I believe that one of the biggest problems with today’s Democratic Party is that it doesn’t ask itself, “How do we win?”
I mean, it does ask this question in a limited sense, as in, “How do we win this upcoming primary? How do we win this upcoming general election? How do we win this open seat?”
But the Republican Party plays an entirely different game. When it asks, “How do we win?” what it means is, “How do we defeat our opponents utterly and permanently, so that they have nothing left and no chance of ever staging a comeback?”
And that is not a question that the Democratic Party is asking.
To be honest, it seems impolite even to consider such a thing. It’s good, in a way, that we hesitate. Fairness matters to us. Kindness matters to us. We want to win, but something in us recoils from wanting to destroy our opponents. Nevertheless, if fairness and kindness matter to us, we have to do what it takes to thwart the opponents of fairness and kindness, not just one at a time but across the board. And if we want to do so according to our own standards, we have to be thoughtful and analytical about what, exactly, that’s going to require.
We have to be strategic, not just tactical. Tactics are the tricks and techniques employed to accomplish objectives. Strategy is the long view, the big picture, the identification and prioritizing of objectives on the path from here to there.
The Republican Party is both strategic and tactical. Have you read The Shock Doctrine yet? If not, stop reading this diary, go read The Shock Doctrine, and come back when you’re done. That, right there, is the Republican strategy in all its gruesome glory. All it’ll take is one good electoral tidal wave in a year divisible by both 4 and 10 to drown our dreams of liberty, equality, justice and dignity for all.
What does the Democratic Party have? Tactics. Sometimes. When we’re lucky. Rarely, however, a coherent strategy.
As Democrats, or as independent progressives who vote Democratic, we need to know what we’re fighting for. We need to be able to say what we’re fighting for. We need to know who and what our opponents are and what they’re fighting for. And we need to know how to defeat them, utterly and permanently, so that the forces of injustice and heartlessness have nothing left and no hope of achieving a comeback.
We need to begin with the concept of a victory condition (something sadly absent in all the discussions leading up to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). A victory condition is an end goal that, if met, allows you to declare the fight over and the outcome successful.
In chess, there’s only one victory condition—checkmate—and every other objective in the game is merely a subgoal toward reaching this one overarching goal. If you’re not playing toward checkmate, you’re not playing to win. In baseball, the victory condition is having the greater number of runs at the end of the ninth inning; Bill James revolutionized baseball statistics by recognizing that the key building block of runs earned was the base hit. In war, historically, the most common victory condition has been the acquisition of new territory; this requires, among other things, the establishment of a stable occupation government and the destruction of the enemy’s ability or willingness to keep fighting. If you can’t hold the territory you’ve acquired, or if the enemy won’t stop fighting to take the territory back, you haven’t won. In a revolution, the victory conditions are the overthrow of one government, the replacement of it with another, and the people’s acceptance of the new government as legitimate. To call the revolution successful, to call it a win, all three of these conditions must be met.
OK, so what are our victory conditions? I’m not willing to say that it’s as simple as “Democrats win,” or even “Democrats win control of every branch of government in every jurisdiction.” Because that condition doesn’t specify what a Democrat is, or who is and isn’t a Democrat.
People change parties. Some Democrats are crooks (*cough*Blagojevich*cough*) who don’t deserve to be elected to anything, ever. That might be a short-term win for the party, but I think we ought to aim for something more transformative. Why not? The Republicans do. (More on that below.)
I’ve written before about the necessity of winning the battle over the meaning of America, and that’s the ground I believe we should be fighting to win. The progressive vision of America is exemplified by the words of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; by the strides this country has made toward full representative democracy since those founding documents were written; by its openness to immigrants from other nations, by the words of Emma Lazarus inscribed upon the base of the Statue of Liberty, and by the promise of prosperity and opportunity to all comers. This is an aspirational vision of a country where everyone is recognized as equally deserving of life and liberty, health and happiness, security and opportunity, rights and dignity, and where we’re all treated equally in our pursuit of these blessings.
The Republican vision of America, in contrast, is exemplified by the former Confederacy: “a one-party state with a colonial-style economy based on large-scale agriculture and the extraction of primary resources by a compliant, poorly educated, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible” (Colin Woodard, American Nations). This is an authoritarian vision of a country that rejects the notion of equality, jealously preserves (and, whenever possible, extends) the privileges conferred by differences in status, systematically squeezes wealth out of those of lower rank in order to reward those of higher rank, demands deference and obedience to this system, and punishes deviation with violence.
It’s crucially important to understand, first, that both of these two visions of America exist, and second, that these are not the only two visions of America that exist. However, the Republican vision is a powerful one, both culturally and politically, and the progressive vision is its polar opposite, so I’m going to focus on them for a bit before discussing others.
Broadly speaking, then, the progressive victory condition is this:
The principle that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights, and that they are entitled to fully participate in and benefit from the political, economic and cultural life of their community and nation, is considered sensible and popular and is enacted in policy at every level. The principle that human beings are unequal and that some should be excluded from political, economic and cultural life, exploited without regard to their needs, or deprived of their rights or dignity because of differences in status, is considered unacceptable, if not unthinkable, and policies founded on this principle are eradicated.
That’s a big abstraction. What would it look like in practice?
The Universal Declaration of Human rights—the most thoughtful, comprehensive and forthright expression of the freedom and well-being to which every human being is entitled by right of birth—offers a road map:
- The criminal justice system respects and protects everyone equally. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments are honored fully in both letter and spirit, along with the presumption of innocence of the accused. Jury selection is truly impartial. Inhumane and degrading treatment and punishment are eliminated. Indefinite detention is eliminated. Torture is abolished.
- The government respects citizens’ privacy and requires business to do the same.
- Marriage equality is the law of the land.
- Family leave policies are extended to match those in the rest of the developed, democratic world.
- People who are nonreligious or belong to religious minorities may live anywhere without being subjected to harassment, persecution or unwanted proselytization. Public schools and government offices are not used to transmit religious messages.
- Peaceful protest and assembly is fully accepted and respected. The police are not used to intimidate, disrupt or crack down on peaceful demonstrations.
- Voting rights are universal. Every adult is automatically registered to vote and has convenient access to a voting location. No one convicted of a crime may be deprived of his voting rights after his sentence is completed. Anyone may run for office without the hindrance of burdensome ballot access laws. Campaign finance limits and public financing allow candidates to compete on more equal footing.
- Everyone, regardless of age, receives an income sufficient to provide a decent and dignified standard of living, whether by means of a livable minimum wage, a social welfare program, a government job program or a guaranteed minimum income. Social Security is stable and dependable.
- Everyone is guaranteed safe and fair working conditions, dignity in the workplace, and a livable wage that doesn't require one to work multiple jobs. Equal pay for equal work is guaranteed regardless of sex or ethnicity. The right to organize a labor union is guaranteed and defended. Every worker is guaranteed sick leave, vacation time, and compensation for unemployment or workplace injury. Access to food, housing and medical care is universally guaranteed.
- Public schools are fully and equitably funded through progressive state income taxes, not local property taxes, and public school curricula are directed to the full development of every student's personality, not limited to a narrow core of academic standards. Early education is developmentally appropriate. Children living in poverty have full access, both in and out of school, to social supports necessary to prepare them for learning. Special education is fully funded.
- Recognition of and respect for human rights for all people in all nations forms the basis of America's foreign policy. Aid to countries that systematically violate human rights is withdrawn. The military budget is reduced to a level commensurate with those of other nations.
That is what victory looks like.
Now, how do we get there? Begin with the end in mind. Work backward.
To implement these policies, we have to have progressive (not merely Democratic) majorities in every branch of government and every jurisdiction. That will require the electoral victories to place these candidates in office. And that, in turn, will require several things: widespread acceptance of this vision of America, enough competent candidates committed to this vision to fill the available offices, and support from a party that’s also committed to this vision.
So now we have three subgoals. How do we reach each of them?
To gain widespread acceptance of the vision, we have to articulate it—loudly, broadly and constantly. We can never shut up about it. We have to talk about it in value terms: “This is what fair government policy looks like. This is what compassionate government policy looks like. This is how we help everyone succeed—not by punishing them for being something we don’t like, but by making it easy to prosper and hard to falter. This is how we take care of each other. This is how we make democracy work. This is what America stands for—this is liberty, equality, justice and dignity for all. Not some, not most, but all.”
It will probably help to also lay out, in stark terms, what our opponents’ radical authoritarian agenda looks like:
- The police use their power arbitrarily and capriciously. Obedience and deference are assumed and expected, and anyone not complying immediately and to an officer's satisfaction may be punished without trial by beating or death. The protection of the law is a privilege of rank. The accused is presumed guilty. Criminal punishment is maximally degrading, and torture is employed freely if the state believes it can get results.
- There is no right to privacy.
- There is no universal right to marry. Business is under no obligation to respect employees' family life.
- People who are nonreligious or belong to religious minorities may be harassed, persecuted or proselytized at will by the religious majority. Public schools and government offices may freely transmit the religious majority's messages.
- Protest and unapproved assembly are violently suppressed.
- Voting is a privilege. States may impose whatever taxes, tests or restrictions they consider appropriate. Access to a voting location during election hours is in no way guaranteed. Unrestricted campaign finance keeps political offices in the possession of the executive-financial elite and its handpicked candidates.
- The minimum wage and all forms of welfare are abolished. Social Security is absorbed by the finance industry.
- Labor, workplace safety and environmental regulations are dismantled. Unions are banned; employers have carte blanche to retaliate against workers who attempt to organize or object to their working conditions in any way. Food assistance and housing subsidies are eliminated. The health insurance industry is deregulated.
- Public education is dismantled. Corporate and religious schools predominate. Independent private schools -- the only alternative to a narrow, test-driven curriculum or religious indoctrination -- serve an exclusively affluent population.
- Foreign policy is driven solely by economic and political interests and relationships of convenience. Wars are started over slights, real or imagined.
- Oh, and incidentally, climate change results in catastrophic property destruction along America's coasts, a monstrous refugee crisis as millions flee the unsurvivable tropics, and violent disputes over dwindling natural resources, destabilizing governments the world over.
A caveat: It’s not necessary—or, for that matter, helpful—to recite this entire litany to everyone. You can pick out the key points that will resonate with your intended audience. The point is, we have to not only put forth our own vision but make it clear why the Republicans’ antithetical vision must be repudiated.
Don’t call them “conservative.” Ever. They are not conservative. They are not interested in preserving our institutions, especially not the 20th-century institutions that promote justice, equality and civil rights. They want to uproot these institutions. This makes them radicals. Call them “radicals.” Call them “authoritarians,” “reactionaries,” “neo-Confederates.” Because they are, in fact, neo-Confederates. Doug Muder perfectly articulates the way they see the world:
The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries. . . . The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change. When in the majority, Confederates protect the established order through democracy. If they are not in the majority, but have power, they protect it through the authority of law. If the law is against them, but they have social standing, they create shams of law, which are kept in place through the power of social disapproval. If disapproval is not enough, they keep the wrong people from claiming their legal rights by the threat of ostracism and economic retribution. If that is not intimidating enough, there are physical threats, then beatings and fires, and, if that fails, murder.
Their “established order” is hostile to liberty, equality, justice and dignity. It’s unfair, spiteful, arrogant and cruel. We have to say so. Their “established order” depends on violence to maintain itself. It rejoices in taking violent action against anyone it thinks deserves it. It believes a lot of us deserve it. We have to say so. A vote for the Republican Party is a vote to bring back the Confederacy. We have to say so.
We have to maintain the drumbeat without ever letting up: “America stands for liberty, equality, justice and dignity for all. Everyone deserves to be treated with fairness and kindness; everyone has rights that the government must respect and defend. Every other advanced democracy agrees with this. The Republicans stand for unfairness, heartlessness, unequal privilege, unquestioning obedience and violence against the vulnerable. They would bring back the Confederacy. We’re not really going to let them do that, are we? Are we?"
Of course, it’s not as simple as that, but in order to win widespread acceptance of our progressive, egalitarian vision, it’s the minimum we have to do.
Then we have to find candidates. This will be an outgrowth of the process of disseminating the value message and seeing whom it resonates with most. The challenge is, the places where this progressive vision is most lacking and most urgently needed are precisely the places where local conditions are going to make it most difficult to run, let alone to win. People who don’t care about democracy don’t think twice about creating obstacles to getting on the ballot, turning campaigns into fundraising arms races, or playing dirty. We have to be willing to link arms and wade into the fray together. We can’t let good candidates go it alone. We have to build a deep bench.
Let's face it: Our governors suck, practically across the board. Many of our U.S. senators aren’t so hot. The House of Representatives includes some of our best exemplars, but also some of our worst. We've got some talent at the state legislative level, but at the moment, they're badly outnumbered by Republicans.
We have to pump new blood into the system from the bottom, and we have to start now. We have to contest every election, even for the most minuscule office, and we have to do it with candidates who are committed to a progressive vision of America, so that in years to come, we have people who are ready to level up.
We have to use our community networks. Republicans organize through country clubs, chambers of commerce and churches. What’s our equivalent? To make this work, we have to be joiners, even if it runs against our individualist inclinations. The nonprofit sector is probably a good place to look. Wherever there are people in need, there are community organizations trying to help them—usually underfunded, understaffed and overworked, but where are you more likely to find people wholeheartedly committed to fairness and kindness, who truly understand what the least of us need?
We have to not only find these candidates but support them with coordinated, consistent messaging and pooling of resources. A shared party affiliation isn’t enough: candidates should run as slates, printing signs and stickers with their names listed together. Because it’s essential that we communicate that all our candidates stand for the same things.
To achieve this coordination, consistency and sharing of resources will, however, require a party committed to this vision. And here’s where I’m gonna piss a whole bunch of people off: The Democratic Party is not, at this time, committed to a progressive vision. The Democratic Party is committed to itself. And even that not so much, it often seems.
A (D) after a name is not enough to help us achieve this vision. A little incrementalism is OK; what we absolutely cannot do, though, is continue to support Democratic candidates who work actively against equality and justice in government policy. I live in Chicago, so I’ve got an uncomfortably close view of a whole bunch of these types. Chicago is a Democratic (capital D) city, but it’s not a democratic (lowercase d) city. The folks running the party here are petty and authoritarian and spiteful, and they have a term of contempt for folks who believe government should operate in the public interest: “goo-goos.” They will not help.
John Gilmore famously said the Internet “interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”; we have to do the same with the political machines that impede progress toward equality and justice. We have to interpret them as damage and route around them.
If we want to win, then somehow, we have to use whatever accumulated leverage we have to move the Democratic Party—county-level, state-level and national—toward wholehearted, full-throated commitment to the progressive vision of America. And if the Democratic Party won’t commit to that, then we have to establish a party that will.
Heresy. I know. But consider this: We have had, so far, six different party systems in the history of the United States of America:
In the First Party System the Federalist Party contended against the Republican Party.
In the Second Party System, Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party contended against Henry Clay's Whigs.
The Whigs collapsed in 1854 and were replaced by the pro-Union, antislavery Republicans in the Third Party System, which lasted through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.
In the Fourth Party System, the parties realigned away from racial and monetary issues and toward issues of progressive reform, with immigrant-heavy Northern cities emerging as a new Democratic base; this is when the Republicans stopped being the good guys, though many of the Democrats weren't that great either.
The Fifth Party System resulted from another realignment after the Great Depression, giving us five consecutive Democratic administrations and two terms of Dwight Eisenhower, the only Republican since Teddy Roosevelt whom liberals speak of without disdain.
Finally, the Sixth Party System arose out of another realignment prompted by the Civil Rights Movement and the flipping of the segregationist South from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
On average, the first five party systems lasted about 36 years apiece. The Sixth Party System, however, has lasted 47 years already—five years longer than the Third Party System, its closest competitor.
In short, we’re overdue for a party realignment. And I think it’s going to happen, if not in 2016, then in 2020.
The question is, along what lines will it realign?
If we don’t influence the direction that the Democratic Party takes, it's going to go wherever it goes without us.
Of course, there are any number of ways it could shake out. The Republican Party could self-destruct, and the Democratic Party could fracture into a conservative wing and a progressive wing. The Democratic Party could self-destruct, going the way of the Whigs, and be replaced by an upstart party. But I don't think either of these scenarios will happen. There’s too much money and too much social pressure sustaining the Republican Party, and it has too many elected members at every level of government, for it to disintegrate now. And the Democratic Party’s favorable position going into the 2016 election is probably going to keep it alive as well.
So the more likely outcome is that both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party will remain intact, but with changes in each party’s platform and base of support.
It’s already abundantly clear that the Republican Party is going to go full-on fascist unless some cataclysmic correction takes place. The real question is which way the Democratic Party will go. Will it adopt and press for a progressive vision of America, or will it adopt what I call the patrician vision or the “New Netherland” vision (after Woodard’s description of how the barons of New York City melded religious, cultural and intellectual equality with political and economic aristocracy, a philosophy to which many of today’s prominent Democrats clearly ascribe)?
Adopting the patrician vision, IMO, would be a disaster. The progressive vision of liberty, equality, justice and dignity for all which I laid out above is supported, surveys show, by a majority of Americans. In Overton Window terms, it’s at the very least Acceptable, possibly even Sensible. Yet the media and even many Democratic Party leaders treat it as if it were Radical!
If we want to reverse course from the Cliffs of Insanity that the Republicans are determined to steer us toward, we have to establish the progressive position as our default starting position in all debate and all negotiation. Because what happens when we don’t? We start from a halfway position, and the Republicans hold fast to their extreme position and haggle us away from that.
Sure, it would be better if all our elected leaders adopted Getting to Yes–style negotiation based on common interests, but positional and transactional bargaining is the way things are done on Capitol Hill. So if we want to end up in the middle, we have to start at least as far away from the middle as the Republicans are. And we don't want to end up in the middle—we want to end up on our side of the middle, right? This is common sense, isn’t it?
So this is what it boils down to: In order to reach our end goal—in order to win—we have to have a party that is committed, across the board, to a progressive vision; that articulates that vision constantly and consistently; and that supports progressive candidates for every office at every level.
That party can be the Democratic Party, or it can be a new party that replaces the Democratic Party. But I think it’s going to have to be the Democratic Party, because other scenarios just aren’t plausible right now.
We can make do, maybe, for a little while, with less, until things get really bad. But if we do that, we can’t honestly claim that we’re interested in winning . . . only in temporarily forestalling our eventual, final defeat.
Postscript
During this contentious primary season, other users here have accused me, both implicitly and overtly, of wanting the Republicans to win. That is the very last thing I want. I want us to crush our enemies, see them scattered before us, and hear the lamentations of their Bircher billionaire donors. Which means I want us to adopt the strategy that makes that crushing victory possible.
I described the progressive vision of America. I described the Republican neo-Confederate vision of America. Here’s another plausible scenario:
- The criminal justice system remains pretty much as it is now: arbitrary, authoritarian and underscrutinized, with regulatory Band-Aids applied here and there when an inconvenient video is released and what little justice is obtained taking the form of settled lawsuits. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments remain Swiss cheese. Inhumane and degrading treatment and punishment remain the status quo of our continually expanding prison system. Indefinite detention persists indefinitely. Torture is eschewed, except when it’s not.
- There is no right to privacy.
- The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 continues to be held up as the gold standard of what America can do for its families without upsetting the business community.
- It’s still safe to be atheist or Muslim in most blue states and still iffy everyplace else.
- Peaceful protests are routinely surrounded by phalanges of police in riot gear, and tear gas canisters fly as soon as someone uses a tone of voice that sounds a little too angry.
- Republican legislatures and secretaries of state continue to play cat-and-mouse with the Supreme Court on voting rights. Millions remain effectively disenfranchised. Millions more could vote if they could get to a polling place in between their two work shifts, but they can’t. Millions more no longer give a shit.
- The minimum wage is raised to a level that’s almost enough to lift a worker out of poverty. “Workplace dignity” remains an oxymoron. Sick leave? Vacation time? Unions? Pfft.
- Food assistance remains inadequate. Affordable housing remains as scarce as a Stradivarius. Medical care remains the most expensive in the world, with consistently mediocre outcomes.
- Public schools continue to vary in quality according to local property values, with more and more non-affluent children of color shunted into charter schools. Curricula remain constrained by standardized test content.
- Foreign policy is driven by economic and political interests, religious prejudice, and AIPAC.
This does not meet the victory condition. This does not help us move toward the victory condition, or help us fulfill any of the three prerequisites for achieving the victory condition.
This is not a win.