1. The Republicans aren’t alone. Democrats believe spin, too. To be sure, the numbers aren’t the same. While most Republicans really do believe their own nonsense, a small faction of Democrats tends to swallow baloney whole.
2. We can see this in the reaction to Joe Manchin’s vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. He was the lone Democrat to do so. Some say there’s nothing good in the party having a Republican-lite. Others have called for him to be purged.
3. Others still say the Democrats don’t need the likes of Manchin. @onesarahjones, in New York magazine, said:
4. "Manchin’s vote should call old party strategies into question. If the Democratic Party can’t count on its own senators for votes as morally pivotal as the Kavanaugh confirmation, its big tent might just be too big." nymag.com/daily/intellig…
5. I’ll get to the “big tent” point in a minute. First, Manchin.
6. The senator voted after Susan Collins did. His vote was irrelevant to Kavanaugh’s confirmation. It was symbolic. It had enough meaning to hold back criticism back home. Yes, he alienated some West Virginia liberals. That was the risk he took.
7. But liberals are a small minority in WV. The majority consists of Rs and Is: voters who are not going to give a D the benefit of the doubt. In any case, anti-Trump sentiment is probably going to bring Democrats back to him, even if he offended them. That’s the power of party.
8. I can’t disagree more with the idea that the Democrats’ tent is too big. Frankly, I’m stunned to see such thinking in public view. It fundamentally misunderstands Democratic history.
9. The party has always been majoritarian, and it has always had to tolerate, and referee, diverse and opposing points of view, because it must.
10. The imperative to remain open is even greater now. A number of voters who supported Republicans are discovering that conservatism is a byword for sadism.
11. They didn’t believe liberal criticism of GOP race-baiting. They didn’t believe the purpose of conservatism was inflicting cruelty. Things are different now. As Max Boot wrote: In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.
12. Boot: As I now look back with the clarity of hindsight, I am convinced that coded racial appeals had at least as much, if not more, to do with the electoral success of the modern Republican Party than all of the domestic and foreign policy proposals crafted by
13. @MaxBoot: well-intentioned analysts like me. This is what liberals have been saying for decades. I never believed them. Now I do, because Trump won by making the racist appeal, hitherto relatively subtle, obvious even to someone such as me who used to be in denial.
14. Yes, Boot should have known better. So what? Now he does. Democrats should make room for people like him, even if he doesn’t see any room for center-right views. Fact is, liberalism is broad, so broad that conservatism can’t exist without it.
15. It is the hegemonic ideology, as the Marxists say. So there’s plenty of space for center-right views, as long as they privilege and demand full political equality for all.
16. Because, really, that’s the difference between liberals and conservatives, right?
17. For the former, liberty comes through equality. For the latter, liberty comes through authority—or the affirmation of the “natural order” and the punishment for deviation from it.
18. As long as there’s an enforceable consensus on what full equality means in 21st-century America, the Democratic Party can contain multitudes. It must.
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