U.S. Democrats need to discipline their own coalition

Sometime about halfway through the (first?) Trump administration I had a minor epiphany. It used to be that when a Republican President did something that I objected to, I blamed U.S. Republicans for having elected him. At a certain point though, I got tired of all the excuses I kept hearing from Democrats. I began to think that we – and by “we” I mean “the rest of the world” – should be putting a lot more blame on American liberals, for being incredibly bad at politics, and thus for having inflicted Trump upon us through their ineptitude.

This realization came to me when I was listening to yet-another talk by an American liberal academic, who went off on a digression about how horrible President Trump was, before ending with an apology “on behalf of my country.” I couldn’t help noticing that the apology seemed insincere, because the speaker didn’t give the impression that she felt personally responsibility for Trump’s election. Indeed, she talked about Trump as though he had just landed from outer space, as if the way that American liberals (and “progressives”) behave had absolutely nothing to do with his popularity.

From that day forward, I began to blame Democrats for the success of Republicans. This led me to see many things differently. For instance, I began to notice that the eagerness with which American elites claim that “racism” is the primary force driving Trump voters serves also as a convenient form of self-exoneration. I don’t really know how much working class Republican voters hate racial minorities, but one thing I’m quite sure about is that they really, really hate elites. Now, if you’re a member of that elite, one of the things you might do to improve the situation is to stop doing some of the things that make your fellow citizens hate you so much.

Of course, one might think that blaming Democrats for Republicans is unfair. It’s like blaming someone who gets punched in the face for having a punchable face. And yet, if you do happen to have a punchable face, and you know that you have a punchable face, and you’re in a room full of people spoiling for a fight, is it not a reasonable counsel of prudence to do what you can to make your face slightly less punchable?

So what makes Democrats so bad at politics? Once you set aside the usual excuses, it’s easy to see that the list of problems is quite long. (Incidentally, one thing I have learned as a long-time outside observer of American politics is that non-Americans have a very distorted view of the two political parties because we tend to focus only on federal politics. As a result, most non-Americans know a lot less about how Democrats act at the state and municipal level. So, for example, the fact that the Democratic party is generally seen as more corrupt than the Republican party is something that most non-Americans do not realize.)

I would like to focus on something more basic though, which is the failure on the part of many Democrats to understand the importance of disciplining their own coalition. Yascha Mounk recently wrote a piece in Persuasion pointing out how proactive Keir Starmer has been in this regard (in the U.K.), and how singularly ineffective Joe Biden has been by comparison. The comparison is a bit unfair, in that Starmer has been unusually effective (e.g. consider how well he has dedifferentiating the two parties on trans issues), while Biden is not much worse than any other Democrat.

Part of this comes down to differences between the two political systems, in particular the absence of party discipline in the U.S. In a system with party discipline, participants get used to the idea that they may need to stfu every so often on some issues, especially if their position is one that is massively unpopular with the general public. Discipline also leads to the creation of official party platforms, which typically leave out most of the ideas favored by the more extreme elements in each party’s coalition. This allows politicians seeking election to distance themselves, with some degree of credibility, from unpopular ideas.

Even granted these differences though, Democrats spend far too much time trying to placate their own extremists. Liberals seem to think that the only way to reduce political polarization in the U.S. is to attack Republican extremists. If the goal is to reduce polarization, why not try to clean up your own house instead? People sometimes fail to appreciate the extent to which polarization is driven by both sides looking at the extreme end of their opponent’s coalition with revulsion. So one way to reduce polarization is to make your own extreme less unpalatable to others. And yet Democrats, while condemning Republican norm violations, often give a free pass to their own side for violating the exact same norms.

I came across an unusually clear example of this a while back in the New York Review of Books, a publication that offers fairly reliable insight into the worldview of U.S. elites. The article in question is a bit of culture war polemic by Adam Hochschild entitled “History Bright and Dark.” In it he reviews two ideologically opposed efforts to retell American history in support of contemporary political positions: the (right-wing) Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum and the (left-wing) documentary version of The 1619 Project. Hochschild is, as one might expect, extremely negative in his assessment of the Hillsdale curriculum, while bending over backwards to be positive about the 1619 Project (and its architect/narrator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, e.g. “Again and again... Hannah-Jones tackles the dark sides of history that the upbeat 1776 Curriculum ignores”).

There is, however, a striking mismatch between the tone of the review and the specific criticisms that he puts forward of each curriculum. When it comes to the 1776 Curriculum, Hochschild’s central complaint is that it fails to emphasize the things that he would like it to emphasize. For example, while it forcefully condemns slavery, it does not put enough emphasis on its day-to-day horrors. Or, the question of how “the nation’s territory was wrested away from its original inhabitants is skimmed over quickly.” Or, there is not enough discussion of wealth inequality (“Its view of American history is all politics and no economics”).

“The most notable thing about the 1776 Curriculum,” he says, “is what is not in it.” In other words, his central criticism of the curriculum is that it emphasizes the things that conservatives think are important, while putting a great deal less emphasis on the things that liberals think are important (e.g. “missing from the 1776 Curriculum is the idea that constitutional rights are only a beginning”). That should hardly come as a surprise to anyone. People often study history and come to different conclusions about its implications for the present.

When it comes to the 1619 Project, on the other hand, Hochschild’s assessment is upbeat, and yet prefaced by a peculiar cautionary note: “the series is not without flaws, and some are no fault of the creators.” The implication, I suppose, is that some are the fault of the creators. He then proceeds to point out several problems that are, one would think, far more serious than selective emphasis. Specifically, he catches Hannah-Jones making false claims, not once but twice! And yet he treats this as though it were a minor annoyance, a distraction from what is otherwise an excellent product.

This is, of course, a long-standing complaint about the 1619 Project – that is plays fast and loose with the facts. I don’t intend to adjudicate those claims here, I just want to observe that Hochschild, on two separate occasions in his review, accuses Hannah-Jones of what a less charitable reviewer would call “lying” (or, perhaps, of presenting “alternative facts”). The first involves a slightly obscure point about the impact of a proclamation by the British Governor of Colonial Virginia. Here is what Hochschild says: “Some problems might have been avoided. In the first episode of the series, the host and 1619 Project originator Nikole Hannah-Jones stubbornly sticks to a contention that in the earlier versions drew criticism from historians.” He goes on to make it clear that he agrees with the historians.

Later on in the review he fact-checks her even more directly. “In one of her occasional overstatements, Hannah-Jones claims that American capitalism was ‘born on the plantation,’ which is not really true. But what is true is the centrality of human property in this country’s history.” Strangely, none of this seems to affect his positive overall assessment of the series. And yet, it seems to me that saying things that are “not really true,” or stubbornly repeating false claims, even after having been corrected by historians, is not a venial sin, but rather a mortal one – especially in a curriculum that is aimed a high school students.

Not to belabour the point, but imagine what the response would have been if the conservative curriculum contained, not mere omissions, but explicitly false claims. The natural conclusion would have been that these falsehoods undermined the credibility of the broader narrative. And yet, in the case of the 1619 Project, they are treated as just “occasional overstatements.” Why such indulgence? It is perfectly possible to tell the history of the U.S. in a way that treats it as little more than a long litany of injustice without lying or misrepresenting any of it. My suspicion is that Hochschild underreacts because he fails to appreciate just how damaging this sort of behaviour is to the cause that he supports.

Most people assume that others lie as a last resort, not gratuitously, and so if the liberal curriculum contains lies, it must be because the liberal narrative as a whole can only be sustained by lies. This makes everyone on the left look bad. This is why the standards that we impose on our own side should be the exact opposite of the ones that Hochschild applies in this review. When our political opponents lie and dissemble, it makes them look bad, but when people on our own side lie and dissemble, it makes us look bad. We shouldn’t be giving them a pass just because we happen to agree with the sentiment that motivates them.

I will grant that I’m making a big deal out of one little article. I keep thinking about it though, despite having read it just over a year ago, because it so precisely captures a certain obliviousness that many U.S. liberals have, where they seem unable to imagine how they look to others, or how the actions of their own side might contribute to polarization. When Sean Spicer stood up and lied about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration, it spawned dozens of think-pieces on how authoritarian political movements force their followers to lie in order to demonstrate fealty. This is probably true, but it is important to recognize that conservatives apply the exact same analysis to all the lies told by liberals, many of whom are just as afraid to challenge their own side.

I am not trying to suggest any sort of false equivalence between the two sides. Republicans clearly have become a lot more extreme than Democrats have. My point is simply that, since American liberals have had so little success in their attacks on Republican extremists – indeed, they seem to be just egging them on – maybe they would be more effective if they focused on limiting the flow of ragebait emanating from their own coalition.