For the moment, the Democratic Party is clinging to centrism in the places where it has no value, and throwing it aside in the areas where doing so comes at great cost, writes JonathanChait
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images From the standpoint of its activist base, the Democratic Party is a hidebound claque of traditionalists who are consistently outmaneuvered by a more disciplined and ruthless opposition. From the standpoint of its elected officials, their party is being hijacked by ideological fanatics sent on a political suicide mission.For evidence of the former, Politico reports on the state of Democratic senatorial thinking on the subject of the judiciary.
While it’s nearly impossible to imagine Democrats actually following this advice, it’s worth noting just how irrationally self-defeating this idea is. Jones is proposing that Democrats would gain a majority of the Senate but allow Republicans to block all their judicial nominations again. Of course, the majority can change either rule at any time. So if Democrats allow a hypothetical Republican minority to veto judicial nominations, either through a filibuster or a blue slip, Republicans can and will simply change the rule back when they have power again. For all the tut-tutting about “vengeance,” what they’re discussing is not whether to steal back their lunch money from McConnell but whether they should let him borrow their wallets again.
Progressives have waved away such objections by insisting people who have private insurance don’t like it and would be glad to be moved onto a public plan. “I was at a town hall and I said, ‘Who here loves their Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance?’ And not a single person raised their hand,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggests. “People like their health care, they like their doctor, but I’d be interested in what the public polling on Aetna would look like.
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