Lots of people whose opinions I value find Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo a pompous ass. Sometimes I agree. But, because I also seem hard wired to try to understand the present in the context of what I know about the past, I sometimes also find his thoughts worth pondering. He turns a historical lens on the current mainstream Democratic Party, an entity that seems way out of touch with many of its voters.
I think he is onto something:
... while Chuck Schumer and the consultants may suck, it’s probably not really about them. It’s about something more fundamental, a crisis of liberal democracy which we have to try to solve even though we only dimly understand it. Yes of course there are theories and one or the other of them are probably partly right. But this isn’t about criticizing theorists. It’s about living in history, when the things really driving change are seldom that clear to those living amidst the change.
The danger here is that we collectively fall into a kind of self-disgust which I see all the time. Our leaders suck. We suck. We’re weak and hapless. The political faction or movement I belong to sucks.These all flow rather naturally from most of the mainstream media narratives about whatever challenges Democrats are facing at a given moment. And this is of course enervating. Or it can be. And it can promote conflict which is not necessarily productive conflict.
And yet just because it’s happening in [much of Europe] and in countless other similarly situated countries doesn’t mean we can say, “Welp, it’s bigger than us. That’s just how it is. Nothing we can do about it.”
Obviously the challenge is still the same for any of us who believe in liberal democracy, in freedom and general human flourishing. In fact the challenge is probably greater because it’s not just some incidental thing that’s going to be solved in time for the next election — better consultants, no politicians over 65, politicians who will fight. It’s big and goes beyond any single person’s mistakes or individual excellence.
And this is what I mean by a dual approach, the necessity of not falling into a kind of cheap and demoralizing self-critique while also recognizing that it is very much our responsibility to have the creativity, forcefulness and resilience to do something about it.
In a way it requires us to understand our situation both from outside of history, looking at it from the long view, and also very much inside it, in the moment, with every action and option on the table, with every decision mattering because we don’t know how the future turns out.
We know we can still be agents in our own lives. We're in a moment in which many women especially are being reminded that we are need not be bound by what others think we are capable of. That's what Gloria Steinem came to mean to millions over a long political life. That's what Dolly Parton meant -- to some of the same millions as well as others looking to different cultural reference points.
People make fun of the gray haired biddies of the "Resistance," but we're right to notice and try to arrest the democratic backsliding which is the MAGA/Trump regime. We've witnessed both a lot of BS and a lot of progress toward freedoms over our lives. We don't want to go back.
In November, we'll vote and get out the vote. We'll accompany targets of Trump's anti-immigrant racial pogrom to court. We'll rally if we must. This is our country and the world those who come after will inherit. We won't give up on it.
