We Are All Burkeans

 Martin Longman talks about "popularism" and the burdens that Democrats labor under in terms of an asymmetric playing field.

Basically, without saying it, what Longman is describing is temperamental as opposed to ideological conservatism. America is not a "center right" nation when it comes to policy preferences. Ask Americans what they would like, and their views will largely line up with a broad range of "center left" priorities. Of the top of my head, majorities support some form of abortion rights, more gun control, higher taxes on the rich, more government help with health insurance, a better environment, improved public education, workplace protections...I dunno, I'm still ingesting my coffee. Ask them if they "want" these things and anywhere from 51% to 70%  will say, "sure." 

Here's what I think Longman hits on. When you craft your question a certain way, you get a certain answer. If you say, "Anyone should be able to get an abortion whenever they want," that won't be popular. If you say, "Abortion in the first trimester should be available to those women who need it." it will be.

This semantics argument is at the heart of "popularism." That there's some magical phrasing that will make Democrats an enduring majority party.

What Longman hits on, and I think this is more profoundly important than he realizes, is that ANY CHANGE will be unpopular compared to preserving existing structures. At first, this is really discouraging for a party that wants to improve things for most Americans. If you do something like Obamacare, you will get punished for it, because change is scary.

The flip side is that once you've instituted those changes, they become the status quo that becomes hard to change. We saw this with the Affordable Care Act. The GOP had control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency and they couldn't gut the law. Bush couldn't gut Social Security. 

The temperamental deference to the status quo is a fairly normal human impulse. So how do Democrats navigate this?

First, the wasted time with Manchinema really does hurt more than I thought it would. Not because of the dysfunction narrative - though it doesn't help when you're trying to sell efficient government and they can't function efficiently. Rather any gains that Democrats want to run on in 2022 and 2024 require people understanding exactly what the new status quo is and Democrats effectively saying that they want to protect that.

In other words, you win an election; you issue reforms quickly; Republicans howl about the reforms; Democratic poll numbers drop; people like the reforms; Democrats run on protecting them from Republicans.

What I worry about is that a two year cycle simply isn't long enough to allow this process to give the Democrats working majorities for long enough to truly cement their gains.

If - somehow - Democrats can run and win in 2022 on a fear of a Trump Restoration and the end of democracy as we know it - then there is real hope for creating a virtuous cycle for enough time to bleed off support for Cult 45.