Ed Burmila linked to an article in The Baffler that I'm not even going to try to track down to link to. It starts with an overly generalized discussion of an American Myth of distortion that has little to any basis in my understanding of American history.
It then goes on to argue that Liberal governance as typified by Obama was a failure because it tried to reach out for bipartisan compromise.
The problem with this analysis is that the reason Obama reached out to the GOP was because after 2010, the GOP controlled the House. Without Republican help, Obama couldn't pass any legislation. Why did the GOP win the House in 2010? Because there was a massive economic crisis in 2008 (it was in all the papers). The tail of that crisis lasted for years, and some of it can still be seen in the persistently stagnant wages we see today.
Now, there is something called Murc's Law coined by Scott Lemieux that says the "only Democrats have agency, and therefore everything is there fault." The reality is that our elections are basically determined by 20% of the population who make their voting decisions based on "TEH FEELS." Things are going great? Reward the party in power. Things suck? Punish the party in power. This is why, since 1980, Unified control of the White House, the Senate and the House has occured very rarely. It is obviously in place now, in 2009-2010, 2002-2007 and 1993-1995. The preference for divided government isn't about policy, it's about how people feel about government. Democrats do a poor job of telling a story about policy, whereas Republicans are good at that. But as we are seeing now, Republicans can't outrun bad policy. This is leaving aside the 2010 GOP gerrymander entirely.
The fact remains that Democrats - mushy, liberal centrist Democrats - won the popular vote for President in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016. Bush won the popular vote in 2004 by a million votes, in the narrowest re-election margin in nearly a century. The fact remains that votes for Democratic members of Congress exceed those votes cast for Republican members of Congress is almost every election. Using just the House vote, more Americans voted for Democrats than Republicans in 2012, 2008, 2006 and it was effectively tied in 2000. In two of those elections, they won the popular vote, but did not gain control of the House. In 2016, only 1% separated the two parties in the House, neither of which won a majority of the popular vote. Despite winning 49.1% of the popular vote, the GOP won 55% of the seats.
The article - and others of its ilk - suggest that it is Democratic timidity and perverse insistence on bipartisanship that hamstrings Democratic voter turnout. Last night saw another young, female person of color knock off an older, white, male Democratic warhorse. Both Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represent the changing demographics of Democratic bastions in the cities. They do not represent a groundswell for Bernie Sanders, yet this is inevitably the lens through which the Left percieves it. Clinton's unpardonable crime in 2016 of getting millions more votes than Sanders remains a sore spot. Andrew Gillum's win in Florida is being ascribed to Sanders, even though Gillum was a Clinton surrogate.
Winning primaries and safe seats is not the way back to a House and Senate majority. If Trump proved anything, it was that the power of white voters - while waning - remains the most potent force in American politics. Running up the vote totals in Ocasio-Cortez's district by moving left will not win a suburban Long Island district.
But again, all of this presumes that campaigns - especially midterm campaigns - are fought and won on issues. They aren't. If you really care about issues, you've already made up your mind whom you are voting for. In fact, we know for a fact - via polling - that Democratic solutions to problems are more populat than Republican solutions. Background checks have been overwhelmingly popular for years, but it hasn't led to a Democratic House. Increasing taxes on the wealthy has been popular for years, but it hasn't led to a Democratic House.
Luckily, widespread disgust with Trump SHOULD lead to a Democratic House this November, but it will have to overcome the 2010 gerrymander. And should Democrats gain the upper hand throughout the 2020 re-districting cycle, they should play hardball, too.
But, to use a current example, calling the Democrats feckless because they can't stop Brett Kavanaugh from getting confirmed is just moronic. There are almost certainly 51 votes to confirm him. Everything else is theater.
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