Democratic Party

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Joe Biden: ‘Vamos a pelear con todo al invertir en Estados Unidos primero’

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Presidential TransitionliveLatest UpdatesFormal Transition BeginsBiden’s CabinetSecretary of StateElection ResultsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpiniónSupported byContinue reading the main storyComentarioJoe Biden: ‘Vamos a pelear con todo al invertir en Estados Unidos primero’Esto es lo que el presidente electo de Estados Unidos dijo sobre el futuro del país en nuestra entrevista.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesPor More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      After Biden Win, Nation’s Republicans Fear the Economy Ahead

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesWho Gets the Vaccine First?Vaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter Biden Win, Nation’s Republicans Fear the Economy AheadPolling shows that Republicans have turned bearish on the outlook for their family finances since the election, while Democratic optimism is rising.By More

    • 38 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats, Stay United

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocrats, Stay UnitedEven though significant compromises will be required in Congress and not every progressive idea will be embraced.By More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      ‘We’ve Harmed the Senate Enough’: Why Joe Manchin Won’t Budge on the Filibuster

      by

      WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the most conservative member of his party in the Senate, has a message for fellow Democrats hoping to capture the majority and quickly begin muscling through legislation to bring about sweeping, liberal change: not on his watch.With Democrats mounting an intense, long-shot campaign to win two Georgia Senate seats whose fates will be decided in runoffs in January — a feat that would give them control of both chambers of Congress along with the presidency — Mr. Manchin’s unequivocal stance against ending the filibuster means that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. would still need substantial Republican support, and probably Mr. Manchin’s seal of approval, for any major move.In a wide-ranging interview in his office, Mr. Manchin, 73, a former governor, argued that moderates in both parties needed to assert themselves in a new Senate, no matter which party is in charge. He said that his party had lost rural voters because of an ultraprogressive message that scared them, and he criticized Republicans for selling their “souls” in subservience to President Trump.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Q: It strikes me that you’re going to be playing potentially an extremely important role if we end up with a 50-50 Senate. Would you agree with that?A: I would think the only reason that people are assuming that — you can tell me if it’s true or not — is because of my independent voting. I’m pretty independent. If it makes sense, I go home and explain it. If it doesn’t make sense, I don’t. Sometimes that’s a real strong Democratic issue they’re really happy with, and sometimes it’s a Republican issue they’re happy with. I think I’m the most moderate or centrist — as far as centrist voting — than anybody else in Congress, 535 people.Q: What do you make of the election results over all?A: I just can’t believe that 72 million people were either that mad or that scared of the Democrat Party to vote for what I consider a very flawed individual. Here’s a person who lost 230,000 lives under his watch, basically denounced the science completely because it might hurt him politically, has a lack of compassion or empathy for humans, and denigrates anybody and everybody that does not agree with him. How 72 million people could still walk in and say, ‘Yeah, it’s better than that,’ I just can’t figure it out.That was a sobering thing for me. My state got wiped out this election. So I would say, I’m just looking at myself, I have not been good at my message. I know why I’m a Democrat. And I know that I’ve never seen the Democrat Party forsake anybody.Q: Why do you think West Virginia and the rural areas have gone so red?A: I can tell you what they said: ‘Listen, I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for another Democrat that might give support to the very liberal wing in Washington that I don’t agree with and have nothing in common with. I don’t have anything in common with people who talk about defunding the police. It looks like they’re condoning riots.’ There’s not a member in the Democratic caucus that condones any of this violence or riots or looting. None.I just would hope that people would start looking at the person that they’re voting for and not the party they belong to. A Democrat who’s a moderate-conservative like myself is much needed to bring other people to that moderate position.Q: The Democratic Party thought it could take back the Senate this year, and there’s still a chance that maybe that can happen if you get both of the seats in Georgia. But in order to pass major legislation, you would have to either get some Republican support or kill the filibuster. You’ve long opposed killing the filibuster. Why is that?A: I can assure you I will not vote to end the filibuster, because that would break the Senate. We’ve harmed the Senate enough with the nuclear option on the judges. We’re making lifetime appointments based on a simple majority. The minority should have input — that’s the whole purpose for the Senate. If you basically do away with the filibuster altogether for legislation, you won’t have the Senate. You’re a glorified House. And I will not do that.Q: So there’s no issue where you would agree to end the filibuster? Let’s say there’s a badly needed new coronavirus stimulus package, and the Republicans won’t make a deal.A: No. If we can’t come together to help America, God help us. If you’ve got to blow up the Senate to do the right thing, then we’ve got the wrong people in the Senate, or we have people that won’t talk to each other. You know, I’ve always said this: Chuck Schumer, with his personality, he’ll talk to anybody and everybody. You can work with Chuck. Chuck is going to try everything he can do to try to engage with Mitch again.Q: Are there any other issues where you would draw a line in the sand and stand up to other members of your party?A: I’ve done that. I was that one vote for Brett Kavanaugh. I thought there had to be evidence, and I never saw evidence. The country was in a feeding frenzy. And there was no Democrat that was going to buck that. I said, ‘I’m not going to ruin a person’s life because there’s no evidence.’And wouldn’t it be so befitting if he votes to uphold the Affordable Care Act? God, oh my. Redemption! Is there redemption here? He and I had a long conversation, and I basically said, ‘I’m pleading with you and your inner conscience, whenever this comes before you, I want you to think about 800,000 West Virginians who couldn’t get insurance before because of a pre-existing condition. I want you to think about 160,000 West Virginians that were so poor, they had nothing.’Q: It does seem like Democrats have won the argument on the Affordable Care Act. Six years ago, Republicans were campaigning on blowing up Obamacare; now they’re running ads saying they’re protecting pre-existing conditions.A: Here’s the thing. It’s 16,000 jobs in West Virginia. Three million jobs in America. You want to be a vote that basically eliminates three million jobs? You want to be a vote that wipes out your state? It’s crazy.Q: Is there any chance of a bipartisan group of moderates — you, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and some others — emerging that can advance compromise policy in a new Senate?A: We used to have meetings all the time, either in here or her office. We had 10 or 12 or 13, sometimes as many as 20, working through the fiscal crisis or different things, trying to find a pathway forward. We need to be more vocal with our leadership.Q: What does it mean to be a Democrat in 2020?A: To me, it still means the compassion that we have for people, but also the dignity of work. That has to be our driver. It’s the economy, it’s all about the economy. You can’t help anybody if you have no economy and no resources to help them.When it comes to workplace safety, it’s the Democrats everyone turns to because they know they’ll do something. When it comes time to protect people’s jobs and opportunities, it’s the Democrats who will fight to protect that. We’re trying to give quality health care, so people can basically contribute to society. With that, look at the economy that we created: a billion dollars coming in our state. We don’t say that, and we don’t seem to get credit for that.So I’m back on track. I know why I’m here, and I know why I’m a Democrat, and I’m going to fight like the dickens.Q: You did a video with a mix of Democrats and Republicans asking people to respect the results of the election. Why do you think that so many Republicans are unwilling to acknowledge reality and stand up and say, ‘You lost, Mr. President’?A: I don’t know. I don’t know the value of being a U.S. senator, or a governor, or a congressman or anything that’s worth selling your soul or your convictions. These are all good people who for some reason aren’t speaking up. They’re hoping it just kind of goes away.Why rouse up 70 million people that were willing to vote for all his flaws, knowing he’s a very flawed human being? He instilled something, the anger in people, feeling like, ‘Hey, I’m getting the shaft here, I’m getting shorted.’ So, they just want that to kind of go away and see if it calms down rather than putting themselves in the iron. And I understand that. But it would be so refreshing to have a majority of all of my colleagues and my friends on the Republican side say, ‘Listen. It’s time now to move on.’ More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Is There a Lockstep Mentality on the Left?

      by

      To the Editor:Re “Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind,” by Bret Stephens (column, Nov. 17):I have read a great deal lately about how the woke left delivered the victory to President-elect Joe Biden and should be recognized and rewarded for its contribution. This incisive and insightful piece by Mr. Stephens may lead us to quite a different conclusion.Perhaps the dogmatic groupthink of the radical left and the media attention it garnered actually nearly cost Mr. Biden the election and seriously eroded what could have been a blue wall in down-ballot contests. At the risk of excommunication from the liberal community I have always embraced, let me say that “leftism” continues to break a singular rule of combat: Never hand your opponent a loaded gun!Cullen SchippeAlbuquerqueTo the Editor:I could be more sympathetic to Bret Stephens’s argument that leftist elites — who allegedly demand conformity of thought — are alienating centrist liberals if more than a handful of congressional Republicans could acknowledge that Joe Biden won the presidency. Clearly no political party has a corner on lockstep mentality.If my choice is between lemming Trumpers who reduce all liberals to socialists, Communists and anarchists and ditch our democratic norm of accepting fair election results, or leftist woke forces, I will gladly take my chances with the latter.Amy LefkofCharlotte, N.C.To the Editor:Three cheers for Bret Stephens as he articulates exactly what I feel as a white, female, senior lifelong Democrat. I am tired of the woke part of the Democratic Party making me feel guilty for the accident of my birth: being white of Northern European descent.I am tired of the politics of identity when identity does not decide how everyone sharing that identity thinks or acts. I am tired of the liberals who cannot look beyond the personality of the president to recognize that he may actually have done something good.Get out from behind the screen of pious disapproval and learn about others who can actually be rational when they make decisions that don’t agree with yours.Lynn BentPortola Valley, Calif.To the Editor:I consider myself one of those “woke” whom Bret Stephens refers to. I strive to be actively attentive to important issues, especially of racial and social justice. I also believe we have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” to take a stand and be active, challenging injustices and racism in our communities and fighting hatred and discrimination wherever it rises.I firmly believe that Donald Trump has harmed the soul of America. Wokes forever!Louis CampagnaRidgefield, Conn.To the Editor:Bret Stephens is right that many on the left had blinders on during the election. Which is why I am optimistic. President Trump may have lost the match but he is not down for the count. The House races saw important G.O.P. gains, and Republicans may well win the majority in 2022. Republicans are likely to hold on to the Senate. And Mr. Trump somehow managed to get three conservatives seated on the Supreme Court.I wouldn’t be surprised to see his victorious return in 2024, after people tire of the lockdowns and high taxes imposed by the Biden administration.David TulanianLas VegasTo the Editor:Even as a lifelong liberal Democrat, I readily concede, as Bret Stephens contends, that the left has turned its back on complexity and nuance, and harmed its own moral standing in the process. The progressive wing of the party fails to appreciate the extent to which it alienates a large segment of the population, or the reasons. And I get how no one wants to feel looked down upon.But how are we to respond, Mr. Stephens, to those who claim, as U.S. deaths pass 250,000, that the virus is a hoax, or those who insist, with no evidence whatsoever, that they know — just know — that the election was rigged, stolen, fake?Karen McAndrew AllenShelburne, Vt.To the Editor:Bret Stephens’s column would be more persuasive if the centrist faction of the Democratic Party actually stood behind policy positions that are up to the task of addressing the massive social failures left in the wake of decades of neoliberalism and winner-take-all capitalism. The center instead only offers more of the same corporatist policies that gave rise to the cult of Donald Trump in the first place.To win big, Democrats must pay heed to the needs of disaffected Trump voters. The party must present an inspiring vision for the middle class that addresses systemic macroeconomic issues such as the widening wealth gap, access to health care and education, monopoly power and money in politics.We can fight right-wing populism only with left-wing populism. Moderation just holds the door open for demagogues.Robert FerrySeattle More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Trump?

      by

      President Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic probably cost him re-election. Yet it seems mind-boggling that he still won more votes than any incumbent president in American history despite his dereliction of responsibility at a time of a once-in-a-century health crisis and economic devastation.Why are President-elect Joe Biden’s margins so thin in the states that clinched his victory? And why did the president’s down-ticket enablers flourish in the turbulent, plague-torn conditions they helped bring about?Democrats, struggling to make sense of it all, are locked in yet another round of mutual recrimination: They were either too progressive for swing voters — too socialist or aggressive with ambitious policies like the Green New Deal — or not progressive enough to inspire potential Democratic voters to show up or cross over.But they should understand that there was really no way to avoid disappointment. Three factors — the logic of partisan polarization, which inaccurate polling obscured; the strength of the juiced pre-Covid-19 economy; and the success of Mr. Trump’s denialist, open-everything-up nonresponse to the pandemic — mostly explain why Democrats didn’t fare better.This shocking strategy worked for Republicans, even if it didn’t pan out for the president himself. Moreover, it laid a trap that Democrats walked into — something they should understand and adjust for, as best they can, as they look ahead.How could a president responsible for one of the gravest failures of governance in American history nevertheless maintain such rock-solid support? Democracy’s throw-the-bums-out feedback mechanism gets gummed up when the electorate disagrees about the identity of the bums, what did and didn’t occur on their watch and who deserves what share of the credit or blame.When party affiliation becomes a central source of meaning and self-definition, reality itself becomes contested and verifiable facts turn into hot-button controversies. Elections can’t render an authoritative verdict on the performance of incumbents when partisans in a closely divided electorate tell wildly inconsistent stories about one another and the world they share.Mr. Trump has a knack for leveraging the animosities of polarized partisanship to cleave his supporters from sources of credible information and inflame them with vilifying lies. This time, it wasn’t enough to save his bacon, which suggests that polarization hasn’t completely wrecked our democracy’s capacity for self-correction: Sweeping a medium-size city’s worth of dead Americans under the rug turned out to be too tall an order.However, Mr. Trump’s relentless campaign to goose the economy by cutting taxes, running up enormous deficits and debt, and hectoring the Fed into not raising rates was working for millions of Americans. We tend to notice when we’re personally more prosperous than we were a few years before.But the president’s catastrophic response to Covid-19 threw the economy into a tailspin. That is where it gets interesting — and Democrats get uncomfortable.Mr. Trump abdicated responsibility, shifting the burden onto states and municipalities with busted budgets. He then waged a war of words against governors and mayors — especially Democrats — who refused to risk their citizens’ lives by allowing economic and social activity to resume.He spurred his supporters to make light of the danger of infection, made the churlish refusal to wear masks into an emblem of emancipation from the despotism of experts and turned public health restrictions on businesses, schools and social gatherings into a tyrannical conspiracy to steal power by damaging the economy and his re-election prospects.He succeeded in putting Democrats on the defensive about economic restrictions and school closures. As months passed and with no new relief coming from Washington, financially straitened Democratic states and cities had little choice but to ease restrictions on businesses just to keep the lights on. That seemed to concede the economic wisdom of the more permissive approach in majority-Republican states and fed into Mr. Trump’s false narrative of victory over the virus and a triumphant return to normalcy.But Democrats weren’t destined to get quite as tangled in Mr. Trump’s trap as they did. They had no way to avoid it, but they could have been hurt less by it. They allowed Republicans to define the contrast between the parties’ approaches to the pandemic in terms of freedom versus exhausting, indefinite shutdowns.Democrats needed to present a competing, compelling strategy to counter Republican messaging. Struggling workers and businesses never clearly heard exactly what they’d get if Democrats ran the show, and Democrats never came together to scream bloody murder that Republicans were refusing to give it to them. Democrats needed to underscore the depth of Republican failure by forcefully communicating what other countries had done to successfully control the virus. And they needed to promise to do the same through something like an Operation Warp Speed for testing and P.P.E. to get America safely back in business.Instead, they whined that Mr. Trump’s negligence and incompetence were to blame for America’s economic woes and complained that Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even consider the House’s big relief bill. They weren’t wrong, but correctly assigning culpability did nothing to help working-class breadwinners who can’t bus tables, process chickens, sell smoothies or clean hotel rooms over Zoom.The Republican message couldn’t have been clearer: Workers should be able to show up, clock in, earn a normal paycheck, pay the rent and feed their kids. Democrats were telling the same workers that we need to listen to science, reopening is premature, and the economy can’t be fully restored until we beat the virus. Correct! But how does that help when rent was due last week?Make no mistake, it was unforgivably cruel of Republicans to force blue-collar and service workers to risk death for grocery money. Yet their disinformation campaign persuaded many millions of Americans that the risk was minimal and that Democrats were keeping their workplaces and schools closed, their customers and kids at home, and their wallets empty and cupboards bare for bogus reasons.The president’s mendacious push to hastily reopen everything was less compelling to college-educated suburbanites, who tend to trust experts and can work from home, watch their kids and spare a laptop for online kindergarten. Mr. Trump lost the election mainly because he lost enough of these voters, including some moderate Republicans who otherwise voted straight Republican tickets.Democrats need to rethink the idea that these voters would have put Democratic House and Senate candidates over the top if only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were less radiantly socialist. They need to accept that they took hits on the economy by failing to escape the trap Republicans set by doggedly refusing to do anything about the uncontained contagion destroying it.And they need to understand how Mr. Trump saved his party by weaponizing polarization. Conservatives needed a way not to get spun by the president’s destabilizing act of disloyalty, so they steadied themselves by reaffirming their loyalty down the remainder of the ballot. They were voting against a personal crisis of identity, not the Green New Deal.Democrats might have done better had sunny polls and their own biased partisan perceptions not misled them into believing that backlash to indisputably damning Republican failure would deliver an easy Senate majority — but not much better. Until the mind-bending spell of polarization breaks, everything that matters will be fiercely disputed and even the most egregious failures will continue to go unpunished.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More