What Democratic Unity Would Look Like
Progressives and centrists are fighting in the Democratic Party, but there is much work to be done -- and it can only be done if we are unified.Today, though, I want to spend a moment envisioning what Democrats might be able to do if we united and pushed for change together.
First, I want to talk about what the kind of unity that actually gets shit done looks like. True unity is not the absence of vigorous debate on policy or on political strategy. What it is instead is having all those debates play out in the legislative and governing process, and then bringing everyone together through mutual respect and a willingness to work out our differences, so that we actually pass legislation. It is also working with the Biden administration to enact new executive orders and regulations that make a tangible difference in people’s lives.
We can have vigorous debates without backbiting... Let me pause here a moment to talk about the fighting that is already going on. Centrist Democrats like Abigail Spanberger and Kurt Schrader -- before the election had even been called for Biden, before we knew the final results on a lot of House races and those two Senate races, before we had a chance to really dig into the data -- immediately began attacking progressives for everything that went wrong in an election where we had just won the presidency and kept the House. AOC fired back quickly in an interview in the NYT, where she talked about the work she had done supporting swing district colleagues, all of whom won their races, and where she pointed out that the losing candidates often had a deficit of investment in digital organizing. Thankfully, proving what a smart and strategic person she is, Con. Ocasio-Cortez followed up with this great statement in The Hill, which I agree with 100%:
There are, at least in the House caucus, very deep divisions within the party, and I believe that we need to really come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart... [With a slimmer Democratic majority] it’s going to be more important than ever for us to work together and not fight each other.
I am more on AOC’s side on the specifics of her argument -- progressive groups and activists did more to turnout the voters we needed in this election than anyone else -- but more importantly, her unity perspective should prevail. The internal finger-pointing (as opposed to the healthy issues debate mentioned above) should stop, at least right now when we don’t even have good data to analyze the results. In any case, can’t we all just acknowledge that Republicans are going to call us all socialists no matter what? That to hurt Democrats, they might seize on any ill-advised slogan some activists throw out in a demonstration, or simply just make stuff up about us? There is plenty of time for analysis, positioning, and debates on where the party should go, primary fights, etc. down the road.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/11/what-democratic-unity-would-look
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Our party is overwhelmingly liberal and progressive, always generally united by ideology, and currently very strongly so. Only nuts and wannabe revolutionaries hoping to benefit from it are unconcerned by the giant threat of authoritarian destruction from the right.
Both of the house's large ideological caucuses, approximately 200 strong in total, are both liberal AND progressive. They disagree on how much to try to accomplish, how, and how fast, but are in strong agreement overall in ideals and goals. The third largest ideological caucus is the blue dogs, membership in the 20s out of 235 total, and even almost all of them support progressive government, just to a lesser degree but enough to cooperate.
Disagreements in our party are only deep divisions when dysfunctional extremists are the disagreers. There are no extremists among our Democratic senators. (I-Sanders' unproductive self-isolation has no effect on the work of Democratic senators.)
As for the house, and "AOC's side," you can count the members of her dissident group on one hand and have fingers left over. This isn't a "side." Massive puffery through hostile media, left and right, does not change their almost nonexistent power among their house colleagues, where they're much too few even to qualify for political analysts as a caucus.
As for divisions among Democratic voters, we overwhelmingly elect liberal progressives and reject those pushing socialist and/or anti-Democratic ideology, most apparently unfooled by the massive and very offensive dishonesty required to support both. Big surprise there. 
