I think Steve Benen may be dodging the muss & fuss of examining the Party towards which he leans when he analyzes the Democratic victory in the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat:
Reassessing the Democratic “brand”: Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told NBC News over the weekend that his party’s brand is “problematic.” Around the same time, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said the Democratic brand is “toxic.” Days earlier, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania told Politico, “If we don’t get our s— together, then we are going to be in a permanent minority.”
Maybe so, but while some Democratic officials complain about the party’s reputation, Democratic candidates have been doing pretty well lately.
In the aftermath of Election Day 2024, the conventional wisdom suggested not only that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance, but also that Democratic voters were demoralized, disheartened and prepared to withdraw from civic life for a long while.
And yet, the Democrats remain the losers of the 2024 election, despite facing a passel of palpable fourth-raters. Benen may think a rehabilitation of the Democratic brand has occurred, but I don’t. I see this as a slight variant of an old aphorism:
What have you done to me lately?
Before the election, it was the economic inflation, which was apparently denied by the Biden team (paywall) (I must have missed that news), along with botching the management of the transgender issue, the lack of a primary once President Biden had withdrawn from the Presidential race, and a few others. These alienated many independent voters.
Have the Democrats reformed to the public’s notice? Minimally. Not enough to matter. I’ll bet most of the public who are uneasy about transgender athletes are not aware of Rep Moulton (D-MA) and Governor Newsom (D-CA) joining them in that uneasiness.
But now we have Republican tariffs, destruction of the federal government, and mass Republican delusions about the popularity of their destructive and sometimes illegal management of government. With the abortion issue lurking in the background. I’m sure there are jokes about how many fourth-rate Republicans can we stuff into the government, but let’s not go there. It’s too much on the nose.
The point is now it’s the Republicans who are drawing the ire of the public. The Democrats didn’t fix anything about themselves, it’s just the Republicans stepping into the obvious quicksand and drowning in it.
Both sides are too arrogant to carry out the necessary self-examination. They’re not actually thinking. Try Erick Erickson’s recent cognitive blunder:
For all the hand-wringing over a so-called constitutional crisis, the reality is this: President Trump keeps winning at the Supreme Court. Time and again, progressive judges in the lower courts have tried to block the lawful exercise of presidential power—and time and again, the Supreme Court has struck them down. Whether it’s firing federal employees, deporting violent gang members, or declining to spend appropriated funds, the Court has affirmed the constitutionality of his actions.
He’s made the logic error of Appeal to Authority, and while falsification of such claims can often be a bit vague, this one is so bad that its puncturing is like a pin in a balloon. Simply consider the conservative wing’s frantic intellectual contortions to give President Trump immunity. If SCOTUS is effectively a tool of conservatives, why should the Appeal to Authority actually work?
Will one side or the other change? Or will we need to replace both Parties?