In his 2006 revision of his book City of Quartz, Mike Davis discusses the labor movement in Los Angeles and includes a slice that I think applies to our current national condition.
“…yet the labor movement has mortgaged its future to a Democratic Party, large elements of which are in full retreat from traditional New Deal commitments. In striving to remake it, labor runs the risks of having its own new unity and militancy unmade instead. Indeed, some would argue that the Democratic Party is the inevitable graveyard for political principle,” says Davis.
God help us, if that’s not how many of us have felt for years.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the lead-up to the 2008 Presidential election and how similar it feels to the current moment. A lame duck Republican president, a global financial crisis, war in the Middle East with no clear objective or end in sight. The parallels are not, of course, a complete one-to-one. That was a presidential election; this is a midterm. That was a Republican Party that accepted a two-party system; this isn’t that.
This administration's belligerence will manifest itself in increasing callousness toward its perceived domestic enemies and more thoughtlessness on the international stage as the walls close in and competence is replaced by loyalty, to an even greater degree. Like a petulant child – Veruca Salt demanding a golden egg, until the American public can place it on the Eggidicator scale and flush it down the garbage chute once and for all.
This Republican Party that wants you to believe all of your problems are because of the 4% of the country's population who are undocumented, flooding across our borders to steal our jobs and illegally vote, en masse for Democrats, because, yeah, that makes sense. Or blame the roughly one and a half percent of United States citizens who are Muslim, but somehow plotting to bring about Sharia Law. Or the less than 1% of trans Americans who want to invade your bathrooms and indoctrinate your children with dangerous ideas like, inclusivity? To be clear, I’m not saying these issues don’t matter; I’m particularly sensitive to the people who find themselves on the odious end of conservative rhetoric, but what I am saying is that, for the average American, these are mostly abstract debates. Not as relevant as trying to maintain a good job, or trying to afford things like, college, daycare, healthcare, eldercare, etc. There are material issues facing Americans that have nothing to do with the culture war narratives conservatives would prefer to engage in.
Much like 2008, there is a desire for a new kind of politics, something different, hope and change, one might call it. As I have said before, the Obama presidency never lived up to the lofty expectations many of us had for it. The context of that era, though, is important to acknowledge. Post-World War II era politics were more or less still in place, drifting, listing, taking on water for sure, but a radical change the type of change we’ve seen with this administration, an administration unbothered by norms or laws, not to mention common sense – would have been hard for the American public to accept, with a leftist bent by the first Black President. Spin the wheel and choose your preferred adjective: socialist, communist, Marxist – a black Muslim hell-bent on imposing Sharia Law and destroying America. No, that kind of radicalism is only acceptable from an old blonde-haired, orange-skinned cartoon version of a President implementing authoritarian policies wrapped in an American flag.
I recall after the landslide of 2008 pundits proclaiming that George W. Bush had (paraphrasing) fucked things up so bad, Republicans might never win majority control of the government again. That control was short-lived, as it has always been for Democrats. 2009-2011 marks the last time Democrats controlled both Congress and the Presidency, only the third time that’s happened in the last 50 years. There are many reasons for this; the structure of the Constitution places a thumb on the scale for rural voters, but I think there is another argument too.
Again, from City of Quartz, Davis continues, “Labor’s forward march in Los Angeles, and with it the future of the urban region, depends, in my opinion, upon further consolidation of the programmatic vision, built around a human needs agenda, that is not hostage to any individual campaign or political personality. Los Angeles needs, in short, a more, not less, ideological politics.”
He wrote that 20 years ago about the labor movement in Los Angeles, but I can’t think of a better description of where the left writ large finds itself in this moment.
We have a Democratic Party that has shunned big ideas in favor of a comfortable drift towards the right. A political science professor might point to Walter Mondale’s defeat in 1984 as the beginning of this era. But whatever demarcation point one uses, it's not arguable that the Democratic Party has shifted toward accommodating centrists, where bold policies like Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society were replaced with conservative footsy like the Bill Clinton Crime Bill and Barack Obama’s A.C.A. To summon Jules in Pulp Fiction, for the last 50 years or so, we’ve had two political parties playing different sports, Republicans have planted their tongues deep within the proverbial holiest of holy’s while Democrats have been giving foot massages.
In the interest of full transparency, this is a tension that exists within me. I often oscillate between a purist leftism and centrist ideals. After all, we want a big tent, right? Pragmatically, what’s the alternative: a Republican Party, taken over by an extreme political movement building internment camps that would make Manzanar look like a Sandals Resorts, to house people who have committed no crimes, including women and children.
There’s a similar tension playing out in the California governor's race right now. An uninspiring corporate democrat is running against a Republican who wants to give massive tax breaks to billionaires and fully deregulate the tech industry. Which, judging by Xavier Becerra’s donors, he’ll probably end up doing anyway. And this is where the messenger needs to match the message, and I will say, Democrats seem to be doing a better job of that in 2026 than they have in a while. Suddenly, the bench is deep and impressive.
As an aside, I remember walking around the Pasadena Flea Market prior to the 2016 democratic primary; the Bernie tent was a few stalls down from the Hillary tent – the energy could not have been more starkly divergent. The Bernie tent was pulsing with people and energy; the Hillary tent had a handful of workers, paid to be there but apparently the job did not stipulate energy, of which there was very little. So why, why do the democrats insist on forcing boring, corporate-funded candidates down our throats and forgoing principled candidates with bold ideas? Well, I think the answer is clear: money. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and if Democrats are ever going to consistently beat Republicans, they need to learn from their mistakes.
There is no magic wand Democrats can wave, particularly in the next two years, that will heal all that ails us. But the problems in this country, the fun new ones this administration has created and the old festering ones that just won't heal, they also create the opportunity for bold solutions. But the rhetoric needs to match the scale of the solution. If Democrats take back Congress, and that’s a big if, this administration has spent ten years sowing the seeds of doubt in our election process; they’re going to do it again. But if Democrats somehow do, it's time to propose bold legislation: free college, universal healthcare, a billionaire’s tax and so on. Force Republicans to vote against actual populist positions, not the rhetorical populism they prefer to peddle in. It's time to be bold; it's time to fly Where Eagles Dare. Because the only thing Republicans fear more than gender fluidity are Democrats delivering on a progressive agenda that makes peoples lives better.
