Democrats, Ignore your Marriage Counselors
Hello everyone. It has been a while but… Anyway, this is my thinking on the question asked here a few days ago: Do Democrats and Progressives need a marriage counselor or a divorce lawyer.
It is long, so forewarned.
First, let’s be clear on the idea of the Overton Window. Wikipedia notes the creator’s view and intended use of the concept. Though I believe the concept has been morphed to being a name for a political tool most effectively used by the Republican/Conservative movement. The action being to move the Overton Window rather than to expand the window.
Next, let’s get the idea of a divorce right out of our heads. It is very clear that we are a voting system that only functions with a binary choice. We can and have more than 2 choices, but beyond the 2 groups that have been in existence since a bit after the formalization of the Constitution, there is no effect on the functioning of our government. Yes, there is the spoiler effect which means any group outside of the 2 primary groups becomes a pawn for one of the primary groups. A tool to be used in attempting to manipulate the results of the vote count.
This is not to say we do not have the idea of coalition activity happening. We do, but it is under the umbrellas of the binary system: Democratic Party and Republican Party. Go ahead and divorce a part of your coalition when it’s a most votes wins game. Truth: divorce is messy and expensive. I know, I’m in my state law books.
That leaves marriage counseling. The Democratic Party already has marriage counselors. They pay them very well too. If marriage counseling was the answer, we would not be having this discussion.
The question of counseling or divorce implies that the “progressive” is a subgroup of the Democratic Party coalition. This is wrong. It is wrong because the progressive is not a unique group within a larger group forming a coalition though it has been talked about as such. Progressive is an ideology; It is a mindset. The party that held this ideology changed over time. As we know, it is with the Democratic Party today.
Being an ideology, a mindset; what the Democratic Party needs is a psychologist. Probably a behavioral psychologist. In more slang terms; A damn good kick in the ass.
The Democratic Party and the nation is where we’re at because the Republican Party has methodically pushed the Overton Window to their desired social order. In the 1980’s the Democratic Party having lost 3 presidential elections in a row decided the Republicans were correct when they said the nation was a “center right nation” via the “silent majority” jingle. Yeah, trickle down wasn’t the only jingle. Economies of scale was another. A reasonable sounding phrase for promoting consolidation. It’s like the Republicans had hammered the Democratic Party into self doubt. Actually, they did.
Clinton won on progressive language; just go read his stump speeches of the first campaign. Obama did too. The Democratic Party misinterpreted the reason for their win. Instead of understanding they won because people heard a progressive message while living through an economic down turn, they interpreted it as having won by being less Democratic Party. I’ll blame the marriage counseling which apparently was pushing the divorce solution. Obama was a repeat of the Clinton win. A progressive message resulting in a win coming out of an even worse economic downturn. And again the marriage counseling suggested divorce.
Think I’m wrong? How many times did the Democratic Party swear their love to the Unions and then cast them aside on the marriage counselor’s advice? Or talk to Robert Reich about his Clinton party experience. People are correct when they repeat the line: why vote for a Republican lite when you can have the real thing.
The party also had learned their money came by being all in on the conservative ideas of social order and the economy. Triangulation was playing the right against the left and vice versa while staying supposedly neutral to the electorate. Only a marriage counselor could come up with this idea for saving a marriage. The Dems got lucky with Clinton getting a second term due to the computer/internet age arriving. It drove the economy like it hadn’t been since coming out of WW2. After the Bush/Cheney fiasco, the Democratic Party/Obama had an opening as FDR had and they didn’t take it. Hell, Obama kept trying to do the “grand bargain” to the point where the Republican’s position of anything Democratic Party is bad, voted no and actually saved Social Security. It spared the Democratic Party from facing themselves in the mirror.
All along the Republicans were working that window tool. Using their extreme positions to set up the next “moderate” step until we have now arrived at full tilt extreme being moderate within their party and society. Expanding the window would have left the Democratic ideas as still possibly acceptable. The Republican/Conservatives wanted to eliminate any such ideas born of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party needs to start using the progressive wing for what it can give them: the force to push that Overton Window back. Hopefully back to where the nation feels there is an actual middle at least. The only reason the progressives look “extreme” is because as Mark Johnson commented correctly, the progressives have been the ones the Republicans have used as the foil in their tactics to convince the nation that Democrats are extreme. With this Republican tactic came their building of their own, personal information machine. The Republican Might Wurlitzer as it is referred to. They attached to it the “echo chamber”. Actual, more a digital delay (who remembers the Echoplex?). The Republicans are in the digital age now: keyboard into a digital mixer output through some chorus into a looper output with digital delay. It’s a symphony orchestra of endless size pumped through the internet (the amps and speakers in this model). Simultaneously both the Republicans and Democratic Party allowed the economy of scaling within our news distribution system benefiting the Republican information machinery.
The “moderate” Democrats have accepted this position of the window due to their short-sighted plan to win elections. I think the originator of the Overton Window concept would say the Democratic Party was living inside the window while the Republican/Conservative movement was pushing it from the outside. It also benefited the moderate Democrat in that it made them look “moderate”. Convenient! More marriage counseling advice there. Let’s just help the Republican/Conservatives move that window.
Funny this progressive bad thing, this “let’s not go too far” thing, as this very attitude/position has nurtured what’s happening today. If you’re moving right, where the hell do you think the person actually on the right is going to go?
Think about how little the nation heard of FDR or even the very liberal, the progressive positions of Eisenhower, Kennedy or Johnson while the Republicans were propagandizing Reagan as some kind of saint/savior of the nation. These presidents were the Democratic heroes of progressive policy which the party intentionally walked away from because that Mighty Wurlitzer with the Echoplex had successfully placed the “we’re a center right nation” ear worm in the Democratic Party’s head. And the marriage counselors failed. They were the wrong profession. They don’t deal with ear worms.
The Democratic Party is a party that became a split identity due to some loses in the 80’s and the bad advice from the wrong choice of professional counseling.
Those holding the progressive ideology have been warning the nation for decades about the Republican party and what it was becoming, what it stood for. Since Reagan frankly. It’s that progressive voice in the head of the Democratic Party which the mind is actively working to ignore because they were counseled to do so. It’s this voice that is trying to remove the Conservative ear worm in the Democratic Party’s head.
The only way the Democratic Party can start winning and save this nation is to start embracing the progressive half of their mind. Full throated embrace. It has to be real, you have to be real. Those referred to as the “progressive wing” are actually Democratic Party members who hold a core ideology of the party. Start using this part of your brain to push back against the beyond extreme ideology of the Republicans.
It is and always has been an ideological fight for the nations’ mind. The Democratic Party abandoned the progressive ideology for what they believed was better ideology: practical ideology. And here we are with all the antisocial, destructive “isms” that are currently popular to describe what this nation has now become. You can’t win an ideological fight if your ideology is little differentiated from the ideology you are supposedly fighting or worse not even an ideology. I mean, why would one even fight such a fight? Why would one expect to win…anything? Why do you think people don’t know who or what the Democratic Party is, stands for? Practical is not an ideology. It is a tactic. Use it as a way of viewing how you will impress your ideology upon the nation’s mind. (Lesson 1: You know, do the grooming like the Republicans have done and are doing. If you are going to let the Republicans define the use of a word, then uses it on them as they defined and used it. Lesson 2: take waltzing lessons as in waltzing a person around.)
The progressive wing is the appendage of the brain that houses the historical ideology of the Democratic Party which materialized in the FDR New Deal. Screw the marriage counseling. If you can’t figure this out by staring at your self in a mirror for a good long time, then find a behavioral psychologist at least. Also, find someone to build you a Might Wurlitzer attached to an Echoplex. I suggest going digital, the sampling is very good now.
Damn it, the F’n civil war was an ideological fight. The Revolution was the birthing ideological fight. The Constitutional Convention was an ideological fight. WW2 into the Cold War was an ideological fight. We’re in an ideological fight and the Democratic ideology is held with those labeled progressives. It is not with the “moderates” (not the Republican definition but actually moderate) as they only have an ideology of “practicality” which is not an ideology but a strategy and tactic. And it very practically killed this nation.
If you are going to take this much space, spell it out for us. What about Gaza and Israel? Ukraine? What about transgender minors’ medical care? What about the borders? What are, say, 5 policy areas you think are really important and what are the conflicts in the party over them and which position ought the party support? Long, but not long enough really.
@Eric,
Why don’t you start your own blog? You can then post the answers to your questions, instead of telling others what they should write about.
I recommend blogspot.com to host your blog. It’s cheap and reliable.
I actually agree with @Eric377. I read the entire blog/article and it sounds good but it can be interpreted in many different ways. How does it affect positions on any of the major issues? Are Democrats going to stick with their brain dead ways? So I would like to see what the progressive policy is.
Many times Democrats have the right goal but the mechanics of getting to the goal are incredibly stupid. I will give an example. Right now in California the insurance commissioner has denied the request of the largest homeowner insurance provider (State Farm) to increase rates on average 22%. I would assume that the goal is affordable insurance rates (it could be something else like votes or to force people into the California state run plan which is broke) but the result will be that State Farm leaves California and I will have to pay 400% more for my insurance through California rather than 22% more through State Farm. The insurance commissioner should be focusing his efforts on making certain there is no collusion between insurance companies and that insurance companies can use more factors (such as more levels of wildfire risk ratings) in setting rates. I am upset enough that I will probably vote Republican for the first time that I can remember and most likely will move out of the state in which I have lived 90% of my life.
@Pre,
What is the GOP solution to the home insurance crisis in California?
Free market. Let insurance companies have the rates that they want. It doesn’t hurt to have a commissioner review proposed rates but it isn’t like a regulated utility where they are guaranteed a return. In the long run having a healthy free market is better than having a government entity regulate rates. The government entity can’t react fast enough. Yes there would be times when prices would be higher than needed to make a good profit but in the long term the solution to high prices is high prices (i.e. encourages more competition).
Good article from the NYT on homeowners insurance. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/08/climate/home-insurance-climate-change.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xk4.o9KD.X86odqQAwU7P&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
@Pre,
LOL! The free market is pulling out of CA, FL and LA. High prices don’t encourage competition for the simple reason that most people cannot afford the prices and insurance companies can’t afford the losses. People will go uninsured, and the state taxpayers will have to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, the state economies will suffer for years. Sounds like a libertarian solution.
Democrats don’t need marriage counselors…they just need to wait until next year for voters to start deciding to throw the bums out, just like they did in 2024. Then they’ll throw out the remaining bums in 2028, returning Democrats to power. Then Democrats will become the bums to be thrown out in 2030 and 2032. Sad that voters see throwing bums out as their only alternative. But considering that the Democratic establishment at the DNC, AIPAC, and a few billionaires get handpick the candidates, often with no primaries, hardly anyone but corrupt bums get to run.
So why would Democrats need marriage counselors…the system works for them…they are guaranteed to return to power, almost like clockwork. Of course, a handful of progressives does occasionally manage to slip by, escaping the stranglehold of the power brokers–a few crumbs thrown to voters.