Jon Chait does a good job laying out the broad history of the last 30-40 years when it came to the Reagan Coalition. For the most part, the neoconservative foreign policy hawks and the libertarian anti-statists have had the wheel and - while their agenda has largely been a disaster - they haven't been TOO far out of line with public opinion. That could be toxic, because - as he puts it:
Republicans will try to confine their ambitions to poll-tested measures like a 15-week abortion ban. But it is far from certain they will restrain a base that has the taste of victory. One prologue is Florida, where social conservatives led the party into a nationalized fight over a bill restricting schools from any mention of homosexuality. The pressure to demonstrate ideological commitment will push officials farther and farther rightward.
Meanwhile, the GOP operatives interviewed by Ben Jacobs feel that the Democrats will screw this up, because the Democrats always screw up. This elides the fact that more people vote for Democrats in every national election, but the GOP has leveraged the anti-democratic structures of the American form of government to avoid democratic accountability. It was interesting reading the GOP operatives saying things like this:
A senior Capitol Hill staffer made a similar point: “The left has lost the plot so much, it will neutralize what will be a vote-moving issue. The traditional left argument is about protecting women, but now they can’t even say what a woman is.” As the red-state operative wondered, the question is also whether abortion becomes a separate issue from the current cultural wars or if it just becomes “part and parcel with drag-queen story time and teaching kids hypersexual content in schools” and the other social issues currently animating the right.
This is kind of nuts. This is pure Fox News bullshit. It echoes this line from Chait's piece:
The conservative movement traditionally consisted of three main wings: foreign-policy hawks, anti-statist libertarians, and social conservatives. All three wings have developed radical ideas in the ideologically purified sanctity of their think tanks and media organs.
The idea of epistemological closure has fascinated me for awhile. Chait and other have waged a lonely battle to try and avoid this on the Left, but certainly the Very Online Twitter Left that thinks Bernie was more popular than Hillary has fallen into this very trap. What's striking is that the entire GOP establishment has fallen into believing the Fox News bullshit.
I've written before that everyone seems to think that the GOP are full of political masterminds, when really they have terrible structural advantages that allow them to pursue shitty policy without suffering the electoral consequences of it.
It could very well be the case that inflation destroys the ability of the Democrats to retain control of the Senate (and therefore the judicial nominations needed to counteract this theocratic lunacy). Inflation is a real problem. However, by November, it might be so baked into the cake that the death of a young woman in Texas from a self-induced abortion this fall could be a rallying cry for a surprisingly diverse counterwave.
The GOP operatives do have a point, when they say that Democrats shouldn't be going to far. "Safe, legal and rare" remains the best expression of the popular position on abortion. Women's autonomy works well, too. You just know that some nitwit will say that women should have abortion on demand through the third trimester, and that will become the "Democrat position" on Fox and OANN.
Yglesias can be tiresome on this issue, but Democrats really should try some message discipline on popular positions, seize the middle ground and then be able to actually govern.
The future of democracy might depend on it.
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