This is a fascinating article by Perry Bacon at 538 that gets to what I think are the real divides in the Democratic party, as opposed to the stale ideological arguments which really aren’t all that acute. It’s not so much about policy as it is about politics and I think it’s extremely important:
Facing a Republican Party with a growing anti-democratic contingent, Democrats are debating what to do — to bolster their party and, in the view of some in the party, American democracy itself. At the heart of the discussion is how much structural reform do the nation’s governmental and electoral systems need.
However Democrats decide to proceed will have huge implications for the party and potentially the country. So let’s start by breaking down what I think are the three main camps in this debate and their visions:
Camp No. 1: We are in a Democratic and democratic emergency
Key figures: Former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, author and Democratic activist Heather McGhee, and former top Obama adviser and “Pod Save America” host Dan Pfeiffer as well as the progressive groups Demand Justice and Indivisible.
Ideas: Persuade Justice Stephen Breyer to retire as soon as possible and quickly confirm his replacement; get rid of the filibuster; with the filibuster out of the way, pass structural reform legislation, such as an updated Voting Rights Act, a raft of electoral reforms (H.R. 1), statehood for Washington, D.C., and an expansion of the Supreme Court by adding four new justices, as well as creating additional judgeships at the lower court levels.
The people in this camp don’t agree on everything, but they foresee a nightmarish (and fairly plausible) scenario for Democrats, and they’re proposing a series of steps to avoid that calamity. Here’s the Democratic nightmare: Biden and congressional Democrats pass a few major bills over the next two years but leave the filibuster in place, preventing the passage of major reforms to America’s electoral system. A federal judiciary stacked with Trump appointees strikes down all or parts of many of the laws the Democrats do pass as well as many of Biden’s executive actions, leaving Democrats few permanent policy victories and driving down the president’s approval ratings.
Meanwhile, Republicans use their control of most state legislatures to draw state legislative and U.S. House district lines in ways that are even more favorable to the GOP than the current ones and enact laws that make it harder for liberal-leaning voting blocs to cast ballots. Combine gerrymandering, voting limitations, lackluster poll numbers for Biden and the historic trend of voters rejecting the party of the incumbent president in a midterm election, and it results in the Republicans winning control of the House and the Senate and making even more gains at the state legislative level in November 2022.
Post-2022, Republicans in Congress block everything Biden tries to do, further driving down his approval ratings. Meanwhile, Republicans use their enhanced power at the state level to continue to adopt laws that make it harder for people in liberal-leaning constituencies to vote and harder for Democrats to win in swing states. Then, these laws are upheld by lower courts and a U.S. Supreme Court still packed with Trump appointees. In 2024, Biden (or whomever the Democrats nominate) wins the popular vote but still loses the Electoral College — in part because Republicans have limited Democratic votes in some swing states. A GOP with control of the White House, Senate, House and most state governments in 2025 then effectively creates a system of “minority rule” in which Republicans can keep control of America’s government for decades even if the majority of voters favor Democrats as well as liberal and left-of-center policies.
In this scenario, the Democratic Party is in peril, but in some ways so is American democracy more broadly. So to this camp, Democrats must act aggressively and quickly over the next two years to forestall this outcome, by getting rid of the filibuster as it currently operates (most legislation requires 60 votes to pass in the Senate) and enacting an aggressive “democracy agenda.” This is a pro-democratic (small “d”) agenda in many ways, particularly in giving residents of Washington, D.C., representation in Congress and enhancing protections of the right to vote for Black Americans who live in GOP-dominated states. But it’s also clearly a pro-Democratic agenda (big “D”) in that it would, for example, add the two senators from D.C., who would almost certainly be Democrats.ADVERTISING
Pfeiffer describes whether the Democrats get rid of the filibuster in the next two years as “the decision that will decide the next decade.” He argues that keeping the filibuster may be effectively “a decision to return to the minority and stay there for at least a decade.”
“The door is closing quickly in terms of us staying a functioning democracy. We have no time to waste,” said Meagan Hatcher-Mays, director of democracy policy at Indivisible. “Democrats have been handed this power to save it. We don’t have two years. We have a year. The window to actually get things done is really closer to 10 months.”
Camp No. 2: Maybe there’s an emergency, maybe not; either way, just do popular stuff
Key figures: Former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, Rep. James Clyburn, former President Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders and the liberal group Data for Progress.
Ideas: Get rid of the filibuster to pass popular legislation such as a new Voting Rights Act (H.R. 1), expanded background checks on gun purchases and an increased minimum wage.
The people in this group generally aren’t as alarmist as the this-is-an-emergency camp. They aren’t arguing that American democracy and the Democratic Party are at risk. And thus, this group generally isn’t pushing the most aggressive reform ideas, such as adding justices to the Supreme Court.
But they are pushing for some democratic reforms — in particular, getting rid of the filibuster. I included a number of major Black politicians in this camp because they tend to focus on getting rid of the filibuster as a means of passing laws that protect voting rights. From this camp’s point of view, an updated Voting Rights Act is a moral imperative, regardless of its electoral impact, and the filibuster must go if it stands in the way. When Obama referred to the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” in his speech last year at Rep. John Lewis’s funeral, he shifted the discourse in the Democratic Party on the filibuster, in my view, by casting it as a barrier to racial justice, a powerful message in an increasingly “woke” party.
This camp is thinking electorally too, though. For people in this camp, getting rid of the filibuster is a path to passing a bunch of provisions that are popular with the public, such as making it easier to vote and increasing the minimum wage. Getting those kinds of bills passed, in this camp’s view, would help Democrats win in 2022 and 2024. So one reason this group is not likely to push for adding seats to the Supreme Court, even if the filibuster is gone, is that adding justices isn’t that popular an idea. In fact, there is talk in liberal circles about carving out exceptions to the filibuster for voting rights bills instead of completely gutting it. That approach might appeal to this bloc in particular.
Camp No. 3: We can and should work with Republicans
Key figures: Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Ideas: Keep the filibuster in place and get more legislation passed on a bipartisan basis.
[…]
Yeah, whatever…
Biden seems undecided
Bacon points out that Biden was originally very much in Camp number 3 but changed course during the campaign and has been governing so far in the first category (and with COVID relief in the second as well.) He’s been cagey about the filibuster, refusing to take a stand, which is smart. There is no upside to pressing the case until they pick their time to end it (if they decide to do that.)
Bacon also suggests, though, that Biden and his team aren’t convinced that they have to enact electoral reforms which is kind of scary:
When I talked recently to John Anzalone, who was Biden’s lead pollster during the 2020 campaign and remains one of his political advisers, he said he disagreed with the assumption that Republicans would make gains in next year’s congressional elections simply because of the historical trend that voters favor the opposition party in a midterm.
“The rules are changing. … All of that is out the door now,” Anzalone said.
He added, “I think we can’t underestimate how transactional voters are right now. They want action. I think that has major implications for 2022.” Anzalone argued that voters would see Republicans as a party of “inaction” if they spend the next two years blocking everything Biden tries to do, particularly in terms of dealing with COVID-19 and the economy.
It is, of course, entirely unsurprising that Biden’s political advisers are not conceding defeat in the November 2022 midterms six weeks into Biden’s first year in office. So perhaps Anzalone was just spinning me. But Biden and his team may determine they can accomplish some big policy goals, keep the president’s popularity up and do well in the midterms without having a big intraparty fight over the filibuster. Maybe they can do enough popular stuff with the filibuster in place.
Anzalone declined to comment on the filibuster question itself but said that, in his view, “voters don’t care about process.”
“People want bipartisanship. But action is more important than bipartisanship,” he argued.
Meanwhile, all the states with Republican legislatures are busily enacting draconian vote suppression laws, so I’m not sure it really matters. Or do they think that the Trump voters are going to vote for Democrats because of COVID relief and a good economy? What are they smoking?
Here’s how Bacon sees this potentially playing out:
Democrats can pass a lot of their economic priorities through the reconciliation process. But almost all the rest of their agenda can be blocked by Republicans as long as the filibuster remains in place. So the big question over the next two years is whether the party moves toward a final confrontation with Republicans and the bipartisanship camp over the filibuster. Here’s how such a confrontation would work:
1. House Democrats pass one or a series of bills that are very popular within the party and poll well with the public overall (so a new Voting Rights Act, a background check on gun purchases bill, etc.);
2. Senate Democrats hold votes on those provisions and get a majority of senators but not the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster;
3. Biden and other party elites, like Obama, publicly say the bill or bills must pass and that if the filibuster is the barrier, it needs to go or at least be reformed. Biden would frame his embrace of gutting the filibuster as essentially, “I didn’t want to do this, but Republicans left me no choice.”
4. There are public efforts by Democratic organizations like Indivisible to get their members to contact Feinstein, Manchin, Sinema and others in the bipartisanship camp and try to browbeat those senators into changing their minds on the filibuster; and
5. There are private efforts from party elites, including Biden, to move these senators.
So technically, it’s not just Biden driving this process, since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would need to put these bills up for votes in their chambers. But in reality, I suspect they would defer to Biden. And in laying out that scenario, you can also see why this is a complicated process in which people can’t say exactly where they stand right now. If Manchin, Sinema and that bloc are never, ever going to back any changes to the filibuster, it might be unwise for the Democrats to do much to pressure them. Setting up Manchin and Sinema to be blamed by the entire Democratic Party for effectively preventing a new Voting Rights Act from passing is not ideal for them or for Biden. He might be pissing off the two senators who are most apt to tank his entire agenda anyway.
At the same time, you can see how this five-step process might be the most effective way to push these senators. Opposing getting rid of the filibuster in the abstract is one thing. It’s another thing to be the white senator who opposes getting rid of the filibuster when the filibuster is the barrier to passing a bill called the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that is supported by basically all Democratic voters, top Black leaders such as Abrams and Obama and the sitting president from your own party.
I think this is right. I don’t think Manchin and Sinema want to be the Strom Thurmonds of their time. That really isn’t their profile. So, I suspect that voting rights is going to be the issue that nukes the filibuster — as it should be since it has been used for far too long to deny Black Americans equal rights.
Bacon concludes:
As you can see, the arguments about the filibuster are really arguments about much deeper questions around race, democracy, bipartisanship, norms and electoral politics. At the same time, there is a simple, binary question at hand here: Will Democrats leave the filibuster in place as it is now, or change it? This decision is ostensibly up to the 50 senators and in particular the focus-on-bipartisanship bloc. But it’s also a broader conversation that includes Biden, other Democratic elites and potentially rank-and-file Democratic voters too.
For now, the bipartisan/Manchin (No. 3) camp has the votes on its side. And it might throughout the next two years. But you could see the vote count changing — because Republicans’ increasingly radical behavior may be validating the alarmism of the this-is-an-emergency camp and strengthening their case that drastic measures are needed to preserve both democracy and the Democratic Party’s ability to win power.
If Trump would shut up and fade into the woodwork, I would think the Republicans have a good chance of coming back strong in 2022. Democrats rarely politically benefit immediately from doing the right thing, unfortunately. (You can look it up.) But with the GOP going further and further down the rabbit hole, it’s not at all clear to me that Democrats need to choose between necessary reform and delivering material benefits to the people because Trump is going to be out there reminding everyone, every single day, about what the Republican party has become while his sycophants and henchman parrot his every utterance.
So, I’m firmly in Camp #1 and Camp #2. I think it would be suicidal to pretend that something very dangerous has not happened to the right wing in this country and simply go about our business as if it’s all about money and if we just get material benefits to people this will all straighten itself out. I just don’t think economic determinism works here. The right wing extremists who stormed the capitol were not downtrodden working class folks who’ve been exploited. They are largely middle class and upper middle class and their beef is about status, race, pride, religion, and psychology way more than money.
Obviously, that doesn’t mean the Democrats shouldn’t deliver the material benefits they’ve promised. That’s what people voted for them need as well as a lot of people who didn’t, whether they voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all. Their families deserve the help that Democrats are offering. But that’s just one priority. The other is to save democracy from this increasingly radical factions that’s taken over the Republican party. They must do both.