Precisely Why I Worry About the Left's Future

This Matt Yglesias piece isn't about my point, but this is as good of a spot to start as any:

“Nominate a black guy from Chicago next time” did not particularly solve any weaknesses revealed by John Kerry’s 2004 campaign, but it happened that a black guy from Chicago was very talented at casting core progressive aspirations in an appealing light pitched at a wide range of voters. Democrats are finally mustering some meaningful ethnic diversity in their Senate caucus as Cory Booker and Bob Menendez will be joined next year by Tammy Duckworth, Catherine Cortez Masto, and Kamala Harris. I suspect that, somewhat paradoxically, continuing to put forward candidates of color may be crucial to speaking more compellingly to white voters since they can speak credibly about a cross-racial politics without sounding like they are trying to sideline nonwhite people’s concerns.

But the proof of that theory will ultimately have to be in the pudding. The party needs less fear of primaries, less centralized control of House races from the DCCC, and overall more openness to the idea that it’s going to take a range of approaches for a diverse party to win in a diverse nation across a problematic political geography.

The good news for Democrats is that having an opponent to run against is less stressful. Either he does an okay job and gets reelected regardless of what you say (as four out of our last five presidents were) or he fails and you run against his failure. It frees you up to say what you really think. I know perfectly well why Clinton’s campaign thought it was smart to make ads that heavily focused on Donald Trump mocking Megyn Kelly and Serge Kovaleski. But I don’t for a minute think that’s why Clinton or anyone else who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into her campaign think a Trump White House will be disastrous for America.

When in doubt, you can do worse than saying what you really think. And as long as you’re at it, you probably want to elevate your most compelling and credible public-facing messengers to deliver it.

On the morning of Election Day, I thought President Clinton would end up pleasantly surprising a public that grudging accepted her as an alternate to a flagrantly unfit Trump — and I still think that’s true. In terms of the substantive work of presidenting, she was a very solid choice.

A couple of core critiques of this somewhat optimistic view of the future of the party:

1. The key component to President Obama's political success was not his race, it was his talent. Look, this one could get me in a lot of trouble, so i'll try to make it as plain as possible. President Barack Obama is the first African-American President, and yes, that was a motivator for some portion of the population. Let's be honest though, he's the only non-white guy ever to be elected to that office. There have been no LGBT folks, no women, no Latinos, no Asians, no Jewish people, and no any other group, besides white, straight, Christian guys. Did President Obama win in part because of his race? I think the obvious answer is that it had to play a role. It wasn't the main role though. President Obama was not the first African-American to run for President, nor the first non-white, straight, Christian male to run for the office. Jesse Jackson got a lot of votes, but he did not win. President Obama, much like President Bill Clinton and JFK in previous times, was a very, very talented politician. For that matter, so were LBJ and President Carter. Democratic voters want charisma, they want to be inspired in some way by their candidate, they need a connection to them. President Obama was among the most inspiring people to ever run for office. Given the number of African-Americans who have served as Senators, Congressmen, Governors, Mayors, and local elected officials, and his unique status as the only one to reach the White House, clearly he had something more. Yglesias isn't saying he only won for racial reasons, but I think it's important that we understand that the main reasons President Obama won were not race driven, actually. If we lose sight of that, we lose sight of why he actually won in 2008 and 2012, much as the Clinton campaign seemed to do in their oversight of the white working class voter in 2016.
2. The interest groups are not going to let Congressional campaigns become de-centralized from the DCCC. This is a key component to understanding how actual left-wing, professional politics work. The Democratic Party is less of a party and more of a coalition. The Democratic Party is essentially the sum of the coalition partners' as parts. The DCCC acts as a clearing house for all things Congressional campaigns, and in many ways makes sure that our candidates for office are definable as Democrats on the issues. Do we really think that the national party organization can or will allow the local leaders out in the counties to start finding the right kinds of candidates for their areas? Do we actually think that we're going to start nominating pro-life Democrats again in rural areas, or allow the broader "Blue Dog" movement back into the party? Are we really going to allow candidates out of lock-step on the environment, abortion rights, or gun rights to be our nominee? I mean honestly, is there any way to prevent Emily's List from primarying a pro-life candidate in a district where that might be an advantage in the general election? If Yglesias means this less in an ideological way, and more in a tactical way, do we really want that? I realize that the national party can be constraining on messaging and how a candidate uses their time, and locals hate that, but do we want them re-inventing the wheel on targeting or running a field program? Of course not. Until the House Democrats have a different set of leaders, and a totally different dynamic with the coalition partners, I just don't see any way that they are going to loosen their grip on the campaigns.
3. I'm not sure our party can keep it's focus on Trump. Let's just be honest about this, it wasn't 48 hours after Hillary Clinton's concession that the first of the harder-core Bernie folks were saying "I told you so." I hope, and think it's possible, that we can all get back together now and focus on Donald Trump. In fact, I think it's imperative that we do. The divide between supporting the ACA or Medicare for All, or between supporting free college and debt free college is minor, compared to the divide between generally progressive ideas and a President who's nominating an Education Secretary who opposes public education, a Labor Secretary who opposes a living wage, and an EPA Administrator who opposes any form of national regulation to protect our air, our soil, our water, and our health. We need to get together and call this incoming administration for what it is, but I have serious doubts that we can. I'm guilty of this too, re-hashing my critiques of Bernie's movement since the election, in part because we almost have to have an internal debate. We have a DNC Chair's race that will matter to the future of our party. We just had a leadership race in the House that matters too. We have to discuss the pluses and minuses of these candidates, and frankly what they want to do, which does re-divide us. For those reasons, I have real doubts that we will focus our combined efforts in easily on stopping Donald Trump. Remember, it was the first two years of George W. Bush's tenure at the White House where our party was most divided, and took the most legislative and policy defeats. We did not recover in time to elect John Kerry.
4. What do we really think? Who are our most compelling spokespeople? This is a lot harder than what you might think. We just had a very divisive primary process in 2016, one in which most of the combatants still believe they were right. That was essentially a debate between the most progressive domestic-policy nominee we've ever had and the most progressive candidate for President we've ever seen, and yet there is broad disagreement over who should have won, and what we want moving forward. That's just the policy side too, when you dig into who the good spokespeople are moving forward, it gets worse. Sit in any room of Democratic operatives and bring up Elizabeth Warren as a potential 2020 nominee- the divisions over her are evident quickly. You can do that with any front-runner you want, from Warren to Booker, and anywhere you want to go from there. Is Keith Ellison doubling down on failure or the only way to move the party forward? Honestly, the responses you'd get from our volunteer class would leave you confused. We just spent eight years with a Democratic Administration keeping the red-carpet rolled out for one specific candidate in Hillary Clinton, and then we didn't win. This leaves us in some serious wilderness.
5. Unfortunately, a steady hand like Hillary isn't really what our voters want. Hillary Clinton lost because of a combination of factors, but the bottom line was that people who voted for President Obama did not turn out and vote for her in the same frequencies as they did for him. White working-class voters who stuck with the President against McCain and Romney did not do the same for her. African-American turnout was down from both 2008 and 2012, and Trump got a higher share of their votes. Millennials did not give her the same vote they gave President Obama. Our coalition of voters also didn't elect John Kerry or Al Gore, both very intelligent and accomplished men in their own right, or Dukakis, Mondale, and even second-term Jimmy Carter. Democrats need to be inspired. It's not something we all like to admit, but it's part of it. Our candidates have to be somewhat regular people, but also inspiring and lofty, when they speak to us. They have to reach our aspirations. They have to inspire our hopes. I love Hillary Clinton because she's smart, tough, and knows how to play the game, but that doesn't work for our voters. We want JFK, not Adlai Stevenson. We literally have to find someone who can go high against the dark lows of Donald Trump. 

In short, while I think that Donald Trump will be an absolute disaster, i'm not bullish on the future of the Democratic Party right now. I think it's highly likely that we'll spend the next two years "finding ourselves," then run an unelectable candidate in 2020 and handing Donald Trump the White House for two terms. That's horrific, but unless i'm wrong about the things above (which I hope I will be, and do believe I could be), that's the most likely outcome happening. The other possible outcome is that we end up nominating some larger-than-life, Democratic version of Trump figure in 2020, and they win on personality, leaving our party in the exact same actual mess that the other party is walking into right now. I'm not sure that's much better. Either way, i'm not very positive on the future of "the Left" in America right now.