Is the Presidency a Poisoned Challenge for the Democrats?

Why the Democrats winning the White House could lead to the fate of Australia’s Raygun.

Democrats obviously want to win this election, not just because they want to keep the White House out of Donald Trump’s hands. They believe they have the chance to cement an agenda and a legacy. Winning this election however might be a poisoned chalice, unless the party has an awakening.

If Donald Trump does lose this election, particularly if he loses badly, it will be a dangerous moment for not just America, but also whomever is sitting behind the Resolute desk. The Democrats are not prepared.

I see little evidence the party’s leaders appreciate the danger that they’re in.

THE POISONED CHALICE OF LEADERSHIP

When you talk with Democrats, you quickly learn they’re certain their party is in great shape. Their agenda, they believe, is popular. They think they have the right ideas. They believe they’re the competent party of grown ups ready to administer the government. In fact, they believe the only reason the party has trouble politically is because Republicans are obstructing them and spreading lies. If the people will just let them get to work, they’ll see what a tremendous job they’re going to do.

Whenever I hear this, I think about the Australian breakdancer Raygun.

I’m sure you still remember Raygun’s disastrous performance at the Paris Olympics. When Raygun qualified to dance in front of an international audience, she clearly believed she had won the greatest opportunity of her life. How could she not emerge better off getting the chance to do her thing before a global audience? As she learned to her dismay, opportunities are only opportunities if you’re ready for your moment. If you’re not, they’re just opportunities for tragic self-destruction.

It’s a close race, but I think the Democrats have a good chance to win it. If they do, a Republican Party now united around Donald Trump will fall into turmoil when he abruptly leaves the scene. Is the Democratic Party ready for the opportunity to govern?

While Democrats have been in office the last four years, they feel they haven’t had a clear field because of the lurking specter of Donald Trump. Opposition to Trump united their party. It focused it on campaigning and politics. What happens when suddenly he is gone?

If Democrats win another four years, they clearly intend to deliver more of the same agenda they’ve now offered for around half a century. There’s little there that would be out of place in a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton briefing book. Their appeal is not to innovate, bring new ideas, or tackle neglected problems. It’s to be effective managers and technocratic administrators. They promise to pull out their well-trod policy books and spreadsheets and technocratically manage us into a more efficient and competent future.

In short, they’re promising the status quo.

This vision appears to be quite compelling to the sort of people influencing the Democratic Party. This is blindness. These are not normal times. We’re in the midst of the most dramatic transformation of our country that any of us remember. This is not a moment for steady administration. It’s not the 1990s. It’s a moment of rocky national challenge.

This is what the last eight years in America have demonstrated. Americans might not know for sure what they want, but they definitely want something. Offering a steady ship and the status quo in a moment like this is not enough. This is not a moment for efficient managers, bureaucrats, technocratic programs, or incremental improvements. This is not the time when Grover Clevelands, William McKinleys, or Bill Clintons prosper. This is the moment for innovators and heroes. This is when Abraham Lincolns, Teddy Roosevelts, and FDRs are called for and shine.

When you say this to Democrats, they simply do not hear it. In fact, they usually get quite angry. They’ll yell at you that they’re the party you should trust to manage the economy. They say they’re the ones really looking out for the working class. They say Kamala Harris is seasoned and prepared, and therefore will be a great president. No matter what else, they say they’re a better alternative to the turmoil of Donald Trump. This is what America should want, they claim, and if you can’t see it something is wrong with you.

Their inability to understand this critical truth is the root of most of their party’s problems. In fact, Donald Trump hasn’t been standing in the Democratic Party’s way. He’s been what’s sustaining them. For the last decade, Democrats found unity and purpose opposing Donald Trump. Once he is gone, something else is called for. As history demonstrates too well, political parties who win elections like this one usually go on to fail.

When Trump disappears, and that unity is suddenly removed, Democrats will have no choice but to either rise to this extraordinary moment or fail with politically disastrous results. Like Raygun’s opportunity in the spotlight, the opportunity to govern freely without organized opposition could leave the Democrats more damaged than if they never had the opportunity at all.

THE CHALLENGE OF DOMINANCE IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES

Three times an America political party has found itself on the winning side of a political collapse. Two times out of three, that party stumbled into their own fall as well.

The first party to blunder after their opponents’ collapse were the Democratic-Republicans. When the Federalists imploded, the Democratic-Republicans thought America had rewarded them with a mandate to govern freely. Instead of using this opportunity to innovate and implement new agendas, the party grew self-satisfied and corrupt in its total control. Party leaders used the opportunity to indulge their own agendas and self interest instead of solving the problems of a rapidly changing America. Americans got angry at their complacency and inaction, and a national populist backlash elected Andrew Jackson and tore the Democratic-Republican Party down.

The second time a party won total power after its opponent’s collapse was the antebellum Democrats in the wake of the destruction of the Whigs. Like the Democratic-Republicans, the Democrats believed they had won a great victory and America had given them a mandate. Instead of seizing the opportunity to innovate and govern a rapidly changing country amid the rising tensions around slavery, the Democrats spent the next two years self-satisfied as they violated prior agreements and compromises to ram through their pet projects. This not only alienated America, but it created a popular uprising that in the next election swept Democrats out of Congress and put it in the hands of the ugly Know Nothing movement.

Both times, the party made the same mistake. They interpreted their opponents failing as a victory. Instead of viewing the crisis that destroyed their opponent as a risk and challenge, they saw it as a mandate. Rather than embracing the challenge to do hard things and innovate to head off the coming crisis, the party got complacent and blundered into the same coming storm. It’s like a man running from a tempest alongside his rival, and when he sees his companion get swallowed by the cyclone stops to celebrate his victory only to get swept up next.

Only one time in history did a party in this situation not make this mistake. When Herbert Hoover’s Republicans were crashing during the Great Depression after struggling to reverse the economic catastrophe, the American people put Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats into office. Roosevelt understood the moment. He reportedly told his advisor Adolf Berle after the election, “The country will either have a recovery or a revolution."

Roosevelt knew he had not won a victory. He had won a difficult challenge and responsibility. If he was to avoid the fate of Hoover, he had no choice but to innovate to end the crisis Hoover couldn’t. Roosevelt threw out his party’s old playbook and put his administration into the hands of the smartest minds he could find, including not just Democrats but many former Republicans. He gave this so-called Brain Trust the power to try anything they thought might address the crisis, whether or not it violated Democratic Party orthodoxy. The result was the New Deal.

The New Deal was not a perfect program. Many things the New Dealers tried did not work or were even counter-productive. However, it met the moment. Roosevelt understood the collapse of the Republicans was not an endorsement of the Democrats. It was a challenge requiring fresh thinking, innovating, and bold action without regard to old orthodoxy. The Democratic Party not only survived, but thrived.

THE DANGER OF COMPLACENCY

If the Democrats win this election, they will face a moment of extraordinary opportunity and risk. It’s a rare moment in history in which greatness is not just possible, but required.

Opportunity exists to deliver extraordinary change. With the right ideas, there’s a clear road for someone to lead the way to tackle the problems we’re not addressing, clean up the inaction and corruption choking democracy, and embrace new ideas. The risk is, if those in power fail to act, they potentially face the same fate as the Democratic-Republicans and antebellum Democrats.

Democratic leaders do not see things this way. Why are they so complacent?

The first problem, no doubt, is the sense of unity and purpose the party felt opposing Donald Trump. It’s been almost a decade since anything was demanded of the party other than opposition. Opposition to a common threat held the party together and gave it a common goal.

The other problem is in the type of people who now lead the party. They’re managers.

Over the last few decades, the Democrats became the party of professionals. Professionals and managers used to be divided across the parties, each having some section of America’s managerial elite. In recent years, the party identities changed so almost all of America’s meritocratic and technocratic leaders are Democrats. These are America’s corporate managers, doctors, lawyers, consultants, engineers, and academics who administrate the top rungs of everything. Despite the Democrats clinging to their old identity as a party of scrappy workers and underdogs, professionals now lead and control the Democratic Party.

They’re perhaps the worst equipped people in America to recognize the moment. They have three major blindspots:

• They’re Technocrats. Their worldview isn’t built around inspiring change that rocks boats. They’re by nature box-checkers and ladder-climbers, not innovators, philosophers, and bold entrepreneurs. They’re the sort of people who believe problems can be solved by implementing systems and watching data and managing spreadsheets. Taking risks, breaking orthodoxies, thinking fresh, unlearning conventional wisdom, and alienating constituencies isn’t what got them where they are. They believe in careful management of the status quo.

• They’re the Group the Status Quo Benefits. When other groups in America complain about the nation needing change, the group who doesn’t see the problem is group of people running things. The status quo is working great for elite-educated professionals. In the words of Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

• They Don’t Understand Their Coalition. Professionals are mostly liberals committed to carefully administering liberalism. They believe the party they lead agrees with them. They fail to appreciate the energy in their party is increasingly among people who are not liberals, who hope to wrest power away for far more disruptive change.

In other words, the people running the Democratic Party are the one group in America who simply cannot see the problem. They don’t understand where the anger is coming from. From their perspective, it looks irrational. America is going great. This is why they nominated not an innovator or disruptor but a stable and reliable party regular for president.

If Trump loses this election, he will not run again and will leave the political scene. Since the Republicans are now held together by the presence of Donald Trump, Republicans will likely fall into chaos. This will leave the Democrats in full control. They can do whatever they desire.

Like Raygun, they will have won their platform. What will they do with it?

It appears the party will be inclined to continue plodding forward doing what they’ve always done. They won’t interpret their victory as just a rebuke of Trump but a mandate for themselves. They’ll seize the chance to advance old party priorities they couldn’t achieve when opposed because they were unpopular. They’ll seek to efficiently administer the government without changing things. Without outside pressure to enforce party discipline, they’ll infight and maneuver for influence. They won’t challenge or excise party factions with bad and unpopular ideas, but give into them in the name of party unity. They’ll seek to consolidate a victory they believe they earned.

They’ll follow the formula of the Democratic-Republicans and antebellum Democrats. I would expect the same result.

Democratic leaders don’t appear to understand this moment calls for more than cautious administration. It doesn’t call for just implementing ideas you couldn’t pass for the better part of a century because they were rejected and opposed. It calls for rethinking your party coalition and priorities in the wake of a new national situation and challenges. It calls for listening to both your constituents and opponents to understand why they think something is going wrong. It calls for fresh ideas, fresh thinking, and novel policies that address the new problems that are tearing America apart. It calls for a Lincoln, a Teddy Roosevelt, or an FDR.

It’s true, however, that Franklin Roosevelt himself had no record as an innovator when he ran for president in 1932. His record also was as a reliable party regular. He even ran his campaign on outdated Democratic Party boilerplate of his era, attacking Hoover (ironically given what happened next) for his irresponsible deficits. It wasn’t until he took office that it became clear Roosevelt understood the moment and the stakes.

We can all hope it happens again. I just wouldn’t count on it.

Do you agree the presidency could be a poisoned chalice for the Democrats? Join the conversation in the comments.