Not just a move left but a move towards irrelevance

From Democrats have changed a lot since 2012 by Matthew Yglesias and Milan Singh.  The subheading is Moving left on economics — but also on climate, race, and a bunch of other things. 

The Republican Party is always a hodgepodge of ideas.  It is such a big tent that there is a certain incoherence.  You can find vocal advocates for mass migration as well as voices for strong borders.  For more international involvement and less.  For greater freedom of the marketplace and for more control.  There are a few reasonably common shared values, mostly centering on the Bill of Rights and family but beyond that, it is a Wild West of ideas.

The Democratic Party used to fit that description.  Will Rogers famously said:

I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.

But their commitment to state led reform has led to an evolution away from the working man and towards the plutocrat.  Away from ideas and towards power.

The chattering class (the Democratic Party with ink) has been seized with this revelation, though the process has been visible and commented on for more than thirty years, with the recent publication of a cartoon by Colin Wright.

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There are loud debates about the degree to which the claim is true that Republicans have been consistently the same while Democrats have moved sharply to the left.  I accept that it is broadly true and especially noticeable when you focus on non-urban Democrats.  They look a lot more like Republicans and far less like the vocal far left of the Party.

The Yglesias and Singh article attempts to provide some rigor to the underlying Wright cartoon claim.

One way to see this is in the evolution of the party’s platform, which is why Milan carefully read the 2012 and 2020 Democratic platforms in their entirety. The point of this exercise isn’t that the mass electorate scrutinizes these documents in detail, but that the statements are a chance for party leaders to tell the world what the party aspires to be and do. It’s of course possible that a party could smuggle some totally obscure new policy commitment into the platform that doesn’t reflect anything other than platform-writing. But that’s really not the case here.

The 2020 platform has some new sections on Covid-19 and Donald Trump that are not present in the 2012 platform for obvious reasons. But more broadly, comparing the two clearly shows a Democratic Party that has adopted new left-wing commitments on race, climate, and other policy areas while somewhat de-emphasizing bread-and-butter economics. But importantly, even on economics, the party has shifted left.

Democrats have moved left on economics 

The table below summarizes the 2012 and 2020 platforms’ economic planks. The shift on corporate taxes arguably just reflects a change in the underlying policy status quo, but in other areas, you see clear ideological and policy movements in a more ambitiously progressive direction.

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They identify for other areas where the Democratic Party has moved left.

A softer line on crime

Democrats got much more aggressive on climate

Centering race in a new way

A miscellany of increased progressive commitment

It is notable that in all these areas, an increase in Left/Progressive ideology is concomitant with a decrease in logic, reason and empiricism.  The Democratic Party is increasingly the party of emotional hysteria over reason and debate.

It is worth a read.  There is one other interesting attempt at empiricism.

 

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The Democrats are talking a lot more about race, identity, climate, and immigration and a lot less about jobs and veterans.  Interestingly, that is the inverse of what people say they are concerned about in the various surveys of public concerns and fears.  Race, identity and climate hardly show up.  Immigration is on some people's minds but in a way opposite to the Democratic policies.  Everyone is very concerned about jobs, the economy and inflation just about all the time.