(2024-11-12) Yglesias A Common Sense Democrat Manifesto

Matt Yglesias: A Common Sense Democrat manifesto. This is a column I am writing because Kamala Harris lost the election, but it’s not a column about “why Harris lost.” An honest assessment of why Democrats lost has to acknowledge that 90 percent of the explanation is the inflation-driven anti-incumbent trend that has hit essentially every rich country around the world.

Being a Democrat should mean caring more than Republicans about the lives of poor people, about equal rights and non-discrimination, about restraining big business in matters related to pollution and fraudulent practices, and about protecting social insurance for the elderly and disabled.

But that doesn’t mean that Democrats’ agenda should be driven by those on the far left. A big-tent Democratic coalition needs leftists. But left-wing candidates are rarely winning tough elections, and too often, they’re not improving governance of the solidly blue places where they’re elected.... even without being a degrowth party, Democrats are heavily influenced by the views of major environmentalist organizations that do have a degrowth ideology at their core.

Nine principles for Common Sense Democrats

My goal here is to write these principles down at an adequate level of abstraction such that they don’t become a policy laundry list.

But I also don’t want these to be total platitudes; I want some people to read them and think, “Fuck this, I don’t agree.”

Economic self-interest for the working class includes both robust economic growth and a robust social safety net.

The government should prioritize maintaining functional public systems and spaces over tolerating anti-social behavior

Climate change — and pollution more broadly — is a reality to manage, not a hard limit to obey.

We should, in fact, judge people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin

Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose.

Academic and nonprofit work does not occupy a unique position of virtue relative to private business or any other jobs.

Politeness is a virtue, but obsessive language policing alienates most people and degrades the quality of thinking.

Public services and institutions like public schools deserve adequate funding, and they must prioritize the interests of their users, not their workforce or abstract ideological projects.

All people have equal moral worth, but democratic self-government requires the American government to prioritize the interests of American citizens.

Jared Golden in Maine is one of the most important common sense Democrats we have in elected office, but what makes sense in terms of organizing school systems in the tiny towns of northern Maine is almost certainly not what makes sense for Grow SF to push for in the Bay Area. But Golden and Grow SF are two pillars of what I think is fundamentally the same movement animated by the same values.

A moment of peril — and opportunity

The last time Republicans won the popular vote in a presidential contest was 2004 when I was 23 years old.

To lose, for real, is not a good feeling.

I worry about bad policy, and I also worry about clever policy. I worry about abuses of power, I worry about January 6 pardons. I worry about all kinds of things, and I cannot assure anyone that things will be okay.

What I can do is reassure everyone that in retrospect, the mid-aughts were the most exciting and generative time in Democratic Party politics that I can remember.

A Harris administration would have continued the kind of straddle that has paralyzed Democrats since Bernie Sanders’ failed insurgency in 2016 — cycle after cycle after cycle of establishment Democrats giving enough ground to their leftist critics to stay in charge but not enough to satisfy those critics.

Do we want a party that delivers economic policies that generate prosperity and wins votes by reflecting voters’ actual moral and cultural values, or a party that insists on trying to impose fringe values on an unwilling populace, while flailing to buy votes with unsound fiscal policies?