How Democrats Can Save Social Democracy

   How do we save our Social Democracy between now and 2021? We know the Republicans can't do it. If a political party is going to emerge as a serious champion of the established liberal order it will have to be the Democrats. On Sunday, I wrote about what I think the GOP needs to do if they want to save their portion of our two party system. That doesn't get us out of the immediate trainwreck, however, it just gives them something to rebuild after. Today I'm going to tackle the real problem: an immediate stare-down with the obvious consequences of the Senate Majority Leader first nullifying a Democratic president and then kowtowing to a Republican president. A lot of leftists and liberals have ideas about how to win a general election. I think there's a clear and common sense strategy but most won't dare try it.

   I'm about as confident of the Democratic Party's desire to follow my advice as I am of the Never Trumpers but I'm going to post this anyway. The thing to remember is that portions of this list don't require leadership as much as they require pressure on our representatives. Direct and continual action is how you convince people to take "the mob" seriously.

1. Let's Talk About The Mob

   Both in his presidential election and in the mid-term congressional election Donald Trump played the law and order card very hard. Democrats in urban areas, suburbs and exurbs need to meet this head on rather than hide behind their own veteran status or record as a prosecutor to prop up their own law and order credentials. Instead of playing into the establishment idea of respectability, Democrats need to express solidarity with activists and pledge to support their activism with legislation. More importantly, they need to cast "the mob" in the role of the protesters at the Democratic Convention in 1968. They need to cast the military/industrial/law enforcement complex as the police who beat the shit out of those protesters.

   The GOP, with the tacit assistance of Big Media and Big Donors, is attempting to engage in a national police riot and tell us it's for our own good. Look at what's been happening on the border. It's on both sides now and the Tijuana police are doing our dirty work because we're dumping the issue on Mexico instead of being a responsible superpower. So let's talk about who "the mob" really are.

2. The Identity Thing

   There is no way to navigate American politics without dealing with identity politics. This is something that really should be easier for an outsider like Bernie Sanders, who straddles the historic link between left labor ideology and left racial justice ideology, but the mainstream Democrats chose to very deliberately play Trump's game and attempt to play race as a wedge issue to deflect from real issues. Rather than dividing voters by race with Trump's naked racism the Big Dems chose to cast Bernie's supporters as racists and Bernie himself as a potential cryptoracist. Between Bernie's understandable desire not to use his personal civil rights record for political gain, which he probably thinks would sound patronizing from a white politician and his unfortunate decision to fail both economic and social justice in a single "civil rights" argument.

   To do this you just use the Declaration of Independence. "The pursuit of happiness" refers to the freedom to support one's self economically as one chooses and to participate in the creative and social life of the community. This was a fundamental principle of Enlightenment Natural Rights theory.  It needs to be communicated to the public as an unambiguously left populist argument. Anytime you mention "the working class" you make it clear that black and Latinx people will benefit more from kitchen table legislation than anyone else. Democrats should make voting rights an election issue every election and an activism issue every year before an election. When Republicans talk about "law and order" and "all lives matter" you reply that a policeman's first duty is to the public safety and concerns for the safety of police offers are less important than the safety of the public they serve. Make it clear it is not acceptable that this does not include the black community.

   The problem with identity politics isn't that Democrats play it. It's that they play it so badly. Remind the white working class that every time the cops shoot a black person and get away with it they become that much more likely to use violence during a strike and get away with it. Make it about solidarity against the police state.

3. Don't Get Hung Up On Electability in 2020

   Dennis Kucinich once famously said, "I'm electable if people vote for me." What's that? Don't remember that? It's probably because you either never heard of Dennis Kucinich or dismissed him as a joke when he ran for president in 2004. In either case you were doing what the mainstream media wanted and paying attention to Howard Dean. The most genuinely leftist candidate for president at the time, Carol Mosley Braun, was pressured into folding her campaign for the benefit of a straight white man (Howard Dean) of squishy Third Way credentials and a very thin political record. The chosen "electable star" was soon dismissed as un-electable because people thought his Vermont war whoop at a rally was weird. The electable candidate, John Kerry, was nominated and chose the populist outside (John Edwards) as his running mate. Dems thought it was in the bag.

   We know how that turned out. Despite what pundits are saying on talking head shows, we don't want anyone to drop out before they think they should. It's less important that the presidential candidate actually win in 2020 that he turn out lots of people who might vote Democrat in places people don't usually vote Democrat. Imagine a presidential candidate who can accomplish a Stacey Abrams level shift in the political balance of the entire country, down ticket, whether he wins the electoral college or not.

   If you can only have one in 2020 would you rather have the White House or the Senate? Think about 2012 before you answer.