The End of an American Political Marriage
It’s a painful to watch. A marriage of over 40 years is coming to an end. What makes it all the more awkward is that only half of the couple is fully cognizant of this fact. The other half is going through the motions of daily life, stubbornly holding on to the belief that everything will be back to normal soon, ignoring evidence that things have soured since the honeymoon.
Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment simply cannot accept that bipartisan support for important legislation is no longer realistic. Up until now, bipartisanship represented the American ideal that we can set aside our differences and come together to effectively govern. Indeed, were it not for major concession by both Federalists and Anti-Federalists at our county’s founding, we wouldn’t be here at all. Distaste for single-party attempts to ram through major legislation and political appointments has been the norm since at least 1980. The moderate left and the moderate right made the necessary concessions to maintain their marriage. But Republicans have abandoned their bipartisan vows and are galivanting about town with their new man, Donald Trump. They’ve made it clear he is the both the party’s nominee for 2024 and it’s spiritual leader.
Just like in real-life, infidelity is a symptom, not a cause, of a failing relationship. By 1994, Newt Gingrich was already hacking away at bipartisanship’s foundations of mutual respect and institutional norms. By the time Obama was sworn in as President in early 2009, Mitch McConnell had vowed to obstruct him at every turn. McConnell also used the filibuster to deny Merrick Garland his seat on the high court, then immediately proceeded to scrap it for his own party’s SCOTUS nominees. Donald Trump was merely the culmination of Republican efforts to destroy bipartisanship.
The brutality of GOP tactics isn’t limited to the opposing party. They have also turned them on the citizenry. While gerrymandering and voter suppression have been fixtures in American politics for decades, GOP held states are already ramping up their efforts to historic highs. They are 100% committed to disenfranchising as many likely Democrats (read “minorities”) as they can.
The only effective remedy to these state-level actions is a federal restoration of key provision in the Voting Rights Act, which cannot be achieved with the filibuster in place. But Democrats appear to be in denial. Despite the painfully recent bad-faith GOP actions, Joe Biden has signaled he is not ready to end the filibuster.
For many of those to the left of moderate Democrats (like myself), the alternative seems obvious. Many progressive ideas have proved to be more popular than expected. If Democrats could simply unite and pass a boldly progressive slate of legislation, surely they would be rewarded for their efforts electorally. Why should Democrats tie themselves to norms like the filibuster that the opposition has abandoned?
However, many leftists and progressives simply cannot understand that bipartisanship was never merely a means to an end. Bipartisanship is the virtue that guides centrist’s thinking and shapes their worldview. The process of negotiating to a middle ground between the two parties is part of what makes the legislation good, not merely the legislative outcome.
This begs the question, why have Republican moderates caved to extreme right-wing forces like QAnon whereas moderate Democrats are reluctant to embrace merely progressive stances like a $15/hr minimum wage? First and foremost is that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden convincingly won the last two Democratic presidential primaries while Trump convincingly won his. But perhaps the larger underlying issue comes down to the persistent ugliness of racism in America. The far-right is increasingly defined by their embrace of racism and the far-left is increasingly defined by anti-racism. Anti-racism, broadly speaking, is the both acknowledgment of structural racism and a commitment to eradicating it. Republican moderates are more willing to be silently complicit with racism than Democratic moderates are willing to be anti-racist. Racism is the norm whereas anti-racism is a radical position, so unsurprisingly, moderates are more comfortable with an ugly norm than a bold new virtue.
Anti-racism won’t be appealing to the average moderate, but the sad fact is it’s a two-party system, so the Democrat’s marriage to bipartisanship is over whether they like it or not. Their partner packed a suitcase and is already out the door. The only question is how long will Democrats hold on to the illusion that they’re ever coming back? And once they let that illusion go, how will they go about picking up the pieces?