Late in her career when Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest accomplishment, she responded simply:

“New Labor”.

With New Labor and Tony Blair, Thatcher had so completely reshaped the landscape of British politics that even her enemies were playing by her rules. Thatcher’s push towards privatization and her belief in the markets as the arbiters of societal value became the cornerstone of British governance. After Thatcher, any true opposition to this philosophy became politically infeasible for decades to come. Hard to imagine a more complete victory than one which forces your opponents to adopt your world view as their own.

It’s no wonder Tony Blair made Margaret Thatcher more proud than David Cameron ever would.

If you asked Ronald Reagan that same question, he may very well have responded that his greatest success was “Bill Clinton and the third wave Democrats”. After all, it was Bill who managed to make the Democratic Party the darling of rich folks from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

And now we’ve reached the part in the article where the author normally proceeds to bash Bill Clinton and the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party, insult Hillary Clinton and blame her for the 2016 loss to Donald Trump (a clever and original argument) and then spend eighteen paragraphs talking about how Bernie Sanders is the one true savior for America.

I’m not here to do that.

I was a die-hard Hillary supporter, tend to support market based solutions, and own a sum total of zero Bernie Sanders stickers and or buttons.In the spirit of full disclosure however, we do bear a striking resemblance. (Insert facebook photo here)

That being said, I think that if we take the long view on American politics, the smartest thing for the oft-maligned neoliberals like myself out there to do is support a radically progressive shift in the Democratic Party.

There are two main reasons why:

The sickness in the Republican Party is in large part due to their need to differentiate themselves from Third Wave Democrats. Both parties can’t be the pro business party. Therefore, the Republican strategy has been a sharp swerve to the right on social and economic issues. By creating a truly progressive Democratic party we would create electoral space for the Republicans to abandon their nativist, nationalist extremism and become a true pro-business party. A radically progressive Democratic party would not lead to, as some woke Millennials call it “full communism now”, but rather would be a counterbalancing force to the fundamentalist right that has overtaken the Republican party.

By and large, the “unrealistic” reforms Bernie Sanders was so often mocked for; like campaign finance reform or free college tuition, are no more extreme than the mainstream views of the modern day Republican party. In fact, Bernie’s free college plan would have been much cheaper than the raise in military spending the Republican congress passed this year.

We have seen time and again that the starting position of the Democrats already cedes enough ground to the Republicans that even if the Democrats got everything they wanted, it would still be an acceptable bipartisan deal in any sane political climate (look no further than Obamacare, based off of the conservative ideas for health care reform). If we ever want to progress as a country, we need to shift the Overton Window significantly to the left and stop entering into debates with a compromise position as our initial offer.

The early victories of the Third Wave Democrats were a stunning success from an electoral perspective. They also produced one of the best decades in American history.

But the Bill Clinton’s win represented a more fundamental shift for the Democratic Party, than was recognized at the time. A somewhat pyrrhic wherein we lost the essence of the party. The last few decades have shown the delicate juggling act required to be both a corporatist, pro-business party and a party of the people too often leaves the people hung out to dry.

And without a counterpoint from the left, more sinister business interests have latched onto to the Republican Party to gut the social safety net, slash financial regulations and remove even the most common sense sustainability laws.

The future of American is not a pro-business party (Democrats) vs. a pro-billionaire and nativism party (Republicans). It’s one where there is a party of economic and social justice (Democrats) vs. a pro business party (Republicans. Which means even if you don’t fully support a radical progressive agenda of single payer healthcare, trust busting and labor protections, seeing the Democratic party move in that directions is a positive sign for the country.

The foundation of today’s problems can be found in the beginning of the neoliberal era, when market forces were sweeping the world and the end of history was upon us. When the Democrats had just elected a charismatic new President who was going to bring change to Washington. A different kind of Democrat, who believed that the interests of social progressives and big business could be aligned. A Democrat whose views showed the immense power of the Reagan revolution.

Turns out, Reagan and Thatcher missed something. When your enemy adopts your views, then you lack a meaningful way to differentiate yourself from them.

Republicans had a problem. If the Democrats were the pro-business party now, how the fuck were they supposed to win elections?

Luckily for the Republican Party and unluckily for the American People, a hero emerged to lead the Republicans out of the wilderness. A family values Republican who cheated on his wife as she died of cancer. His name was Newt Gingrich and his weapon was the Culture Wars.

When the Left Goes Right, the Right Goes Crazy

From a tactical perspective, it makes a lot of sense. George H.W. had just lost his re-election campaign and his style of old fashioned conservatism and practicality just couldn’t cut it against the new, exciting message of Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party.

When the Democrats moved right on economic issues, Republicans found themselves backed into a corner and scrambling for an electoral strategy to differentiate themselves. Since Reagan, the Republicans had happily defined themselves primarily as the pro-business party. When that was no longer a method for meaningfully distinguishing themselves for the Democrats, they basically had three options.

Shift the national dialogue to focus on conservative social issues Move economically further to the right by prioritizing sweeping tax cuts, eliminating government services and gutting regulations Obstruct new legislation from being passed and use every tool in the toolbox to prevent Democrats from passing laws

Obviously the choice was all of the above, but their first prong of attack was number one, bringing cultural issues front and center. By hammering away at issues like the evils of feminism, gays marriage and gun rights, the Republicans were able to claw their way back to control of congress.

Enter Newt Gingrich.

It would of course be giving too much credit to Newt say that he pioneered the strategy for this new brand of Republicans. He merely partook in what was to become a time honored tradition in the Republican Party, turning to their vilest and most offensive elements in times of electoral uncertainty. In this case, their shitty messiah turned out to be none other than Pat Buchanan, who presciently laid out thirty years of Republican strategy at the 1990 RNC, saying

“There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself…

The agenda [Bill] Clinton and [Hillary] Clinton would impose on America — abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units — that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God’s country.”[8]

Republicans do best when people are operating scared. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the Republicans needed a new bogeyman. Like Ozymandius taught us in Watchmen, when there is no obvious enemy, the best thing to do is create one. And for the Republicans there was no better target than the latte sipping, Prius driving, NPR listening coastal elite.

The battered Republican party in the early 90s gazed into the abyss, decided they liked the abyss and moved right in. They’ve been there ever since.

The GOP 2000 to 2016: The Zombie Party to Trump’s Lapdog’s

There was a period of time when the old Republican Party hadn’t quite realized it was dead. This lasted from when George W. Bush was elected President to when Mitt Romney lost the election of 2012. Bush and Romney, for all their many flaws, operated (domestically) as traditional Republicans.

But with Bush’s double barreled disgrace of the Iraq War and the US economic collapse, coupled with Romney’s embarrassing defeat, the Republican party was finally free to shed its sheep’s clothing. There are really three events critical to understanding the modern day GOP. The first was Newt Gingrich and the dawn of the Culture Wars. Second was the Tea Party movement, when for the first time Zombie Republicans started to get pushed out in droves by a strange new mutation of Republican. The third was Trump.

Once Newt Gingrich opened the can of worms that was the Culture Wars, there was nowhere else to go. As long as the Democrats stayed firm on the middle ground, the only way for the Republicans to rile up their base was through increasingly repugnant white identity politics. Trump isn’t an accident or an aberration. He is the logical outcome of thirty years of Republican grievance culture.

Trump owns today’s Republican party. The speed with which they capitulated to him would be impressive if it wasn’t so infuriating. But the question on everyone’s mind is — where next.

I have vowed to never say that the Republicans have reached rock bottom, because they’ve done an impressive job of proving me wrong every time. But I will say I hope they’ve reached rock bottom. The thing about rock bottom though, is that after you hit it, you have to go up. And right now, the Republicans have shown zero signs of improvement. And how can they — the basic calculus that began with Newt in the 90’s still holds true.

The Grand New Party

Imagine for a second a functioning Republican party, which upholds their basic constitutional duty, isn’t fundamentally based on white grievance politics and legitimately attempts to pass legislation that makes country a better place. Suspend your disbelief for a second, and ask yourself how they could get there.

Obviously the current path is a dead end.

This Republican Party would favor tax cuts for the middle class, but would probably also support immigration as a means of boosting the economy. It might not support huge deficits, but it would probably recognize the long term risks of climate change. It might not be going for single payer healthcare, but it would hope for thriving public markets in the Obamacare marketplaces.

See the problem here is that I just described most Democrats.

It seems like our only option right now is to pull off a reverse of what Reagan and Thatcher pulled in the 80s. We need a Democratic Party which so fundamentally reshapes our government and social contract that even our enemies are playing by our game. And the way we do that is by pushing the Democratic Party sharply to the left and then passing as much leftist policy as we can.

Margaret Thatcher didn’t win everlasting glory for her party through bipartisan compromise. She did it through seizing as much power as possible and using it as effectively as possible.

And if we can do this, we can reshape the future of American politics.

So what policies and platforms should this new Democratic party support? The list of progressive policies we should consider pushing for, from a jobs guarantee to universal income, abolishing ICE and reparations. I’ll be exploring which of those the Democrats should focus on in a future post.