Re: Democrats Need Brains As Well As Spine

On 14 Feb 2022, PaxPerPoten <[email protected]> posted some
news:[email protected]: 

> Kamala Harris is nothing but a political trick turning whore.

In my days as a professional, card-carrying-“centrist” Democrat, one of 
the intramural memes that made me the craziest was the assertion that 
anyone who didn’t favor the progressive flavor-of-the-day policy 
prescription or message lacked “spine.” Not brains, but spine. The planted 
axiom was that everyone knew this or that lefty shibboleth was correct, 
and so failure to pursue it could only be explained as a product of 
corruption or of cowardice, with the latter explanation being more 
charitable.

Now don’t get me wrong: There were plenty of “centrist” politicians who 
could have pleaded guilty to the charge of timidity, bred of a deeply 
poll-driven obsession with occupying and holding the political middle 
ground at all costs. But sometimes ideological or strategic differences of 
opinion are just that, and do not betray an overweening desire to sell out 
“the base” for a mess of bipartisan pottage or pundit admiration. And 
being “tough” or a “fighter” or “unafraid” does not necessarily dictate 
the most successful course of action. Even though progressives have earned 
the right to lead the Democratic Party, an aggressive attitude simply 
won’t be enough.

It’s an important distinction to remember in the Trump era, when it’s a 
rare left-of-center political person who does not openly and loudly 
disparage the president and his party. Trump is the American Beauty rose 
of will-to-power politics, who has satisfied those in the GOP who cared 
most about “owning the libs” and defying “political correctness.” But the 
habit of identifying the leftmost course as defining Democratic courage 
lives on in the attacks on Nancy Pelosi for resisting demands for an 
immediate lurch down the path to impeachment. Does anyone who has paid 
attention to Pelosi’s career really believe she’s afraid of anybody or 
anything? Quite possibly she is wrong that impeachment might materially 
improve the odds that Donald Trump will serve a second term in which he 
can further stack the judiciary with stone ideologues and shred every 
constitutional and democratic norm. If she’s wrong, she’s wrong, but it’s 
not a matter of inadequate spine.

You can hear the same sort of mistake being made in the criticism of Joe 
Biden’s irrepressible faith in an honorable GOP that will spring back to 
life once the Evil One in the White House is gone. He’s absolutely wrong 
about that, of course. But it’s not because he’s soft or too nice or lacks 
spine. No one Biden’s age is likely to be afraid of anything other than 
the Grim Reaper.

More to the point, though, toughness is not going to beat Trump or the 
GOP, either. It’s going to require brains and and a workable strategy, 
both in the 2020 election and beyond. And it’s the apparent lack of brains 
exhibited by Biden’s persistent bipartisanship that’s troubling.

Nobody’s going to call progressive writer Brian Beutler a milquetoast 
centrist. He is practically the Cato the Censor of pro-impeachment 
agitprop. But he understands why Biden’s misapprehension about Republicans 
is a problem, and what needs to be done about it:

[It] … foreshadows how things will go for any winning Democratic candidate 
who clings, sincerely or otherwise, to the view that a golden era of 
compromise will dawn once Trump is gone. These candidates will lock 
themselves into a mode of governing that can not work anymore. Their 
supporters and intra-party critics will be demoralized, their presidencies 
will stagnate, and they will waste precious time grasping for a better 
approach. (That’s if they don’t react to predictable GOP resistance by 
passing new, ill-conceived pseudo-compromises like the Hyde amendment.)

It’s obviously just as naive to assume that hard-nosed realism about the 
nature of the modern GOP will unlock a progressive revolution all on its 
own. But candidates who understand what they’re signing up for can take 
steps to prepare for governing around Republicans now, knowing it’s 
delusional to imagine they’ll govern in coalition with them. If Democrats 
win the White House but not the Senate, Democrats should be prepared to 
implement creative foreign and administrative policies; if they 
consolidate power, they should be prepared to legislate in an aggressive 
and likely partisan way. The next time a Democrat is president, 
Republicans will again want to filibuster his or her presidency into 
failure, so the filibuster must be on the chopping block, and the party 
should be prepared to legislate around its own internal center, rather 
than let its most conservative members set the agenda in the vain hope of 
securing bipartisanship.

This is a challenge to intelligence and imagination and political skill, 
not just to courage and strength and “spine.” Out-thugging Donald Trump 
may well be impossible in any event. So instead of simply demanding that 
Democrats “stop bringing a knife to a gunfight,” progressives should ask 
them to bring all their assets to the table. They’ll need them.

<https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/democrats-need-brains-as-well-as-
spine.html>