Clive McFarlane: No common ground to be found

The one word not heard often, if at all, by any of the major Democratic presidential candidates in their primary debates thus far is "bipartisanship."

This is a significant development in American politics, it appears to me.

Many will perhaps agree that much of the country's progress towards a fairer and a more just society was primarily achieved through an unrelenting appeal to the moral conscience of the nation and through tedious, bipartisanship efforts to achieve incremental gains toward that just end.

Barack Obama's presidency perhaps offers the most recent example of that approach, although, according to Bill Scher, writing for Real Clear Politics in 2017, Mr. Obama was vilified on the right for being a staunch partisan (pushing through Obamacare without Republican votes, and using executive action to create policies in the face of Republican intransigence, for example), and on the left for allowing Republican obstructionism to stifle his agenda.

Yet, Mr. Scher argued, "Almost everything he did accomplish on the domestic front was due to his tenacious pursuit of Republican votes."

Among those bipartisan successes, Mr. Scher listed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a stimulus package to arrest the Great Recession; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill, which strengthened financial regulations following the 2007-2008 financial crises; the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which was then the U.S. policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians; a food-safety bill that increased the power of the Food & Drug Administration to recall tainted goods; a bill "to reduce the racially discriminatory disparity in mandatory prison sentences between crack and powder cocaine convictions;" and a Medicare reform measure that based reimbursement to physicians on "quality of care instead of quantity of procedures."

Many will argue, Mr. Scher asserted, that a number of Mr. Obama's bipartisan successes were acts of capitulation to the Republican agenda.

Among them were Mr. Obama's bipartisan surveillance reform law, which did little to stem the National Security Agency's collection of metadata on Americans, and his extension of President Bush tax cuts, which many felt extended economic largess to the wealthy on the backs of poor Americans. Yet, Mr. Scher noted, relative to the surveillance law, a majority of Americans at the time had consistently told pollsters that it was more important "for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy."

As to the Bush tax cuts, Mr. Scher argued that it was a "long game" Mr. Obama felt he had to play in order to secure re-election.

"The extension of tax cuts and unemployment benefits amounted to about $300 billion of additional economic stimulus," without which "the economy could have stalled out or tipped back into recession just before the election, destroying Obama's chances," Mr. Scher said.

Whether or not you agree with Mr. Scher's assessment, it seems clear now that neither party is interested in bipartisanship any longer.

Coming after their 2012 presidential defeat, Republican strategists argued about taking two options: move away from extremist policies that alienate people of color, women and young voters or double down with greater efficiency on those polices.

The party, with its embrace of Donald Trump, clearly appears to have chosen the latter.

And now, many Democrats, in response to Mr. Trump's presidency, feel that it is suicidal to pursue any moderate positions that might lead to bipartisan polices.

Wednesday night's Democratic Presidential debate, in which President Obama's record of deporting a high number of immigrants in this country illegally was raised and castigated more often than President Donald Trump's family-separation border policy, showed the length to which some Democratic party leaders are willing to go in order to eviscerate any moderates from their midst.

It is clear, that like the extremists on the Republican side, the Democratic progressive base is unwilling to support any moderate policy they believe extends, rather than vanquishes, social, economic and environmental injustices.

That is why candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is calling for radical structural changes to economic and domestic policies, resonates so well with the Democratic base.

"It won't be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration," Ms. Warren said in rolling out her presidential campaign.

"We can't afford to just tinker around the edges – a tax credit here, a regulation there. Our fight is for big, structural change."

Despite her radical polices and despite polls showing former Vice President Joe Biden having significant leads over all Democratic presidential candidates, no one is writing off Ms. Warren's chances of winning the Democratic nomination.

That would be an outcome that would be just fine with progressives, for then the 2020 presidential election will provide Americans with a clear choice between Democratic socialism and President Trump's racism, as acknowledged by people on both sides of the political spectrum.

And for many progressives, such a defining choice has to be made before they can reengage in bipartisan policymaking.

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