Burn Down the House

Progressive Nihilism:  "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

Readers over the age of 60 will recognize the quotation.  It was cited by people on the anti-war left to show the crazy nihilism of the American military and the political right.   AP Correspondent Peter Arnett said he heard a US Army major explain why a village with hundred of civilians needed to be bombed in order to remove the Viet Cong soldiers there.  With everyone dead America could start over fresh.  The phrase "press reset" had not yet been invented.

Democrats and progressives are figuring out what went wrong on November 8.  A group of them are saying we need to remake the Democratic Party as a socialist party. 

Brad Avakian lost his election

Oregon is a blue state currently. Democrats hold significant statewide state and federal offices.   Oregon being Oregon, and Democrats being Democrats, these politicians are widely understood to be "liberals", "progressives", "environmentalists", and "pro women."  They are challenged by well funded opponents from the right, some of whom present themselves as conservative right and then lose, and some who presented themselves as moderate conservatives who then sometimes win.   Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Tom McCall won statewide office as Republicans.  This election cycle the Republican Secretary of State office was won by Republican Dennis Richardson who re-cast his long political career into one of moderation on social issues.  His Democratic opponent, Brad Avakian, was the liberal Democrat who won national recognition as the man who fined a baker over refusal to decorate a wedding cake for a gay wedding.  It was a bridge too far.  A Democrat lost a statewide election in Oregon.

The half dozen or so of these leading Democrats I have spoken with frankly over the years all shared the same dismay.  Oregon, they say, is liberal progressive, but it isn't Berkeley.  It isn't Sweden.  Their dismay is not the Republican attacks.  They expect and deserve those.  Their dismay is the progressive, environmental left which insists that they push ever leftward to prove they are pure enough.  No regulation is tight enough.   No tax is high enough.  No wilderness area boundary is big enough.  Sixteen years ago they argued there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush on the environment.  This year some said there is no difference between Ron Wyden and the Koch Brothers.  It was not just that Hillary Clinton was a sellout.  So was Bernie Sanders.  Vote Johnson and Stein.

Protest from the Left

The strongest issue advocates for Democrats are not people who care about Democrats; they care about issues.  They care about reproductive rights, about the environment, about teacher pay and pensions.  I watched the fury with which some wilderness supporters scolded the nation's most avid advocate of wilderness, one who was facing parades of empty log trucks in opposition to his pro wilderness extremism.  Their complaint:  he had sold out by not demanding more.

I hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic governor and it was picketed--from the left.  I hosted a fundraiser for a Democratic senator--arguably the most liberal senator in the senate, more liberal on the score sheets than Sanders.   It was picketed from the left.

The future of a forum I participate in among my college classmates--one that has persisted nonstop for 20 years--is endangered because the abusive tone and mocking name calling employed by a participant who is relentless in righteous anger and name calling on behalf of Bernie Sanders.  I do not think he intends to be nasty, but he is certain of his role as a principled truth teller: only idiots and the corrupted would be blind to Sanders' superiority and Hillary's depravity and 

The progressive left is a tough group to satisfy but a Democrat angers them at ones peril. The pecking order of political virtue is scaled by the absoluteness of the position. More extreme and more absolute mean more purity.  The omnivores are scorned by the vegetarians.  The vegetarians by the vegans.  The cooked food vegans by the raw food vegans.  The locavore organic raw food vegans top the non-organic.  The grow it oneself organic raw food vegans are triumphant, but they need to beware.  It is possible to be a grow it yourself organic heirloom-only raw food vegan.  

There is no value in their venting their anger at Republicans who mock them and who quote them verbatim to show how frightening is the progressive left.  Instead, they vent their anger at people who will listen: Democrats.  Democrats need them. They are allies, but dangerous ones, made more dangerous because if they get a few percent of people to peel out of the coalition they can throw the election to the Republican.

I saw it up close when I was a Democratic elected official: a Jackson County Commissioner.  Nothing but suicide was good enough.

Democrats are figuring out what changes they need to make in both leadership and policy.  Currently some of the strongest arguments are being made in going full left.  That would not be the strategy of Chuck Schumer, but he is trying to hold a coalition together and the strongest voices are on the left.  

Thad Guyer has an observation from his observation site in Saigon, Vietnam:

Guyer

“Bernie Sanders is not Finished Wrecking the Democratic Party”

Non-Democrat Bernie is on the stump again, trashing the Democratic establishment and promising that a massive grass roots progressive movement is about to take charge of the party. Were it not so destructive, it would be just a sad show, heavy on hollow rhetoric, still stuck on “free tuition” and Democrats taking rich people’s money. And the show is none too friendly toward Chuck Schumer’s plans to save the party. (See Sanders interview with Maddow, https://goo.gl/AbAzxE, and NPR, “Bernie Sanders Says Trump Won Because Democrats Are Out Of Touch”, https://goo.gl/eH73iw.) He has added new content with his “Make America Sick Again” attack against Republicans repealing Obamacare.

Meanwhile, Schumer is trying to deal with political realities like Senator Joe Manchin (D. WVa.) and nine other endangered red state democrats who have no intention of sounding like they support Obamacare, or the president’s eleventh hour environmental and business regulations. (See, CNN, Jan 4, 2017, “Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin skips Obama Hill meeting”, https://goo.gl/kWoZvl; and AOLNews, Jan 5, 2017 “Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin gives Trump's EPA pick a thumbs up”, https://goo.gl/cz0nqE). On her show, Maddow made little headway beyond general fight talk in trying to get a firm commitment from Schumer to oppose the Trump agenda and cabinet nominees. The best she could do is get Schumer to say he will try to block any Trump Supreme Court nominee. (See, MSNBC, “Schumer: Dems will resist Trump on 'stolen' Supreme Court seat”, https://goo.gl/5CkJkx).  

Announcing for President in NH.  He became a Democrat that day.

So that’s where we’re at. While Schumer is trying to regain Democratic establishment credibility and realism, Sanders will be out trying to fire up the progressive base against that Democratic establishment, rejecting realism and the centrism that we need to not give Trump 60 filibuster-proof votes in the Senate. To make it all seem worse, the Washington Post published its demographic findings that the “identity politics” strategy of Democrats is unlikely to ever work, because the only way to overcome the shift of white voters-- and a third of Hispanics and Asians to Republicans-- will be to get unprecedented and demographically unlikely levels of support and turnout from minority voters in future presidential elections. (See WP, “The U.S. is becoming more racially diverse. But Democrats may not benefit”, Jan. 6, 2017, https://goo.gl/Xj0CLs). 

Bernie is the gift that just keeps on giving. His next gift may be a Republican majority in Congress that cannot be stopped.