We talk with writer and liberal political commentator E.J. Dionne about his new book: "Code Red." In it, he urges moderates and progressives to stop feuding and come together if they really want to defeat President Trump. Dionne gives examples from U.S. history when people of slightly different political persuasions got together and made major change. He says today's Democrats could actually learn a political lesson from a Republican icon: Ronald Reagan.
Air date: Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020
GUEST:
- EJ Dionne - author of "Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country" and political commentator for The Washington Post. He is also a government professor at Georgetown University, a visiting professor at Harvard University, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a frequent commentator on politics for NPR and MSNBC.
Transcript
This is a machine-generated transcript and contains errors.
Laura Knoy:
From New Hampshire Public Radio, I'm Laura Knoy. and this is The Exchange. Party primaries are contests with winners and losers, so it's not surprising these races can be bitter with the current Democratic presidential race. Serving as Exhibit A. But our guest today is urging party members to come together in his new book, Code Red. National political writer and commentator E.J. Dionne urges moderates and progressives to stop feuding in order to win back the White House. And Dionne says they could learn how from none other than conservative icon Ronald Reagan. E.J. Dionne is with us this hour. And let's hear from you if you consider yourself politically moderate. What's your message to those on the further left? If you're of the more liberal persuasion, how do you respond to a message of moderation? And if you're a Republican, how do you view these divides among Democrats within your own party? And E.J. Dionne joins us from D.C. And E.J., it's always great to have you on the air. Thank you very much.
E.J. Dionne:
It is so good to be with you. And we still miss you in Washington where I was lucky enough to meet you a long time ago. Also, I want to thank you having a breakfast across from your beautiful state capital on primary day, having breakfast with you as the only way to begin a New Hampshire primary. Right.
Laura Knoy:
You and I spent the day, the morning of the primary together and talked about some of this stuff. And so let's talk about the primary. Actually, I have to ask you, E.J., because this narrative that you bring up in the book, you know, liberals and moderates need to get together is exactly what we're seeing right now in the Democratic Party. Did you plan it this way when you started writing the book or were you just lucky?
E.J. Dionne:
I guess I was lucky. But you could tell that this, you know, of going into this a year ago, that this was going to be a problem. As you mentioned, the first sentence of the book is, well, progressives and moderates feud while America burns. And you really saw that division in the party if you looked at Bernie's vote. He was the winner. But the Klobuchar, the Buttigieg, Klobuchar vote added up to 44 percent, Bernie at 26 percent. You have a real potential of the forces in the party going at each other. And I argue in the book that what they need to realize is they have far more in common than they may want to know. I joke at the beginning of the book that maybe I'll be like an unwelcome family counselor, kind of trying to tell each side, you know, listen to each other a little bit. You know that Progressive's are right when they say that we live with the economics of the Reagan consensus for way too long. Whatever you thought of Ronald Reagan back then, we're in a very different situation with rising inequality. And that progressives also say, I think rightly, that moderates sometimes spend all their time negotiating with themselves before they even take on the fight. On the other hand, moderates are right.
E.J. Dionne:
That change happens in America often step by step. And I use a great term invented years ago by Michael Harrington, who happens to be a democratic socialist but was a very practical democratic socialist. And he talked about visionary gradualism and always like that, because I think the visionary part is where progressives are right that you need to take a look at the big reforms we need. We do need change in health care in helping people either go to college or have post-high school training in dealing with climate change. But often change happens step by step. Thus, the gradualism part of the original Social Security system wasn't as broad reaching as it became over time to weak civil rights bills were passed in the 1950s that helped pave the way for the great Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. American history is replete with people who had big ideas in mind and achieve them over time brought the country along. And I think that we desperately need that conversation bringing these two sides together, because if they spend all their time focusing on the relatively small differences they have with each other, they're going to ignore the large differences they have with the other side.
Laura Knoy:
So visionary gradualism means big ideas, but achieved over time. I understand what you're saying, E.J., but it sounds quite a sort of blah and vanilla. I mean, that's not a rallying cry. You're not going to get up on the stump in front of a sea of supporters and say, I'm calling for a vision, visionary, gradualism. It doesn't sound very exciting.
E.J. Dionne:
Well, actually, it was pretty exciting to get Social Security in those civil rights acts and. I think that, you know, I in the book, I talk about Martin Luther King's great phrase, the fierce urgency of now and now means that the urgency part, it's important. And now means let's take steps now. Thus, a good example is on health care. We can argue to we're blue in the face about single payer or Medicare for all. The fact is there are a lot of people out there who still don't have health coverage. Getting everybody in the country health insurance now, that is to say, over the next couple years is very exciting. We can then have a long argument about whether we move to single payer or whether we just keep making Obamacare work. In the book, I talk about sort of three core ideas. I talk about a politics of dignity. I think there is a real dignity deficit in the country and a lot of people feel looked down upon by elites of one, one kind or another. And that's true of people in some of the old mill towns and cities across the country that voted for Donald Trump. It's also true of people in inner cities who feel ignored. So I think dignity is an exciting and and genuinely important concept. I talk about remedy, where instead of focusing on all the things we divide us, we set out to solve some problems. That is the American way. And I also talk about a politics of more where, where, wherever we disagree, we want more people with health insurance, more people being able to go to college or having training after high school. A more people feeling secure in their schools, more kids who feel safe. So I think there is a lot of excitement here in getting things done for the country after a period where we've really spent so much time being divided from each other.
Laura Knoy:
How do your own personal politics, E.J., shape this book. You've said you grew up in a conservative family from your past books and past writings, I know you're motivated by religious faith. So how does that shape what you bring to this book?
E.J. Dionne:
Well, I've always said that I have never been able to, even though my politics started changing when I was about 13 years old. And my dad, who, alas, died when I was 16, he and I loved to argue about politics. My dad really modeled how you do this because he encouraged me to disagree with him. And he thought it was good for, you know, parents and kids to sort of thrash things out. So we had very good natured arguments about things. And I wrote a column years ago about my dad, who died the same year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy died. And I always said, you know, I always thought three great Americans died in 1968. I'll never know where his politics would end up, but we found ways of arguing and loving each other at the same time. So I have always been open to conservatives and conservative ideas. The thing that's bothered me in the last couple of decades is that there's been a radicalization of conservatism that I think has put it in a different place from where I think a healthy conservatism ought to be, that conservatives are correct, that we need to nurture our institutions. I think that and there is a brilliant conservative called Yuval Levin, who's recently written a book about this, that where we're at a stage where conservatives seem to be attacking institutions.
E.J. Dionne:
Conservatives used to be environmentalists. I mean, think about the word conservation. It has the same roots as the word conservative. A lot of conservatives have moved away from that. So I have a whole chapter that begins imagining what a Republican Party might look like if it were somewhat more moderate, still conservative, still pro-business, but set about the business of solving problems. And if you look at the Republican Party of Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower, they were an activist party. I went to college on national defense education loans that Dwight Eisenhower set up. There are great land grant colleges all over the country that were established because of a law that Abraham Lincoln signed. So there is this tradition of activism in the Republican Party that's unfortunately, I believe in this period been lost. So the change in me is that I become more critical of conservatives over the years, not because I hate conservatism, but because I don't like the direction that conservatism has taken over in that period.
Laura Knoy:
So you come out of a tradition, as you said, E.J., of arguing but loving each other the same, and that's kind of the premise of this book. Now you're urging Democrats to, yeah, go ahead and argue but love each other the same. You said that you said in an interview you have a moderate disposition, but a gut sympathy for the left's analysis of what's wrong. How many moderates do you think feel the way that you do? E.J., they appreciate the passion of what the left brings to the table because we've seen some displays of animosity recently in the Democratic Party.
E.J. Dionne:
Right. And you can imagine a battle royale. I said just this morning that, you know, in the Internationale that old anthem of the left, there is a line that's tis the final conflict and a billionaire against a democratic socialist, if that's where it comes down, would be a very, very divisive fight. But the point I make in the book is that moderates at this moment are well to the left of where a lot of people who might call themselves moderate some years ago because they've looked at problems and said these problems are deeper than we thought they were 20 years ago or then they actually were. We've gone through a period of rising inequality that began depending on how you want to look at the numbers in 1973 or 1980. This is creating real problems for the country. We have great regional inequalities in the country. I have great affection for mill towns of New Hampshire like Berlin, because I come from a town like that in Massachusetts, a place called Fall River. And I feel very at home in the mill towns up there. We've got to do something about those economies and we can't just let them stagnate. Climate change is another question that is now genuinely urgent. So that I think when you listen to, say, a Pete Buttigieg or an Amy Klobuchar or a Joe Biden, where they stand now is significantly more progressive than, say, blue dog Democrats might have been under Bill Clinton.
E.J. Dionne:
I think that creates a real opportunity for coming together. And you can't create a majority without people coming together. If I could just say one more thing on that. In the book, I write about two fascinating members of Congress, young Democrats elected, relatively young Democrats elected in 2018. One is Ayanna Presley from Boston, African-American progressive member of the squad defeated a quite progressive member actually Mike Capuano and Abigail Spanberger, former CIA agent, took carried a Tea Party district, took it away from a Tea Party member of Congress. I spent time with both of them in 2018.
E.J. Dionne:
If you look at this party, it needs both Abigal Spanberger and Ayanna Presley and what they represent. Ayanna Presley wouldn't have power in this Congress if it weren't for more moderate members like Spam Burger who won districts like hers. Spanberger wouldn't be in Congress without the activist energy of people to her left. I was at a bookstore recently where somebody got up. I was talking about Spanberger and said I'm well to Spanberger's left, but I worked my heart out for her. That's the kind of coalition building you need if you're going to win a majority in a very diverse country.
Laura Knoy:
Let me remind our listeners that we'd love to hear from you again. We'd just finished the New Hampshire Democratic primary last week. So these thoughts are fresh on our minds here in the Granite State. So let's hear from you, we're talking with E.J. Dionne. You probably recognize his name. He's a frequent commentator on NPR. He's an author and a writer for The Washington Post with appointments at Georgetown and Harvard and the Brookings Institution. And his new book is called Code Red. In it, he urges moderates and progressives to stop fighting to come together if they really want to defeat President Trump. In a little bit later, we'll talk about some of the examples from our history that Dionne gives about when people of different political persuasions got together and made major changes. Picking up on something you just said, you said you can't create a majority without coming together in an interview with a progressive magazine. I think it was called Dissent. Recently the writer told you, hey, I'm a big fan of Bernie Sanders. And he said, look, what a lot of people see in that campaign is, quote, the promise that the left can get into the driver's seat. He said leftists need to be willing to fight for themselves because they have a diff. Plan for how to build a majority, so basically he seemed to be saying, look, E.J., I'm not interested in your coalition. The left can do without you. How did you respond?
E.J. Dionne:
Well, you know, actually, his spirit was very warm and open. Tim Shenk, he's Deputy Editor at Dissent, a young, brilliant historian and I'm glad you raised that, because I'd love people to take a look at that interview because it really, in a way, modeled what I am trying to bring about. And what I argued and I think he sort of accepts this I don't want to speak for him is that if you look historically, the most progressive change in America was achieved when people on the left came together with the governing center, a governing liberal center.
E.J. Dionne:
In the case of FDR, for example, the example I cited to Tim and that I also mentioned in the book is the relationship between the CIA. Oh, the original industrial union that later merged with the AFL CIO was really out there on the barricades for workers, quite a radical union federation in many ways, headed by a guy named Sidney Hillman, the CIO was to Franklin Roosevelt's left. But it also gave Franklin Roosevelt critical support when he needed it against the right, but then pushed him toward more aggressive reform when he needed to be pushed. And in fact, Roosevelt at times welcomed that pressure. He once he is said to have said the history is muddy on this, but he is said to have said to a Philip Randolph, the great civil rights leader, you know, I want to do what you want me to do now. Go out and make me do it. So there is a role for the left in pushing the debate. And one of the things I do in the book is I honor Bernie Sanders for broadening our debate that had really been shrunk. The parameters of the debate were really pulled in with the dominance of Reaganite ideas. And Bernie said, wait a minute, Obamacare isn't the left wing solution. Single payer is the left wing solution. Thanks to that, we have a much broader health care argument now. And I was heartened recently. You may have noticed that AOC, who's a big Bernie supporter, said, look, if we can't get single payer, we would know what's wrong with a public option. I felt, maby, AOC read my book, although I have no evidence for that but it's hopeful on my part. But, you know, you can start in a place and come to a different place that still pushes us forward.
Laura Knoy:
All right. We've got some emails lining up, some calls coming in. E.J. And again, if you consider yourself a liberal Democrat, what are your thoughts about building a coalition with moderates? Same thing for moderates. How willing do you think those more on the left of your politics feel about that? And of course, if you're a Republican, how do you view these divisions both in the Democratic Party and perhaps in your own party? More in a moment with E.J. Dionne and his new book called Code Red.
Laura Knoy:
This is The Exchange. I'm Laura Knoy. Today, writer and political commentator E.J. Dionne about his new book, Code Red. In it, he urges political moderates and progressives to stop feuding if they really wanted defeat. President Trump. What do you think about this? Paul's calling in from Hancock. Hi, Paul. You're on The Exchange. Welcome.
Caller:
He he mentioned the term "visionary gradualism." So there were two ideas that nobody's talking about that I think are examples of that. And I'd like to see if it passes muster as examples. One is Medicare for all children. So cover children until they're 18-21,26 years old and we get a much better R.O.I. on that than we do (a return on investment) than we do on covering the older people. But it would really produce a very healthy young population. The other one is instead of, you know, instead of erasing student debt. How about relieving them of the interest? By the time a student debt is paid today, it will be 2043. And exactly the amount of principal that's paid will be paid in interest. Reduce the monthly payment from eight hundred and twenty five dollars to three hundred and seventy five dollars. And those young people will get into the economy.
Laura Knoy:
So you sound like a definite moderate, Paul. How do you feel about that?
Laura Knoy:
Yes. How do you feel about E.J.'s call for, you know, moderates and more liberals to stop fighting and get it together.
Caller:
Well, I wish that could happen. You know, it seems like immediately they start labeling each other oligarchs and racists and socialists and all of this labeling doesn't seem to help at all.
Laura Knoy:
Well, Paul, it's great to hear from you and Edith. Let's go next to Jade in Vermont.
E.J. Dionne:
Could I just I want to vote for Paul. Well, let me take the next call, because he raised some really interesting things there. But let's take the next call first.
Caller:
Hi. Big fan of both of yours. I'm an independent, I'm registered independent, and I've voted Republican once or twice in the past. I vote Democrat most of the time because I think people and pro people, really like to see people supported. Right now. I would, I really love the ideas of Bernie. I live in Vermont. I've seen great work that he's done. But at the same time, I don't think that's going to happen. So I'm much more practical. So I think maybe what you're describing is some ways are people who are less but practical and want to see things done, but understand it has to happen slowly. And it's baffling to me why they can't just be clear about that in their talking and their dialogue. I can see why they don't work together because they're trying to be elected. But at the same time, in the end, we're going to need people who can get things done and move things forward and address the real lives of people. And even though they're all trying to do that, they don't actually seem to be making an effort to get that done.
Laura Knoy:
Jade, great to hear from you, too. Go ahead, E.J..
You have wonderful listeners. I'd vote for her, too. A couple of things. First on the first caller. He's absolutely right that there are all kinds of paths to improving our health care situation. The point that the legitimate little litmus test is not this plan or that plan. The legitimate litmus test is will we cover everybody in the country with decent, affordable health insurance the way virtually every other rich democracy does. Now, some of them do it with single payer. Others, like Germany or Switzerland or the Netherlands or Australia, have mixed systems. And the gentlemen's approach in terms of kids and adults, we did pass the S-CHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program that really does provide coverage for kids.
E.J. Dionne:
But I agree with him that there there may be ways that are halfway houses toward single payer where on the one hand you could make sure that all kids got into a government kid's program and then you could also lower the age of age eligibility for Medicare. If you are 55 or 60 years old, lose your job and and need health insurance, it is awfully expensive to get it. Why not let people at that age who keep working nonetheless get into Medicare? And I think that you could have a system where you wouldn't completely overturn things suddenly, but you would gradually change things. On the second caller's great point. I really am hoping one of the reasons I wrote this book is to see in some of these debates, have a candidate or several come forward and say, look, we have some legitimate disagreements on paths forward on some of these questions. You know, the NAV systems that we have may be a little different, but we're all moving in the same direction. And let's figure out how to get there as fast as we plausibly can. And I think there's an opening for a candidate who can rise above some of this fighting in the party. I got to say, Elizabeth Warren gave a really powerful speech on the night of the New Hampshire primary where she lost. She ran fourth ahead of Joe Biden, but she talked about the dangers to the party of people just tearing each other's eyes out and forgetting that, you know, when all is said and done, as your caller suggested, they are all trying to make things better for people, especially people who are left out of our current prosperity.
Laura Knoy:
Well, thanks to Jade and Paul for those calls. E.J., here's an e-mail from Johnny who says this 52 year old has had enough of moderate Democrats. The party has devolved into the Republican Lite Party over the length of my lifetime. Johnny says, if FDR or Eisenhower are too extreme left for the corporate wing of the DNC, those currently pushing Republican billionaire Mayor Bloomberg is a reasonable choice. They do not deserve my vote, Johnny says. With all due respect for Mr. Dionne, there's only one campaign that is historically funding itself through millions of small donations, not through billionaire bankers, billionaires and oligarchs. I'm with the young people, Johnny says on this. They have a legitimate reason to be angry. Bernie Sanders is offering a long forgotten base, a voice that corporate media has long attempted to snuff out ridicule and silence. Johnny, thank you very much.
Laura Knoy:
And I think that some of the sentiment also that that. Writer from Dissent magazine was trying to get at with you. E.J., you know, enough with you moderates, your kind of what Republicans used to be.
E.J. Dionne:
Well, I don't think I think of myself as Social Democrat or a person of the center left. But I as I said, I have a moderate disposition. Let me first in the spirit that I'm trying to embody, agree with the writer on a couple of things. One, I think that the way Bernie is financing his campaign is a model for the way campaigns ought to be financed. And in the book. In fact, I talk about H.R. 1, that reform bill that passed the House that's in Mitch McConnell's deep freezer in the Senate, which includes provisions where you would have a matching fund, where small contributions were matched by government so that candidates really could run very well-funded campaigns based entirely on small donors. Secondly, I've always had a lot of time for Bernie Sanders. I once had him as I did a long interview with him right before he ran last time. And I guess it was late in 2015. He can find it online. You know, Brookings is not a an outpost for democratic socialism. But Sanders wanted to come in and talk politics, and his program and I was very happy to do that. So I agree, he has broadened the outlook of the party in useful ways. Here's where I disagree with the the writer. I think it's a mistake to look back at both the Obama and Clinton administrations as failures from the point of view of progressives.
E.J. Dionne:
First of all, there's a great old saying from somebody I knew years ago who said sometimes liberals sound like they're saying our programs have failed, let us continue. I think we should honor the fact that Clinton and Obama solve some real problems put before them. Obama prevented our economy from falling into a Great Depression. He passed the first significant health care reform since Medicare. He passed the Wall Street reform, which isn't everything I would want to either. But it had some important provisions in it, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And so I don't think we should look back on this past of Democrats as nothing but a corporate neo liberal, you know, failed experiment. There were some real successes there. Again, in the book, I talk about how both Clinton and Obama fell short of progressive hopes and we need to do more. And the historical example I used, again, is FDR, where he was out of the progressive tradition of Woodrow Wilson and his cousin TR, but then he went beyond it. So I agree, we need to go beyond where we were. But I don't think we need to disown that past or completely write it off.
Laura Knoy:
Well, Johnny, it's good to hear from you and what you just said, E.J. kind of relates to something you said in the book, quote, lurking beneath the agreements excuse me, the arguments about tomorrow, our disagreements about yesterday, again, specifically how to judge whether Clinton and Obama were to use your words, shrewd pragmatists or unprincipled sellouts. So what's the shrewd pragmatist argument?
E.J. Dionne:
With a shrewd pragmatist is that... we'll take Clinton. There are many more Democrats these days, partly because of his recent presidency, partly because he was such a commanding figure in our politics who are prepared to defend Obama. You noticed in the early debates a lot of Democrats were going after Obama and then they realized, hey, wait a minute, most of this party really still likes Barack Obama very much and that the what I argue is that both of them lived within this long Reagan consensus that dominated our politics. And I can see precisely why people on the left, like our writer, got impatient with that. And perhaps Obama should have been tougher on Wall Street. And you know, the folks who helped get us into the mess of the Great Crash, but he fought where he could against that consensus. If you looked at his stimulus package, it was extraordinarily progressive. It made some of the first investments in fighting climate change. About a third of that money went to lower income Americans to help pull them out of the mess that they and our country were in.
E.J. Dionne:
In Bill Clinton's case, he tried to get universal coverage and failed. He also presided over a massive expansion of the earned income tax credit, which now sends tens of billions of dollars to low income people now. I had disagreements with Clinton. I opposed the welfare reform that he signed because I thought it was, too. Punitive and didn't do enough to help lift poor people out of poverty. So again, I am not an unalloyed apologist for either administration, but I think when we look back on them, we can say they pushed us forward rather than backward. And what we need in our politics right now is to restore progress. And that's where kind of this argument about restoration versus transformation. I see as a false choice, because there are things at the end of the Trump years that we want to restore certain values and behaviors that we want to restore. But at the same time, what we're trying to do is restore those values so we can move forward. All right.
Laura Knoy:
Let's take another call, And in Wolfeboro, Reeves calling.
Caller:
Good morning. Morning. I have a.... I love this. I love us. I'm constantly explaining to people, will you stop going to your poles and start working togethe- in almost every topic you can name. I wanted to ask Mr. Dionne. It seems to me that there was a moment that was really interesting to me when Obama was endeavoring to get the Affordable Care Act passed. One of the one of the thorns in his side was Dennis Kucinich, who was absolutely adamant that that didn't go far enough, that we needed single payer quit, with which I completely agree. But Obama invited Kucinich to join him on the on Air Force One for a flight. He got off that flight and he approved of the Affordable Care Act and agreed to vote with it. And I do not believe... I do not believe that he was swayed by the joy of being on that plane.
Caller:
I think that what happened was that Obama said the country is not capable yet of envisioning single payer. This is the step which will accomplish that. And I believe that he persuaded Kucinich, who agreed in the. We got it. And what we have now is 10 years later. Everybody thinks that everyone should be covered. And we're forgetting that 10 years ago it was you should be covered if you have money. So I think that is a great example of what you're talking about right now, where even a person like me who's extremely nervous could be argued to be fairly left, really recognizes that we have to work with everybody where they are at this moment and move forward because it moves even if you don't get exactly what you want. It moves the idea of what is permissible forward. It it alters the Overton Window.
Laura Knoy:
Reeve thank you very much for calling in what you think E.J.
E.J. Dionne:
Again, I really want all your colleagues to run for office at some point. I think you would would like the argument of this book, because that's exactly what I argue, that there are reforms that transform the nature of the debate. They become irreversible were forms not because we become some kind of Stalinist dictatorship where we can't move. They become irreversible because they have overwhelming support from the people. Thus you just can't repeal Social Security. And with Obamacare, we see that despite the Republican effort to repeal it and now they're going back door through the courts to try to throw it out. Once people saw what Obamacare did, everything ranging from the insurance subsidies to the exchanges, to keeping your kids on your own health care as a parent until they're 26, they don't want that the protections for pre-existing conditions. They don't want that to go away. And so now, thanks to Obamacare there. The whole idea of a public option, which at the time they couldn't get through, partly because of the resistance of moderates, I thought the moderates were very wrong about that. But now the public option is the moderate position. So we are making progress. We are pushing the boundaries of the debate. Again, Mike Herrington, whom I also quote in the book, saying he was always for the left wing of the possible. And Reeve sounds like a left wing of the possible sort of person. And I think that she'd perfectly described how we make progress in our country.
Laura Knoy:
Here's an e-mail from Sherry in Dover who says, I'm considered a, quote, far left progressive. Why has progress in this country always been incremental? Sherry says, because power protects itself. She says, we don't really consider who gets left behind when we, quote, compromise. So long as the powerful are content, we seem to be happy to leave the historically disadvantaged left behind yet again, Sherry says. How does asking for a $15 minimum wage, then settling for $12 help people who cannot afford to live? She says there are places where, quote, gradualism is appropriate, but when people's lives are on the line is cruel to say we can't move too fast. Sherry, thank you so much and E.J., kind of sounds like Johnny. You know, sometimes the problems are too severe to wait.
E.J. Dionne:
Part of my political disposition is a bias in favor of low income people, Catholics call it the preferential option for the poor. I am for a $15 minimum wage. A lot of times when you pass a $15 minimum wage, it's it's passed in steps. It's almost always passed in steps. So you don't disrupt the labor market too much. So, yes, my heart's with that caller. The question is, how do you get from here to there? Because the worst thing is to demand everything and get absolutely nothing for those very vulnerable people most.
This is The Exchange, I'm Laura Knoy. Today, writer and political commentator E.J. Dionne and his new book called Code Red. In it, he urges moderates and progressives to come together in order to win back the White House. And he says today's Democrats could learn a valuable lesson from a Republican icon, Ronald Reagan. Let's hear from you. If you consider yourself politically moderate, what's your message to those on the left? If you're of the more liberal persuasion, how do you respond to this message of moderation that we're hearing from E.J.? And if you're a Republican, how do you view the divisions among Democrats right now or even within your own party? Before we go back to our listeners and lots of comments from people about that last point that I made that you say in the book, hey, Democrats, you could learn a valuable political lesson from Ronald Reagan himself.
E.J. Dionne:
Right. And again, just on the word moderate, I guess, I think of myself as a progressive of a moderate disposition. And I worry I worry sometimes moderate, as I say in the book, is a complicated word. And people can read about how I deal with it. But I'm glad you brought up Reagan, because Ronald Reagan used what he opposed big government taxes, Soviet communism to develop his agenda for change, smaller government, lower taxes, a forceful foreign policy. And in doing so, he redefined our politics and his ideas exercised broad sway for nearly three decades. Those of us on my side of politics don't like that direction, but it's true that the influence was there. And I think Trump has similarly clarified what moderates and progressives are like abhor, racial and ethnic intolerance, a disdain for democratic values, corruption, marriage, a corporate dominance, and the pursuit of a brutally divisive politics as a substitute for problem solving. I call it the power of negative thinking that you can often you often come to what you believe affirmatively by defining very clearly what you opposed to take of that earlier caller. That caller is rightly opposed to the oppression of poor people and has developed a whole politics out of that. I think that this whole series of frustrations and things that made people angry about the Trump era bring moderates and progressives together. And in focusing on that, they can they can a work together to move us forward and B, begin to craft programs that respond to the things they're angry about.
Laura Knoy:
So Ronald Reagan said, look, we can fight later. You know, if you guys want. But for now, let's get the economic conservatives and the social conservatives and start a movement. And he was successful.
E.J. Dionne:
Right. And that I think that there is that. That's precisely right. And the religious conservatives together. And by the way, I was glad you raised it at the beginning of the show. I really do think there are ways in which we need to talk about religion very differently. I thought that Mitt Romney's intervention on the impeachment vote, where he invoked God, not to say that God is on my side, but rather that religion challenges the conscience. I think that's a very good way to think about religion. And I think it does need to play a role on the progressive side.
Laura Knoy:
Well, Pete in Manchester writes, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe proposed during the debate on Obamacare that all those earning 40000 or less be covered under Medicare. That was a great effort that might have drawn bipartisan support, but fizzled. Pete says maybe hope for our bipartisan future. So that's one of the issues that I'll ask.
E.J. Dionne:
Olympia Snowe is gone, you know? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt.
Laura Knoy:
No, no, that's OK. It's just the idea that health care seems to one of these issues where there's some push and pull and people of different political persuasions do seem attracted this issue as an area for possible common ground.
E.J. Dionne:
Well there ought to be, because it is crazy that we don't cover everybody in our country. But I'm glad the this was a writer correct, brought up the Olympia Snowe. And this is where progressive frustration is something I can very much identify with. Obama tried in every way he could to bring Republicans on board on health care reform. The exchanges came from ideas put forward by the Heritage Foundation, a very conservative group. The whole. The structure of Obamacare was based on the health care reform in Massachusetts that Mitt Romney proposed and try and try as he might. Republicans just would not come over and help pass Obamacare. Even Olympia Snowe, who was I think know a genuine moderate, she voted to get Obamacare out of committee. So that was one vote.
E.J. Dionne:
But in the end, even she voted against it in the end. You know, thank goodness there were three Republicans who voted to save it more recently, including the late John McCain. But, you know, it's this radicalization of the Republican Party prevents Republicans from supporting proposals that they used to support 10 or 20 years ago. Richard Nixon's health plan, by the way, was to the left of Obamacare. So it just shows you how much the party has moved.
Laura Knoy:
So you talk about the radicalization of the Republican Party. E.J., some people say the Democrats have gotten radical. So is that a fair point?
E.J. Dionne:
I think that there is polarization, but it is asymmetric, which is to say that the Republicans have moved farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. Just look at who makes up the two parties, the Republican Party, that the percentage of moderates has shrunk to the point where the vast majority of Republicans think of themselves as conservative, including a third or more of the party who think of themselves as very conservative, the Democrats. And this is why coalition management is so important to them. The Democrats now are about half liberal or left and half moderate or conservative. So if you're dealing with a situation where many of the fights that used to happen between Republicans and Democrats are now happening inside the Democratic Party, basically what you're saying, most of the moderates are inside the Democratic Party. They've left the Republican Party.
Well, love to hear from some more listeners on that last point. That's really interesting that you say that, E.J. I'd like to get through a couple with you, E.J.. Christopher in Manchester says, The demand for ideological purity from the far left and folks like AOC, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez seems like a perfect recipe, Christopher says to turn lots of Democrats into independents, kind of the mirror image of what happened in the Republican Party in the 80s and 90s with Jerry Falwell, et cetera. Christopher says New England is majority independent or undeclared now. So there's Christopher saying he sees what's going on now in the Democratic Party, similar to what happened, the Republican Party, you know, in the 80s. What do you think, E.J.?
E.J. Dionne:
You know, to paraphrase an old Labor leader, if you cut off one wing or the other of the old bird will fly around in circles. And I think that the Democratic Party, the progressive movement, only moves forward when these two wings are able to fly together, to work together. And that, yes, there can be a turnoff. If everything is turned into a litmus test, then politics starts sounding like a chemistry class. And so, yes, I think there is language that can come out of the left that really says to moderates, well, the left doesn't seem to want us. On the other hand, I think moderates can do that, too. In the book, I talk about socialism, and socialism can mean a lot of things if democratic socialism means Sweden, Norway or Denmark. These are not scary places. These are places that have a vibrant market economy. They're really more social democratic than socialists have a vibrant market economy and real social protection and workers rights. On the other hand, if socialism means the old Soviet Union, nobody, including Bernie Sanders, wants any part of that. So I think the piece I'm calling for needs to be upheld by both sides of the party, both sides of the progressive movement.
Laura Knoy:
Michael emails, what role has the embrace of identity politics of the progressive wing of the party played in alienating the centrists? Michael says I've only been registered as a Democrat. I've only been registered as a Democrat in my life and have been terribly put off by the focus on the immutable qualities of candidates, which at times seems to tow the line of bigotry. Michael, thank you very much. And there is a lot of talk about this, E.J.. You know, are progressives overdoing so-called identity politics?
E.J. Dionne:
Well, I'm you know, when Richard Nixon didn't want to answer a question, he used to say, I'm glad you asked that question. In this case. I really am glad that this question was asked. Because I have a chapter in the book on this. The title of the chapter is out of many. Dot, dot, dot. What exactly? You. From our slogan, our national slogan out of many one. And subtitle is The Politics of Recognition and the Politics of Class. And I am I try to suggest that when we attacks on identity politics, if you are African-American or Latino or a woman or LGBTQ person, it sounds like to them, you just want to say, I don't have any right to fight for my rights. And I quote Stacey Abrams in there saying, look, we didn't ask for the oppression of identity politics, for the oppression that came from our identities. We're fighting identity politics because we want to be treated like everyone else. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to those who say that those are not the only identities. There are also identities such as class. And so what I argue is that we have to bring together a politics of recognition that says, yes, certain groups in our society have historically faced oppression, especially African-Americans.
E.J. Dionne:
We shouldn't flinch from addressing that directly, but that should not mean that we don't address other forms of inequality and unfairness that may face somebody again to go back to Berlin. Somebody up in Berlin who may be white, who may have lost a good factory job and says, what about me with a what about me question is a legitimate and is not automatically racist. But we do have to recognize that we've got to fight against racism and fight against other forms of repression. And I talk a lot in the book about or some in the book about Bobby Kennedy, because he was somebody who in his great 1968 campaign conveyed to African-Americans that he absolutely understood why they were angry, why they felt a sense of oppression. And he conveyed to white working class Americans that he understood their problems, too, and that they weren't ruled out of his politics of dignity. Again, I think a fight over dignity is a way to bring these groups together.
Laura Knoy:
Well, yes, and you started out the show today talking about that. And here's an e-mail from Douglas in Pike who says, I appreciate E.J.'s comments on human dignity, but it seems to me that many of the Trump voters have felt talked down at by liberal elites for many years and voting for Trump is payback. And that's a theme in your book. E.J.. That's something you've been talking a lot about.
E.J. Dionne:
Right no, I worry about that. I worry about that on the part of progressives. I hate terms like flyover country as if this vast part of the country is somehow less sophisticated or less worthy. But I also object on the other side to Republicans when they talk about real Americans, real Americans presumably cannot possibly live in the blue states of New England or New York or Pennsylvania or the West Coast. I think both of these forms of discourse are dangerous because they get away again from that great American we. But I think we we on the progressive side and you know, Bernie is somebody who does talk about this. Pete Buttigieg from a different part of the party also talks about this a lot, as does Amy as do Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden, that talking down to people is is at bottom anti-democratic, both with a small D and with a large D. And so I do think it's important to to address the real concerns of folks who feel who feel excluded after all these years. And it is possible I spend a lot of time in the book on the 2018 election. And it's really important that in the three big swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, they all shifted Democratic in 2018. They elected Democratic governors and Democratic senators. And that's because 10 to 15 percent of the Trump voters shifted to Democrats because the Democratic candidates in those states spoke to them directly. They didn't give up on the party base. They didn't give up on African-Americans. But they address the concerns of these voters and said, look, Trump promised you a lot. What has he delivered?
Laura Knoy:
A review of your book from The New York Times. E.J. said it was, quote, a sharp reminder that the common ground on which Dionne has built his career has been badly eroded with little prospect. I'm quoting here that it will soon be restored. How do you feel about that? Did you share that? Sort of gloomy assessment from The New York Times.
E.J. Dionne:
Well, you should read all the nice parts of that review. A very good review that will. It's online and will appear in print this Sunday, I am told.
Laura Knoy:
Oh, and and they like the book. They're just saying, the common ground that you've been working on your whole life has been badly eroded and they don't think it will soon be restored.
E.J. Dionne:
Right. I was just doing what my publisher would want me to do. It's a very perceptive review. If you go back to my book, Why Americans Hate Politics, I did write about the right and conservatives in a different tone. I have a lot of respect for them. As I said at the beginning of the show, for some of the core purposes of conservatism, I there are a lot of things I like about Edmund Burke. But Edmund Burke, the sort of original conservative you could say, was someone who accepted that if you're going to preserve something, you honor a society, a set of institutions, you have to embrace reform. And unfortunately, I think beginning for me, them breaking moment was the whole fight over Florida and watching the the Supreme Court getting packed with conservatives and a whole series. That was a way in which we got into Iraq. I became less and less hopeful that the kind of conservatism that I respect was really being well represented, were well represented in our politics. So that that review really has it right. I hope for a day when this brand of conservatism is defeated and a new version that is more Burke-y and more accepting of the need for reform can exist. And we can have a real argument without the kind of division we have now.
Laura Knoy:
Well, E.J., it's always good to talk to you. Thank you very much for giving us an hour today. It's great to be with you always. Thank you. It's E.J. Dionne, author and political commentator for The Washington Post, with appointments at Georgetown, Harvard and the Brookings Institution. You've heard his voice on NPR. E.J.'s new book is called Code Red. The Exchange is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
