“[O]ur political parties are not even in the same business anymore,” begins E.J. Dionne. Only one is in the business of governing: the Democrats. And the other?
The Republican enterprise is devoted to stoking anger and social resentment, not to enacting legislation. Democrats may take an eternity to do it, but they actually want to pass bills, create programs and spotlight day-to-day concerns (child care, health care) that government can plausibly address.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was still nursing his strained vocal chords after his marathon babble-fest Thursday night when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi listed some of the features in the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill just before its passage. Specifically, lowering the cost of insulin, reducing child-care costs, “universal pre-K for every 3- and 4-year old in America,” “high-quality home health care.”
Building roads and bridges and expanding broadband to rural communities was in the infrastructure bill President Biden signed earlier this month. The Trump administration marketed “infrastructure week” with signature Trump hollow rhetoric until it became a running joke. He delivered nothing after four years. Democrats delivered in Biden’s first.
Trump’s focus was on his crowd size and ratings. Democrats’ is on improving American’s lives.
The difference could not be starker, Dionne writes:
If politics is defined as nothing but the one big culture war that so many Republicans embrace, the practical work of government becomes a mere sideshow. One result: Any Republican willing to work with Democrats to solve particular problems (say, collapsing bridges) becomes a traitor in the only conflict that matters.
While a recent Pew poll finds Republican subgroups “Faith and Flag Conservatives” and “Committed Conservatives” broadly conservative, about a quarter of Republicans, the “Populist Right,” are immigration hard-liners, but “highly critical of the economic system.” Republicans need their base focused on the culture war and away from economic debates that could loosen the party’s hold on them.
The widest point of fracture continues to be racial injustice:
Pew found that among “the four Republican-oriented typology groups, no more than about a quarter say a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic background; by comparison, no fewer than about three-quarters of any Democratic group say a lot more needs to be done to achieve this goal.”
This gulf on one of the central questions facing our nation suggests that, for now at least, Republicans have a powerful interest in keeping a politics of resentment alive. The angry divisions over Friday’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case — and the facts of the case itself — are the latest example of why the country needs less of this kind of politics, not more.
The MAGA squad on Capitol Hill sees waging culture war as the very point of holding political office: stoking anger, provoking fights, “owning the libs,” and advancing conspiracy theories. The Democrats’ “Squad” is working to advance legislation that actually addresses people’s needs.
The differences could not be more stark. Whatever Democrats’ political failings, and with the most conservative members of the caucus a drag on passing needed sweeping change, the arc of the party’s legislative history may be long but bends toward progress.
Granted, whatever progress is politically achievable will never be enough for the leftmost activists. Their cup is always half empty, and Democrats forever failing to live up to expectations. But that is in itself proof the major parties are not, as lazily alleged, two sides of the same coin, and proof of a difference between Democrats and Republicans that the leftiest of the left deny exists. Democrats have the power to disappoint them. Republicans cannot.
It might be useful if on the left we dropped the conspiracy theory that when Democrats fail to live up to progressive dreams — the Manchins and Sinemas nothwithstanding — it is because its leaders are as obeissant to their corporate overlords as Republicans and actually want to fail. Take a step back and think about that one a moment.