The Democrats are ditching centrism for economic populism

NEARLY four years ago Bernie Sanders, the crotchety, democratic-socialist senator from Vermont who came surprisingly close to winning the Democratic presidential nomination last year, introduced a bill to provide universal government-run health care. It attracted no co-sponsors. On September 13th he introduced a similar bill. Sixteen Democratic senators—one-third of the party’s Senate caucus—signed on as co-sponsors, including Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, all potential presidential candidates.

In the intervening four years Mr Sanders’s proposal has grown no more feasible. In an interview with Vox, an online news outlet, Hillary Clinton, who defeated Mr Sanders for the nomination, raised the same objections she had last year: his plan is too vague, expensive and politically naive. But Democrats today are in no mood for caution; enraged and energised in opposition, they have taken a maximalist turn. Some single-payer supporters freely concede that the bill has little chance of passing soon, but believe it is better to take a bold position and get pushed, by circumstance or negotiation, back towards the centre than to start there. That is a sound mobilisation strategy. But the goal of party politics is not mobilisation; it is victory, and the party’s centrist wing, quiet as it is now, worries that full-throated progressivism may prove a hard sell at the ballot box.

Party leaders downplay fears of a split, eagerly claiming progressive activists as partners. A wave of demonstrations last spring helped block Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (efforts that have resumed, see article). Mr Trump’s ending of an Obama-era programme that allowed undocumented immigrants to work if they were brought to America as children also sparked demonstrations—less widespread and rowdy than those targeting health-care repeal, but only because Mr Trump appears eager to find a legislative solution that lets those immigrants remain. Emily’s List, a political-action committee that helps pro-choice women candidates, says that in the 2015-16 election cycle 920 women interested in running contacted them. Since Mr Trump’s election more than 17,000 have, from all 50 states.

Many of the activists themselves are warming up for a fight. Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, an umbrella group for local activists, believes “progressives should target Democrats and make sure they have spine...It’s important that there is a force external to the party making sure all of our elected officials are standing up for what’s right.” Activists in Pennsylvania’s rust belt—a bellwether region in a bellwether state—express similar criticism. Jane Palmer, who heads an Indivisible group in Berks County, complains that the state party is “passive, old and not agile enough…We don’t want to take orders from them. We have more power as outsiders.” For some, the bruises from last year’s Democratic primary remain sore. Jude-Laure Denis of POWER Northeast, a faith-based progressive group active in Pennsylvania, explains, “In 2016 the party decided it knew better than the people. When you do that, you break your base.”

This is a familiar complaint from backers of Mr Sanders (like Ms Denis). Some of them believe the contest was rigged in Mrs Clinton’s favour. It was not—Mr Sanders lost because he received less support—but e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacked by WikiLeaks revealed party insiders speaking of the upstart candidate with contempt. One former state-party chairman calls him “a uniquely destructive force”, more interested in tearing the party down—he is, after all, not even a Democrat—than helping to build it.

The new New Deal

Yet despite his loss and the snarls of the party faithful, Mr Sanders’s influence may prove more lasting than Mrs Clinton’s. Many Democrats now support a $15 minimum wage, another priority of Mr Sanders that Mrs Clinton hesitated to embrace. Not all Democrats back free in-state university education, as he does, but anyone who wants the base’s support will have to do something about rising university costs. The “Better Deal” agenda released by Charles Schumer, the Senate minority leader, supports a higher minimum wage, a trillion-dollar infrastructure and job-creation package, paid family and sick leave and expanded regulatory power to break up monopolies and block corporate mergers deemed too big. The era of Democrats co-opting Republican attacks on “big government” is over; Democrats today back government activism on a scale unseen since the New Deal.

Those who worry, like Mrs Clinton, that these policies might not pass a Republican-dominated Congress miss the point, says Tom Steyer, an investor and liberal philanthropist. “It’s crucial for Democrats to stand up for ideals, even if they’re not achievable…If there’s nothing you’re willing to stand for, what’s the point?” Republicans have long taken this approach, backing policies such as outlawing all abortion, less as practical goals to work towards than as ways to rally the faithful and frame debate. That approach has moved the centre of American politics ever rightward; progressives see marking out similar positions on the left as a way to push back and stake their own claim.

Boldness rallies people more than pragmatism. “People want to be inspired,” says Naomi Winch, president of the East Penn Democratic Club, an activist group. “Candidates have to lift people up...They have to be brave.” It also shifts the debate away from social issues: a boon for Democrats in Republican states. Stephanie Taylor, who heads the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which supports progressive candidates and causes, says that if you have a Democrat running in such a state as a “corporate-friendly Republican-lite, the only distinction becomes social issues. Then it becomes a race entirely about abortion and guns…instead, if they’re presenting an alternative vision about what government should be doing for working people, then you have a real choice.”

Democrats have long shied away from full-throated leftism, fearing it could scare away centrist voters, changing the calculation. But political polarisation has made such voters scarce. Research by Corwin Smidt of Michigan State University shows that between 2000 and 2012 an average of just 6.2% of voters pulled the lever for a different political party in two successive presidential elections, with the lowest recorded share (5.2%) coming in 2012—less than half the average rate (12%) between 1952 and 1980. Turning out the party faithful thus seems a surer road to victory than appealing to the vanishing centre.

Such talk makes centrists nervous. Will Marshall, a longtime advocate for pro-business, conservative Democrats, has started an advocacy group that will eventually sprout political-action committees aimed at supporting “a pragmatic wing [of the Democrats] that can be successful in middle America.” Mr Marshall favourably cites John Hickenlooper, Denver’s former mayor now serving as Colorado’s governor, as the sort of pro-business Democrat who can win centrist states while not alienating progressives. Mr Hickenlooper’s apprenticeship and job-training programmes are laudable; he sees them as “the essence of Democratic policy, which is providing opportunity for everyone. That’s what we should be talking about.”

Plenty of Democrats have begun testing “opportunity” phrases. Tim Ryan, a congressman from Ohio who challenged Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic House leadership, says that Democrats must be “the party of growth and opportunity”. Matt Bennett of Third Way, a centrist think-tank, uses the phrase “opportunity to earn”—meaning that Democrats should focus less on addressing inequality of outcomes through redistribution than on making sure the playing field is as level as possible, not tilted in favour of big companies or people born lucky.

Equal opportunists

This pitch could appeal to both populists and moderates. It offers a unifying, forward-looking story, which Mr Obama also provided as a candidate, rather than Mrs Clinton’s scores of targeted micro-policies that never quite cohered into a whole. It also offers cross-racial appeal. Non-whites, who comprise an increasing share of Americans, overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Democrats want to keep it that way, so calls to abandon “identity politics”—to downplay immigration and racial-justice concerns, for instance—will fall on deaf ears. But equal opportunity is a malleable and forward-looking rubric that could have wider appeal, and it provides a tidy contrast with the revanchist undertones of “Make America Great Again”.

That only goes so far, however. In much of the country the party’s brand is toxic. Democrats hold few congressional seats outside big cities, and control no statehouses in the South; they hold just three away from the coasts. Ms Taylor of the PCCC ran focus groups in Maine and South Carolina. She laments: “Issue by issue, people would hear our candidates and love them, but when they heard they were Democrats they would just shut down.” As the Democrats have grown into a party dominated by urban professionals and ethnic minorities—two groups of people whose futures look brighter than their pasts—the party’s ability to speak to people who are left behind has waned. In 2016, according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, a website providing quantitative analysis of sport and politics, Mrs Clinton improved on Mr Obama’s strong performance in America’s 50 most-educated counties, but collapsed in the 50 least.

In three special House elections held this year to replace congressmen nominated to Mr Trump’s cabinet, Democrats ran candidates suited to their districts: a buttoned-down striver in Atlanta’s richer suburbs, a quirky populist folk-singer in Montana and a pro-gun veteran in Kansas. They outperformed expectations in districts long abandoned to Republicans, but still lost—largely because Republicans successfully tied them to reviled national figures such as Ms Pelosi, with whom they had little in common other than party identification. This suggests that detoxifying the party will be hard.

But Democrats disagree about how much they should compromise. John Bel Edwards, for instance, is a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat serving as governor of deeply Republican Louisiana—the only Democratic governor in the Deep South. A candidate who sounded and voted like a coastal liberal would not win there. The Republicans’ rightward drift on abortion, pursuing policies that restrict access to birth control as well, leaves the centre wide open for Democrats. And indeed, even some prominent steadfast supporters of abortion say privately that, while they would prefer pro-choice candidates, winning a congressional majority is more important. Ben Ray Luján, a congressman from New Mexico who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), set off a firestorm when he vowed not to withhold funding from candidates who oppose abortion choice. Support for it has long been in the party’s platform. Some Democrats argue that such compromise betrays the party’s values and produces a weaker, less stable coalition.

Democrats are so united in their loathing of the president that they can afford some divisions over policy. In fact, their chances for victory in 2018 and 2020 may well depend on whether they can reject the energising thrill of purity-seeking and appeal to the country as a whole. That is how Mr Obama won power. Mr Trump, of course, took another path. But it will do America no good if Democrats take the wrong lesson from the wrong president.