A Real Minority of One

 The Democrats' current shutdown strategy seems to me like a typically muddled product of committee thinking. What exactly is it supposed to achieve? 

By every conventional measure, it is bound to be a political failure. It will alienate many voters. The party making demands in shutdown negotiations almost never gets what they want, if history is any guide. By rejecting a clean continuing resolution—even for an admittedly worthy policy cause—Democrats will seem like the intransigent ones and will take the blame for the shutdown in the public eye. 

Plus, Trump thrives on chaos, and this breeds lots of it. It creates a breach for him in which he can try horrifying new policy experiments. He loves nothing so much as an unprecedented situation that enables him to see what else he can get away with...

The advocates of the shutdown acknowledged some of these risks—but told us they would be worth taking. Ezra Klein—in a piece last month—argued that Democrats should try the shutdown strategy, in effect, because we have nothing left to lose. The courts are not coming to save us. The economy and the stock market are doing fine. So—if anything is going to slow the wheels of Trump's race toward authoritarianism—it has to be Senate Democrats wedging themselves between the spokes. 

But if that's the argument for the shutdown—why are Democrats not making Trump's authoritarianism the central issue of the spending negotiations? Why are they not making any demands related to his illegal extrajudicial killings; his illegal kidnappings and abductions of asylum-seekers to third countries; his deployment of federal troops to the streets of Democratic-led cities; etc.? 

It seems to be because a number of different ideas collided in the Democratic consultant hive mind. On the one hand, they seem to have internalized the message from Ezra Klein et al. that they need to "do one for the base" and make progressives enthusiastic again about the party by "showing they are willing to fight." At the same time, they have learned their lessons well from the David Shor brigade that they aren't supposed to talk about anything controversial: "don't mention Trump; don't mention immigration. Focus solely on health care because it's our best issue." And so forth. 

The result is an ungainly hybrid animal. Democrats are taking a radical step—shutting down the government—that risks alienating many moderate voters and will play well only to the activist base. But—at the same time—they are scared to justify this step using any radical arguments. They are taking a bold action to show they are willing to put themselves on the line to "put up a fight." But they won't say what exactly they are fighting. They won't come out and say directly that the fight is about Trump, or about Trump's authoritarianism. 

It seems to me we ought to pick one or the other. If the strategy here is messaging to the median voter and showing that we are the moderate pro-institutionalist party—rejecting a clean CR to fund the government is not the way to get there. But if the strategy is instead to give one for the radical base and put up a fight—then let's at least fight for a reason. 

If the Ezra Klein argument for doing this really is—"sure, it's a massive risk; but it's worth taking, because we have nothing left to lose"—then let's at least go down fighting for an identifiable cause. If we have to take this terrible risk—let us at least tell people why we're actually doing it. To quote Claude McKay: "If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot[.]" 

If we're saying: Be fearless! Face the risk of the shutdown! Then we should be no less fearless in our messaging. We should say: we do not fear the words Trump, authoritarianism, ICE. Let us name them!

Of course—this strategic question gets to the heart of the larger ongoing debate about whether the Democratic Party ought to focus on galvanizing and mobilizing its progressive base or—instead—"moderating" on key issues to message to the center of the electorate. 

I find—probably like most people—that I tend to wish the party would adopt a "moderate" position on the issues I hold moderate views on; and a "radical" position on the issues I hold radical views on. 

And while that may sound like an absurd or self-seeking position—it's not. Because all I'm actually asking the party to do is to adopt the positions I believe to be true and right.  

In all the discussions about Democratic strategy—I wish more people would ask this question: what do we believe to actually be true? 

In his essay on the fugitive slave act, Ralph Waldo Emerson repeated the age-old cry of the minority party in government: "why have the minority no influence?" Emerson then answered his own question: "because they have not a real minority of one." 

In other words, they don't know what they stand for. They try to be all things to all people—and so, they end up standing for nothing. Whereas no majority on Earth is powerful enough to prevail against even one person who knows where they stand, and is willing to say what they actually believe in. 

Time and again, people arguing the "Dems should moderate" case have cited to me the example of: "Democrats should oppose trans women playing on women's sports teams, because that would be a popular position." I wish that the people arguing for this change would have the courage to admit that they are advocating for this position because they actually think it's right, not just because they think it would be strategically clever. 

Whereas I think that position is wrong, and so I oppose it. I will continue to think that it's perfectly fine for trans athletes to compete on any sports team they choose. If we have some problem with fairness, then we should use a metric to segregate teams that bears a much more direct relationship to actual physical ability—such as weight or height—rather than the extremely imperfect proxy of sex. 

This may not be a popular position; but I profoundly do not care. And I think—to Emerson's point—a Democratic politician willing to explain why this was their position, and why it actually makes sense—or the opposite position, if they hold that one instead—would do better in any election than one who adopts a position they do not hold, but which they think will make them more popular.

Chasing after popularity never works, if it is grounded in insincerity. "Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness"—as D.H. Lawrence once wrote. People can see through the desperation of the appeal—the attempt of Democrats to improbably position themselves as "tough on crime" or whatever borrowed sheen they are trying to steal from the actual political right, instead of leaning into their own liberal brand (Elissa Slotkin's plea for more "Alpha energy" in the Democratic Party seems doomed to me for exactly this reason). 

Noah Millman published a piece this morning on Substack arguing that the real problem Democrats face is that—if they were indeed to moderate on core issues—it would mean adopting positions they themselves do not hold. He thinks that would be a tall order for them. I also happen to think it would be a strategic mistake. 

Again, I refer you to the Lawrence quote above. If you go searching for popularity for its own sake, you will never find it. Those who adopt positions that they don't really believe—just in the hope of winning popularity; those who are fundamentally untrue to themselves; will never actually convince anyone.

Whereas if even one person was willing to say what they really believe—to dare to be a "real minority of one"—they could carry the world with them.