Gee ... I thought they already had transformed the Democrat Party? And that's precisely the problem that the 'Majority Democrats" want to avoid.
This New York Times analysis of yet another small faction emerging after the disastrous (for Dems) 2024 election skips over that to some extent. It also manages to remain ambiguous about what the Majority Democrats represent, other than a lot of butt-hurt over losing.
Are these moderates seeking to seize back the reins from the Left? Progressives trying to seize full control from the moderates? Or just people who think that maybe, just maybe, politicians should consider popular consensus rather than attempt to beat ideological agendas onto electorates?
The latter is certainly part of the new initiative, but everything else seems up for debate:
Members of the initiative, Majority Democrats, have different theories about how the national party has blundered. Some believe a heavy reliance on abortion-rights messaging or anti-Trump sentiment has come at the expense of a stronger economic focus. Others say party leaders underestimate how much pandemic-era school closures or reflexive defenses of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s re-election bid have eroded voters’ trust in Democrats.
But the roughly 30 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels who have so far signed on to the group broadly agree that the Democratic Party must better address the issues that feel most urgent in voters’ lives — the affordability crisis, for example — and that it must shed its image as the party of the status quo. Many of the group’s members have, at times, challenged the party’s establishment, something the organization embraces.
“If we don’t build this big-tent party that can win majorities,” warned Representative Angie Craig of Minnesota, a leader of the initiative, “we’re on the path of being the party of the permanent minority from a national-election perspective.”
Being the anti-Trump party “might win a midterm election,” Ms. Craig, who is also running in a competitive primary for the Senate, added, “but it’s not going to build lasting majorities. We’ve got to lay out the case for what we’re for as a party.”
Well .. . yes, yes they do. And what's so extraordinary about the NYT coverage is that they never actually do lay out a case for what Democrats should stand, other than winning some elections. After all, the progressives in their coalition have spent the last two-plus decades challenging the Clinton-era moderation approach, where abortions were supposed to be "safe, legal, and rare," and when able-bodied Americans were expected to work while receiving welfare benefits. The progressives led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez see themselves still as outsiders tilting against the Democrat establishment, as does their new poster boy Zohran Mamdani.
In fact, Mamdani is a pretty good test case for this incoherence on principles. Mamdani won an election, or at least the Democrat mayoral primary. If he does win the mayoral general election -- and right now he's the favorite, with Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo haggling for the independents -- doesn't that match up with the only clear goal of Majority Democrats in this NYT piece? To win elections?
The rough analogy here may be to the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in the 1980s, when the electoral situation looked less dire for Democrats. They had lost one presidential election in a landslide when centrists formed the group in 1985, and they would lose two more before the DLC had any real impact. However, Democrats still had firm control of the House -- at that point for almost 40 years -- and on-again-off control of the Senate during that period. They also had control of more state legislatures than Democrats do now, and blue states performed better then as well because of the lack of penetration of radical Marxists in the party.
And yet, Democrats saw where the party was heading and formed the DLC to counter it. That produced the Clintons and "triangulation" to get the party closer to consensus opinions on fiscal discipline, crime, and welfare reform. That moderate approach held until 2008, when the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, and the Iraq war allowed progressives to dominate the presidential primaries and push a Senate backbencher to a landslide victory. Suddenly we got ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the Iran deal, interference in Israeli elections, and arguably interference in American elections as well.
So will Majority Democrats emulate the DLC and pull back to the center? Apparently not:
In some ways, the group’s structure resembles that of the Democratic Leadership Council, the once-influential group that successfully pushed the party to the middle in the Clinton era.
But while many of the officials involved in Majority Democrats similarly come from the center-left, organizers insist there is no ideological litmus test to join (nor, despite the new-generation focus, is there an age limit; Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, 60, is on board).
What does it mean to have "no ideological litmus test to join" when the point of the initiative is to "remake" the party based on "lay[ing] out the case for what we’re for as a party"? Reading just a bit further, the intent seems clear -- to appease the progressives and keep them from conducting purity purges:
Expanding the Democratic coalition, Mr. Talarico said, takes “some patience and some tolerance.” He added: “Those are values that Democrats usually espouse, but we need to keep them ourselves. We’ve got to be open-minded. We’ve got to be willing to join with people in a coalition that we may not share 100 percent of our policy views.”
Well, it certainly helps to avoid committing to any principles. However, what this means in practice is that Democrats don't want to "remake" the party at all from its current radical-progressive course. They just want to beg the ascendant radical-progressives for room to pretend that they can still offer some nuances, when those nuances will mean absolutely nothing when Democrats become the governing party again.
The truth is that "younger Democrats" have already transformed their party into the Democrat Socialist Party, and that the Marxists now control the establishment. The so-called Majority Democrats don't have the courage to challenge the ascent of the Marxists, and only want peaceful co-existence with radicals on the radicals' terms. That's a long way from the DLC, and it's even farther away from the political consensus and center of American politics.
