The problem with Democrats is Republicans. The solution is organizing.
In a two party system, the collapse of one party necessarily infects the other.
The night that Delaware Congressman Mike Castle lost the 2010 Republican Senate Primary, I cried.
I was alone in my apartment in DC, scrolling through a Twitter feed full of ecstatic Democrats and progressives. Castle was a beloved and respected moderate who had been virtually guaranteed to win in the general.
Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party candidate who beat him, was a political novice who had only a tentative grip on policy and an even weaker grip on reality. The most memorable part of her campaign would be the ad in which she declared, “I’m not a witch.”
Her primary win turned a guaranteed Republican Senate seat into a guaranteed Democratic Senate seat (held to this day by Democratic Senator Chris Coons). Similar primary victories by similarly absurd Tea Party candidates across the country cost Republicans the Senate majority that year.
That’s what the folks on Twitter were celebrating the night Castle lost — a gift from a GOP primary electorate in the throes of an anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-Black-president backlash.
I couldn’t join in the celebration because I was convinced that a temporary Senate majority was not worth the damage that electorate was going to inflict.
In a two party system, the loss of one party to conspiracy theories and a desperate longing for an imagined all powerful, all white, suburban United States is a catastrophe. Democrats could not possibly win every election, and their losses would put the power of the federal government in the hands of those who hoped to destroy it. Each election would become a question of system survival, rather than incremental policy changes in one political direction or the other.
The transformation of every election into the “most important of our lifetime” was not the only consequence of the Republican descent into cruelty and incompetence. At each new milestone of Republican extremism — Newt Gingrich’s speakership, George W. Bush’s contempt for truth and democratic institutions, the audacious nihilism of Mitch McConnell and, finally, the authoritarian ambitions of Donald Trump — moderates either left the party or were purged. Some, like Castle, were forced into early retirement by a primary loss. Others left office before the latest right-wing mob had a chance to push them out. Some simply gave in and began parroting the new party line.
And some of them, both elected officials and rank and file voters, became Democrats.
This has been a decidedly mixed blessing for the Democratic party. As in Delaware in 2010, Republican extremism has often resulted in Democratic victories.
But it’s also meant that a single party has to contain the entire spectrum of substantive political debate. Small government, pro-market conservatives are in the same party as social democrats, as are millions of people with views in between.
It’s impossible for anyone to craft a coherent policy platform that satisfies both Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin, so party leadership can only find ways to manage the universal disappointment of its members.
Political reporters, incapable of recognizing (or saying out loud) that one of the two major political parties has gone off the rails, report on this as a failure of leadership, a party unable to maintain the unity and messaging discipline of its rival.
But the Dems aren’t in disarray. They are simply all that is left of genuine, democratic debate over good faith policy differences. Democrats are no longer a party in any meaningful sense. They are simply a bulwark.
Yet that bulwark must stay in place long enough for us to build something new. Another Trump term, combined with an obedient federal judiciary and a dysfunctional Congress, may do more damage than we can repair. And as always, that damage will fall hardest on Black, immigrant and low-income communities.
I don’t blame anyone for resenting the choices they have in this year’s election. I will, however, blame people for acting as though they are entitled to treat voting like an act of self expression, rather than a moral decision with real world consequences.
In the meantime, the work of repairing and rebuilding our democracy belongs to us, not any national party or institution. While our national politics have all but swallowed state and local politics whole, the truth is, the federal government is a creature of state and local politics. Rebuilding our national democracy starts with local organizing, building power one local race, town hall, and community board meeting at a time.
Obviously, this situation is not tenable. A functioning democracy requires institutions that represent the full spectrum of political positions and preferences of the electorate. The fear of a Victor Orban style authoritarian state can only hold the rest of us together for so long.
That’s all the more reason to be clear eyed about what we’re up against and what it will take to push back.
