It’s unfortunately all too common to see moderate Democrats engage in the kind of cowardly and shallow behavior we saw with the bipartisan Supreme Court protection bill.
It’s an embarrassment for all involved, and Democrats in particular should be ashamed…
If, as Coons suggests, there was a desperate need to enact this measure when we saw Jackson’s family during her confirmation hearings, then he and other Democrats would have enacted the measure then — you know, when her confirmation was actually happening… Now, they're boasting about passing a performative bill that coddles right-wing justices — arguably the most oppressive forces in American society today. Not a good look.
It seems fairly well established by now that fear and a psychological pre-disposition to behave more conservatively are linked. As fear increases in people, several things happen, including a move towards “low-effort” thinking and a hypersensitivity to fear stimuli which creates a negative feedback loop spiraling individuals and groups towards ever more conservative behavior. It’s also problematic that in our ultra-materialistic society, the fear of aging leads to all sorts of psychological and emotional problems that drive people towards unnecessarily and self-destructively conservative behavior as they age. All of this has been kicked into 5th gear by the current media landscape and the dystopian world we live in. These feedback loops of on the one hand: reality-based fear and on the other hand: unnecessary clickbait fear-mongering, have IMO helped create modern cultures that seem to be more and more drawn to fascist (conservative) movements at the very moment we should be running in the exact opposite direction.
Now, couple all of this with the fact that 46% of the Senate Dems and 40% of House Dems in 2021 were 65 years or older, making it the oldest Congress in 17 years. The median age in America continues to rise, but as of 2020, it was still only 38. Now, lest I be accused of ageism, I should say that age in an of itself isn’t likely the largest driving force behind the disconnect we see between Congressional Democrats and progressive voters writ large (remember: Bernie Sanders). But in cases where Democratic leaders are operating like it’s still the 20th Century and the DLC isn’t discredited, it certainly could be affecting their ability to connect with the voters they need to mobilize in order to stay in office: ie younger voters and minorities.
Now, throw into the mix some high-profile new data on voter turnout that’s sending waves through our Dem GOTV groups and will be used by moderate and conservative Democrats to push the party to shift their focus from reaching out to the young and to minorities in favor of older, white, working-class Americans and you have all the elements for a fear-based race to the bottom and an election wipeout. And if key Congressional Dems are dead set on that strategy, there may be little we can do to overcome it. For all of our electioneering, if the actual people running for office refuse to craft messages that appeal to the people we’re trying to mobilize, then Congressional Dems have set us all up to fail.
So, if this happens… and sadly, knowing Democratic moderates and conservatives, I think it’s more likely than not… sensible people need to have already established a widely understood narrative about how big of a mistake it was. Because we all know that Democratic moderates will be blaming progressives and woke (ie modern) culture for their losses. We need to start now if we’re going to build a solid foundation for the acceptance of these truths, an argument that becomes conventional wisdom, that those moderates and conservatives within our party who succumbed to fear, retreated to white rural America, and who didn’t focus on 21st Century winning strategies: they’re the ones who self-destructed.
The only way to fix a rotten system is to first diagnose the problem… and of course to remember: