I’ve said this so many times. Democratic politicians want bipartisanship, unity, compromise, to inhibit the party platform from moving leftward, which risks threatening corporate donor interests. They commit the fallacy of the golden mean- the best outcome is not guaranteed to be, and rarely ever is, the middle of two extremes. And it’s obvious that the median democratic voter, whether more moderate or more left, does not want bipartisanship with republicans. Because they can see so clearly that the GOP is completely opposed to democracy and egalitarianism and would not be willing to cooperate with Democrats under any circumstances.
Meanwhile no Republican politicians, not even the most moderate ones anymore, talk about bipartisanship. Acting as flagrantly partisan as possible is a winning strategy for them- it not only gives their base faith in the party (meanwhile actively worsening their own lives in the process), and doesn’t threaten the donor class at all. After all, fascism requires state corporatism and oligarchy, and does not meaningfully threaten the livelihoods of elites.
Until democrats ditch the “adults in the room” and the “when they go low, we go high” approach and play the republicans at their own game, they will not sustain as a party. Only winning elections because the GOP has so obviously made things worse off for people, while doing nothing to make fundamental changes, is not a viable long term strategy.
Democrats will also not win by being the perpetual opposition party. Not only because their opposition to fascism is not strong enough (and it won't be until they can, at least, actually address institutional failures and adopt bold, populist narratives), but because people actually want change. The conventional wisdom amongst Democratic politicians is that running "Republican-lite" campaigns, in which candidates concede issues to the Republicans (such as being somewhat anti-immigration) will be attractive to voters is plain wrong. People will always vote for the real thing (in this case, the Republican who is unabashedly anti-immigration) as opposed to half-measures. This is especially true for Democrats running in more moderate/swing districts, being told that running a more liberal/progressive campaign cannot win.
It's interesting that Fetterman proved this narrative wrong, and then completely strayed from it. He ran an unapologetically populist campaign in a swing state and was progressive on pretty much every issue outside of Israel. And he won handily in the primary against the "establishment democrat" Conor Lamb who ran on a centrist platform, and beat out Oz in the general. And now Fetterman is mostly a Republican-lite Democrat. The simple answer is that he was bought. The more cynical one would be that he understood that running a progressive campaign- or at the very least, one that is very distinct from the GOP platform- would win an election, but since the Democratic party as a whole seems to not learn its lesson, that there's no point in following through with it.
abcnews.go.com
