What Didn’t Happen After Jan. 6th
The curious incident of Democratic inaction and infighting—not outreach—after the insurrection
One year and one day after the mob at the Capitol, we took to The Bulwark pages to call on “January 7th Democrats” to step up.
We asked What Didn’t Happen After January 6th? And why?
Three weeks after the January 6 insurrection, a high-profile faction on the left launched an aggressive recruitment campaign looking for candidates to primary a vulnerable incumbent.
The recruitment target? Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, fresh off casting his vote to impeach President Trump.
The recruiting entity? An offshoot of Justice Democrats, the progressive group aligned with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
That’s right: The founders of Justice Democrats went on the offensive against Manchin—immediately after the insurrection—in an attempt to find a more liberal West Virginia Democrat to primary him.
West Virginia is one of the reddest states in the country, making Manchin an electoral miracle; if the group were to be successful in its effort to oust him with a left-wing primary challenger, that challenger would lose to any GOP nominee in the general. Meaning that these progressives watched the January 6 attack on democracy and decided that what America needed was . . . one more Republican senator.
The net result being that this progressive group had effectively joined forces with the GOP to hobble what could have been a movement of empathetic big-tent Democrats incentivizing red-to-blue party switching.
It’s hard to overstate just how significant an opportunity January 6 initially represented for Democrats: Donald Trump’s anti-democratic movement had, in violent and grotesque fashion, paraded its true colors in front of the nation and the world. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Republican party shed 12 points in favorability among its own voters while Democrats made a 7-point gain with independents. A disgraced Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook, his loudest megaphones. Even some of Trump’s most ardent and vocal propagandists from Fox News acknowledged in private that the president had crossed a serious line. Democrats were handed a chance to win over the middle of the country.
Instead, the biggest recruitment story in the aftermath of the insurrection was the far-left trying to recruit candidates to knock off a fellow Democrat.
You can read the full piece here.
Three years later, core themes continue to be true:
Factions, not parties, are the level for change. “The Democrats” as a party were not structured to seize the January 7th opportunity. Only an organized faction can do that.
The Far-Left has peaked. Forget primaries from the left for sitting Democrats (even AOC is promising not to back such challenges anymore) - Squad membership itself is declining.
The most organized faction in early 2021 was the “harass Joe Manchin for clicks & cash” faction, not the “woo disaffected Republicans into a majority coalition” faction. The best bet for centrists and pragmatists of all kinds is still building partisan factions.
That’s why Organizing Beats Debating.
There’s no such thing as “The Democrats, Inc.”
The “Democratic Party” is little more than a loose-knit network of institutions (committees, think tanks, media outlets, organizing and advocacy groups, etc.) and individuals (politicians, activists, voters, etc.). There is no centralized decision-making apparatus to define priorities, make tradeoffs, and allocate resources. This means “The Democrats” are simply whoever within the coalition steps up and does the real work of organizing and investing.
One of the first questions this newsletter sought to answer was But don’t “The Democrats” do that?
The far-left has peaked.
Not only has the far-left never flipped a single seat, but the “Squad” has seen its growth (which unfolded only in some of the bluest districts in the country) slow dramatically since its inception in 2018. The slowdown in momentum has also unfolded in the entrepreneurial groups that powered the far-left’s rise, with flashy and disruptive upstarts like No Excuses PAC and New Consensus appearing to have fizzled out entirely with little to show.
The most effective way for centrists to exert an influence on our politics is through moderate partisan factions, not third parties.
Vaguely defined anti-partisan centrist groups dilute moderates’ political power by diverting critical resources away from the center-left and center-right partisan factions where they could have a real impact and toward quixotic third-party efforts that are doomed to lose in our “first past the post” electoral system. Partisan factions are not only more effective now but also serve as the basis for the organized networks that could in a future where reforms like ranked choice voting and multi-member districts are more widespread.
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I understand at least one reason that Democrats have problems. I am TOTALLY against the Trumpist Republicans,. but grew up in a family that did not consider anything other than Republicans as genuine Americans. I have never really had a family because they always focused on guns and hunting and killing, and Republican ideas. I never belonged in that family. In fact, I was told by my Mother that I ruined her life by being born. Republicans tend to be extreme, while Democrats are much more open minded and willing to listen . Republicans are judgemental and overbearing, while democrats want to find solutions that are good for everyone. Republicans need to wake up! We need to stop the conflict and find one party that will unite us all.There are becoming many more of the open minded, life loving, caring and open-minded, honest people who genuinely care about other people and want to make this a better world!
The far left may have peaked, but Democrats are still in danger as long as it has any presence in the party whatsoever. When moderates and liberals start the hard but necessary work of changing party stances and attitudes (return to all-of-the-above energy policy; draw a bright line between legal and illegal immigration; consider a minimum age of 16 or 17 for gender transition; bomb Iran to stop it getting a nuclear weapon) expect the far left to push back loudly, and Republicans to try and tie the left to the center. The center needs to be ready to bash the far left until it leaves the party entirely.