There’s been plenty of debate about the direction in which the Democratic Party has been moving. Some have accused of it having shifted to the right. To those critics, I ask: since when? Since it nominated Jimmy Carter—who shot down national health care despite having 60 Democratic senators, and otherwise passed very little, if any, meaningfully progressive economic legislation?
Since when? Since LBJ? Although the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, and Voting Rights Act were tremendous accomplishments, he too failed to pass national health care, despite also having massive, filibuster proof majorities. Oh, and he got us into the Vietnam War, remember?
Since when? Since FDR? He didn’t pass national health care, and his Social Security and welfare legislation all but excluded blacks. New Deal housing policy actively made residential segregation worse. And the Democratic Party of his day was essentially on record as supporting segregation when one considers the power held by its Southerners. Three more words: Japanese internment camps. Finally, people who stood to his left condemned FDR as a corporate sellout in his day too. Among his harshest critics was Senator Huey Long. This is from Arthur Schlesinger’s The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936:
Long retained deep suspicions of some of Roosevelt’s associates. A day or two before the inauguration, he came to (FDR advisor and braintruster Raymond) Moley’s room at the Mayflower, kicked the door open, chewed on an apple, and said pugnaciously, "I don’t like you and your goddamned banker friends!"...and in May denounced the administration on the ground that it was dominated by the same old clique of bankers who had controlled Hoover. "Parker Gilbert from Morgan & Company, Leffingwell, Ballantine, Eugene Meyer, every one of them are here – what’s the use of hemming and hawing?”
In fact, on issues of equality and access for women, non-whites, LGBT groups, and religious minorities, the Democratic Party has never come close to being as left as it is right now. N.E.V.E.R.
In terms of what he’s accomplished, Barack Obama is by far the most progressive president on economics since LBJ. Maybe that’s not saying much given the presidency of Bill Clinton, but the movement is in the right direction. In addition to expanding Medicaid and providing subsidies to buy health insurance to millions who previously went without it, and guaranteeing access to millions of others who were previously unable to get insurance, and doing so with a funding stream that is profoundly progressive (i.e., Obamacare’s taxes on the wealthy), he also made the income tax code more progressive by raising tax rates only on the wealthy. The stimulus also shifted funds in a profoundly progressive manner.
Accomplishments are what matter. When Ted Kennedy was asked about his greatest regret as a senator, he listed the failure to compromise and take a deal that Richard Nixon offered him on national health care. Nixon had proposed requiring all employers to offer health insurance to their workers—with low-income Americans receiving money from the federal government to pay for premiums. The negotiations ultimately broke down. Why? Kennedy decided to listen to progressive labor leaders who told him to walk away and wait for a Democratic president, at which point they’d implement a single-payer plan. How’d that one work out?
More broadly, if we go beyond economics—and a big chunk of policy lies outside that category—the Democratic party has been moving steadily leftward ever since 1948 when it first passed a Civil Rights plank that led to Dixiecrats leaving the party to rally behind Strom Thurmond as a third party candidate for president. That leftward movement has only accelerated in the past seven years.
Are Democrats perfect? Absolutely not. But let’s neither whitewash the past nor ignore the full spectrum of issues that defines progressivism. Overall, Democrats have never been as left as they are now.