Joseph Yaffa’s Comment in The New Yorker (How to Defend Democracy) caught my attention recently. He discusses the success of the far-right AfD party at the German ballot box, and the threat this poses to Germany’s standard anti-fascist stance. It’s becoming increasingly challenging for other parties to govern without the far right when sizable pluralities of the German electorate vote them into office.
In the US, which has long been locked into a two-party system, it becomes nearly impossible. When one party is taken over by its extreme right wing and manages to get control of the government, the other party gets stuck making speeches and trying to claw its way back into power.
I was particularly struck by Yaffa’s closing passage:
Yet competence at institutional defense is no substitute for an affirmative vision of governance. That’s also a lesson for other European democracies, from Austria to France, where mainstream parties have struggled to keep far-right challengers from power. A firewall can protect a political system, at least for a while, but it cannot explain what that system is for, or why its citizens should care.
The Democratic Party talks about political norms and threats to democracy. Biden and Harris both made these important issues in their campaigns, and Biden even closed his presidency with a speech about it.
They’re right, of course. The electorate must defend its democratic heritage to keep it. The stakes are enormous, the threat imminent; Gondor calls for aid.
What’s missing is party leaders’ commitment to assertive, tangible action.
Where is their sense of urgency?
Many of them are still acting as if this is business as usual; negotiate, give-and-take, explore common ground. They try to pass half-a-loaf legislation and wind up with nothing but the heel. It’s almost embarrassing to call that a victory, and it’s hard to run on that, but it’s all they have.
The opposition needs to offer a compelling alternative to authoritarianism. It sounds absurd on its face; we really have to explain why it’s bad to let a corrupt gang of the incompetent, the immoral, and the insignificant run the show?
But the last decade has been shown that we obviously do.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party leadership seems to be at war with the one faction that inspires, excites, and increasingly delivers results.
Bernie Sanders and AOC are reaching national audiences, generating an enthusiastic groundswell for a new vision centered on structural reform and tangible results for the people. Mamdani is reshaping the way New Yorkers think and feel about city government, and government more broadly.
But the centrists are more concerned with not offending swing voters and corporate donors. They stake out positions in the lowlands of the middle, protecting their seats, and trying to eke out calculated Moneyball-style victories.
Moneyball can work. But fans that want to see top performers at the top of their game may get bored and leave before the final score. The game becomes pointless without the fans.
Playing politics that way made increase your odds of winning, but it doesn’t earn loyalty or enthusiasm. It just means another bitter fight over the same indecisive voters next cycle; more pandering to the middle, more of the same old same-old. Voters stay home with more determination and energy than they ever brought to the ballot box.
The party becomes pointless without the voters.
A party needs to be more than a club for power-seeking. A party is meant to be a group of like-minded people working together to lead the community. It needs to have a clear and effective platform, not platitudes and a cowardly affection for the status quo ante.
It needs to clearly be fighting for, not just fighting against. It needs to stake out clear and compelling positions that will deliver structural reform and meaningful change.
It needs to be more committed to winning - to delivering measurable, tangible change - than to just not losing.