So how has not making an argument against Movement Conservatism, but appearing reasonable by comparison as an alternative to partisanship, worked out so far for the Democratic Party as a tactic?
Nobody can argue we aren't bipartisan no matter how much bad faith we may face, or that we aren't far more reasonable than crazy people, or that Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint aren't zealots. Nobody can honestly argue that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell aren't bad at their jobs, nor their respective caucus leaders in name only when Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint aren't around to jerk the parties chain back in line.
But, who is winning, or has largely won, the ideological argument?
Movement Conservatism. Either catastrophic default, or some flavor of Movement Conservatism will be the dominant end result of the debt ceiling debate being fought in DC. There is not going to be a clean one-sentence debt ceiling bill that ends the fight. Whatever the end result will be, it will have more cuts than revenue streams and Democrats will have essentially beaten an unreasonable form of Movement Conservatism with a more reasonable, now quaint by GOP standards, Movement Conservative outcome.
Without making any argument against Movement Conservatism, we are America's Yield sign for Movement Conservatism. The Yellow Light that forces Movement Conservatives to wait a few years more. It's been 40 years, what's five more? Ten? If the Democrats will put Social Security and Medicare on the table as a head-fake, maybe they will do it with Roe next time. Sure, they might take out a few faces, but the voters will never forget that a policy or idea they treasure was either actually on the table, or was a piece of convenient bait, something to be used and something where the emotional anguish and insecurity of those who live or die without them is a feature and not a bug. Another useful tool to exploit no matter how much pain and anxiety it causes people who don't know they are just being used for a gambit or a head fake.
We can beat the zealots of the 2011 GOP, either by a never intended to be acted upon Kabuki threatre faux trap offering, or real deal actually offering, to give the GOP the moon in exchange for the GOP of 1994's arguments and policy outcomes. As a door prize, yes, we do get to look like people who aren't wearing suicide bombers vests, plus we get to make the argument that Eric Cantor, like Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich before him, is a total douche bag and make him personally radioactive while leaving the bad ideas that actually make him dangerous alone to kill again in the future.
So what has America learned over the course of this latest political battle?
Democrats do look vastly more reasonable, the Republicans look completely unreasonable, that Representative Eric Cantor is, in fact, a total douche bag, and, oh by the way, they have won the ideological argument that Big Government is the problem, entitlement cuts need to be on the table, Movement Conservatism is an entirely legitimate ideology that should be treated as a serious school of thought, and austerity is the answer.
The Democratic Party is, mistakenly I believe, using 1990's era conservatism, on both governing and on the role of government, to beat an extremist sub-cult of the breed. We are using what used to be the conservatism of country-club Republicans to beat the politics of the John Birch Society. Either way, the conservatives win. It's a way of turning even total routs, complete political victory, into self-injuring partial defeats.
Liberals are often accused, by the fine Third Wayist-No Labels Democratic Party policy loathing reasonable centrist types of the Versailles beltway, of failing to note that the general public is not as fixated on the specifics of political debates or the nuances of partisan conflicts. Here is a case where overconfident and smugly self-assured neoliberals are clearly guilty of what they charge others are guilty of. They are insanely assuming that the unsettled souls dependent on the Social Safety Net not only get that it was all a ploy, but that they are fine with it, that everything is okay with screwing with their heads either way as long as the Democrats win.
What does victory achieved without winning an ideological argument look like?
In the end, the best case scenario for the national Democratic Party is that Democrats might win very temporary gains because people dislike a crop of Republicans. All Republican pols, like all conservative pundits, are disposable.
The GOP solution is to 'get new Republican faces', new faces armed with the same failed Movement Conservative ideas that haven't been discredited. Worse, you have made your own job harder by avoiding partisanship by any means necessary because many assume you don't believe in your own ideas either.
How does avoiding an argument help you win an argument?
It doesn't.
There is no substitute tactic to making a strongly partisan argument against Movement Conservatism and for the policies and principles of the Democratic Party if you want to defeat it.
The Democratic establishment offers up the GOP, either as a gambit or as a real offer, a major rolling back of the New Deal. Win or lose the round, Democratic voters won't forget. Bonus fail for terrifying Democratic voters, and Democratic leaning Independents, with the idea that the people they thought they could trust will offer up the worst policy to cut a bad deal or to temporarily tie the GOP up in knots. It's marketing stupidity as genius.
What the vulnerable actually get is.... terrified. What they get is the sudden shock of seeing Democrats put Social Security and Medicare in play, and they don't care why even if they know why. The part of that general public that gets, or would even believe, it was all just a ploy to get the GOP to screw itself, is a tiny fraction of what the neoliberal thinks it is.
Even if it's just all a mindfuck Kabuki theatre trap, that Lawrence O'Donnell is right, and that Ezra Klein's take is wrong, the Democrats have still been publicly arguing, as non-Movement Conservatives, in favor of offering America old Movement Conservative policy plus a little bit of common sense revenue as the better option A vs. the Movement Conservatives newest flavor of crazy crackheadism.
Either way, the American people end up with some degree of Movement Conservative policy as the outcome.
The Democratic Party can and will moderate the speed with which we adopt Movement Conservatism as out national default for political policy. It's about as brilliant as offering America a bowl full of paste made of corn starch and water and saying "well, it's better than starving!"
Democrats will have found a way to win now and yet be right back where we are today in a few years over some different hostage crisis at the same time because Movement Conservatism will still be as completely viable as ever and non-Movement Conservative policy will be on the defensive to a status quo that is hostile to non-Movement Conservative policy outcomes as a default.
Good luck, next Democratic President, getting non-Movement Conservative policy passed. It will be a lot harder than it is today no matter what the outcome in DC on the deficit ceiling fight.
Our party now mostly functions as a self-sabotaging, self-crippling, and an only semi-partisan placeholder between unbridled Movement Conservative national bar lowerings. For a very good reason. That is the very political niche that it has carefully carved out for itself by not only not making an argument, but trying to be seen as doing anything but making a partisan argument as a feature and not a bug of how it goes about its merry way being America's yellow traffic light. By not being willing to risk being attacked as "partisan" by people who don't care if the Democratic Party even exists. Today, it's not even making the case for undoing and rolling back the policies that have already brought this nation to the brink of ruin.
You humilate and destroy Eric Cantor, somebody else will take his place. Jim DeMint. Somebody else will take his place. Thaddeus Cotter. Replaced with ease. Michelle Bachmann. Replaced with somebody crazier. No Tom DeLay. No Jesse Helms. No Newt Gingrich. No George Allen. No Rick Santorum. No problem.
If the GOP brand is tainted, even destroyed by a debt ceiling default that is entirely blamed on the GOP, Movement Conservatives don't suffer, the GOP does. The Right can walk away from a failed GOP because Movement Conservatism hasn't sufferned a scratch. We attack Republican faces, not Movement Conservative ideas. Worse case scenario, the Citizen's United crowd rolls out "The Conservative Party" or "the American Tea Party" and abandons the tainted GOP brand to the dust bin of history. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
How has adopting Republican policy, as a way of 'bringing the nation together', and 'negating the Rightwing's attacks by taking them off the table' worked out?
Not only not well, it's been a catastrophe.
You can't really roll back Movement Conservatism with how we do business in DC, in fact, we aren't even really temporarily suspending it, we have slowed its implimentation down. You are, best case, only moderating the rate of Movement Conservatism becoming the only game in town.
Neoliberalism cannot beat Movement Conservatism, because neoliberalism was designed to avoid even trying. It doesn't recognize that Movement Conservatism not only serves the wealthy few at the expense of the vulnerable many, but also has some very important side agendas, agendas second only to serving the needs of the rich and powerful, and those are to destroy any alternative, any, to it as a form of viable governance and to always move the debate Rightward. Always.
You can win a battle with neoliberalism, or several, you can take down individual Republican pols whose stupidity leads them to self-destruct, but. But you can't win a defining victory in an ongoing ideological struggle, you can't fundamentally change the course or direction of the nation away from a philosophy that is making an argument and waging a fight, a fight that you lose by default of not making an argument, with it as your guide.