You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Tent

Who controls the U.S. Democratic Party? David A. Hopkins on its old guard, new left, and the challenge of winning American elections with such a diverse crowd of interests. Brought to you by [BetterHelp]( Recently: Sergey Radchenko on [how seriously to take Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats](. … Today: Who controls the U.S. Democratic Party? David A. Hopkins on its old guard, new left, and the challenge of winning American elections with such a diverse crowd of interests. … Also: Alice Han on what’s at stake in the massive global surge of Chinese high-tech exports. Subscribe to The Signal? Share with a friend. … Sent to you? Sign up [here](. Strange Multitude Mario Purisic The Republican Party in the United States has long had an anti-elite, populist-right faction. But since Donald Trump first won the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, that faction hasn’t just rebranded around his now-iconic campaign slogan, “Make American Great Again”; it’s taken over the party entirely. Despite Trump’s defeat in 2020, he’s easily won the nomination again this year—with no effective challengers to his leadership and no significant dissent from his polarizing style. Meanwhile, as American politics has seemed more and more polarized as a whole, it’s become a matter of consensus among Republican partisans—and plausible enough to others—that the Democratic Party is now at least as “far-left” as the Republican Party is “far-right.” After all, from the early days of the anti-Trump “Resistance,” Senator Bernie Sanders, a key figure of the Democrats’ old left, became more popular than ever; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a generation of young leaders from its new left became more prominent than most American politicians; and progressives started driving the Democratic agenda on a range of high-profile issues from immigration to sex and gender. Yet Biden himself is hardly an avatar of the progressive left. In fact, very few senior Democratic leaders have anything to do with the progressive left at all. And the platforms critics on the right most associate with it—from defunding police to distributing monetary compensation for slavery and its long aftereffects—struggle for traction within the party almost as much as they do among Americans generally. So if progressives don’t really dominate their party, who, if anyone, does? David A. Hopkins is an associate professor of Political Science at Boston College. As Hopkins explains, the Democratic Party is constitutionally unlike its counterpart: While Trump has reshaped the Republican Party, its politics remains a fusion of conservative social ideas and pro-business economics. The Democrats, by contrast, are a broad coalition of rivaling groups. Those who supported the neoliberal Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, for example, had very little in common ideologically with those who supported the socialist Bernie Sanders. Which means the party’s leadership always ends up having to balance these kinds of factions against each other—and small groups can wield more power than mere numbers might suggest they would. Still, Hopkins says, the Democratic coalition is changing. It’s becoming more ideologically uniform; its voters’ ongoing reaction to Trump is accelerating this change. And the whole dynamic is altering the American political landscape … [Read on]( Advertisement From David A. Hopkins at The Signal: “Over time, the number of people who are Democrats solely on the basis of group loyalty has declined. Which has made the party a lot more unified than it used to be. On the one hand, that’s been good news for the Democratic Party, because it’s made it considerably easier for them to agree on policy. On the other, it’s made it considerably easier for them to lose electoral support. The Democrats used to be the clear majority party. That’s not the case anymore.” “Because Trump is prone to making controversial statements about racial minorities, because of his treatment of women in the past, because of his blunt style of politics—for all these reasons, he’s effectively encouraged the Democrats to define themselves as the antithesis of all of that: the party of the educated and erudite, the party of the socially sensitive, the party of the internationally tolerant.” “[Biden has] invested a lot in reviving the old labor left. He hasn’t had so much success yet in winning voters back, but the labor movement really hasn’t had a better friend in the White House since Presidents Lyndon Johnson or Harry Truman. If instead, Vice-President Kamala Harris or Senator Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg were the president, I’m not sure the revival of labor politics would have been a priority for the Democrats at all. I think Biden himself has made it a priority.” [Members can access the full conversation here]( Advertisement Distracted, drained, and disconnected? You deserve to feel focused, calm, and in control. Connect with a licensed therapist who specializes in helping you manage stress and achieve a better work-life balance. [Learn more]( FROM THE FILES Trade War II Getty Images China’s Commerce Ministry announced this week that the People’s Republic and the European Union have agreed to hold last-minute talks about staving off major new EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. After finding that [Beijing was unfairly subsidizing its EV automakers](, the European Commission had decided that, as of July 4, it would impose a 38 percent tariff—on top of an existing 10 percent duty. Which are just a couple among many trade measures Europe and the U.S. have taken—or are considering taking—to address an ongoing surge in the production of advanced Chinese technologies like EVs, solar panels, and semiconductor chips. In May, Alice Han [explored the apparent trade war emerging behind these events]( between China and the West. Han says China is significantly expanding its industrial capacity in part to revive its flagging economy—but also to pursue its goal of dominating high-tech manufacturing globally. Brussels and Washington are responding with tariffs and investigations into subsidies that might violate World Trade Organization rules, while the political mood in both capitals has turned in favor of more aggressiveness toward Beijing. At the same time, Han says, individual European member states still hold different positions on trade with China—which is why the EU’s whole approach remains so much a work in progress. [Read on]( Join The Signal—to support our independent current-affairs coverage, explore our archive, and unlock our full conversations with hundreds of contributors: [Become a member]( Coming soon: Hussein Solomon on why the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, couldn’t win a majority in last month’s South African elections … This email address is unmonitored. Please send questions or comments [here](mailto:concierge@thesgnl.com). To advertise with The Signal, inquire [here](mailto:advertise@thesgnl.com). Add us to your [address book](mailto:updates@thesgnl.com). Unsubscribe [here](. © 2024 [unsubscribe](