Differences of Opinion in the Democratic Party

An interesting assessment by FiveThirtyEight, Democrats Are Split Over How Much The Party And American Democracy Itself Are In Danger, finds three different mindsets about the current political situation. The first group sees a "Democratic and democratic emergency", the second sees a possible emergency, but just do popular stuff, while the third group sees no problem and wants to keep the filibuster and pass legislation on a bipartisan basis.

My assessment of the three groups is that there are two groups, the first two are basically close variants of each other, while the third is truly different. The second group, which includes Stacey Abrams, Rep. James Clyburn, Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, is interesting. It wants to get rid of the filibuster so that legislation to protect voting rights can be passed. IMO, when voting rights in a democracy are under the severe attack the fascist GOP is now fully engaged in, democracy is in an emergency situation. Getting rid of voting rights to rig elections for the GOP is how the American experiment can come to an end and be replaced by fascism or some other form of far right authoritarianism.

FiveThirtyEight writes:

We're in an emergency

Ideas: Persuade Justice Stephen Breyer to retire as soon as possible and quickly confirm his replacement; get rid of the filibuster; with the filibuster out of the way, pass structural reform legislation, such as an updated Voting Rights Act, a raft of electoral reforms (H.R. 1), statehood for Washington, D.C., and an expansion of the Supreme Court by adding four new justices, as well as creating additional judgeships at the lower court levels.

The people in this camp don’t agree on everything, but they foresee a nightmarish (and fairly plausible) scenario for Democrats, and they’re proposing a series of steps to avoid that calamity. Here’s the Democratic nightmare: Biden and congressional Democrats pass a few major bills over the next two years but leave the filibuster in place, preventing the passage of major reforms to America’s electoral system. A federal judiciary stacked with Trump appointees strikes down all or parts of many of the laws the Democrats do pass as well as many of Biden’s executive actions, leaving Democrats few permanent policy victories and driving down the president’s approval ratings.

Meanwhile, Republicans use their control of most state legislatures to draw state legislative and U.S. House district lines in ways that are even more favorable to the GOP than the current ones and enact laws that make it harder for liberal-leaning voting blocs to cast ballots. Combine gerrymandering, voting limitations, lackluster poll numbers for Biden and the historic trend of voters rejecting the party of the incumbent president in a midterm election, and it results in the Republicans winning control of the House and the Senate and making even more gains at the state legislative level in November 2022.

Maybe we're in an emergency

Ideas: Get rid of the filibuster to pass popular legislation such as a new Voting Rights Act (H.R. 1), expanded background checks on gun purchases and an increased minimum wage.

The people in this group generally aren’t as alarmist as the this-is-an-emergency camp. They aren’t arguing that American democracy and the Democratic Party are at risk. And thus, this group generally isn’t pushing the most aggressive reform ideas, such as adding justices to the Supreme Court.

But they are pushing for some democratic reforms — in particular, getting rid of the filibuster. I included a number of major Black politicians in this camp because they tend to focus on getting rid of the filibuster as a means of passing laws that protect voting rights. From this camp’s point of view, an updated Voting Rights Act is a moral imperative, regardless of its electoral impact, and the filibuster must go if it stands in the way. When Obama referred to the filibuster as a “Jim Crow relic” in his speech last year at Rep. John Lewis’s funeral, he shifted the discourse in the Democratic Party on the filibuster, in my view, by casting it as a barrier to racial justice, a powerful message in an increasingly “woke” party.  

This camp is thinking electorally too, though. For people in this camp, getting rid of the filibuster is a path to passing a bunch of provisions that are popular with the public, such as making it easier to vote and increasing the minimum wage. Getting those kinds of bills passed, in this camp’s view, would help Democrats win in 2022 and 2024. So one reason this group is not likely to push for adding seats to the Supreme Court, even if the filibuster is gone, is that adding justices isn’t that popular an idea. In fact, there is talk in liberal circles about carving out exceptions to the filibuster for voting rights bills instead of completely gutting it. That approach might appeal to this bloc in particular.

Nah, there's no emergency

Ideas: Keep the filibuster in place and get more legislation passed on a bipartisan basis.

Democrats would need every Democratic senator on board to get rid of the filibuster, so these members are super-important. And over the last few months, Manchin and Sinema have said they are strongly opposed to getting rid of the filibuster. Longtime senators like Feinstein have hinted in the past that they are wary of such a move too.

Part of this opposition to getting rid of the filibuster reflects ideological differences — Manchin in particular is more conservative than most (if not all) congressional Democrats. So he probably isn’t dying to get rid of the filibuster to vote for a $15 federal minimum wage, for example, because it’s not clear he favors that idea anyway.

But this bloc also disagrees with the this-is-an-emergency camp about the state of American politics right now. Feinstein is fairly liberal on policy issues. But she, like Manchin and Sinema, has suggested she wants to work in a Senate that is not hyperpartisan and seems to believe that is possible. In the view of people in this camp, the Republican Party is not completely dominated by an anti-democratic wing that won’t work with Democrats. So members in this camp view getting rid of the filibuster and other more aggressive moves as not only unnecessary but potentially really bad — making the Senate and Washington overall even more gridlocked and polarized than they already are.

In view of the last ~30 years of American politics, the third group seems to be the most delusional about the situation. The GOP really is dominated by an anti-democratic wing that won’t work with Democrats. Republican political leaders and activists openly call the democrats and the press anti-American communists who are enemies of the people. That some democratic politicians cannot see that reality probably reflects an anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian streak in their mindsets and/or some mental weakness. The evidence of fascist GOP intransigence is overwhelming. So is the evidence that most congressional republicans buy into the lie that the 2020 election was corrupt and that the 1/6 coup attempt was something they could rationalize into acceptance. That leaves the ex-president an acceptable candidate if he chooses to run again in 2024 despite his dominant role in fomenting the coup attempt.