In defense of extreme (Democratic) partisanship

In defense of extreme (Democratic) partisanship

Perry Bacon Jr. — Read time: 5 minutes

Columnist |

October 18, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The Democratic Party’s voters (not necessarily its leaders) are what we want America to be. They are diverse on a number of dimensions, unified around laudable goals such as reducing economic and racial inequality, and actively trying to make the United States the best nation it can be.

The problem is there aren’t enough Democrats to guarantee the defeat of Trumpism.

Because the news media tries to cover both parties equally critically, the story of U.S. politics today is often depicted as an extreme Republican Party facing an almost-as-extreme Democratic Party dominated by over-educated elites who are hostile to the values of average Americans and leave them little choice but to vote Republican. But that’s an attempt to turn a one-sided problem into a two-sided one.

Story continues below advertisement

Being a consistent, stalwart Democratic voter today should not be dismissed as being overly partisan or unthinking. It’s common sense.

You're following Perry Bacon Jr.'s opinionsFollowing

Those are not out-there views. The majority of Americans agree with Democrats on nearly all of those positions.

Story continues below advertisement

More important, these are the morally correct stands. We tend to think the issues of our day are more nuanced than the issues of past eras. But being deeply committed to ending slavery was a controversial position in the 1850s, as was being deeply committed to ending racial segregation 100 years later. Today, describing the United States as having racial practices and systems that end up maintaining disparities between White and Black people even if individual people are not being explicitly racist (this is what critical race theory essentially argues) is so controversial that it’s being banned from being taught in public schools in conservative areas. But 50 or 100 years from now, I suspect people studying this period of U.S. history will conclude fairly easily that critical race theory was correct and that the bans on teaching it were just an assertion of White power over Black people.

And it’s not just that Democratic voters are on the right side of a host of issues, in a way that is obvious now and will be even clearer in a few decades. It’s also that the Democratic Party is very representative of the broader nation. The Republican Party is way more White (the GOP is about 85 percent White) than the country is (59 percent). About 60 percent of people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 are White. About 60 percent of Democrats are Christian, Jewish or part of another major religion tradition, compared with around 70 percent of Americans nationally. About half of Democrats have a four-year college degree, as do about 40 percent adults overall.

Democratic voters aren’t perfect. Many of them seem quite comfortable sending their children to schools that are very segregated by race and income. But Democratic activists fully appreciated the danger of Trump and his supporters and rightly started casting Trump-style politics as authoritarian and fascist much earlier than other groups of Americans (like the national news media) did. From the women’s marches at the start of Trump’s presidency to the protests after the killing of George Floyd to the massive turnout in the 2020 elections, Democratic voters have been aggressively acting both to stop radical Republicans from tearing apart what’s already good about America and to push the nation toward being fairer and more equal.

Democratic voters are extremely partisan right now — exactly as they should be, as Republican voters keep nominating Trump-style candidates who won’t even promise to concede defeat if they lose elections. “Maintaining and exacerbating polarization is essential for a democratic party when it faces an authoritarian party,” political scientists Nathan Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason wrote in their book “Radical American Partisanship,” published earlier this year.

Story continues below advertisement

“Radical partisanship is a sign of serious political trouble — save for viewing Republican authoritarianism as a national threat, which is actually part of the solution,” they wrote.

It’s important to separate Democratic voters from Democratic Party leaders. Many of the party’s leaders have not risen to the moment of aggressively fighting Trumpism or of trying to create the more equal America that the millions who attended the Floyd protests throughout the country were demanding. These leaders are still too wedded to bipartisanship, their own wealth and power, the desires of their campaign donors, and their cautious approach to basically any issue that might be controversial. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) most exemplifies what I am criticizing, but President Biden has some of these flaws, too.

These leaders have done little to cultivate the great base that they have — or to really expand it. The Democratic Party leadership in the Trump years has emphasized mundane policies (infrastructure) over an inspiring vision for the United States in 2022. The party’s activists get little direction or engagement from Democratic leaders until election season, when they are barraged with constant emails and text messages imploring them to donate money to the often unexciting candidates the party bosses have settled on.

Story continues below advertisement

But there are a few people who are either Democrats or closer to the party than the GOP who are offering an inspired vision and moral leadership, such as the Rev. William J. Barber II, former NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

What those leaders and many Democratic voters seem to understand is that the United States today is in a deep conflict about what the nation should be and whose values it should defend that has echoes of the pre-Civil War and civil rights eras. There are good guys (Democratic voters) and bad guys (Republican politicians.)

But the good guys might not have the numbers to win. In the three elections since Trump took control of the Republican Party, the Democrats have won on average 51 percent of the popular vote, compared with 46 percent for Republicans. That’s not enough in a system with the Senate, the electoral college and other anti-majoritarian features that currently boost the Republicans.

Story continues below advertisement

Perhaps those Democratic Party values, laudable as they are, just aren’t shared by enough Americans. Or perhaps many voters don’t perceive the party as putting those values into policies often enough. Alternatively, voters might like some of the Democratic values but still prioritize either the purported values of the Republican Party (self-sufficiency, small government, respect for religion) or its actual ones (defense of the status quo, prioritizing the interests of White Christians.)

Either way, it is possible that Republicans win control of Congress in a few weeks — empowering a party that is increasingly radical and anti-democratic. It’s great that Democratic voters are on the right side of the issues. But at least this November, being right might not be enough.