What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Sheilbh]

Thinking about it, more party discipline is not the answer.  I think it would have the same deleterious effect it had on the Republican party, where the loudest, dumbest, media attention grabbing ideas become the strongest.  If the party enforces a single message it means the crazies will fight much harder to take over the party to avoid being kicked out and to increase the strength of their message.  The way the Democrats are currently constructed the extreme versions get the play, but the rest of the party is able to continue without being sucked in that direction.

What is a little odd about Carville's statement is that he was a Clinton guy and Bill Clinton very successfully used the louder voices on the left to position himself as a centrist (the third way) and he wound up being a two term relatively popular president.

Yeah it's a big thing in UK politics too - Blair was particularly good and inspired by Clinton. Define yourself against your internal opponents because it creates an image of "change" from the last guy/leadership figures. But almost run against both your actual opponents and the "vested interests"/old ideologies holding your own party back. Michael Portillo who went from being the most ultra-Thatcherite to a strong Tory reformer used to always call for the Tories to adopt a similar blood on the carpet strategy, which they never really fully did.

Theory: when the left does this they contrast themsleves against the far-left who are blocking a left-wing government from taking office and changing because of their niche ideological obsessions/purity tests (Clinton, Blair etc); but when the right does it it's normally someone running against the party/Beltway establishment/centrists who are blocking a properly reforming right-wing government (Thatcher, Regan, Trump etc)?

[Sheilbh]

I think the real reason that the democrats are a gerontocracy is because the base of the party has two conflicting desires:

1) win elections
2) push hard toward progressivism - the status quo is not acceptable

But at the same time can reflect on the past several decades and recognize significant progress on a lot of fronts.

So a more moderate guy like Joe Biden can win because, while his track record may have some stuff that is problematic to the base, he can overcome that because he has a track record of being an ally when things were actually getting done and progress getting made. But such people are simply old now.

A younger guy who was just starting out in politics 15 years ago and not supporting gay marriage at the time is not going to have that same credibility--that attack will cut much deeper. And of course your more activist members are going to have problems winning elections.

I think this is true - but I wonder if it's actually more true for minority voters and especially African-American in key states for the Democrats? Whatever else you say about Biden or Clinton they've spent years building contacts, networks and credibility among black voters and as you say being allies, which is why they both absolutely trounced Sanders. He hasn't done that work on a national level before 2016 and he's a Senator from a very white state so doesn't have the credibility locally. Ultimately he's a candidate who is only capable of exciting the left-activist and white college educated bit of the Democratic wing and that's not enough.

The same thing as goes for Sanders goes - even though they're different types of politician - for Buttigieg.

I also think Obama - and now Biden - have failed to use their appointments to build a bench. We are still talking about Clinton appointees. John Kerry at the age of 77 is in, what, his third major role. I could be wrong but I think Clinton appointed a young team around him (no doubt part of his brand) which is why so many are still prominent figures. I don't think that's happened so much with Obama and Biden. I always remember reading policy wonks get very excited about some 60 something Obama appointed to one department who, from his academic background, could not be more perfect for the role etc etc - and just thinking, you know, that's only part of the job and possibly not the most important part. In the case of Biden, it's probably complicated by the desire to draw a contrast with Trump - so appointing people with lots of experience.

[alfred russel]

Theory: when the left does this they contrast themsleves against the far-left who are blocking a left-wing government from taking office and changing because of their niche ideological obsessions/purity tests (Clinton, Blair etc); but when the right does it it's normally someone running against the party/Beltway establishment/centrists who are blocking a properly reforming right-wing government (Thatcher, Regan, Trump etc)?

In all of these cases it really is a case of posture and optics though. When push came to shove Clinton, Blair, Thatcher, and Reagan still expected to get the votes from their full caucus.

[Sheilbh]

In all of these cases it really is a case of posture and optics though. When push came to shove Clinton, Blair, Thatcher, and Reagan still expected to get the votes from their full caucus.

For sure - and generally they do. I think in a democracy most of politics is posture and optics. That side is key, it's how you earn a hearing from the public, win votes and build political capital/power.

[grumbler]

Analogy doesn't work. People voting for Trump & co. is a conscious choice, not a natural phenomenon.

People are a natural phenomenon. It's all natural phenomenons, all the way down.

I think you refuse to see this because you just really like feeling morally superior without any need to take an ounce of actual responsibility yourself. Nothing that happens is because of you or your beliefs, it is 100% those damn bastards evil fuckers who don't agree with you.

Congrats on that - you keep winning those arguments while those assholes on the right keep winning elections they have no business winning, and you can feel outraged by it, and get really mad at the people who actually think trying to get something done is worth some effort and nuanced thinking.

This is also an ad hom.  Can't we debate arguments rather than personalities?

[Malthus]

On the same topic, only in a Canadian context - an op-ed calling on the NDP to stop acting as a national left wing conscience, and start trying to actually win elections, as allegedly former (very popular) leader Jack Layton would have done:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-ten-years-after-his-orange-wave-the-ndp-must-recommit-to-jack-laytons/

You can see the obvious tension here - committing to winning means staying within the Overton window, which means discarding policies that are "in advance" of those that would attract the general public - in short, it required compromising principle (assuming some of that principle lies outside the window). The difficulty is that within the party itself, where it chooses leaders and candidates, compromise of principle to get level required to win seats may not be a winning strategy.

Layton was able to do it because he had immense personal prestige built up over many years, so he was able to more easily shrug off criticism that he was lukewarm on principle. It isn't clear whether any of his successors could do the same, though until they do, the NDP is pretty well doomed to never actually govern directly.

[Sheilbh]

I'm never sure if the Overton window is a real thing - or at least a useful tool for understanding political parties.

I think it's relevant to sort of elite level discourse - so think tanks and columnists etc. But I think in the context of political parties - moving the Overton window is normally the same as winning votes. Either you win office and create new facts on the ground or you win enough votes from your opponents that you force them to move to try and consolidate their vote (e.g. the far/populist right in Europe). But I think it's one of those things that the left tends to obsess over while the right just does it.

But political parties simply talking about things doesn't "move the Overton window" or make anything happen because most people ignore it. It makes me wonder if actually the better route for a party like the NDP might be trying to set up a think tank/policy infrastructure around them which can amplify or develop their views.

[Malthus]

I'm never sure if the Overton window is a real thing - or at least a useful tool for understanding political parties.

I think it's relevant to sort of elite level discourse - so think tanks and columnists etc. But I think in the context of political parties - moving the Overton window is normally the same as winning votes. Either you win office and create new facts on the ground or you win enough votes from your opponents that you force them to move to try and consolidate their vote (e.g. the far/populist right in Europe). But I think it's one of those things that the left tends to obsess over while the right just does it.

But political parties simply talking about things doesn't "move the Overton window" or make anything happen because most people ignore it. It makes me wonder if actually the better route for a party like the NDP might be trying to set up a think tank/policy infrastructure around them which can amplify or develop their views.

I take the Overton window to simply mean that range of opinions that are considered reasonable and practical by enough of the general public to get elected.

Politicians do not 'move the Overton window', so much as attempt to stay within it, so as to win elections.

Mass movements certainly attempt to move the Overton window - tat is exactly the point of holding large scale, highly visible marches and protests: our point of view is not done weird outlier, see how many people support it.

The job of a politician, assuming they have any purpose other than merely to gain power for themselves, appears to be to take the views they hold, communicate those views in such a way as to ensure that they are perceived as falling within the Overton window, and get elected so they can carry out policies based on those views.

The problem being if the views of the party the politician belongs to falls outside the window - which is what it is being indirectly argued in this op-ed that the NDP parties' policies do (they at as a "conscience" rather than trying to "win elections"). The op-ed again indirectly argues that the NDP ought to temper their principles (discard anything that does not contribute to winning votes) because otherwise, they will never have the opportunity to enact their policies (except to the extent they can exercise leverage in a minority government situation).

[crazy canuck]

@Shelf:

You think Larry Summers would self describe as a progressive?  He fired Cornel West at Harvard!

And there was a time when Hillary was asked during the primaries or the general if she considered herself a "liberal," and she just puked all over herself.

edit: And Bubba helped found The Democratic Study Group, or The Third Way, or whatever the hell that was called.

This is a slight tangent, and I could be wrong.

But I swear politicians on the centre-left in the 90s and 2000s used to be more comfortable describing themselves as "progressive" because it didn't carry the same legacy of "liberal". Now it's sort of switched and the left own "progressive" while mocking centrist "liberals"?

In the context of progressives now - probably not (though that is something Hilary said in 2016). In contrast to equivalent conservative/right-wing technocrats - yes. The goals of their policies are different. There is a reason why Larry Summers is neo-Keynesian and has worked for Democratic administrations. It isn't because he thinks they'll be more receptive to his technocratic ideas than a Republican administration, but because they disagree on fundamental points.

And I become more convinced that we are living the Orwellian nightmare where words become meaningless or at least significantly lose any common understanding of their meaning.  I wonder if that was the goal of the American right all along - so confuse the language of political discourse as to make it largely meaningless.

[Berkut]

I think it is too simplistic to say that it is or is not a "real thing". It is certainly a real thing - the term was created to describe an observed process after all. You can argue about how much it moves the discussion, or is just a reflection of the discussion moving.

What's amusing about all this is that I think I can make a better argument to defend Tlaib's comments then those who have been so angry about it the rather mild observation that her comments aren't terribly helpful to actually winning elections.

But that isn't really the point.

Political Parties are not there to "just" win. That turns it all into just a football match, except with stakes that determine how people lives will be lived. Nor is it useful to simply ignore the need to get elected in the interests of ideological purity.

It's weird that this has to be said. Isn't it obvious? There is a tension in all parties between these two things. You have to get elected in order to do anything, but if you don't stand for anything other then being elected, then why should anyone care? So you have to play this game - this game we call politics - between those two basic pressures. If you do it badly, you fail and either don't get elected, or get elected standing for nothing (this, IMO, is the GOP right now in the US - they don't actually stand for anything anymore other than getting power).

The Dems need to thread this needle, and by and large, are doing it well. I think Biden is doing it well. He is doing just what we would want - pushing progressive policies, while being moderate in his tone and message. And it's not like you have to be THAT moderate.

What is odd is how frothing mad the left gets, but very inconsistently so. After all, Biden just got elected being the one guy on the left who was most willing to just outright condemn rioting and protest violence.

[Jacob]

What is a little odd about Carville's statement is that he was a Clinton guy and Bill Clinton very successfully used the louder voices on the left to position himself as a centrist (the third way) and he wound up being a two term relatively popular president.

Yeah, I think the Clinton approach - of managing and contrasting with the leftists - is going to work out better than hectoring them.

Conversely, I think the leftists are going to get further by being strategic in their hectoring, and managing their support to get progress on issues they care about.

To me it seems Tlaib, AOC, Sanders et. al. are doing a reasonably decent job of it on the left, and so is Biden with his more centrist positioning. Less so for certain sub-sets of both leftist and centrist punditry.

[alfred russel]

What's amusing about all this is that I think I can make a better argument to defend Tlaib's comments then those who have been so angry about it the rather mild observation that her comments aren't terribly helpful to actually winning elections.

Wikipedia says she won her primary by 33% and her general election by 60%. Her comments seem to be pretty good at winning elections in her district.

[DGuller]

I don't think AOC should be lumped with the rest.  Despite her portrayal on the right, and her willing association with the rest of the squad on the left, she has a far more nuanced understanding of politics than she's given credit for.

[alfred russel]

The median voter is something like a 55 year old white person without a college degree in a mid size city/town making $60k a year. The tipping point state in the last election was Wisconsin, so the math at one level is pretty easy: to maximize electoral effectiveness, say things that appeal to 55 year old white people without college degrees in Green Bay, and don't say things that offend them.

That is probably cool to Berkut because he probably has a lot in common with that median voter. Both the median voter and Berkut are probably turned off by ideas like defunding the police. But Rashida Tlaib's district is a lot different: it is majority black, has truly urban constituents with a part of Detroit, and is not well off with a median household income of $39k.

The context is that her constituents don't necessarily have the same political goals as the middle aged & middle income white people of Green Bay. Telling her to shut up and get on board the national electability train is wrong for a whole host of reasons.

[alfred russel]

I don't think AOC should be lumped with the rest.  Despite her portrayal on the right, and her willing association with the rest of the squad on the left, she has a far more nuanced understanding of politics than she's given credit for.

I think she is brilliant and the future of the party. Unlike Tlaib and Omar.

Schumer seems terrified of a primary challenge from her.