Elizabeth Warren did almost everything right. She got into the game early with a good plan, she put together an excellent organization and ground game, she campaigned fearlessly, developed a message that was perfectly consistent with her identity and track record, stuck to her message with unyielding discipline and campaigned relentlessly in the retail markets of Iowa and New Hampshire with remarkable accessibility. She did everything right except one thing, and that one thing caused her to make two major mistakes: She fumbled on the Medicare for all issue and she went incomprehensibly after Bloomberg in the debates in a murder-suicide attack that could not possibly benefit her, as she was occupying a distinctly different lane than his. And both mistakes stemmed from her belief that the Democratic Party is a progressive party.
Not so. It may have been moving in that direction in the pre-Tump era. No longer, here is why:
Not long ago, the GOP had a healthy moderate wing. In my January 2 post, If I were a Republican…, I described the beginning of a migration of the moderate remnants out of the Republican Party in the wake of the Trump takeover. Over the past 30 years, The Republican party had been progressively and systematically ridding itself of all non-radical elements, transforming itself into a rigid, intolerant party that was ripe for the picking when Donald Trump came along and helped himself. It was a shock to the Republican “establishment” that had no business being shocked since they were expediently complicit in feeding the beast over the years until it grew to devour them. By the time they woke up to the fact that a Jeb Bush no longer has a prayer of a chance against a Donald Trump, it was too late, the monster had grown to an uncontrollable size and was out of the cage.
So now the excommunicated Republican moderates, the professional political class, the elected officials, the intellectuals, pundits, columnists and operatives all erupted in an uproar. They formed groups like the Never-Trumpers and the Lincoln project, publishing op-eds, whined about the “highjacking” of the GOP, angrily shaking their fist at the party’s door on their way out.
But what of the constituents who had been voting for them, those who are raising families, working to put food on the table and striving to stay healthy and improve their lives? These everyday people still vote and if their traditional Republican party is not giving them what they want, they’ll seek someone else’s services. And that’s what they did in 2018 and on Super Tuesday:
The Democratic party is beginning to attract the previously moderate Republican voters, diluting the progressive influence within itself. Warren didn’t have a chance and, now that it’s a two-person race between Bernie and Biden, Bernie also doesn’t have a chance, barring unforeseen extraordinary circumstances.
We had a preview of it on Super Tuesday, when Bernie Sanders was pushing a revolution to a centrist electorate, and this electorate had made it crystal clear that its highest priority was to beat Donald Trump. The way they responded to the offer of a revolution, regardless of how appealing some of it may have sounded, was the way a passenger on the Titanic would respond to an offer of a scrumptious lobster dinner: “Just get me off this frigging boat! You can shove your lobster!”
I suspect this drifting to the center is just the beginning. Unless and until the GOP rectifies the mistakes they have made over the past generation, stops catering to the extremes, returns to exercising pragmatism and cooperation, and expands an inclusive and welcoming tent — not at all a given that this is even possible at this point — the moderate Republican voters will need a home and, short of creating a third party that could accommodate them, they will vote Democratic and the Democratic Party will be increasingly more centrist going forward as the Republican Party withers on the vine.
Many of my friends are of varying degrees of progressive persuasion, and I am sure some of them will not be happy with my view on this, and though I can explain profusely that my observation is not necessarily my wish, it won’t matter, emotions are running very high these days. I can only mitigate their displeasure by reminding them that centrism is relative, it depends on where the extremes are. And going forward, the GOP will either rid itself of its extremism or die as a viable party, and either way the center will not seem quite as bad as we may think of it today.
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