Dmitri Mehlhorn is an influential Democratic operative I never heard of and you probably haven’t either.
He is a supporter of the effort by Democratic leaders and funders to defeat progressive Democrats in primaries.
Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept news service, invited him onto his news show to find out “what arguments are being made in meetings we’re not invited to.”
I summarize his remarks because one should always be aware of the strongest arguments on the opposing side.
Mehlhorn’s argument is that there are three categories of potential voters:
- Those who think voting can help their friends make things better.
- Those who think voting is a waste of time.
- Those who think voting can help prevent their enemies from making things worse.
The Bernie Sanders campaign was based on the assumption that if you could propose things that would actually make things better, potential voters would move from category (2) to category (1).
This didn’t happen. and isn’t a realistic strategy, Mehlhorn said. National elections are a battle between voters in category (3) who may possibly draw in voters from category (2).
Mehlhorn himself is in category (3). He thinks everything should be subordinate to the goal of defeating Donald Trump.
He thinks the way to do that is to bring together the broadest possible coalition of anti-Trump politicians, from Liz Cheney to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and the way to do that is find common ground that everyone can agree on.
For example, Democrats are campaigning for abortion rights, a live issue because of the overturning of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.
But they have not tried to enact the principles of Roe v. Wade into law.
That was the politically right choice, according to Mehlhorn. It is better to campaign against Republicans for wanting to deny abortions to young teenage girls who are victims of rape, and make that the issue. Then Democrats could proceed step-by-step to broadening abortion rights
Mehlhorn may be right. The last “hope and change” candidate was Barack Obama, and his administration disillusioned a lot of his supporters by its failure to keep Obama’s promises.
But I hate to think that he is, and I hate to think that the top Democratic leadership think he is right.
Nuclear war, financial collapse, climate catastrophes, the surveillance state and pandemics are urgent threats. We don’t have 20 years to fool around.
But if the maximum that is politically possible is less than the minimum that is needed, change will have to come from streets, not the ballot box.
By that, I mean strikes, boycotts, sabotage and mass protests, both violent and non-violent, leading to at least a threat of revolution.
This is not something I advocate. The outcomes of revolutions are unpredictable and even revolutions that ultimately produced good results, such as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, were not something I would have wanted to live through. But I have a sense that some sort of blowup is coming.
LINKS
How Democratic insiders are thinking about 2014 by Ryan Grim. I recommend reading the whole thing. It is a good example of a civil conversation between two individuals who genuinely want to understand the other’s point of view.