Democrats better make the most of the next four years
We’ve reached the end of a century long debate over the New Deal
My prediction about tomorrow is that the Democrats will win the battle but, if they continue down the road they’re on, lose the war. It should surprise no one that I am viscerally uninspired by Joe Biden and establishment Democrats generally. Though I do hope Trump loses, what I fear most is the back-to-brunch, politics-as-usual, “I don’t want to have to think about the president!” attitude attached to Bidenism. If a Biden victory is considered anything other than temporary, we’re doomed.
I think many things about contemporary politics, many of which I outline on this site, but if I had to boil our current political moment down, it’s this: we’ve finally reached a critical mass regarding post-war US policy, which has been essentially a century-long debate about the rate at which to scale back the protections created by the New Deal.
There are three responses available to this critical mass. We can 1) abandon the New Deal political architecture of the last century by going back in time to a pre-New Deal, unregulated and callously libertarian America; 2) attempt to salvage the sinking ship of 20th century New Deal liberalism by nibbling around the edges to try to slow the bleeding; or 3) abandon the political architecture of the last century in favor of a new, forward looking politics aimed at solving crises unique to today.
Republicans pursue option one with laser-like focus. Since its passing, they have tried to eliminate the New Deal with swift legislation and sweeping SCOTUS rulings. They believe the program’s basic protections are undeserved, hence calling them “entitlements,” as though they aren’t in fact fundamental and dignified rights all people deserve. Our reactionary culture and constitution have aided Republican efforts to erode these protections, but so have the neoliberal market policies embraced by both Republicans and Democrats alike. Think about labor protections as simple as the weekend. You like your weekends, right? You can thank the New Deal and the labor unions, socialists, and progressive Democrats in the thirties for your weekends, your eight hour work days, forty hour work weeks, and any overtime pay you may receive for working beyond those limits.
But for 47% of Americans who are employed by the so-called gig economy today, a sector that will only continue to grow, basic protections like weekends and the eight hour work day, not to mention the minimum wage, are nonexistent. These workers labor like they live in pre-1930s America, where they must work weekends and well into the night beyond 9–5 as independent contractors who don’t get a minimum wage or healthcare benefits and rely solely on tips. You won’t enjoy any of the New Deal protections if you imagine working a gig-economy job anytime in your life, and for more than half of Americans that’s already the case. This is the brutish world Republicans want because their worldview is selfish and individualistic without any room for a concept of public good.
Democrats, meanwhile, foolishly pursue option two. They continue to defend a hollowed out New Deal institution that many (rightly) feel no longer even protects what it’s supposed to, thanks to bipartisan rewiring of it’s basic circuitry. The New Deal has suffered greatly under 100 years of sustained attacks by Republicans hellbent on destroying the program, while the Democrats have worked only to slow the rate of its destruction, not reverse it. The Democrats are then left defending a broken system, a status quo no one likes, and so voters grow disenchanted by them. Even though Republicans have the incorrect prescription of going back in time to a pre-New Deal America, they at least have the correct diagnosis that (thanks to them) the current system is broken.
The Democrats refuse to acknowledge what we all know: that Republicans aren’t good faith opponents who aspire to work across the aisle with Democrats to improve the country for all. No, the Republicans are an autoimmune disease, attacking and undermining the government in order to then claim that the weakened government doesn’t work as well as the private sector. And rather than try to pass new legislation, the Democrats defend an immuno-depressed government-body that’s been ravaged by austere neoliberal policies.
This leaves option three, which only the socialist left aspires to. Option three combines the correct diagnosis that we must abandon the hollowed out political institutions of the 20th century with the correct prescription, which is to move forward, not back. If the gig-economy keeps growing and more and more Americans work as contractors for companies not legally required to offer benefits, then we simply can’t continue with employer-sponsored healthcare; if the planet continues to warm and choke on the carbon we dump into its atmosphere, then we simply can’t let corporations ruthlessly chase after the bottom line with environmental abandon. The New Deal welfare state worked for a bit in the mid-twentieth century (though, crucially, because many of its programs specifically excluded Black Americans), but now we face new problems. What we need is to de-commodify the basic tenets of life — healthcare, housing, employment — that through bipartisan consensus have been controlled by market mechanisms for the last 50 years, which has done nothing but increase inequality.
Biden defeating Trump is a small, temporary victory. If the Democrats remain fixed in place, refusing to abandon the twentieth century politics they miss so fondly for forward-looking policies, then who cares about the next four years.
