"THE PAST IS NEVER DEAD. IT ISN'T EVEN PAST."

William Faulkner said that.  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  George Santayana said that.  Remembering the past without understanding it also condemns you to repeat your mistakes.  I said that.

As it happens, the repeated mistake I’m most worried about for the 2020 election is hosophobia, a syndrome to which progressives are particularly susceptible.  (Hey, I just learned the word myself – it means a fear of being impure.)  In 2016, the symptoms of hosophobia ranged from mild (I’ll hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton) to severe (I’ll vote Green or Libertarian, or screw it, maybe I won’t vote at all).  I have made the argument, which I won’t repeat here but which I continue to believe, that progressive hosophobia put Donald Trump in the White House. 

I wonder how those third-party voters and abstainers feel now.  I hope some of them have the good grace to be embarrassed, but my guess is that most are still in denial.  People like that are basically Libertarian Deplorables and Green Deplorables, and they have more in common with Trump’s OG Deplorables than they might want to admit.  And what they have in common is hosophobia, in the form of utopian thinking.    

Republican Deplorables look to a mythical past, in which people like them were winners and everyone else – women and minorities especially – knew their place.  Progressive Deplorables look to a mythical future, in which the American two-party system has collapsed and been replaced by a parliamentary system where their ideas will get more traction.  Deplorables on the right are wrong about the past, and Deplorables on the left are wrong about the future.  There is no realistic path to either of those outcomes.

Once various Democrats began announcing their plans to run for president, there’s been a renewal of progressive attacks on the party.  Some – by no means all – of those attacks appear to be coming from Bernie Sanders supporters (and probably some Russian bots as well).  That makes sense.  Bernie’s not a Democrat, after all, even though he’d like to be the Party’s nominee in 2020.  That makes him, once again, a lightning rod for progressive discontent with the Democratic Party.

Vox Media’s Matt Yglesias recently described an important distinction among progressives related to their attitude towards the Democratic Party.   Some on the left, he said, believe that “The Democratic Party a basically good institution that serves the interests of its constituents and would be able to do more to advance worthy causes if everyone pitched in and worked harder to help Democrats win more elections.”  That’s more or less my view, although I’d say “better than any other viable alternative” rather than “basically good.”  People in this camp may admire Bernie Sanders and his policies, but they get exasperated when his followers trash the party their boy wants to lead.

Yglesias summarizes the less charitable view as: “The Democratic Party is a basically corrupt institution that serves the interests of wealthy donors and will only advance worthy causes if its current leadership is displaced by new leaders with pure hearts.”  The first half of the sentence is hyperbole, although it contains a kernel of truth that the party would do well to address.  But the conclusion in the second half is misguided and dangerous.

Gosh, you might say, who could be against insisting on new leaders with pure hearts?  What’s wrong with that?  Donald Trump is what’s wrong with that.  The road to utopia leads to dystopia. 

All that bullshit we heard in 2016 from Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters about how there was no real difference between the two major parties?  I wonder how many of them still believe that, two years into the Trump administration.  All that bullshit we heard from Greens, Libertarians, and progressive non-voters about maybe the best thing would be to burn it all down and start over?  Guess what?  Donald Trump is burning it all down.  How’s the starting over going?

One of the things I find most aggravating about hosophobic progressives is that most of them are unserious.  Their outrage may be perfectly sincere, but they haven’t done anything useful with it.  Mostly they just pop their heads up every four years to complain about how the system is irretrievably broken, and how any candidate with a chance of winning is unworthy of their vote. 

Building a credible political party requires sustained effort – going to meetings, circulating petitions, recruiting members, raising money, and running for office. How many Green voters have done any of that since November 8, 2016?  My guess?  Virtually none of them.  Maybe you think that’s a little harsh.  If so, show me a list of Green Party accomplishments.  Which candidates have they elected?  Which of their policies have they implemented? 

An objective observer might conclude that the Greens don’t really want to win national elections. If the only thing you’re passionate about is pointing out the other guy’s faults, you don’t have to work nearly as hard.  There’s no reason to compromise because there’s nothing at stake.  Elections are just opportunities for virtue signaling.

I find that annoying, because anyone who’d paid attention would be aware that the Democratic Party has moved fairly dramatically to the Left over the past decade.  Maybe you wish it would move further, and faster.  Fair enough.  Nevertheless, Democrats elected a Black president, and nominated a woman.  They supported the legalization of gay marriage.  They continue to oppose the persecution of asylum seekers and other immigrants.  They elected a new cohort of Congressional Democrats that is demographically diverse, and whose views tend to be well to the Left of whoever they replaced. 

I’m happy about all of that, although I will close with a cautionary tale.  Some of you may be old enough to remember the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972.  In 1968, the Democratic Party establishment ignored its progressive wing and nominated middle-of-the-roader Hubert Humphrey.  He lost a close election to Richard Nixon, and bad shit happened.

The Democrats responded by tacking left in 1972.  They nominated Senator George McGovern (from South Dakota, of all places) who was as far Left as it was possible to be in national politics in 1972.  McGovern was at least the equivalent of Bernie Sanders today. He was a good guy, and I was happy to vote for him. Alas, Richard Nixon beat him like a drum, carrying 49 states and winning over 60% of the popular vote. Then even worse shit happened.

Now obviously 1968 is not 2020, and this is not an argument against nominating an unabashed progressive.  It’s an argument in favor of finding an unabashed progressive that can win.  Electability will be my tie-breaker if and when I have to choose between two or three progressives with reasonably similar policy positions.   I want shit to stop happening. I want the Left to start winning elections.