19 Jul The Big Tent Party

“The Democrats were once the Big Tent Party. No longer.” – The Lonely Realist

The 20^th Century’s Democratic Party was the Big Tent Party. Its policies attracted labor unions, blue collar workers, African Americans, young Americans, Catholics, Jews, liberals and often a majority of moderates. Its policies leaned left of center, favoring Federalism over States’ Rights, progressive taxation, a balanced budget, social liberalism, and a foreign policy that balanced America’s national interest with globalization and international outreach. But that was more than a generation ago. Democrats in the 21^st Century have moved to the left, choosing culture warfare as a platform priority, focusing on “words” (like “Latinx” and “justice-involved populations”) and “rights” (including abortion rights, gun rights, welfare rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, picking-pronoun rights, and economic equality rights). They distilled those “words” and “rights” into nationwide slogans touting “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI), Defund the Police, Tax the Rich, Black Lives Matter and, most recently, “seize the means of production” and “Globalize the Intifada.” The Democratic Party in the early 2020s imposed uniform nationwide policies that disregarded local and parental autonomy in a virtual parody of bi-coastal elitism. In losing touch with individual rights and freedoms and limited government intervention in the economy and personal lives laissez-faire American values, the Progressive Democratic Party represents leftism run amok. Americans have noticed…, and so has the Republican Party. Democrats’ words and apparent advocacy of open borders, increased entitlements, bigger government, inflationary spending, offshoring, and high tax rates alienated important constituencies, collapsing the Democratic Party’s Big Tent.

The Democratic Party’s words and follow-on actions invited MAGA’s ridicule. Democrats’ defense of a bloated, overreaching Federal government provided fodder for successful attacks on the “Deep State.” The Democratic Party’s focus on “rights” – abortion rights, gun rights, welfare rights, LGBTQ+ rights, picking-pronoun rights, and economic equality rights –enabled the Republican Party to build its own tent of discontented voters whose priority is their own rights, which they prefer to be determined at the State and local level. Hank Sheinkopf summed up the Democratic Party’s problems in a recent WSJ editorial: “The Democratic Party has become ‘a group of clans that come together every two or four years, for a particular purpose, but have nothing in common beyond that.’ What binds the party together ‘is not ideology, but individual concerns’—grievances…. ‘They don’t have a set of crossover arguments,’ merely ‘the notion of social justice—defined in a very strange way….’” That summary was mirrored in a recent speech to Party regulars by former President Obama who said that defeating MAGA Republicanism would require “less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions.” Translation: not only is the Democratic Party no longer “the Big Tent Party,” it no longer exists as a cohesive political philosophy.

Democrats accordingly find themselves in political limbo, fumbling for a consistent message, while Republicans are successfully preaching Democratic Party incompetence, pandering to voter resentments, and pursuing Project 2025. The Republican Party has abandoned traditional conservative policies, replacing Reagan-era internationalism with xenophobia, globalization with onshoring, and fiscal prudence/supply-side economics with political vote-buying pandering. “Peace through Strength” now means something quite different from the policy practiced by Ronald Reagan. Tax reform through the One Big Beautiful Bill is not a set of supply-side measures that promote economic growth. It instead is an exercise in fiscal irresponsibility that permanently lowers tax rates and guts the agencies that enforce tax collections, guaranteeing that America’s unrepayable debt and deficits will continue growing. America has moved on from being a 20^th Century’s Nation of Immigrants, rejecting “immigrant rights” and treating immigration as a synonym for “open borders” and a gateway for “violent illegal immigrant killers, rapists, gang members, and other sick criminals” seeking to replace European Americans. America’s government has dedicated itself to persecuting prosecuting and deporting those legals and illegals. This at the same time as the Department of Health and Human Services empowers anti-vax and other conspiracy theories favored by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Attorney General’s office quashes questions about Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list” and pursues “enemies” both inside and outside government.

What will deflate the Republican Party’s Bigger Tent? As James Carville sagely noted, “It’s [always] the economy stupid!” As long as the American economy continues to grow, the stock market continues to levitate, inflation (insofar as its ratio to wage increases is concerned) remains under control, and the Democratic Party fails to provide a viable alternative, Donald Trump will continue being the Ringmaster and the Republican Party will continue being America’s Big Tent Party.

Finally (from a good friend)