by Ray Keating
The Keating Files – March 19, 2020
Where do our major political parties and philosophies stand right now, and as we look ahead not just to presidential and congressional elections this November but beyond?
Just after the 2000 election, when we were all waiting around for the final tally of a disputed presidential election – remember Bush vs. Gore – I took the opportunity to evaluate the state of our two major political parties, and the major movements or sets of ideas that undergirded much of the nation’s politics, i.e., conservatism and modern-day liberalism. It was one of those turn-of-the-century opportunities.
And now, two decades later (wow – 20 years!?), how do things look for the Democrats, the Republicans, liberalism and conservatism? This first essay evaluates the Democrats.
In 2000, I bemoaned that the state of our body politic had “wilted.” I argued that “the size of government combined with the corruption of the Democratic Party during the reign of President Bill Clinton ... soiled the public square,” including “the continuing tragic ethical decline of the Democratic Party.” The Dems had “tacitly adopted the sordid governing philosophy of the ends justifying the means.” That’s still the case, but things have gotten worse.
But the mess back then wasn’t just about Clinton. It had been building up as the Democrats, for example, had enshrined judicial activism as a glorious cause, that is, in order to get around what was actually – and for them inconveniently – written and intended by the U.S. Constitution. Democrats also perfected the political spin machine that could manufacture crises in order to advance the policies they preferred, namely, the expansion of government into all realms of life – the dream of Progressives in the Democratic Party since Woodrow Wilson. Again, the ends justify the means (more on this, by the way, for the Republicans in the upcoming essay on the GOP).
Little of this has changed over the past 20 years, except that the Democrats’ policy agenda has moved much further to the Left. For example, any semblance of social conservatism that might have existed among Democrats in 2000 – such as a few pro-life elected officials here and there – has been stomped out.
And while Democrats in 2000 were annoyed at being called “socialists,” today, a significant chunk of the party, led by presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, as well as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, embrace the label – thereby exhibiting a breathtaking expansion of economic ignorance within the party. Indeed, as bad as the Democrats had been on economic issues post-John F. Kennedy, the steep descent into economic illiteracy has been rather stunning in recent times.
The notion that the U.S. could have a Democratic president today who would agree to a capital gains tax cut, welfare reform, and making NAFTA a reality – as President Bill Clinton did – is nearly unimaginable. In fact, could 1992, 1996 or 2000 Bill Clinton even have a shot at the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination today? Doubtful.
For good measure, the radical environmental movement’s reach has vastly expanded in the Democratic Party to the point that a climate agenda imposing drastic costs on the U.S. economy and calling for government to effectively reshape the entire energy industry has become the accepted political line among Democrats.
In looking at causes, one must recognize that Barack Obama ran and governed as the most liberal president the nation has ever had, given that his Leftism cut across nearly all issues, as opposed to someone like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also was a hardline Leftist but had issues where he was still rather centrist, like on foreign affairs, and other social issues around today that weren’t even thought of by most people.
So, this year, we have Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, pitching himself as the more moderate among Democratic presidential candidates – and given that Sanders is the only one remaining, Biden is more moderate – but at the same time, Biden arguably is running to the left of Obama.
The Democratic Party over the past twenty years has moved so far to the Left – that is, it has become so radicalized – that the party’s 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, managed to lose to Donald Trump (and yes, she also was highly unlikeable, but so was Trump), and the same thing could happen in 2020.
Looking ahead, can the Democrats pull back from this journey to the far Left? Well, keep in mind that this is the direction the party has been going at least since 1968, and given who the party’s activists and donors are, it’s hard to imagine a return to anything even close to where the party was under John F. Kennedy, or even Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. For example, recall that the deregulatory movement that benefited the U.S. economy so enormously during Ronald Reagan’s 1980s actually got started during Carter’s presidency. But especially given the hyper-regulation of the Obama years, any whiff of talk that doesn’t involve increased regulation is sure to lead to banishment from the 21stcentury Democrats.
Indeed, even as the Democrats seem to have coalesced this year around Biden, and moved away from Sanders, in an effort to defeat Trump, it has been the uniqueness of Donald Trump that drove this momentary glimpse of something resembling political sanity (as well as more people actually paying attention to crazy stuff that Sanders has done and said over the years). But as already noted, it’s not like Biden is running on anything close to being middle of the road. He offers a left-wing agenda – such as big tax increases, unbridled liberalism on all social issues, more and more regulation, extremism on the environment, and so on – in the hopes that his history and style as trusty, old Uncle Joe will attract, and fool, enough voters to send Trump packing.
This Biden strategy in no way challenges the Democrats’ increasing liberalism. Indeed, barring some political miracle, the Democrats’ leftward journey will continue unabated for the foreseeable future.
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Ray Keating is a columnist, an economist, a novelist (his latest novels are The Traitor: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel, which is the 12thbook in the series, and the second edition of Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel with a new Author Introduction), a nonfiction author (among his recent works is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know), a podcaster, and an entrepreneur. You can also order his forthcoming book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York – signed booksor for the Kindle. The views expressed here are his own.
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