Mechanics

Alex Samuels: What things do you wish the Biden administration would tackle?

David Gonzalez (Hispanic, 43, Missouri): [...]I also wish the Biden administration would make real strides with climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and health care. These are things that probably have to pass along party lines and I don’t know if Biden could get Democrats in line to make those things happen or has the desire to make a number of executive orders.
Meet 6 Democrats Of Color Who Want To See Their Party Change

This is the problem with campaign promises, and other things that people want government to do, simply because they think it can. Given the presence of a filibuster where all it takes to prevent cloture is the opposition party deciding to not allow something to be voted on, and the fact that is not the job of the executive to simply will legislation into existence at the stroke of a pen, party line votes and executive orders aren’t going to do the trick.

But candidates don’t bother to make that point when they’re attempting to buy votes with campaign promises, and the people who believe in those promises are, more or less by definition, ignorant of how the process actually works, or they wouldn’t have believed the campaign promises that certain policies would be quick and easy to enact...

“Today’s Democratic leaders need to step down and create space for younger, more creative, thinkers who are better connected with their communities,” said 34-year-old Laura Taylor. “Older politicians past the retirement age shouldn’t put their power or reputation above progress for our people.”

In other words, “Since we don’t have the votes to elect the people we want into Congress, the people currently there should walk away from their offices.” Why would anyone do that?

But I remember when I was young enough that I thought that way. Granted, I’d become cynical enough to have left it behind by the time I was 34 and most certainly 43, but I remember when I thought that I understood what was best for everyone, and it was only also pretty good for me personally, because I was simply one of the everyone.

One of the casualties, and I use that word with due deliberation, of my maturation process was the understanding that I had anything approaching an objective view of the world, and thus, an understanding of good and bad policy that anyone other than myself should subscribe to. The realization that I hadn’t been distinguishing what I believed was good for me from what was good for the world around me eventually led me to want to understand what other people thought was good for them, and why.

People who, when given the chance, vote against politicians pushing for greater government funding of health care and/or against the local Millennial for Congress are doing so because those positions align with what they understand their interests to be at the time that they vote. And simply telling them that they’re ignorant or gullible isn’t going to cut it. Especially, if they, like myself, understand why they no longer think like a young person.

I am, for the most part, unsympathetic to the idea that governments should be run like businesses. Businesses are allowed a much greater level of choice over both their employees and their customer bases than governments can and still be workable. But there is some wisdom in the idea, however. Political incentives are not fixed. Some few are artifacts of the current state of Human Nature, but most of them are driven by the behavior of the general public; tens of millions of individual choices made because, in the moment, they make sense. Businesses understand this, and put a decent level of effort into aligning their offerings with the market that they’re going after. And while sure, there are businesses that seek to provide poor value for money or restrict choices in order to pad their bottom lines, most businesses are (whether they like it or not) reliant on their customers.

Young, progressive, voters are disappointed in the Democratic Party, because the party understands that there are multiple constituencies within the overall party, even if young progressives think that those constituencies are unimportant. Politics, however, is a balancing act on both sides, especially in a two-party system driven by negative partisanship. For the parties, they have to navigate between differing constituencies that are a) after different things and b) may even be acting at cross purposes. Just because someone supports and extensive welfare state doesn’t automagically mean that the steps needed to combat climate change are good, or even tolerable, to them. The things that excite one part of the base my inspire apathy in another, and arguments over who’s being the most irresponsible won’t fix that. Likewise, voters have to calibrate punishing the party by withholding a vote, with the risk that it will wind up blowing up in their faces. For all that many Democrats are up-in arms over the decision in Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, Et al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Et al., there are very few voices pointing out that had more Democrats in key states come out to vote in 2016, they wouldn’t be in this position. (I’ve heard more criticism in political quarters of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision to remain on the Supreme Court than I have of Democratic voters effectively failing to back her play.)

Representative politics is not a game of right and wrong. It’s about playing strategically to reach one’s goals. Which can be a tough lesson to learn. But that doesn’t make it any less true.