No Buts About It

"Political violence bad" is the first Common Sense Dems litmus test

Elizabeth Warren has thoughts on the murdered healthcare executive.

“Violence is never the answer,” the Senator began during an interview with The Huffington Post that ran today. Good start!

“But,” she continued.

Wait, but?

What do you mean “but”?

You’re a United States Senator! Who just spent the last four years decrying political violence! A former professor at Harvard Law School and presidential candidate (reminder: a presidential nominee just survived an assassination attempt by a literal inch like six months ago).

“But people can be pushed only so far,” Warren said. Damn. That’s even worse than expected after the but.

And it goes downhill after that:

“This is a warning that if you push people hard enough …”

Responding to Warning Signs

US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) calling a political murder “a warning” to those who disagree with policy prescriptions she may have shared with the vigilante should itself be a warning.

Since the election, more Democrats are awakening to the need for a sharp departure from the politically disastrous approach of the Warren-style progressives over the past decade. We’ve covered before how Warren herself is unpopular (here on the Stack, in CommonWealth Magazine), and how a pragmatic faction of Democrats needs to learn from her faction’s success and build something better.

A challenge for pragmatists is, well, we typically aren’t ideologically extreme sociopaths eager to enforce purity tests and pounce on any opportunity to gin up outrage online. Celebrating a political murderer for a connection to a policy position is just not something typical of a political pragmatist. Nor is enforcing extreme policy litmus tests.

And while the former is entirely good, the lack of litmus tests - a way of defining who is in-group and who is out-group - makes building a community and identity more difficult.

Matthew Yglesias

recently wrote out his Common Sense Democrats Manifesto, which has nine clear principles. Unsurprisingly, it has no clear litmus tests.

Here’s a proposal: to be a Common Sense Democrat, you don’t stand for a “but” after noting that political violence is bad.

Yair Rosenberg shared that unequivocal, forceful condemnation is already a marker of offline swing state Democrats:

Notable that swing state politicians like Shapiro and Fetterman have come out forcefully against the glorification of the UHC shooter. They're outside the online bubble and clearly think it looks terrible to the voters they need, and want no part of it.

More Democrats should pass the test.

Are you in, or are you out?