The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has just made a significant admission: the Democratic Party cannot retake Congress by appealing to the progressive activist base alone.
“There is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates,” DCCC chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján told The Hill. He observed that it is incumbent on House Democrats to recruit candidates that fit their districts, which seems reasonable enough. And if he were talking about virtually any public-policy issue other than abortion rights, the Democratic activist class would nod in approval. But Luján was specifically referring to the DCCC’s intention to recruit and fund the campaigns of pro-life Democrats. His admission set the liberal activist class on fire.
“Ignoring women’s fundamental freedoms and equality to win elections is both an ethically and politically bankrupt strategy,” NARAL President Ilyse Hogue declared. “It’s short-sighted and dangerous to pave the path to victory in 2018 at the expense of women,” All* Above All Action Fund co-Director Destiny Lopez wrote. “This is a betrayal of every woman who has ever supported the Democratic Party,” wrote celebrity anti-Trump columnist Lauren Duca. “Winning with an anti-choice candidate is a loss for human rights.”
Perhaps most telling was the response from Howard Dean, former chairman of the DNC and an architect of the “50-state strategy” that yielded Democrats control of the House and Senate in 2006: “I’m afraid I’ll be [with]holding support for the DCCC if this is true,” he wrote. In an interview with The Atlantic in April, Dean gave observers a window into his party’s befuddled internal monologue when he said he only believed Democrats should not embrace candidates who “oppose all abortion rights.” He demonstrated his confusion, however, when he added that Democrats cannot exclude members “just because they call themselves pro-life.” Apparently, Governor Dean is unaware what the term “pro-life” means.
This is only the most recent occasion in which the issue of abortion rights has catalyzed a clash between Democrats most sensitive to the concerns of the party’s progressive activist base and Democrats interested in winning elections.
“Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” wrote Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez in April. “That is not negotiable, and should not change city by city or state by state.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi disagreed. “Of course,” she said when asked if being pro-life was compatible with being a Democrat. “I have served many years in Congress with members who have not shared my very positive–my family would say aggressive–position on promoting a woman’s right to choose,” she added. See? Even Nancy Pelosi’s family isn’t militantly pro-choice.
There’s a reason why Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t mention abortion rights amid his full-court press for the Democratic Party’s new “Better Deal” agenda–or any other divisive social issue, for that matter. The party is making a savvy play for center-left, white working-class Trump voters by promoting itself as a vehicle for liberal economic programs without all the complicated progressive social Crusaderism. In the process, the DCCC is developing a plan to revive the population of endangered Blue Dog Democrats.
All this centrism is bound to give the party’s progressive base anxiety. They have formed the backbone of the party since its forced truncation at the hands of voters in 2010, and they shed no tears for the defenestration of moderate Democrats. Progressives see Democratic efforts to move on from the divisive culture wars that typified Barack Obama’s second term and Balkanized the electorate as a subtle rebuke of their myopic Identitarian obsession. They’re observant. Apparently, they’re not going to take their abandonment lying down.
Some have speculated that, as Republican’s continue to fail to pass legislation, both Donald Trump and the GOP’s core voters will lean heavily into the culture wars. Gay marriage, institutional acceptance of transgenderism, the ubiquity of Spanish language alternatives in the United States; all this will become political fodder in the absence of legislative achievements. What if Democrats are keener to play along than many suspect? What if the party’s progressive base, which has no use for centrist Democrats and doesn’t much want to bother reintegrating Trump-backing whites into the liberal fold, won’t let the party surrender one inch to conservative cultural revanchists? Maybe the party’s maximalist progressive base is calling the shots now, and Democratic officeholders are just along for the ride?
