Democratic Party Leadership Prefers to Lose to Republicans than Open Space for the Left

Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega persuasively argues that the Republican Party strategy is to create chaos until the 2022 midterm elections in order to take back the house and Senate and then win the presidential of 2024. His basic argument is that social inequality has become so blatant since the 1980s that the only way the Republicans can win elections is by shifting their discourse and the epicenter of U.S. politics to issues of white identity poliltics in order to divert attention from pressing economic issues. The Democratic response to what he calls an “existential threat” to U.S. democracy should be (according to DeVega) shunning “bipartisan politics” strategy (Biden’s stock-in-trade) that gives the Republicans undeserved legitimacy.

What DeVega leaves out of the picture is that the Democratic Party centrists (usually misleadingly called “moderates”) are also beholden to the interests of powerful economic groups. They have always kowtowed to the Republicans not because it’s the only way to pass decent legislation while having to modify goals, but mainly in order to undercut the leftist pole that would emerge if the right were to be knocked off the table. That is, the Democratic Party leadership prefers the right to the left and will do anything possible to avoid strengthening the latter even if it means losing elections to the Republicans. There are so many examples of this dynamic at play that I don’t even know where to begin.   

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/08/republicans-want-18-more-months-of-chaos--followed-by-the-end-of-democracy/?fbclid=IwAR3okcftmMKbioM5H8njORTx0bJZ4Yh7Y2xZxwIzIyLGeMZ4NTx-5bRGrWk