The Week is carrying a series of articles by Ryan Cooper that attempt to analyze and diagnose what ails the Democratic Party. Cooper sees the party as being divided by faction in the face Trumpism.
If the Democrats have one thing in common, it's their shared hatred of President Trump. His shocking win over Hillary Clinton and the subsequent madness of his rule have galvanized the party in a way unseen in at least a decade. Yet their unity in opposition masks lingering and deep fissures in the party.
Cooper identifies what he thinks the four major factions are. Roughly, they could be described as Neo-Liberal, Warren Democrats, Sanders Democrats and the Democratic Socialist of America. Coopers stated intention is analyze each of these in turn.
In this series, I'm going address each of these factions in the Democratic Party, reckoning with their failures and analyzing their potential to transform the country.
This is a laudible ambition, since it has proven nearly impossible to have a reasoned, dispassionate discussion of the differing perspectives that have roiled the Democratic Party over the last two years. It's by no means certain that Cooper will succeed in sparking such a dialogue but it's a discussion that is needed if the Party is going to be an effective, progressive force in our politics in 2018, 2020 and beyond. His first installment is very promising though, giving much food for thought.
One need not agree entirely with Cooper's framing in order to recognize that he gives a thorough explication of how the Democratic Party became unmoored from the New Deal politics that had defined it since the 1930s.
Along the way he gives an excellent overview of the historical roots and development of Neo-Liberalism as a political ideology, its successes and failures.
A generation of economists centered around the Chicago School, including Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Robert Lucas, provided the intellectual backbone, gaining strength in the 1950s and '60s. They argued that New Deal structures were a drag on economic growth, and that taxes, regulation, and social insurance needed to be cut. America simply couldn't afford the strangling red tape and high taxes of the New Deal. And this time, they assured everyone, things would be different — no 1929-style crash would be in the cards.
We all know how well that last prediction turned out.
Financial deregulation also dramatically increased financial sector size and instability. Contrary to prophets of the self-regulating market, an unchained Wall Street quickly created an escalating series of financial crises, requiring expensive government bailouts. Not even a single decade after Clinton's last package of deregulation, the worst financial panic since 1929 struck, leading to the worst recession since the 1930s.
In short, Cooper's first installment is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand what Neo-Liberalism is, where it came from, how it functions and its consequences.
Its an excellent starting point. Hopefully the forthcoming installments will be equally acute.