Who is the Future of the Democratic Party?

There has been a lot of discourse and punditry on the current status of the Republican Party. It’s mired in the cult of MAGA, embracing extremism like we haven’t seen since before the Civil Rights Act, seems more concerned with petty hatred and culture war grievances than actually governing, and is currently on pace to nominate a twice impeached, 4x indicted, career criminal, abuser, grifter, and authoritarian as its candidate for president. “Will the GOP survive Trump” (this presumes that Trump wins the nomination and loses to Biden with no Jan 6 Part II) is the subject of numerous think pieces in the media across the political spectrum.

It’s a very fair question to ask.

I personally don’t think Trump wins the general election for a variety of reasons. (There’s an unlikely but plausible scenario where he does not win the GOP nomination, runs as a third-party candidate, and ensures a Biden landslide, effectively destroying the GOP for decades, but we’re not going to get into that here).

What’s not being talked about enough is the current state of the Democratic Party. In any other election cycle, an 80-year-old incumbent with mediocre-at-best polling numbers would be a sure-fire disaster in the generals. In poll after poll, Trump is the only GOP candidate that Biden beats. It’s easy to see why the DNC rallied around Biden in the 2020 primaries: the schism between Warren and Sanders dividing the progressive wing, the pandemic’s effect on voter turnout, and the realization that beating Trump was essential for maintaining American Democracy. That’s all fine. But where are the post-Biden’s-first-term options?

The Democratic Party is mired in a stagnant and self-congratulatory gerontocracy. The super majority of party leadership is composed of older establishment figures that do very little to galvanize the electorate. The DNC has consistently made it a de facto position to undermine younger, more progressive candidates in primaries, essentially ensuring that the “all talk, no action” milquetoast Democrat of the last 20 years remains the norm. The person who touts their support of worker’s rights but does nothing to support unions. Who decries gun violence but cowers when asked to act, does nothing to advance comprehensive solutions to climate change, and ultimately runs a platform that is at odds with their voting records and submits only symbolic legislation.

Who, then, is the future of the Democratic Party?

Some of this is not entirely their fault. Gerrymandering at the state level has ensured that the House, which should be overwhelmingly liberal, bordering on unswitchable, is slanted towards the GOP. The Senate continues to be one of the most anti-democratic institutions in the world, a vestigial limb that holds back our collective progress and development. But these hurdles and others are not insurmountable, if you’re willing to fight. The Democrats are no longer a party that fights. Their adherence to the rule of law is commendable (a low bar to clear but that’s still something these days) but their refusal or inability to fight is why the GOP – clearly the minority party – continues to have a stranglehold on our political system.

Say what you want about the GOP (what is there left to say to be honest?) but they have had a plan for the last 20 years. Movement Conservativism has gone from being a radical fever dream moving behind the scenes to the norm within the GOP. Who are the “moderate” or “sensible” Republicans? The few that existed are gone to either death or defeat. The GOP has fully embraced extremism while the Democrats are still playing ball like it’s the 1980s (when many of the leadership got involved in politics, not coincidentally). They abhor Trump and the extremism that he has reinvigorated (don’t say that he created it; it was always there). But then they stand pat and do nothing to counter it.

The appeal/motto of the Democratic Party cannot be “It’s Us or Trump” especially if/when Trump no longer occupies center stage in the GOP. Comprehensive gun reform. A Green New Deal. Medicare for all. A living wage. Student loan forgiveness. Access to abortion. LGBTQ rights. These are no longer just progressive issues. Poll after poll shows that these ideas and policies are the mainstream.

Why then does the DNC, aka the Democratic establishment, not embrace those issues and the (potential) candidates that well and truly champion them? The longer the Democrats run from reality, the more they start to resemble the terrible boogeyman that Republicans portray them to be, albeit without the deeply racist undertones of the Deep State conspiracy theories. The Democrats are well-positioned to win a potential and likely Biden v. Trump 2024 rematch, if only because of the extreme anti-Trump sentiment that exists outside of the Republican Party. Beyond that, it does not seem like they have clear plan going forward. At some point, you can’t have “we’re not Trump” be your personality. At some point, you have to start behaving like the party supported by the majority of the electorate. And as much as I wish we had better options, voting for a 3rd party candidate or not voting is absolutely not the right move. But we’re in that position because both parties have fundamentally failed the American people; the GOP by opting for fascism and the Democrats by opting for feckless establishmentarianism.