Democrats Aim to Win and, in Doing So, They Lose

It has long been known that far more Americans consider themselves “conservatives” than “liberals.” And considering how far to the right what it means to be a “liberal” has become, it makes sense that President Obama has never been the liberal messiah that grassroots Democrats convinced themselves he would be when they lapped up his rhetoric in 2008, drank the Kool-Aid, and then tried to spike everyone else’s drink with their unrealistic expectations as well.

Obama is aware where the bulk of the voting electorate tends to huddle, ideologically speaking, and he and his party are the heirs to the belief that being in power is preferable to being out of it—regardless of the consequences to the ability of the left to regenerate itself in a real sense. So it’s easier, electorally speaking, to steal conservative ideas than come up with new liberal ones that can inspire a large chunk of the electorate. In the last few years Democrats have proposed cap-and-trade, a healthcare insurance mandate, have lost interest in protecting civil liberties in the face of so-called national security concerns, just to name a few: these policy proposals were, relatively recently, Republican ones.

The problem is twofold here. Most obviously, if you are further left than the average voter, this is problematic because the policies being proposed by the party that supposedly is working in your interest are always bad ones.

However, the real problem is that the Democrats are hindering the entire left’s intellectual and policy development. By accepting as a truism that because most Americans don’t see themselves as liberals now means that they can never see themselves as such, Obama and the Democrats have destined themselves for an electoral future where moving to the right is the only viable strategy. And because much of the American left tends to believe that they have to support the Democrats, this strategy is accepted and reinforced. There may be grumblings, but few lefties will actually threaten to abandon the party.

What Democrats need to do, if they are to ever revitalize themselves as a true left-of-center party, is to be willing spend a few elections in rebuilding-mode while they refashion a liberal narrative that can win over some voters to their position ideologically—not just for a single election, or on a single issue. That type of narrative was successful in the middle 20th century and, with fresh ideas, there is no reason to believe that it can’t be again. And if it really can’t be done, then we might as well despair for the electoral future of even the moderate left in American politics.

Though losing for a few elections has never been popular with the political class, if Obama and the Democrats want to save the electoral viability of liberals in the future, they have to start acting like they actually believe in those ideas. For the center-left to win long term, they may need to stop worrying about winning elections right now.

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