David Brooks: The Democrats’ problems are bigger than you think

I have a lot of Democratic friends who are extremely disappointed with their party leaders They tell me that the Democratic Party is at this moment rudderless weak passive lacking a compelling message I try to be polite but I want to tell them The complication is not the party leaders The complication is you You don t understand how big a shift we re in the middle of You think the Democrats can solve their problems with a new message and a new leader But the Democrats challenge is that they have to adapt to a new historical era That s not something done by working politicians who are focused on fundraising and the next poll That s only accomplished by visionaries and people willing to shift their entire worldview That s up to you my friends not Chuck Schumer There have been only a insufficient world-shifting political movements over the past century and a half the totalitarian movement which led to communist revolutions in places like Russia and China and fascist coups in places like Germany the welfare state movement which led in the U S to the New Deal the liberation movement which led from the s on to anti-colonialism the civil rights movement feminism and the LGBTQ movement the realm liberalism movement which led to Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher and in their own contexts Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev and decisively the global populist movement which has led to Donald Trump Viktor Orban Brexit and in their own contexts Narendra Modi Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping The global populist movement took off sometime in the early s It was driven by a comprehensive sense of social distrust a firm conviction that the social systems of society were rigged corrupted and malevolent In I wrote about an Ipsos poll that summarized the populist zeitgeist Roughly of Americans noted the country was in decline Sixty percent agreed the system is broken Sixty-nine percent agreed the political and economic elite don t care about hard-working people Sixty-three percent announced experts in this country don t understand the lives of people like me The American results were essentially in line with the results from the other countries around the world that were polled The Republicans have adjusted to the shift in the zeitgeist more effectively than the Democrats Trump tells a clear story The elites are screwing America He took a free arrangement party and made it a protectionist party an internationalist party and made it an isolationist party In recent months George F Will compiled a list of all the options Trump is departing from conservative orthodoxy and behaving and thinking in means contrary to the options Republicans behaved in the age of conservative region liberalism Will s list of Trump pivots is worth quoting in full Combating the citizenry s false consciousness by permeating society including cultural institutions with leadership which IS politics Confidence in executive s ability to anticipate and control the consequences of broad interventions in modern society s complexities Using industrial approach to pick economic winners and losers because the future is transparent so executive can know which enterprises should prosper Central planning of the evolution of the nation s regions and the market system s sectors especially manufacturing Melding governing and party-building by constructing coalitions of government-dependent factions as Franklin D Roosevelt s New Deal did with the elderly Social Measure labor the National Labor Relations Act favoring unions and farmers the Agricultural Adjustment Act Rejecting conservative growth-oriented tax simplification lowering rates by eliminating preferences to use taxes including tariffs as tools of social engineering Bypassing the appropriations process the tax code can transfer wealth to favored constituencies Limitless borrowing from future Americans to fund in the modern day s Americans consumption of regime goods and services Presidential supremacy ensured by using executive orders to marginalize Congress Unfettered majoritarianism hence opposition to the Senate filibuster Trump has taken the atmosphere of alienation magnified it with his own apocalypticism and assaulting institutions across society has created a revolutionary regime More this term than last he is shifting the conditions in which we live Multiple of my Democratic friends have not fully internalized the magnitude of this historical shift They are still thinking within the confines of the Clinton-Obama-Biden-Pelosi worldview But I have a feeling that over the next meager years the tumult of events will push Democrats onto specific new trajectory The crucial point was made by Bulgarian-born political scientist Ivan Krastev on The Good Fight podcast with Yascha Mounk He disclosed In every revolution there is constantly more than one revolution He went on to explain If this is a revolution revolution changes the identity of all players No political party or actor is going to get out of the revolution the way they started it You can have Lenin after Kerensky you cannot have Kerensky after Lenin It is a totally different story The Democratic Party is going to be as dramatically transformed by the Trumpian revolution for good or for bad as the Republican Party is If you re thinking the Democrats job now is to come up with particular new policies that appeal to the working class you are thinking too small This is not about policies Democrats have to do what Trump did create a new party identity come up with a clear answer to the question What is the central matter of our time Come up with a new grand narrative The Democrats first core challenge is that we live in an age that is hostile to institutions and Democrats dominate the institutions the universities the media Hollywood the foundations the teachers unions the Civil Function etc The second is that we live in an age in which a caste divide has opened up between the educated elite and everybody else and Democrats are the party of the highly educated Democrats of late had an argument about whether they should use the word oligarchy to attack Republicans They are so locked in their old narratives that they are apparently unaware that to countless they are the oligarchy If I could offer Democrats a couple of notions as they begin their process of renewal the first would be this Cultural elitism is more oppressive than economic elitism The welfare state era gave Democrats the impression that everything can be solved with money funneled through particular federal plan But the populist era is driven by social resentment more than economic scarcity Every society has a recognition order a diffuse system for doling out attention and respect When millions of people feel that they and their values are invisible to that order they rightly feel furious and alienated Of discipline they ll go with the guy Trump who says I see you I respect you If Democrats and the educated class generally can t change their values and cultural posture I doubt any set of economic policies will do them any good It is just a fact that parties on the left can t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right faith family flag respect for people in all social classes Related Articles Stephen L Carter The Supreme Court got the Environmental Program Act scenario right Thomas Friedman We are being governed by the Trump Organization Inc Lisa Jarvis The MAHA assessment s errors are just the start of its problems Daniel J Stone Biden s cancer identification should be a teaching moment Sarah McLaughlin Once international students feared Beijing s wrath Now Trump is the threat My second notion is this Pay attention to Dwight Eisenhower Ike was a Republican president in the middle of the welfare state era He basically declared I m going to endorse the basic shape of the New Deal but I m going to achieve those ends more sensibly You can trust me For the present day s Democrats that means this If people rightly distrust establishment institutions and you are the party of the establishment institutions then you have to be the party of thoroughgoing modification You have to say that Trump is taking a blowtorch to institutions and we are for effectively changing institutions Do you really think professional politicians are going to lead the tectonic shifts that are required That takes intellectuals organizers a new generation all of us It s the work of decades not voting process cycles Clear your mind Think anew David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times