Tom Hayden for over-rating Obama's liberalism in his primary endorsement of Obama over Clinton. Joan's main point is this. Even though she voted for Obama over Clinton in the primaries by her own account, she makes a realistic and important point:

I want to be clear here. I am not saying, and I never said, that Clinton was more progressive than Obama on any of these issues. But Hayden, Michael Moore and too many progressives claimed, with zero evidence, that Obama would be more progressive than Clinton. He wasn't, and he isn't. There were many reasons to choose Obama over Clinton, but that he was the better progressive was never one of them.

Still, as entertaining as it may be to read her poking fun at the leaden quality of Tom's endorsement of Obama - "I felt like I was in some kind of Maoist reeducation camp, being urged to struggle mightily and cheerfully for Chairman Obama" - I also think she isn't giving enough credit to the point that he was making in his 2008 endorsement. Just as Joan was struck at the time by the tone of it, I was struck by the fact that he was carefully qualifying that what he was really endorsing was the movement that coalesced around Obama's campaign. But she does quote this part:

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined....

That's an important factor that we shouldn't lose sight of. The hopes that not just Obama activists but a large portion of the majority that voted for him placed in the potential Obama represented were bigger than the cautious candidate's stated positions. And if as President he can't show that he can and will deliver on major elements of those hopes, the Democrats could wind up blowing one of the most promising opportunities for progressive reforms that any American Presidential administration has ever had.

1. Lafond, Nicole (2023): Best Way To Make Someone’s Quiet Extremism Widely Known? Elect Them Speaker. TPM 10/25/2023. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/best-way-to-make-someones-quiet-extremism-widely-known-elect-them-speaker> (Accessed: 2023-27-10).

2. Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court Abortion Cases. Brennan Center for Justice 09/28/2022. <https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/roe-v-wade-and-supreme-court-abortion-cases> (Accessed: 2023-27-10).

3. Miller, Bruce (2009): Joan Walsh on adjusting to Obama's disastrous Afghanistan policy. Contradicciones (Original) 12/03/2023. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/joan-walsh-on-adjusting-to-obamas.html> (Accessed: 2023-27-10).

4. 2023: He didn’t. It appears he never took that commitment at all seriously.