Connect with us

News

From the Left, a Historian’s Plea for Democratic Party Unity

Published

on

From the Left, a Historian’s Plea for Democratic Party Unity

The Democratic Occasion goes by way of one in all its periodic convulsions, with an rebel left battling for pre-eminence over a centrist institution led by President Biden.

Biden struggled to steadiness these two wings in his first yr in workplace, usually having to shuttle between one faction of lawmakers and one other to forge compromise.

There is no such thing as a higher instance than his ill-fated promise to bind collectively two main items of laws, Construct Again Higher and the infrastructure invoice, in a form of pinkie promise between progressives and moderates.

Now, as Biden confronts the daunting problem of holding his get together collectively by way of a tough midterm marketing campaign season, his big-tent method is getting help from one of many left’s most influential public intellectuals: the Georgetown College historian Michael Kazin.

Kazin’s ebook, “What It Took to Win: A Historical past of the Democratic Occasion,” traces the get together’s evolution from its roots within the 1800s and argues that Democrats have been most profitable when their wings have been united.

Advertisement

However for a youthful era of progressive politicians, like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, who got here of age at a time of rising disillusion with the syrupy tempo of electoral politics, unity hasn’t all the time been the trail. Ocasio-Cortez was one in all few Democrats who voted in opposition to the president’s infrastructure invoice, and he or she has aggressively backed main challengers to Democratic incumbents.

Kazin concludes his ebook with a warning to his personal aspect, that the get together “can style victory persistently provided that its activists, candidates, and officeholders debate their variations with out one aspect denouncing or searching for to purge each other.”

The ebook tries to hyperlink the get together’s origins in Andrew Jackson’s fiery Southern populism to right this moment’s cosmopolitan coalition of “college-educated folks of all races in main metropolitan areas and Black and Hispanic working folks,” as Kazin defines it.

It’s a tough throughline to attract. The space between these two Democratic events is huge, and Kazin should continually mood his admiration for an establishment based on the concept “that the financial system ought to profit the extraordinary working individual” together with his disgust for its previous sins of supporting slavery and Jim Crow.

The ebook’s very title hints on the ethical compromises Kazin implies have been vital for the get together to win energy over its 194 years of existence, but it surely’s additionally a nod to “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s acclaimed account of the 1988 presidential race.

Advertisement

The train of making an attempt to attach the get together’s distant previous with its fractious current raises a captivating query: What, precisely, is the Democratic Occasion? Is it a set of concepts? An establishment? A coalition of sure varieties of voters?

“It’s all these issues,” Kazin mentioned in an interview. “However the true query is: What does it stand for?”

Kazin, who has edited the left-wing journal Dissent for a few years, involves the mission as a longtime activist and a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “My dedication to the Democrats is an ambivalent one, alloyed with remorse and warning,” he confesses.

So the ebook isn’t just an easy recounting of occasions — it doubles as a delicate manifesto in favor of what he calls “ethical capitalism.”

“All through their historical past,” Kazin argues, “Democrats gained nationwide elections and have been aggressive in most states once they articulated an egalitarian financial imaginative and prescient and advocated legal guidelines supposed to satisfy it.”

Advertisement

He wrestles with what Democrats should do to win again the white working-class voters who’ve been abandoning the get together for many years and culminating within the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The controversy usually boils right down to: Tradition or economics? Identification or coverage?

In Kazin’s view, Democrats ought to embrace the form of populism that has labored for Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a lonely blue survivor in a state that has grown ruby crimson during the last decade.

“Democrats have to face for financial packages that assist individuals who would by no means consider voting for them,” even when the political payoffs are solely incremental, he elaborated in our interview.

It’s a dialogue that inevitably runs into fraught territory. The cultural divide within the Democratic Occasion — between the well-educated elites who run it and the working-class base — has solely deepened in recent times, and Republicans have been adept at exploiting that hole.

Intellectuals like Ruy Teixeira argue that Democrats ought to forcefully rebuke progressive activists who’ve embraced politically unpopular slogans like “defund the police” — even when it means frightening a conflict inside the get together.

Advertisement

Kazin, an previous pal of Teixeira’s, politely disagrees.

“You may’t have a unified get together by alienating younger progressive activists,” he informed us. “It’s important to say, ‘Look, we hear you, however we additionally must resolve which points are main proper now.’”

Kazin is disdainful of the “skilled Democrats” who run the get together and its varied committees, and he credit the efforts of grassroots teams like Indivisible and Honest Struggle with defeating former President Donald Trump.

But for all his criticism of the Democratic elites, whom he dismisses as venal and ineffective, Kazin represents a practical pressure alongside the get together’s left flank, extra aligned with progressive insiders like Pramila Jayapal than with rabble-rousers like Cori Bush.

He’s additionally prepared to forgive the president’s occasional departures from left-wing orthodoxy as a result of, basically, they’re allies in the identical trigger.

Advertisement

“He’s survived on this lengthy profession by ensuring he’s all the time within the heart,” Kazin mentioned of Biden. “Like several good politician, he has to consider mediate.”

This, he added, is the final word lesson of his ebook: “And not using a united get together, you may’t do very a lot in any respect. And when you don’t win elections, you don’t change issues in a severe manner.”

HOW THEY RUN

President Biden’s superior age — he’ll be turning 82 in 2024 — has been a relentless supply of mischief and hypothesis. Regardless of what number of occasions he insists that he plans on operating for re-election, the tales about who may change him atop the ticket hold coming.

Hillary Clinton can relate. At any time when the previous secretary of state pops up within the public eye, she is greeted with the identical query: Are you operating?

Advertisement

It’s usually the identical pundits who stoke the narrative. The newest instance was an opinion essay in The Wall Road Journal titled “Hillary Clinton’s 2024 Election Comeback,” by Douglas Schoen and Andrew Stein.

“Given the probability that Democrats will lose management of Congress in 2022, we are able to anticipate that Mrs. Clinton will start shortly after the midterms to place herself as an skilled candidate able to main Democrats on a brand new and extra profitable path,” they wrote.

Schoen, a former pollster for Invoice Clinton, was a co-author of a strikingly related opinion essay revealed by The Wall Road Journal in 2011. Again then, he urged President Barack Obama to step apart for her.

That didn’t occur, however for the “Hillary’s operating” camp, there’s all the time recent grist for the mill. When Invoice Clinton introduced final week that he was reviving his dormant basis, the Clinton International Initiative, Peter Schweizer, a right-wing researcher near Steve Bannon, called it “additional proof that Hillary Clinton could very effectively run for POTUS in 2024.”

Right now, Clinton fended off one other are-you-running query from NBC’s Mika Brzezinski. She replied:

Advertisement

“No, however I’m actually going to be energetic in supporting girls operating for workplace and different candidates who I feel ought to be re-elected or elected, each men and women.”

Thanks for studying. We’ll see you tomorrow.

— Blake & Leah

Is there something you suppose we’re lacking? Something you wish to see extra of? We’d love to listen to from you. E mail us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

Advertisement

News

Wanted: more bosses on the shop floor

Published

on

Wanted: more bosses on the shop floor

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

On the day of the US election this week, I was struck by a familiar sense of anxiety, dismay and dread.

This had almost nothing to do with the election and everything to do with my decision to spend time that day on the FT’s main news desk. 

In the interests of research, I wanted to see what the job of news editing looked like since I last worked on that desk in London many years ago. 

Advertisement

Clearly much has changed since. The homepage is all-consuming; an entirely different team of editors handles the printed paper. But much is still the same, like the stomach-grinding anxiety about inserting an error in the rush to publish. And the heart-stopping fear of receiving a late, garbled story needing not so much editing as open-heart surgery. And the remorseless speed of the work.

“You all right?” muttered the news editor, a man I’ve known for close to 20 years, as I faffed about trying to log in to the first morning news meeting of top editors. Flustered, I finally got the sound on as he was explaining why I was there, whereupon I thanked him and called him Tim instead of his actual name, which is Tom.

This was a reminder of something I had forgotten in my years away from that work. It is so much harder than it looks from the outside.

The experience confirmed that business leaders who do what Boeing’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, did the other week deserve much credit. 

When Ortberg set out his plans to restore faith in the beleaguered aerospace giant, he highlighted one in particular: putting executives on factory floors as part of “a fundamental culture change”.

Advertisement

“We need to know what’s going on, not only with our products, but with our people,” he said. “We need to prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix, and understand root cause.”

This seems obvious for any company, let alone one reeling from the aftermath of two fatal crashes of its top-selling 737 Max aircraft.

Yet if it really were apparent, there wouldn’t be headlines whenever someone like Ortberg issues such an edict. Or Home Depot tells corporate office staff to work a full day at one of its stores each quarter, as it did this year. Or Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, reveals he has been moonlighting as a driver, as he did last year. 

Maybe more bosses than we hear about spend time answering customer complaints on social media, such as Greg Jackson, chief executive of the UK’s Octopus Energy power supplier. Or decide a human can adjust a car window seal faster than a robot by trying it himself on an assembly line, as Elon Musk did at Tesla. 

But I doubt it. For one thing, few CEOs are like Musk. Also, running a business is hard. It can be easy to get caught up in the daily crossfire of drama. When Khosrowshahi was driving a customer to the airport one night, he had to ignore what the Wall Street Journal said were frantic phone calls from his chief legal officer trying to tell him the company’s network had been hacked.

Advertisement

It also takes a lot of confidence to expose yourself to the ridicule of underlings who know more about how a job is done, especially for CEOs unfamiliar with the industry they join.

But I suspect many executives shy away from the shop floor because they have succumbed to an aspect of power poisoning, or the way behaviour changes when you reach the top.

In this case, they think that, because they are in charge, they understand everything they need to know in order to lead well, even when they palpably don’t. Academics call this the fallacy of centrality and it can be a dismaying thing to watch. Ask any worker repeatedly asked to do something provably unworkable by a clueless boss. 

Of course, hands-on experience alone does not guarantee success. Laxman Narasimhan did 40 hours of barista training before taking over as CEO of Starbucks and last year said he would keep working behind the counter for half a day each month. He was ousted 17 months later. Falling sales and an activist investor will probably always beat even the finest Frappuccino technique.

pilita.clark@ft.com

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Camarillo homeowners return to burned homes after devastating Mountain Fire

Published

on

Camarillo homeowners return to burned homes after devastating Mountain Fire

Camarillo homeowners have started to return to their scorched neighborhoods after the devastating Mountain Fire ripped through the area earlier this week. 

While some homes remain standing, many others have been reduced to rubble, with random pieces of furniture and appliances left behind. 

The fire, which has so far engulfed more than 20,000 acres and destroyed over 100 homes, broke out on Wednesday and quickly grew with the help of strong winds blowing through the area. 

snapshot-64.jpg
Flowers and a message of hope left behind in a decimated neighborhood in Camarillo after the Mountain Fire.

KCAL News

Advertisement


It began in Moorpark before jumping SR-118 and entering neighborhoods in the foothills of Camarillo, where Jamie Randall and her husband Tyler Farnworth returned earlier this week to find that their home was gone. 

“I feel like the shock if wearing off a little bit,” Randall said. “It’s hard to see this. It’s harder today for me then it was even a few days ago to wrap my head around the gravity of what has happened to our home.”

The couple lived at the home with their children and were among the more than 10,000 residents forced to gather what they could and flee at a moment’s notice as the fire ripped through the neighborhood. 

Randall said that she packed two suitcases and grabbed some important documents, anticipating that they would be able to return home after the blaze was handled by firefighters. 

“I never thought in my wildest dreams this would be the last time I would be standing at my house,” she said. 

Advertisement

They say that the fire hollowed out their home, reducing everything inside to ash. 

“There’s a few things that we wish we would have grabbed. Some things from my parents that are no longer with us,” said Farnworth. “Silly little things, you know.”

They say that it was more than just their home, but a community for the family, who owns a dance studio named Bobbie’s School of Performing Arts. 

After news was spread about their home, they say that they were contacted by an overwhelming amount of friends and families showing them love and support. 

“It spread so wide, the amount of love they’ve shown us and they continue to show us,” the family said. 

Advertisement
snapshot-65.jpg
The smiling statue of Buddha that survived the devastating Mountain Fire that ripped through a Camarillo neighborhood on Nov. 6.

KCAL News


While they’re still unsure what their next steps may be, they’re taking one sign from the rubble as a bit of positivity — a smiling Buddha statue that survived the flames. 

“This is our home. This is our home, this is our street, these are our neighbors,” Farnworth said. “Everyone, I feel like, feels the same way.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Poorer voters flocked to Trump and other data points from the election

Published

on

Poorer voters flocked to Trump and other data points from the election

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Donald Trump’s win gave Republicans their highest share of the popular vote in two decades — and revealed big shifts in the US electorate, from the Democratic party’s reliance on wealthier, college-educated voters to the power of issues like immigration.

Low turnout by Democrats also hurt Kamala Harris’s chances while support from traditional left-leaning voting groups, such as Hispanic and Black voters, fell.

The results also show that poorer and less-educated voters now think Republicans best represent them — a reversal from 12 years ago, when Democrat Barack Obama was president.

Advertisement

After a deep-dive into the data, here are five takeaways.

Democratic support depends on high-income voters

Economic realignment has been under way for some time, but hastened in this election. The Democratic party now appears to be the party of high-income voters, not those with low incomes.

For the first time in decades, Democrats received more support from Americans in the top third of the income bracket than from poorer groups, according to an FT analysis of voter surveys.

In contrast to 2020, the majority of lower-income households or those earning less than $50,000 a year voted for Trump this election. Conversely, those making over $100,000 voted for Harris, according to exit polls.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Advertisement

At the same time, Trump enjoyed enduring support from voters without a college degree, with nearly two-thirds voting for the former president, according to exit polling in ten states by NBC News.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Immigration probably pushed voters to Trump

A poll by Gallup before the election found that US voters saw immigration as the most important problem facing the country, with 55 per cent saying that it was a “critical threat” to the US.

The results from Tuesday show just how damaging the issue was for Harris, who was blamed by Trump for the record high number of border crossings during the Biden administration.

Some of the areas that swung furthest to the former president were on the US south-western border, including Hidalgo and Zapata counties in Texas and Santa Cruz County in Arizona.

In Texas, Trump managed to flip four counties on the US-Mexico border that had voted for Democratic presidential candidates since the 1970s.

Advertisement

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Trump captured the suburbs and cities became less Democratic

Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 owed much to the big Democratic turnout in swing-state suburbs, including a blue wave in the majority-white suburbs of Pennsylvania and Georgia, as well as both majority-white and majority-Latino areas in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

But on Tuesday, Trump captured more votes than Harris everywhere outside large cities, including suburban areas. In large urban areas, Democrats lost more than 1mn votes compared to 2020, according to an FT analysis of the results.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

The rural-urban divide has increasingly become an entrenched dimension of US politics, but this election saw a sharp drop in Democratic support in large cities, while rural areas continued to become more red.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Hispanic-majority areas swung to Trump

Days before the election, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s disparaging remarks about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally cast doubt on the Republican candidate’s ability to win over Latino voters.

But the results showed that Latinos, as well as other non-white voters, are increasingly drawn to Trump. The shift could have lasting implications given Latinos are among the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the US.

Advertisement

Even in liberal enclaves like Philadelphia, the most populous city in the swing state of Pennsylvania, voters swung towards Trump in majority-Hispanic areas, even while Harris won those precincts overall, according to an FT analysis of municipal data.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

In Texas, some of the largest swings towards Trump also came from majority-Hispanic counties, including Starr County on the US-Mexico border, which has a Hispanic population of over 96 per cent.

Trump even managed to flip Florida’s most populous county, the majority-Hispanic Miami-Dade County, for the first time since 1988.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Low turnout among Democrats accentuated the swing towards Trump

Not all of the swing towards Trump across the country was attributable to an increase in support for the Republican.

While New York swung to Trump by 12 points in 2024, fewer than 190,000 additional people voted for him than in 2020. But 800,000 fewer people voted for Harris than Biden in the state. Illinois and Ohio followed a similar trend.

Advertisement

Of the swing states, only in Pennsylvania did Democrats lose more votes than Trump gained. In Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina, the party increased their vote count — albeit only by 300 in the North Carolina.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Harris’s turnout effort did bear some fruit, with current estimates showing that the proportion of the voting-eligible population who voted increased in all but two of the swing states.

Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.

Additional reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan in New York and Alan Smith in London

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending