Why Democrats can’t learn lessons from elections

Earlier this month, I published an article raising an important question summarized in its headline: Are Democrats poised to learn their lessons, or instead continue ignoring them? It examined the Democratic Party’s betrayal of labor, working families, and its once defining principles in the service of the careers of politicians.

That analysis concluded with a passing reference to “at least two structural challenges [that] impede Democrats from learning any of these lessons….

[F]irst…party elites don’t care. Election results matter less to them because they respond primarily to other incentives.

[S]econd…even insightful critics of the Democratic Party’s self-marginalizing devotion to economic elites have themselves stood on the sidelines in the primary contests that offer the greatest opportunity for their theoretical concerns to find expression.”

This post explains those critiques in greater detail.

Democrats co-opted civil society

When concerns have been expressed about the corporate co-optation of the Democratic Party, they have tended to be musings by voices who have never seen fit to actually challenge Democratic leaders. Pleading with them to change their stripes is a fool’s errand.

For instance, columnists who rail against the corruption of party leaders—only to ignore populist grassroots candidates who challenge them—are ultimately as self-indulgent as the officials they decry. There is a mechanism in our country to hold officials accountable, but for elections to function as accountability mechanisms, the press must inform the public about its alternatives.

Having won a historic congressional primary only to watch the press ignore our campaign, the general election, our legions of supporters, and then embrace racialized disinformation fabricated to insulate the Democratic Party’s corruption, my experience with the ranks of co-opted “journalists” is one I unfortunately gained first hand. Rather than serve transparency and accountability, journalism in the U.S. today functions mostly as propaganda dedicated to Wall Street, the Pentagon, and the corporate political parties that enable them.

Writers are not the only examples of this problem. Organizations seemingly committed to visionary goals have proven themselves equally co-opted and deferential to the corrupt party leaders who steered our country into a ditch.

I’m not averse to naming names.

Every labor union that has endorsed corrupt party leaders in contested elections, including those representing low-wage workers like SEIU, has proven complicit in corporate rule. Even unions as seemingly committed to their rank & file as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the American Federal of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have endorsed oligarchs—even when they duck debates and hide behind racist smear campaigns.

The same pattern sadly infects most grassroots organizations that claim to stand for visionary change. The most illustrative examples, in my experience, were the Sunrise Movement, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club.

Despite organizing around demands for a Green New Deal, the Sunrise Network was so disengaged that it refused to meet with me, even when I challenged the central impediment to its supposed goal in Congress in the 2020 general election on a platform including its publicly declared priorities.

While the Sunrise Movement could be described as either inept, distracted, or politically co-opted, both DSA and the Harvey Milk Club were even worse, revealing true colors at striking odds with their rhetoric. Despite embracing “progressive” and “socialist” goals, both organizations became active sources of racist disinformation fabricated to secure positions for their leaders in the Democratic Party. The seemingly bizarre fact that my most intense experience with white supremacy as a Muslim immigrant came at the hands of Bay Area millennials who claim to be progressives and socialists is much of what destroyed my faith in this country and hope for the future.

Eventually, I watched each of those nominally grassroots networks—and any number of others, including over a dozen labor unions—grow weaponized against their stated goals, scheming to undermine voices doing the hard work that their leaders lacked the independence to support.

Party elites care more about fundraising than election results

Too many observers start from the premise that the goal of the Democratic Party is to win elections. The reality is more disturbing, and reflects yet another way that capitalism has eroded democracy in America.

Of course, the recent election should offer Democrats many reasons to reflect on how they ducked into preventable punches by aligning themselves with a discredited corporate establishment rather than working to meet the needs of working families struggling to survive.

For instance, Democrats have spent the last four years bragging about an economy that left record numbers of Americans in medical debt or student debt, confronting housing instability or outright homelessness, and facing a future in which our needs seem not only dire, but also increasingly impossible to meet.

It turns out that telling voters to fear a fascist—while supporting fascist policies and ignoring their material conditions—is a recipe for electoral disaster.

None of that is rocket science. But what if every journalist to reflect on the election, and voters who internalize their political perspectives based on those of professional writers, is barking up the wrong tree?

Does the Democratic Party respond to electoral incentives? Does it even have the same goals as candidates and voters?

In fact, the answers to both questions are “No.”

Voters, volunteers, and candidates participate in election elections because they are compelled by the opportunity to participate in a political process, to propose better ideas, and to see those ideas into policy. They’re motivated by a shared vision.

But the consultants and campaign staff who serve as Democratic party insiders have entirely different incentives. They’re not necessarily compelled by either a particular political vision or a generalized commitment to the political process, so much as a commitment to their careers.

The goals shared by candidates, volunteers, and voters—better policy—is not one that campaign professionals share. To campaign professionals, policy is ultimately analogous to a product, and voters to consumers. They essentially construct their positions based on what amounts to a market calculus.

The goal for that class of political actors is not to win elections, but rather to raise money and secure paid positions for themselves. And by that standard, Harris’ campaign was spectacularly successful, even though it lost at the polls.

Have Democratic party insiders learned anything at all from last month’s election? It’s a safe bet that they haven’t.

They—the consultants, the campaign staff, and the labor leaders supporting corporate Democrats—all got paid, despite Harris losing to Trump.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it?