The Liberal Democrats, known as progressives, have never had a political majority. It’s not even close, really. That’s why progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren bombed the Democratic primary in the 2020 election, while the more centrist (at the time) Joe Biden won the Democratic nomination and then the presidency.
The highlight for the progressives may have been the Green New Deal, which the newly elected representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York led in 2019, after being upset by nothing out of a party supporter. Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives that same year, and the Green New Deal was a vision for large-scale, egalitarian change in the energy sector and much of the economy. This was not a legislative package, but a manifesto to end 40 years of capitalism.
It was mostly down from there, and most Democrats themselves may be tired of progressive visions of the mythical Shangri-La. In the June 7 primary in California, voters recalled San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, Chesa Budin, who was elected in 2019. Buden opposed “two justice systems,” one for the rich and one for everyone else, and he advocated alternatives to prison for many convicts. Liberal voters in San Francisco supported this view a few years ago, but with the worsening of crime, homelessness, drug use and untreated mental illness on the streets of the city, now they have said, that’s enough!
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Concerns about urban crime have also driven developer Rick Caruso in the race for mayor of Los Angeles. Caruso, a former Republican who recently turned Democrat, is running as a staunch candidate, promising to put 1,500 new cops on the line. His main opponent, Karen Bass, is vying for her record as a prominent Democrat and years of working with blacks and Latin American communities in Los Angeles. Caruso’s surprisingly strong performance will lead to a runoff in November.
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The results from California follow another upheaval in last year’s Virginia governor race, where new Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Titan Terry McCullough in a race that depends heavily on cultural wars for school programs. State and local competitions do not automatically turn into identical results at the national level, but it is difficult to think of any progressive policies to win over mass voters, while some – especially “police funding” – are utterly terrible.
“Prepare for Permanent Minority Status”
The consequences are dire for President Biden and his fellow Democrats in the upcoming by-elections. “If the National Democrats don’t wake up to what happened to the Progressives, this cycle is preparing for permanent minority status,” Jim Kessler, a longtime Democrat with the Third Way think tank, wrote on Twitter after the California primary.
One immediate consequence of the progressive breakdown could be Biden’s action on the forgiveness of student loans. Like many issues, student debt divides Democrats. Sanders and Warren urged the forgiveness of $ 50,000 in student debt or more through enforcement action if necessary. Biden supports up to $ 10,000 in debt forgiveness, but wants Congress to do so by passing a law, and the votes are not there. Not all Democrats would even vote for so much forgiveness, and Republicans hate the whole idea, as do many politicians who say it would be poorly targeted aid to help Americans, who in many cases are better off getting started.
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 27: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joins student debtors to call again on President Biden to cancel student debt during an early morning White House rally on April 27, 2022 in Washington, DC. District of Columbia. (Photo by Paul Morigi / Getty Images for We The 45 Million)
The Biden administration recently canceled a $ 5.8 billion debt to 560,000 borrowers who visited the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, who cheated students in various ways in their 20s. But that’s a small fraction of the $ 1.8 trillion of all student obligations. Biden’s White House has been hinting for weeks that some greater relief is coming, but this is emerging as a result of Biden’s loss. Young voters are disgusted with Biden, who they say has promised something he has not fulfilled. Maybe Biden could win them over with a huge debt write-off, but this is very unpopular with moderate voters who think it’s an unfair distribution of a privileged group while people who have paid their loans or worked their way to school or have not gone to college to get nothing. Whatever Biden decides, he will infuriate a significant bloc of voters.
Biden’s entire presidency has been a tug-of-war between Democratic progressives who expect Biden to support their expansionist welfare goals and party centrists such as West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who will not comply. Biden turned left after being elected, allowing congressional Democrats to accumulate hundreds of billions of dollars in “20-billion-dollar” legislation for social programs that are not very popular. The BBB package collapsed in December when Manchin said he could not vote on such an expensive and crowded bill. Progressives can’t stand Manchin, but his views are much more consistent with the moderates and independents who put Biden at the top of the 2020 presidential race – and he’s much more popular in his home state, where most voters are Republicans. than Biden is with any group of voters.
Democrats still have little chance of reviving some of the BBB’s elements this year, such as investing in green energy, with modest tax increases to pay for them and also helping reduce gaping budget deficits. One of the Democrats’ many fears is that voters will show up in November with little memory of their 2021 bailout plan or the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed by Biden, and will instead rate the Democratic Party as a fragmented mess that cannot to do nothing. So there is still a desire to convey something to the voters over the next few months.
It may be too late. Voters are already rejecting some of the ideas most closely associated with the Democratic Party – and these are the more liberal progressives of the Democrats, whom they thought they could count on. They can’t, not when big ideas seem radically detached from everyday life.
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Turn from Failure to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
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