There’s a smarter way to be a conservative Democrat

Opinion: There’s a smarter way to be a conservative Democrat

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is joined by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), second from left, and others as they celebrate the bipartisan effort to end a government shutdown at the U.S. Capitol in 2018. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

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By Perry Bacon Jr.

Columnist

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Many more-conservative Democrats practice a counterproductive, toxic “moderation” that has them constantly blasting their more liberal colleagues and reinforcing Republican critiques of their party. They need a better brand of centrism. For a model, they should look to a politician from across the aisle: Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

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I’m to the left of Collins on many policy issues. But as a politician, she’s got game. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, no Senate candidate from either party won in a state where their party lost at the presidential level — except Collins in 2020. Joe Biden won Maine by nine points last year, while Collins also won it by nine. In an era when most candidates can’t get anyone to cross party lines, Collins wooed a lot of Biden voters while keeping the GOP base with her.

How does she do it? Collins voted against Obamacare repeal in 2017 and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, establishing centrist bona fides with independents and Democrats in Maine. At the same time, she joined with her party on most other key votes, most notably Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court. Perhaps most important, Collins emphasized her work on issues that particularly affect Maine.

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What Collins doesn’t do, however, is trash her own party. She seems to understand that she is ultimately on Team GOP. So she criticized some of then-President Donald Trump’s more egregious comments and policies but avoided talking about Trump much otherwise. She rarely takes shots at hard-right colleagues such as Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.). She doesn’t cast herself as a lonely figure of reasonableness among a gang of crazies.

Contrast that with the approach of many more-conservative Democrats. After last year’s congressional elections, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) implied that Black Lives Matter and members of “the Squad” were to blame for the party’s weaker-than-expected results. After the Democrats did poorly in New Jersey and Virginia this month, Spanberger was back at it, this time suggesting President Biden is mistakenly trying to be Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a bizarre attack — FDR is universally regarded as one of the best Democratic presidents.

Another more-conservative Democrat, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, recently criticized Biden’s agenda for being too ambitious to get through Congress, sidestepping Sinema’s own role in blocking Biden’s goals. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has spent the year pooh-poohing ideas from other Democrats, including Biden, and casting the party as fiscally irresponsible.

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There is nothing wrong with policy-based disagreement. But when Collins disagrees with fellow Republicans, she makes a statement or takes a vote and moves on to focus on places where she aligns with the party or on Maine-based issues. Democrats such as Manchin and Spanberger amplify and elevate their conflicts with other Democrats. Their brands aren’t so much a positive vision as anti-party: in effect, ”I’m not a crazy Democrat like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.), another more-conservative Democrat, is campaigning for the Senate on the idea that he is a “normal Democrat” — by implication casting his main, more liberal rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, as abnormal.

To win elections, it is probably essential for more-conservative Democrats to take some positions to the right of progressives. But their anti-party centrism, in contrast to Collins’s pro-party version, is deeply problematic, for three reasons.

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First, it doesn’t lead to good policy ideas. Biden has a detailed policy agenda, as do more-liberal Democrats such as the Squad. But more-conservative Democrats aren’t putting forward an equivalent of Build Back Better or the Green New Deal. Their posture is instead to slam progressive ideas as too controversial, then later support proposals on the same issues that are, say, half as ambitious. Spanberger wasn’t a leader on police reform before last year’s protests; she became emphatic about the need for modest reform only in reaction to more aggressive proposals.

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Second, this anti-party approach makes it harder for Democrats to win. Spanberger and Manchin are reinforcing the Republican message that their party is extreme. They give that message extra credibility because they are Democrats, in effect creating a permission structure for moderate voters to back GOP congressional candidates on the grounds that the Democratic Party needs a check on its power.

The contrast with Collins is important in this context. The Republican Party is clearly moving in a dangerous, antidemocratic direction — but disappointingly, most Republican members of Congress, including Collins, almost never acknowledge that. The Democratic Party is pro-democracy, is pushing popular ideas and is led by a fairly moderate figure — but a sizable group of congressional Democrats casts it as too far left.

Third, this posture is mean-spirited. Manchin in particular seems determined not just to push Biden to the right but also to belittle progressives along the way. Manchin might be getting criticism from his left that he doesn’t like, but he is not a victim. He’s a rich and powerful guy blocking money and programs for people less fortunate than he is. Sinema limits opportunities for her Arizona constituents to interact with her, then gets angry when they confront her.

There’s a better way to be an ideological moderate. Susan Collins shows how. I wish more conservative Democrats would learn from her.