A party lost in the wilderness
Sean Wilentz on the Democrats
I vaguely remember election night in 1984. My first president, Ronald Reagan, scored a landslide victory for the ages. “Morning in America” defeated Democrat Walter Mondale 525-13 in the Electoral College. Mondale won a single state — his home state of Minnesota — by 3,761 votes.
By the next election, my young mind was under the impression that only Republicans were allowed to occupy the White House. Weaklings like Michael Dukakis were an affront to American greatness, or so it seemed to a gung-ho teenager growing up in the Age of Reagan. Vice President George H. W. Bush, who was no right-winger, trounced the Massachusetts governor, winning 40 states worth 426 Electoral College votes in 1988.
Imagine the Democrats’ humiliation after three consecutive defeats: the hapless Carter, liberal Mondale, and then the post-partisan technocrat Dukakis. The party still controlled Congress, though. As Bush took the presidential oath in January 1989, Democrats had an 85-seat majority in the House of Representatives. They enjoyed an 8-seat edge in the Senate. Yet this political party had serious problems; above all, it struggled at politics.
“Whereas the conservative movement of the 1950s and 1960s sought political power and embraced it, the new left of the 1960s and the movements it generated became stuck in protest politics and regarded power and party politics warily as corrupt and unprincipled. Many on the left, despite all the evidence to the contrary in elections and opinion polls, even denied the country’s turn toward political conservatism after the late 1960s. They believed that the problem, in fact, was a lack of ideological and political purity among the Democrats,” writes Princeton historian Sean Wilentz in The Age of Reagan (p. 324).
Even after Bush’s presidency “foundered on the contradictions of conservatism… many liberals mistook the difficulties of conservatism as a sudden flowering of 1960s-style liberalism, as if the country were crying out for a new Great Society — or something even farther to the left” (p. 324).
It took a generational political talent from a rural, poor Southern state to lead the Democrats out of the political wilderness back to the White House. Later in this newsletter, I’ll return to the political genius of William Jefferson Clinton, which was the subject of my conversation with Sean Wilentz, the eminent political historian, in today’s podcast episode.
For now, let’s compare the Democrats’ sorry position before Clinton came along to the state of the party today.
Lost in the wilderness
In 2024 Democrats again lost a presidential election to Donald Trump, a demagogue who had incited a mob to attack another branch of government in a failed attempt to steal an election, the only American president to reject the peaceful transfer of power. The party controls neither the House nor the Senate, and the Supreme Court will be dominated by conservative justices for the foreseeable future.
The New York Times reports the stark reality: “Mr. Trump has increased the Republican Party’s share of the presidential vote in each election he’s been on the ballot in close to half the counties in America — 1,433 in all — according to an analysis by The New York Times. It is a staggering political achievement… By contrast, Democrats have steadily expanded their vote share in those three elections in only 57 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties.”
Moreover, since Trump’s return, the right has scored several “culture war” triumphs, some through outright bullying, some because of leftist overreach. Just as some liberals misread the moment when Bush’s presidency foundered in 1991-92, many leftists from 2020 (or 2017) convinced themselves that the country should neuter police departments, erase biological sexual realities, and ignore the intense backlash to undocumented immigration.
That’s not all! Joseph Biden’s inner circle perpetrated a fraud on the American people by attempting to conceal his rapid disintegration — until The Debate ended the ruse. The somnambulant president reluctantly handed the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, who, incredibly, could never coherently explain why she wanted to be president after the old man bowed out.
In short, the Democratic brand stinks.
“Democrats are deeply unpopular. According to a March poll, only 27 percent of registered voters have a positive view of the Democratic Party, the lowest level since NBC News began asking the question in 1990,” writes the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in The Times. She spent seven years talking to Trump supporters in eastern Kentucky, where she learned that ordinary people believe Democrats don’t stand for anything.
“When the Democratic Party gets its act together, there’s going to have to be a faction that… understands how to take Democratic Party values and adapt them to the world we live in now. And the world we live in now is not the world of coal mining in the 1930s and 40s, is not the world of FDR. Things change. It’s not the world of Bill Clinton,” says Sean Wilentz in today’s episode of History As It Happens.
A singular political talent
Clinton’s political innovation was that he reinvented liberalism for a new age. He staked territory to the left of the failed Reaganomics but to the right of the out-of-date 1960s-style liberalism.
In his 1996 State of the Union address, Clinton stated the obvious and old news: “The era of big government is over.” The Republican members erupted in applause. The president spoke over them: “But! But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”
“What Clinton was able to do was pull together a coalition that I don’t think any politician on the Democratic side could have managed to do, which was — what should we call it? I hate the word neoliberalism because it sounds like Friedrich Hayek. That’s not what it was — but it was a kind of reinvented economic and social policy with the strong civil rights background Clinton had... He had attributes that made him distinct and was able to pull together a coalition that won,” Wilentz says in the podcast.
I mentioned that Clinton ran as a liberal, but not a New Deal liberal or pro-union liberal, given his labor record in Arkansas, the home of ferociously anti-union Walmart.
“I don’t think he was particularly anti-union. He had other ideas about how to make a transition into the new economy we were dealing with. The problem was the Democratic Party, which included the trade union allies, was stuck in a way of thinking that was very appropriate in 1936, and that was maybe appropriate in 1956, but wasn’t terribly appropriate to 1992. The world had changed dramatically and they were trying to come up with a liberalism appropriate to the new world,” Wilentz responded.
Thus, Democrats today should not regurgitate Clinton-era policies, but can learn something from Clintonism, Wilentz says. They need to reinvent themselves.
The 42nd president’s record (on free trade, taxes, crime, financial deregulation, welfare, and health care) has fallen out of favor with some on the left who now view him as a kind of neoliberal globalizer whose policies helped spur the rise of reactionary right-wing populism. Wilentz rejects this argument, but the historian says Democrats need new ideas anyway.
There is more to political success, of course, than building a program with the right policies and messaging. Timing is critical. And maybe your opponents will screw things up in the meantime.
In early 1991, President Bush was so popular – 89 percent approval rating! – that some potential challengers decided not to bother. This provided the Arkansas governor with an opening. Buchanan and Perot seized the moment, too. And soon the triumphalist glow of Cold War and Gulf War victories was dimmed by economic recession and a slow recovery. Bush’s image changed from global champion of freedom to out-of-touch patrician.
Thus, while Democrats may appear hopeless today, their opponents may have done them a big favor ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Under President Trump’s major domestic policy legislation, “millions of low-income Americans could experience staggering financial losses,” per the Budget Lab at Yale. The bill benefits Americans who need help the least while eviscerating the social safety net, betraying Republicans’ phony promises to leave Medicaid alone.
The socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary underscores the party’s dilemma, intensifying the debate among politicians, activists, and commentators about how to rebuild a big tent after bleeding working-class voters for decades. Should Democrats swing left on economic policy? Immigration? Culture? How they answer these questions matters, no matter how badly Republicans might botch things. By now it should be clear as day that simply waiting for enough Americans to find Trump unacceptable is a losing strategy.
Also discussed with Sean Wilentz in the podcast: Reagan’s relationship with Bush; Dukakis’ debacle; Clinton in 1988; Clintonism in 1992; Sister Souljah; the neoliberalism charge; and much else.
Where is international law?
A typical headline in this summer of human slaughter: “Dozens of Palestinians killed by airstrikes or shootings while waiting for aid” (Associated Press).
The headline neglects to mention who is killing the Palestinians. Read the story, though: “Israeli airstrikes killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza early on Friday, while a hospital said another 20 people died in shootings while waiting for aid.”
Haaretz, the courageous Israeli daily, reported that IDF soldiers received orders to mow down desperate, unarmed people seeking a morsel of nourishment. Since Israel began retaliating for the 10/7 Hamas onslaught, an estimated 17,000 Palestinian children have been killed. Whatever the actual figure, there is no denying Israel has destroyed Gaza and killed thousands of men, women, and children. If you spend any time on social media, it is impossible to miss eyewitness accounts and smartphone videos of the daily carnage. I am haunted by images of children with bullet holes in their heads, or arms or legs missing.
Where is international law? A better question is why won’t the only powers who can stop these crimes act? The U.N. Security Council is paralyzed. The U.S. government is complicit. So the killing continues.
In Tuesday’s podcast episode, Adil Haque, an expert on international law and the ethics of war at Rutgers Law School, discusses the problem of enforcing the rules established in the closing weeks of the Second World War. The episode begins with President Harry Truman’s remarks in June 1945 at the signing of the U.N. Charter. These words resonate:
“If we had had this Charter a few years ago – and above all, the will to use it – millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die,” Truman said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Hamas still holds Israeli hostages, which is a war crime. Israeli pogroms are terrorizing Palestinian villagers in the West Bank. The Middle East may be teetering on a region-wide war, depending on the duration of the Israel-Iran ceasefire. The Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran violated the U.N. Charter. Iran’s missile strikes on Israel were also illegal.
The world is teeming with criminal human rights abuses as rule-of-law democracy recedes. Those who defend these outrages subscribe to a different rule: might makes right. Or, our enemies are so evil that we, “the good guys,” may do whatever we please.
Yet this does not mean international law is dead, Haque says.
“International law is not dead but it is facing a series of very serious challenges. First, we have an accumulation of very serious violations of the core rules of international law by Russia, the United States, Israel, and others, all at the same time. That is a problem because international law, like all law, seeks to make a difference in the world and achieve certain purposes. To the extent that it’s violated, it is not serving those purposes,” Haque says.
“Second, the institutional mechanisms through which international law is supposed to be applied and enforced are facing unprecedented bottlenecks, most notable in the Security Council where the abuse of the veto by both Russia and the United States is preventing the Security Council from discharging its responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security.”
Also discussed with Adil Haque in the podcast: the illegality of airstrikes; importance of public condemnation; definitions of self-defense and imminent threat; International Criminal Court; 1967 Six Day War; rules of military occupation; and any good news out there?
Happy 4th of July!
Let’s lift our spirits a bit with some of my favorite words from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
Fifty years later, in June 1826, Jefferson wrote to Roger Weightman to say that he would not be able to attend the upcoming 50th anniversary celebrations. The Sage of Monticello was suffering from numerous ailments and could not make the trip.
But there was much to celebrate nonetheless. As Jefferson informed Weightman, Americans continued to approve of the choice made by the revolutionaries:
“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. that form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.”
On the walls of my study hang two portraits of Thomas Jefferson, inexpensive prints I bought at the Monticello gift shop. They are not just for decoration. They are reminders to dedicate my short time on this planet to learning, reading, and thinking – to live a life of intellectual curiosity and debate. It’s the least we can do, yes?
What’s next…
In Tuesday’s episode, University of Texas at Austin historian Jeremi Suri will discuss Obama and Libya. The U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya’s civil war in 2011 helped get rid of Ghadafi but produced intractable new problems, a stark warning about the unintended consequences of military adventurism.
Current contexts inspired this episode: President Trump did not bother to consult Congress before bombing Iran, per the requirements of the War Powers Act. Obama’s record on this count was not very good either. We have an imperial presidency.
Next Friday, Kevin Levin of the Civil War Memory newsletter will talk about the battle for Gettysburg and other national historical sites. The Trump administration is making substantial changes to the information visitors consume. The president’s executive order was preposterously titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which tells you it aims to achieve the exact opposite.