Last week’s Supreme Court ruling taking an axe to the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions only strengthens the blunt case that Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. makes in a recent column: that long-time Democratic leaders have failed on multiple fronts against a radically conservative Republican Party that is in the process of dismantling America’s democratic and social progress of the last half century. While the Democratic Party, with its big tent constituency and diversity of interests, always has plenty of fertile ground for internal conflict and displeasure about the party’s direction, Bacon gets at the big picture of the last few decades: he correctly sees a sclerotic and increasingly elderly party leadership repeatedly making unforced errors, helping lead the country to the brink of an authoritarian precipice as the Democrats’ losses have been Republicans’ gains. As he puts it, “on their watch, a radicalized Republican Party has gained so much power that it’s on the verge of ending American democracy as we know it.” Bacon has written one of the most straightforward, persuasive indictments of this generation of Democratic leaders that I’ve seen.
Bacon describes the Supreme Courts’s overturning of Roe. v. Wade as the culmination of the Democratic leadership’s failures, a point I believe will be proven out as the decision’s shock waves continue to reverberate through the Democratic Party and American society. In a single ruling, the Court has reduced American women to second-class citizenship, denying them control over their own bodies and not incidentally ensuring that thousands of women will die due to their inability to get abortion procedures, or by desperately seeking illicit, unsafe alternatives to previously-legal medical care. The Court has thrown out a half century’s precedent, and gone against the spirit of advancing rights for American women, in effect giving legal cover to a right-wing, conservative Christian backlash against the fundamental principle that women are the equals of men in our democracy.
For the American political party most closely identified with and responsible for advancing women’s rights, the Supreme Court’s decision can only be counted as a massive failure and setback. And given that eliminating abortion has been a Republican goal for half a century, the Democratic Party leadership’s apparent disarray in the face of the ruling almost constitutes a separate indictment in and of itself. The failure to articulate a plan to expeditiously restore abortion rights for all, while mobilizing the federal government to protect these rights in the meantime (for instance, by funding travel to states where the right has not yet been lost), is simply mind-boggling. Horrifically, President Biden and congressional leaders are behaving as if this fundamental right is somehow not worthy of drastic action. Democratic leaders have failed both to take the proper measure of Democratic grassroots fury, or to register the full monstrosity of a Supreme Court ruling that, by the Court’s own admission, relies on bogus precedent and superstition, like the misogynistic claptrap of a 17th century “expert” who also believed the proper way to deal with a witch was to put her to the flame. Christian theology has been substituted for the constitution — an abomination that should fill every decent America’s heart with rage and a fierce desire for urgent redress.
Yet it would be fine for Democratic leaders not to express such anger, so long as they had a concrete plan to restore this basic right. You may have heard the common-sense idea put forth by politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren, as well as by various pundits, arguing that the way forward is for Senate Democrats to pledge to enshrine abortion protections in law if two or more additional senators are elected in November (this number would allow the party to eliminate the filibuster in the face of sworn opposition from at least two current senators). This is the most basic action that needs to happen, is in fact the only credible way forward to quickly restoring abortion rights — and yet the Senate leadership and President Biden are actually dithering about this (to be fair, Biden said a few days ago that he’d support filibuster reform to protect abortion rights. It’s also important to note that the House, under Nancy Pelosi, already passed abortion protection legislation in 2021. But we still have not seen Biden and other Democratic leaders promote a coherent, concrete strategy to overcome the Court’s ruling).
I would guess a central reason we have not seen greater decisiveness from Democratic leaders on abortion is the same reason that we have not seen them act more boldly on other critical fronts — because they understand that to truly protect abortion rights, they will have to confront the radical and corrupt Supreme Court, and by extension, will have to enter into a knock-down, no-holds-barred fight with the Republican Party that will make the inter-party conflicts to date look like a venerable grandma’s tea party. They will have to assert a vision of a modern, moral American against a retrograde Christianist, white supremacist movement, in which their opponents have already shown a willingness to use propaganda, hate, and violence to get their way — as most recently and decisively shown by Donald Trump’s attempted coup to remain in office, and by how most Republican elected officials have subsequently joined those insurrectionary efforts. They will have to engage in a level of conflict that, temperamentally, experientially, and perhaps morally, they are simply incapable of engaging in.
My mind keeps going back to President Biden’s speech commemorating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, when he said he would “stand in this breach” against America’s domestic enemies. It was a bold and essential statement, proper to the danger of our times and to the president’s crucial role in protecting the constitutional order. Yet those words now threaten to turn into a hollow mockery of themselves, as the president apparently fails to grasp that an out-of-control Supreme Court poses as much danger to American democracy as Trumpist insurrectionists storming the Capitol; as he fails to grasp that these are two sides of the same phenomenon, a right-wing, authoritarian movement that seeks to place white men at the top of the political hierarchy forever and ever, no matter what it takes, whether that means using physical violence, or the moral violence of stripping American women of long-standing constitutional rights. This is an existential, non-negotiable conflict, but the Democratic establishment, exemplified by Biden, seems essentially unable to fully grasp it, believing that somehow there must be a bipartisan way forward, hoping against hope that the Republicans really don’t mean what they’re doing.
Relatedly, the Democratic establishment appears completely averse to actually mobilizing the Democratic grassroots in such an existential struggle, in a way analogous to what the GOP has long done with its own voters. There seems to be a deep reluctance to engage in the give and take that is necessary to any democratic party, in which a healthy feedback loop exists between voters and elected officials. Even as Democratic voters have become more progressive and more diverse, the party’s upper echelons have failed to keep pace. Instead, as Bacon points out, too many Democratic leaders seem more committed to making war on leftist figures like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez than on the Republican politicians who are literally trying to end democracy. Yet, the confrontation necessary to defeat this right-wing, white supremacist reactionary movement will require the activation and mobilization of the American majority against it — something that the Democrats’ tradition-bound leaders seem unable to countenance, out of fear of being too confrontational towards the GOP and an unease that such a mobilization would inexorably lead to their displacement by younger, more vigorous generations.
If I have one critique of Bacon’s excellent essay, it’s that he may underemphasize the importance of the substance of the politics with which the Democrats need to oppose Republican authoritarianism; they must re-think more than the style and vigor of their political engagement. Clearly, Bacon thinks they need to oppose Republican authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism, but I believe this means Democrats also need to coalesce around and articulate an affirmative vision for America that can negate and overwhelm the GOP’s retrograde project. This is a conversation that every democracy-loving American should be a part of, but a few basic elements seem pretty obvious, since they’ve been underlying Democratic Party principles for many years.
First, the party must trumpet at every opportunity that the United States is a democracy, where the majority must govern, and that the Democratic Party is the defender of our democracy. It must emphasize that being an American has nothing to do with skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin, and everything to do with commitment to the common good and mutual respect despite our inevitable differences. It must very consciously describe the progress in social equality made over the last several decades, as well as the work still to be done to achieve greater equality, freedom, and prosperity for all Americans, and affirm its role as the nation’s primary political advocate for these advances. And it must not be afraid to describe in stark, vivid terms the white supremacism, extremist Christianity, and anti-environmentalism that have taken full possession of the GOP, rendering it an enemy to the kind of country the overwhelming majority of Americans want to live in. In particular, the party must explicitly declare its opposition to white supremacism, and make clear that the party’s goal is to defeat this ideology that has poisoned so much of our national life. There need to be straight talk about the way the GOP’s version of America would leave the nation debilitated, with those at the top of the Republican’s twisted social pyramid exploiting and immiserating the rest of us. Finally, the party should broadcast that its goal is not simply the defeat but the destruction of the authoritarian GOP, along with the wholesale discrediting of its retrograde ideologies.
The good news is that there’s already a general philosophy in waiting ready to be hammered out to guide the Democrats forward; the bad news is how very desperately we need the Democrats to do so.