A precursor - I must have failed some sort of target audience screen when I signed up for this newsletter… I’ll try to self-sort better in the future.
1. A useful companion to making room for pro-choice republicans is to make room for pro-life democrats, as there once was. Perhaps they may even be willing to compromise in the ways you hope. Although, leveling down the presumption of absolute evil for each side seems…unlikely.
2. I’m curious if the author thinks counter majoritarian institutions are *always bad* or if there’s value in defending a vulnerable population against tyranny of the majority?
Thank you for reading! I don't necessarily think that counter-majoritarian institutions are always bad. But I also think it is a mistake to put too much faith in particular institutional structures as protections against various harms. In a society with a broad commitment to making democracy work, lots of different institutional forms will work well enough. In a society without that, most of them won't.
What's going to happen is that the GOP is going to win and keep all branches of governments for the foreseeable future, make a huge mess out of the country, and somehow still find a way to blame "the left". Just watch. Things are going to get real bad before they eventually (very eventually) start to get better. Not even sure a secession can be excluded, btw.
We (that is we on the left) need to first progress through the stages of grief and accept the new reality, over which we have limited steering power.
That being said,
2) To the extent the GOP will be remotely interested in doing anything when it gets to power, Democrats can still exert some crucial influence from a minority position.
1) One day, not anytime soon but maybe within the next 20 years, the pendulum could swing strongly back to the left (perhaps after a truly disastrous right-wing governing spell), and we might finally have the huge majority needed to bring the clock forward once again. But in that case, the really interesting question to me is, will we get there with enough teeth (and less Manchins and Sinemas) to actually grab that opportunity?
well said, and applicable to numerous "progressive" policy ideas whereby the pursuit of the perfect (or perhaps more aptly the purest) has greatly damaged the enactment of the good.
Folks like you keep pushing the idea that the current GOP is possible to work with. THIS IS DEMONSTRABLY UNTRUE. You are normalizing and accepting immoral behavior, dishonest statements and disrespectful treatment of minority populations. You, yes YOU, need to stop. Be an accomplice to a better world.
This attitude (as Mr. Avent notes) has no endgame other than increasingly fraught conflict. The Republicans, like the Democrats, are diverse. Many of them on the issue of abortion for example do not support the radical criminalization efforts being pursued by too many Republican politicians. They can be attracted to vote for Dems, but calling EVERY Republican an enemy or stupid or whatever just pushes them away and creates no on ramp towards more progressive policies.
No one said every Republican, I said the GOP, the organized office holders. They need to be called out on their lies, not appeased. You folks are never reluctant to criticize democrats or fear alienating progressives (whose policies are actually supported by the majority). No, we are asked to compromise. Lack of self awareness in the journalism class is a big problem.
Respectfully, this is wrong. I have spent quite a lot of time over the past 20 years calling out Republicans, and I do worry about alienating progressives. I'm asking them to compromise, because it seems to me that if they don't, we will lose our democracy and many other things as well.
A precursor - I must have failed some sort of target audience screen when I signed up for this newsletter… I’ll try to self-sort better in the future.
1. A useful companion to making room for pro-choice republicans is to make room for pro-life democrats, as there once was. Perhaps they may even be willing to compromise in the ways you hope. Although, leveling down the presumption of absolute evil for each side seems…unlikely.
2. I’m curious if the author thinks counter majoritarian institutions are *always bad* or if there’s value in defending a vulnerable population against tyranny of the majority?
Thank you for reading! I don't necessarily think that counter-majoritarian institutions are always bad. But I also think it is a mistake to put too much faith in particular institutional structures as protections against various harms. In a society with a broad commitment to making democracy work, lots of different institutional forms will work well enough. In a society without that, most of them won't.
What's going to happen is that the GOP is going to win and keep all branches of governments for the foreseeable future, make a huge mess out of the country, and somehow still find a way to blame "the left". Just watch. Things are going to get real bad before they eventually (very eventually) start to get better. Not even sure a secession can be excluded, btw.
We (that is we on the left) need to first progress through the stages of grief and accept the new reality, over which we have limited steering power.
That being said,
2) To the extent the GOP will be remotely interested in doing anything when it gets to power, Democrats can still exert some crucial influence from a minority position.
1) One day, not anytime soon but maybe within the next 20 years, the pendulum could swing strongly back to the left (perhaps after a truly disastrous right-wing governing spell), and we might finally have the huge majority needed to bring the clock forward once again. But in that case, the really interesting question to me is, will we get there with enough teeth (and less Manchins and Sinemas) to actually grab that opportunity?
I guess we'll see.
well said, and applicable to numerous "progressive" policy ideas whereby the pursuit of the perfect (or perhaps more aptly the purest) has greatly damaged the enactment of the good.
Folks like you keep pushing the idea that the current GOP is possible to work with. THIS IS DEMONSTRABLY UNTRUE. You are normalizing and accepting immoral behavior, dishonest statements and disrespectful treatment of minority populations. You, yes YOU, need to stop. Be an accomplice to a better world.
It’s 150m people. If we write them off, we don’t have a society.
74M people voted for Trump in 2020. Still a lot of people to write off.
Don’t write them off, but don’t enable them, either. Trump and the GOP encourage viscous intolerance. Don’t let it be acceptable.
This attitude (as Mr. Avent notes) has no endgame other than increasingly fraught conflict. The Republicans, like the Democrats, are diverse. Many of them on the issue of abortion for example do not support the radical criminalization efforts being pursued by too many Republican politicians. They can be attracted to vote for Dems, but calling EVERY Republican an enemy or stupid or whatever just pushes them away and creates no on ramp towards more progressive policies.
No one said every Republican, I said the GOP, the organized office holders. They need to be called out on their lies, not appeased. You folks are never reluctant to criticize democrats or fear alienating progressives (whose policies are actually supported by the majority). No, we are asked to compromise. Lack of self awareness in the journalism class is a big problem.
Respectfully, this is wrong. I have spent quite a lot of time over the past 20 years calling out Republicans, and I do worry about alienating progressives. I'm asking them to compromise, because it seems to me that if they don't, we will lose our democracy and many other things as well.