Just what Democrats need, another self-defeating round of self-flagellation

Just what Democrats need, another self-defeating round of self-flagellation

Paul Waldman — Read time: 4 minutes

Columnist

President Biden and the Democratic Party are in the position just about every ruling party finds themselves in as they approach the first midterm election of a presidency: low approval ratings, difficulties passing legislation and apparently headed for an electoral defeat.

Which means it’s time for a vigorous round of liberal self-flagellation.

“Have they gone too far left?” everyone asks. Reporters seek out Democratic centrists who are eager to explain how all the party’s troubles are the fault of party activists. Can we ascribe far-out positions to elected Democrats who don’t actually hold them? Let’s do it. Is there a liberal jurisdiction where officials passed measures that conservatives would disagree with? Put ‘em on the front page and elevate them to national status.

While we’re at it, let’s return to those Rust Belt diners for another round of articles about why the heartland folk regard these out-of-touch Democrats with contempt. Liberal columnists will write piece after piece on how the party has shifted too far. Every Democrat will face demands to condemn the supposed extremists in their party.

Meanwhile, actual extremism is not only more prevalent in the Republican Party, extremism reaches into its highest echelons. Yet Republican elected officials are far less likely to be weighed down by their own right flank than Democrats are by their left.

What accounts for the difference? It’s partly a matter of psychology. Democrats tend to be timid and self-critical, always gripped by the fear that at any moment the public will reject them. On the other hand, Republicans have embraced a political style that values aggression and shamelessness.

But more important is the informational environments the two parties exist in.

At the center of the Republican universe sits Fox News, a network devoted to stirring outrage, resentment and White grievance. Fox News is the hub of a propaganda wheel, where each day’s programming is filled with stories of liberal excess and the supposed threat it poses to everything that is right and good.

No single outlet — not MSNBC, not the New York Times, not The Washington Post — is as central to Democrats’ worldview as Fox News is to that of Republicans. Meanwhile, the outlets Democrats rely on regularly police liberal excess, drawing attention to it, encouraging Democrats to be embarrassed by it, and initiating cycles of shame and condemnation on the left.

So a report such as that of three members of the San Francisco school board being recalled gets enormous national coverage, framed by the idea that wacky leftists went so far off the rails that even ordinary liberals could no longer tolerate them.

That’s how the article was written after the recall succeeded. Had it failed and those members stayed on the board, it also would have been taken as proof that the left has gone too far.

Democratic centrism is never blamed for the party’s failures; it’s always the fault of the left, even when progressives are the ones doggedly pursuing the president’s agenda and centrists such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) are the ones sabotaging it. Leftists even got blamed for the defeat in Virginia of Terry McAuliffe, as much of a corporate centrist as Democrats could find.

That isn’t to say that liberals don’t call attention to conservative excesses — they certainly do. You can hear reports of book-banning, loopy conspiracy theories and galloping white nationalism on many liberal websites or on MSNBC. But conservatives don’t feel much need to answer for it; the most uncomfortable question they’ll get is whether they admit that Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.

Meanwhile, every Democrat has to face repeated questions about “defund the police,” an idea advocated by almost no Democratic elected official. Do they believe in it? Why haven’t they denounced it more often? Aren’t they worried it will drag their party down?

Here’s what this all adds up to: Everything in the informational universe liberals inhabit encourages them to be critical of their own side, while the opposite is true of conservatives. You then have an allegedly two-sided debate in which Republicans say “Look how crazy liberals are!”, to which Democrats respond by saying “Look how crazy liberals are! Let’s try not to be so crazy!”

The entire debate winds up revolving around the question of how extreme liberals are, at a time when the Republican Party has all but abandoned democracy itself.

Large portions of the public will inevitably conclude that yes, liberals are crazy. They might be trying to make material improvements in people’s lives while Republicans shovel fabricated culture war nonsense at them, but it’s the Democrats who are said to be out of touch with what folks are going through.

Republicans are engaged in an endless campaign of race-baiting, but it’s liberals who are supposedly “obsessed” with race. Liberals beat themselves up for not getting more votes in small towns and rural areas, but nobody asks Republicans why they do so terribly in cities and how their party is going to change to get more urban votes.

The result of all this self-flagellation is that Democrats wind up not concentrating on their opponents — not putting them on the defensive, and not giving voters a reason to vote against them. If the only question being asked is how bad Democrats are, the outcome of the November elections is all but inevitable.