Thomas Hughes The Democratic Party is doing well to fill the intellectual void left by Republicans in this time of ethical abandonment. If there are two schools of thought in American politics, the Democrats now comfortably inhabit both, as the candidates to succeed the jester of chaos had a range of opinions on display at this week’s debates in Detroit. Among the issues dividing those vying for the Democratic nomination were immigration and deportation, healthcare, criminal justice reforms, social and economic justice, nuclear policy, and trade policy…just name a few. Whatever agreement the candidates did have was vague and broad—they all want to address climate change and they all want to rid the Oval Office of Donald Trump, with Sen. Gillibrand even explaining that her first priority would be to “Chlorox” the place after his removal.
It is actually intriguing to listen to various ideas being debated. The nation has serious issues and the devolution into partisan stalemates at every turn has made addressing any of those issues impossible or temporary. But one issue that has dominated the American political system for the better part of this century has been how to reform the healthcare system in America. On this issue the Democrats’ fracturing bordered on schizophrenic. Some in the field, particularly Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, want to move the country to a single payer system, with Sanders claiming the mantle of the “Medicare for all” candidate. But that position has come under attack from the declared moderates, including Joe Biden, who was forced to defend the very idea of “Obamacare,” (as he took to calling it,) as the most feasible way to accomplish the goal of having all Americans insured.
Biden was also forced to defend the Obama administration’s deportation policy. To see the Democratic candidates on stage attacking Barack Obama’s legacy on immigration and deportation at a time when the Trump administration has had children ripped from their parents’ arms and incarcerated en mass in one of the greatest human rights violations of this country’s recent history was both bizarre and wrenching. Biden distanced himself from the effort, and the Trans Pacific Partnership freeptrade deal that the administration favored, which invited a pointed attack from both New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and Sen. Cory Booker, who challenged Biden that he “couldn’t have it both ways” in claiming credit for the Obama administration while distancing himself from it when pressed on uncomfortable realities. Why those two candidates, both polling quite low, thought such a challenge would be good politics is not clear. After another attack from De Blasio on a hypothetical NAFTA reform, Biden took it upon himself to threaten to excommunicate him. As De Blasio teased, “we believe in redemption in this party,” Biden responded dryly, “Well, I tell you what, I hope you’re part of it.”
Vigorous political debates are antiquities in 2019. The number of candidates still in the race this early makes meaningful issues hard to flesh out. As the Democrats find their way forward, their attacks on each other need to be more substantive and forward looking, and they’d do well to be focused on whose policies they are running against, which are not Obama’s. As for health insurance, the party is moving left, so it should be remembered who crafted the plan that was used as a model for the Affordable Care Act—Mitt Romney, a Republican. As Governor of Massachusetts, it was he who took up the challenge of bringing everyone into the insurance market, but he favored doing it in typical right wing-fashion: keeping the market as privatized as possible, keeping the insurance companies in charge, letting them “compete” with each other with increased patient participation.
That was back when Republicans had right wing ideas about how to govern. Today the party is an intellectual ghost town, tumble weeds and creaky doors swinging in the wind. So, now that position is left to the “moderate” Democrats to own, while the left still attacks from the left, favoring a single payer system that has been a dream of Democrats since FDR began building the nation’s social safety net. It will be interesting to see what the Democratic primary voters of this go-around will favor, but how the whole debate, how any political debate today must play out solely among the so-called left is a reminder that, while Trump keeps chomping away at the Democrats, he has already digested the Republican party.
