Portside

There are now two parallel debates about the role and future of the Democratic Party. One has to do with how fiercely and by what means Democrats should resist Trump. The other is about what Democrats should stand for going forward.

For a time, the accommodationists in the party had a modicum of credibility. Maybe there were areas of common ground?

That posture was undermined by Trump’s increasing destructiveness and his habit of making a deal and then demanding more. Advocates of having the Democrats stand back and let Trump destroy himself, such as James Carville, now look silly.

The coup de grâce was the extraordinary April 27 speech by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a man known more as a liberal than a radical but now sounding like Bernie Sanders on steroids. Space precludes my quoting the entire speech, but you owe it to yourself to watch it. In part, Pritzker said:

I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now. But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.

Cowardice can be contagious. But so too can courage.

After that speech, I don’t know how any self-respecting Democrat can say we need to seek common ground, or argue as Carville does that Democrats should just get out of the way and wait for Trump to fail.

The other great debate among Democrats is over what Democrats should stand for affirmatively. And that ideological debate is substantially a proxy for the fight over how much influence Wall Street Democrats should have in dictating the party program.

The coup de grâce was the extraordinary April 27 speech by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a man known more as a liberal than a radical but now sounding like Bernie Sanders on steroids. Space precludes my quoting the entire speech, but you owe it to yourself to watch it. In part, Pritzker said:

I understand the tendency to give in to despair right now. But despair is an indulgence that we cannot afford in the times upon which history turns. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.

These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox, and then punish them at the ballot box. They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact—because we have no alternative but to do just that—that we will relegate their portraits to the museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.

Cowardice can be contagious. But so too can courage.

After that speech, I don’t know how any self-respecting Democrat can say we need to seek common ground, or argue as Carville does that Democrats should just get out of the way and wait for Trump to fail.

The other great debate among Democrats is over what Democrats should stand for affirmatively. And that ideological debate is substantially a proxy for the fight over how much influence Wall Street Democrats should have in dictating the party program.

But then Trump, with unerring timing, unveiled his latest stablecoin, called USD1, a grotesque example of the conflicts of interest that permeate the crypto industry. And so several embarrassed Democrats, with a helpful push by Dayen’s investigative reporting, got off the bill, which is stalled—but only for the moment. It is likely to pass, with Democrats only getting an amendment on stopping Trump’s corruption that is designed to fail.

Unfortunately, this useful and instructive fiasco is the exception. Corporate influence on Democrats remains widespread and substantially hidden.

If the party of the people is to regain credibility with the people, it needs to escape this corporate captivity. Democrats need to sponsor policies that are more persuasive as measures to improve the lives of regular people than Trump’s policies. Should that be so hard?

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School.

Used with the permission. Copyright The American Prospect, Prospect.org, 2024. All rights reserved. Click here to read the original article at Prospect.org.

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