If Democrats win, they need to enact a transformative agenda, fully prosecute Trump — and ignore any hand wringing from pundits
- Democratic pundits and thought leaders are pushing to curtail a liberal agenda as the party looks set to win big in next week's election.
- Essays calling for letting Trump go quietly and avoid prosecution and for Democrats to listen to conservatives on domestic policy are popping up at major media outlets now that Biden has a sizable lead.
- Progressives in the Democratic Party need to take this seriously—these are trial balloons to ensure a tilt to the right.
- Eoin Higgins is a journalist in New England.
Should Joe Biden be elected president on November 3 — especially with a Democratic wave that delivers the party both chambers of Congress — there will be expectations from the liberal base for the party to seize this mandate and deliver a robust domestic agenda and appropriate consequences for the outgoing president.
Recently, however, there has been a concerted effort on behalf of pundits and the more conservative elements of Democratic establishment to ensure that as little of this happens as possible.
From Obama-era legal counsel Cass Sunstein to historian Jill Lepore, thought leaders in the Democratic party's centrist wing are all offering reasons why the incoming administration should handcuff itself and avoid implementing sweeping reforms to the US economy and regulatory state.
Former vice president Biden — who has always painted himself as a moderate— seems receptive to these more tempered expectations. Politico reported this week that he's considering a number of former GOP lawmakers, including former Gov. John Kasich and former Sen. Jeff Flake, for cabinet positions. That these trial balloons are being sent out tells the public, broadly, that Biden and the Democrats may well attribute a potential win to "Biden Republicans" and center-right groups like the Lincoln Project instead of a resurgence of support from the party's base.
This should worry the left, especially those who see a potential Biden presidency as an opportunity for progressive policy. Without a sustained and strong effort from the public, the Democrats appear ready to tamp down as much meaningful change and accountability as they can. It's going to be an uphill battle — one that progressives need to take very seriously.
Right-wing pressure campaigns
Biden is already being pressured by those in his orbit to take what would be a catastrophic conservative approach to governing.
Deficit hawks in the former vice president's orbit have signaled what they describe as a need to cut back on spending as far back as the summer, despite the need for aggressive spending to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis that had followed the disease's outbreak. Handling these myriad issues will require a concerted effort to undo the damage from a year's worth of the pandemic's mishandling and chaos from Trump and the last four years of a steady assault on nearly every facet of the federal government save the security state. Money should not be a concern.
In addition to deficit browbeating, appeals for moderation in the face of the greatest economic and systemic challenge the country has faced in at least three generations are increasing in frequency. And the calls are coming from inside the house.
Law professor and former Obama attache Cass Sunstein wrote at Bloomberg Opinion Sunday that progressives should temper their arguments on big-think domestic policies like the Green New Deal to the concerns of the right. Sunstein, husband of Secretary of State frontrunner Samantha Power, declared that "progressives badly need to give a fair hearing to these objections," despite the fact that said objections are only deployed when spending is targeted at social programs.
Similar noises are coming from centrist Democratic lawmakers too, warning that the party and presumptive president need to avoid thinking about a blowout win, should one happen, as a mandate. In an interview with Sludge, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington explained that in his view Democrats need to understand that the coalition that will defeat Trump comes from around the political spectrum, so that "doesn't mean that they're endorsing us in any sort of huge, dramatic way."
Biden appears receptive to this kind of talk. Despite their social conservatism, which puts the two at odds with the Democratic Party's red lines on topics like abortion and gay rights, considering Kasich and Flake for possible Cabinet positions indicates they're being considered more for their positions on economic policy—something that should gravely concern Democrats outside of the party's donor class.
Letting Trump go gently
That's not all. Among the top priorities for those on the left wing of the party is holding the current president accountable for his myriad crimes while in office.
From the administration's treatment of immigrants to the president's use of the office to benefit his own interests and line his pockets, the Trump administration has been a nonstop parade of criminality and corruption. In order to ensure there is not a repeat performance of this behavior, the bare minimum reaction is to hold hearings — if not prosecute him.
But over the weekend at The Washington Post, historian Jill Lepore opined that the nation should not prosecute Trump but rather let history do the judging. Lepore even likened the desire for accountability to the worst of Trump's crimes, suggesting actions like family separation and the dropping of a large-yield bomb on an Afghan village are morally comparable to holding the actors responsible.
The article—and by implication the argument—was boosted by The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, who referred to Lepore's call to avoid holding Trump accountable as "eloquent." As I recently wrote for Business Insider, this avoidance of accountability and accurate historical memory is itself a major part of the American political project at large and a necessary version of the kind of "memory hole" that's required to hold back the possibility of the president, any president, being answerable to the people outside of the ballot box for their crimes.
For Lepore and Kristof to promote this view — one that aligns with comments from liberals wishing for a kind of politics they don't have to pay attention to every day — does not bode well for Trump facing prosecution or being held to account in any way once he leaves office.
Avoiding another insufficient response to crisis
Given the trend of centrist pundits cautioning Democrats against listening to their base — that, not coincidentally, comes now that Biden has opened a huge lead over Trump — members of the party's left flank would do well to begin fighting for their priorities now. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Biden's most left-leaning surrogates, on October 22 unveiled his own plan for the first 100 days of the new Democratic administration that focused on progressive priorities rather than cautious moderation. It's been well-established for years through a number of studies that despite the actual political leanings of voters, which tend to the left on policy, politicians consistently feel the public is well to the right.
Given this inherent bias toward believing the public is on board with conservatism, actual ideology notwithstanding, the likelihood that Democrats will listen to a minority of voices diametrically opposed to the kind of action needed to address the challenges of the next two years seems high.
The consequences of preemptively compromising in the face of a policy problem larger than quick fixes has been tried before — that's why premiums and copays are higher today under the ACA than they were in the old insurance system.
The left needs to start pushing back against this narrative framing that positions a Democratic wave in the election as anything other than a massive mandate for progressive policies from voters around the country and across the political spectrum.
Allowing the center-right to co-opt this moment would be a mistake of devastating proportions and could lead to another administration defined in large part by the unfulfilled promise of economic recovery for a reeling nation. If Democrats want to avoid a repeat of the last four years in another eight, they need to shut down right wing arguments in favor of doing too little—and the need to do it now.
Eoin Higgins is a journalist in New England. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, The Intercept, Vice News, and many other outlets. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.