Saving the Democrat Party

The Democratic Party is largely in disarray. Its public face ranges from AOC to Bernie Sanders to Jasmine Crockett. If it wants to win elections and cease to be a public embarrassment it needs to do a reckoning, and to discover new policies that will show it is capable of governing.

As President Trump sets out to govern, Democrats are making noise. As Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue in their new book, Abundance, both Republicans and Democrats, but especially Democrats, have failed to build. 

We can read their argument on the book’s Amazon page:

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

So, we have a president who got his start building things. He has enlisted the help of a man who has built cars and rockets and satellite systems. And the Democrat Party has been up on arms, fighting against them. It has refused to give Trump and Co. any credit for anything.

One appreciates the fact that Klein and Thompson are trying to present a political philosophy that comprises both Democrats and Republicans, but still, the failure to govern, the inability to get things done, seems most especially to be endemic to only one of the parties.

It is well enough known that America’s great cities are for the most part, deep blue. They are for the most part governed by Democrats. Finding Republicans in New York City or Boston or Chicago or San Francisco is like looking for a needle in a proverbial haystack.

In short, the authors are doing their best to relieve the Democratic Party of responsibility for its failure to govern. 

After all, aside from AOC and Bernie Sanders, neither of whom has ever built anything, the most conspicuous Democrat today is Rep. Jasmine Crockett. She is not notable for what she has built or for the problems she has solved, but for her offensive and stupid public statements.

Most recently Crockett insulted Texas governor Greg Abbott by calling him, “hot wheels,” an obvious reference to the fact that he is in a wheelchair. 

True, she tried to explain it away by saying that it was a reference to the governor’s policy about migrants, but, obviously, she was assuming that the rest of the country is as stupid as she is. She had used the epithet before there was a migrant crisis. 

Besides,, Gov. Abbott has led the nation in addressing the illegal migrant crisis. Doesn’t that count for something, beyond slander.

One understands the reasons why other Democratic politicians refuse to stand up and to denounce Crockett. One does not need to explain them.

Surely, her attitude and her ridiculous antics show a political party where people are not working to build anything, but are doing everything they can to tear down what others have built. 

Of course, using such slurs does not advance any activity, like building. Insulting and offending people does not produce cooperative enterprise. Effectively, it tells people that you do not want to get along with them and do not want to work together.

Biblically, the story of the Tower of Babel tells us that, in order to build something, all of the workers need to be speaking the same language. This means that multiculturalism is the enemy of building. It is deconstructive, not constructive.

If the best you can do is to insult and offend, you are not going to become part of any work group. You will, however, have a great deal to complain about.