Conservatives long have argued that ideas motivate people and win political struggles.
Progressives tend to see this as hot air blown by plutocrats and their minions. Yet none other than John Maynard Keynes wrote, “I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.” There is plenty of evidence that he was right and that liberals’ widespread commitment to a materialist theory of political change is wrong.
Progressives have also been wrong about tactics. I’m a Bernie Sanders Democrat, but since Joe Biden became president I’ve been impressed with the acumen of moderate House Democrats. U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, complained of Biden, “Nobody elected him to be FDR.” Maybe a few historians visited the White House and told Biden otherwise, as some have claimed. If so, Spanberger is a better historian. The Democrats lost House seats in 2020 and managed a 50–50 split in the Senate. This is far from the huge Congressional majorities that Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed during their presidencies. The House Progressive Caucus was convinced they had “leverage” over moderates and could hold a bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage to the mono-partisan Build Back Better (BBB) legislation. They were wrong. U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, another moderate Democrat, criticized what she called this “ill-fated effort to gain leverage over members of their own party.”
The Progressive Caucus may have imagined itself as a counterpart to the GOP’s Freedom Caucus, which has repeatedly wreaked havoc through its members’ refusal to support necessary legislation. However, the comparison is inapt. Conservatives sometimes embargo important bills because they don’t care if the government fulfills many functions that others support. Some on the right will even hope that dysfunctional government helps their cause by damaging popular faith in the public sector. They can ditch legislative negotiations in blasé fashion.
Progressives can’t do the same with such ease. As it turned out, they largely supported the infrastructure bill with no promises about BBB, which remains on hold. This was not the foolish bargain some will maintain. Progressive threats to kill the infrastructure bill by withholding votes made sense only if one believes that moderate Democrats craved that infrastructure bill so much that they would have agreed to tie it explicitly to BBB rather than get nothing. However, faced with that choice, some moderates would have walked away, enhanced their political brands with many suburban voters, and left progressives – and the American people who needed the components funded in these bills – with nothing.
In fact, moderates like Spanberger and Murphy had been won over by progressive policy arguments. They were going to vote for BBB. Two Democratic Senators blocked it. Tactical leverage from progressives did not produce the surprising progressivism that appeared among a great many moderates.
What did? Decades of policy arguments played the biggest role, along with evidence of the need for the components of both bills. The overarching theses that government must fund vital public needs and also support households directly amid seemingly endless economic and social turmoil have made great headway among Democrats. So has dogged empirical research from policy wonks about the effectiveness of specific programs in addressing the country’s genuine needs. The days when President Ronald Reagan won huge national majorities – and drove a wedge into the Democratic Party – by saying that government was the problem, or when President Bill Clinton announced the era of big government was over, are gone.
Consider the signature fiscal measures signed by the past three Democratic presidents.
Clinton’s Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act of 1993 cut the federal government’s spending by $255 billion. Democrats held a 56–44 margin in the Senate, and the bill passed with 50 votes, all Democrats. The mania for deficit reduction at the time bore little connection to the recession the country had just experienced.
President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created new spending of $831 billion. Democrats held a 58–42 majority in the Senate, and the bill passed with 61 votes. This time, more sensibly, deficit spending addressed a major economic bust.
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 increased spending by $1.9 trillion. Democrats, with 50 Senators, passed this with no GOP support.
Then, Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act added $1.2 trillion of spending. This time, 19 GOP Senators joined all 50 of their Democratic colleagues in support.
These 2021 measures addressed real needs, but the economy was already poised for a rebound from a peculiar pandemic-induced recession.
As well, 48 of 50 Democratic Senators and virtually all House Democrats were willing to support at least another $1.7 trillion on BBB.
Must persuasive ideas address material realities? Absolutely. Traumas including the COVID-19 pandemic and much else, as well as the worsening climate catastrophe, demand major responses. But such responses might take several forms, not all of them progressive. Material realities do not in themselves cause predetermined, coherent shifts in thinking, and when patterns of social thought do change, they will not be damaged seriously by passing events.
The Democratic Party, now led by a largely united set of leaders who support a cohesive suite of reasonably progressive policies, regularly secures majorities of the national vote. Its weaknesses in small-town and rural America and with less-educated white voters (overlapping constituencies), weaknesses amplified in their effect by the overrepresentation of such areas in national and state legislatures, constitute its key problem. Democrats can’t make gains among such voters with leverage or any other kind of pressure tactics. They can only do so with words and images, both of which convey ideas.
That Democrats have achieved so much recently on such thin margins is remarkable. Progressives should recognize that persistent argument and persuasion is their proven path to meaningful change.
Doug Rossinow is professor of history at Metropolitan State University.
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