2022.05.11 民主党人的中期身份危机

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POLITICS
The Democrats’ Midterm Identity Crisis
Biden’s agenda is stuck. His party hasn’t figured out how to replace it.

By Ronald Brownstein
A shattered mirror showing a "D" for Democrats
Getty; The Atlantic
MAY 11, 2022, 6 AM ET
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President Joe Biden arrived in office with a throwback theory of how to expand his party’s support. He sought to focus his presidency on delivering kitchen-table benefits to low- and middle-income families—for example, with stimulus checks and an expansive child tax credit—while downplaying his involvement in high-profile cultural disputes and emphasizing bipartisanship. Harry Truman or Hubert Humphrey would have recognized this approach: It was an updated version of the economics-first political formula that allowed the New Deal–era Democrats of Biden’s youth to dominate blue-collar communities, like his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, from the Depression through the 1960s.


But nearly 16 months into his presidency, Biden’s plan has been battered on both ends. Republicans in Washington, D.C., have dashed his hopes of cooperation (apart from a deal on a bipartisan infrastructure package), and his desire to de-emphasize the culture wars has been undermined by a red-state blitzkrieg on social issues and the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that exploded into public view last week. Simultaneously, opposition from Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—combined with moments of intransigence from the party’s left—have blocked Biden from delivering the full suite of material benefits he hoped would move more working-class families, of all races, back toward the Democrats.

From the April 2022 issue: What Joe Biden can learn from Harry Truman

It’s not unusual for presidents and their political strategists to find that events confound their initial theory of how to expand and solidify their coalition. Bill Clinton wanted to win back working-class white people and independents with his “third way” centrism, but he ultimately revived his presidency by staring down the Newt Gingrich–era Republican Congress over the federal budget (before shifting course again to make some high-profile deals). George W. Bush initially hoped to woo moderate voters and Hispanics as a “compassionate conservative” before becoming a wartime leader focused on maximizing turnout among the Republican base. Barack Obama aspired to be a unifying figure of generational change and racial reconciliation, but he found himself struggling to lead the nation out of its worst economic downturn since the Depression, against fierce Republican resistance that culminated in the emergence of the racially resentful Tea Party.


Events forced each of these presidents to make significant course corrections that in turn helped each win a second term. The challenge for Biden is that he is still searching for the course correction that will enable him to recover—with six months to go until the midterm elections and at a time when his approval rating is stuck at about 40 percent.

The resulting vacuum has plunged Democrats into a cacophonous argument. Centrist party strategists are insisting, more loudly than at any point since Clinton’s presidency, that the president must explicitly renounce the Democrats’ liberal vanguard, especially on cultural flashpoints such as crime and immigration. Progressives, meanwhile, believe that Biden must do more to fulfill his 2020 campaign promises through unilateral executive action, such as canceling more student debt. They also want him to call out Republicans more forcefully, for their hard-right turn on social issues as well as their embrace of state-level voting restrictions and candidates backing former President Donald Trump’s discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

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Condemning Republicans might be one area of consensus for Democrats. In recent weeks, Biden has appeared more willing to describe the GOP—or at least its MAGA faction—as “the most extreme political organization that’s existed … in recent American history,” as he put it in a May 4 speech. Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum also believe that the threat to abortion rights from the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority and state-level Republicans will help them energize their base voters in the midterms and narrow the enthusiasm advantage that polls have documented for the GOP.

A unifying message about Republicans is a relatively easy puzzle for Democrats, though. Their bigger challenge is defining their own priorities and direction—for this year and beyond. The party right now “is a little stuck, and it’s a little mired,” says Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the vice president and chief strategist for Way to Win, which helps fund organizations and campaigns focusing on voters of color. “But we don’t have time to keep fighting about it.”

Both parties generally agree on the two main reasons for Biden’s low approval ratings. First, with the country facing its highest inflation levels in four decades, Americans are expressing in polls towering levels of economic dissatisfaction and assigning a big share of the blame to Biden’s policies. Second, the persistence of COVID disruptions with the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants, as well as the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, severely dented Biden’s attempt to project competence, one of his core campaign promises.

Annie Lowrey: Why everyone is so mad about the economy

“People voted for competency and normalcy,” says Doug Sosnik, who served as a senior political adviser in the Clinton White House. “Well, we don’t have normalcy—a lot of that’s not his fault. And there have certainly been some areas where you could accuse the Biden administration of being less than competent.”

Less agreement exists over how much Biden’s own legislative strategy and broader positioning have contributed to his distress. To Republicans, and some centrist Democrats, the main reason for the president’s decline in approval is that he “ran as a center-left politician, and he has governed as a politician from the left,” as the longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres puts it. Ayres cites an observation from Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who said of Biden, “Nobody elected him to be FDR.” She “had it right,” Ayres told me. On issues including immigration, crime, taxes, and government spending, he said, Biden “has persisted in making liberal choices over moderate choices.”

Ruy Teixeira, a veteran Democratic electoral and demographic analyst who has become one of the most ardent critics of the party’s left wing, largely agrees. Teixeira says that Biden’s initial strategy for expanding the Democrats’ base, by emphasizing economic issues and bipartisanship, remains “a perfectly good theory about how to build a broad majority coalition.” But he complains that Biden allowed progressives in the House of Representatives to demand a much more sweeping economic agenda in the Build Back Better legislation than could realistically pass a closely divided Senate. “He may have wanted to be ‘Scranton Joe,’” Teixeira says. “But he got elected as a president in a party and a political context that won’t let him do that.”


To those on the Democratic left, that analysis might as well have originated in the Upside Down. The problem, they argue, is not that the left is foisting unpopular policies on Biden; it’s that Manchin and Sinema, from the party’s center-right, are preventing Biden from passing popular ideas. “The evidence is much more credible about this being driven by economic perceptions”—primarily about inflation—“rather than the idea that Biden is too left-wing,” says Sean McElwee, a progressive pollster.

If anything, McElwee argues, the failure to pass the BBB legislation’s major climate provisions has contributed to the fact that Biden’s approval rating, compared with his 2020 vote share, has fallen most sharply among young people. Bryan Bennett, the senior director of polling and analytics at the Hub Project, a progressive organization, points out that a survey conducted by the group’s Navigator poll recently found that two-thirds of adults said they support a package that would lower drug prices, confront climate change, and expand Medicare benefits to services such as hearing aids, all of which essentially describes the pared-back version of Build Back Better that has received the most discussion on Capitol Hill.

Sosnik sees some merit in both arguments. He agrees that Biden and Democrats would improve their position for 2024 if they could pass some of the tangible economic assistance in the BBB plan, though he doubts that those programs would be felt in time to boost the party’s prospects this coming fall. But he also believes that Biden mismatched the scale of his ambitions and the size of his legislative majority, and misread the signals swing voters sent when they reduced the Democratic House majority even while electing him to replace Trump in 2020. “Biden got elected mostly as an anti-Trump vote,” Sosnik says, adding, “The signs were there in the 2020 election about the limits of the activism” his voting coalition would accept.


The coalition that elected Biden—primarily people of color, young adults, and college-educated, socially liberal white Americans—very much reflected the Democratic Party’s evolution over his lifetime. But Biden has always seemed eager to reconstruct the Democratic coalition of his youth, which relied on more support from working-class white voters. One White House official, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal conversations, told me that Biden is intent on framing his economic agenda “in a very blue-collar-oriented way.” The president often stresses his plans’ benefits for workers without four-year college degrees—a clear departure from both Clinton and Obama, who emphasized the importance of moving workers up the education ladder. Biden also has rejected calls from even some Democrats to roll back international tariffs or his tougher “Buy American” procurement provisions in order to combat inflation. He’s much more likely than either Clinton or Obama to praise labor unions and less inhibited about criticizing China. Biden rarely seems happier than when appearing at a manufacturing plant.

Yet in the 2020 election, according to most data sources, he improved only slightly on Hillary Clinton’s anemic 2016 showing among white voters without college degrees. As president, Biden’s approval rating among those white blue-collar workers has fallen into the mid-20s in some polls.

Bill de Blasio: Joe Biden can learn from my mistakes

Biden still clearly sees his economic plan as his best chance to reverse those numbers: In his State of the Union address and again in his May 4 speech, he reframed key elements of the stalled BBB package—including bigger child-care and health-care subsidies and measures to reduce drug prices and utility bills—as a means to help financially strapped families. But calling attention to any provisions in the plan always risks reminding voters that Democrats so far have failed to pass it—and that Manchin might not accept any remnant of the economic package Biden once hoped would restore the Democrats’ New Deal–era identity as the party delivering for average families.

If anything, the gap between the competing Democratic factions is even greater on cultural issues. And the dispute is as fundamental as where Biden should aim his fire.

Some centrists—including Teixeira and Will Marshall, of the Progressive Policy Institute—have told me they believe that Biden should focus more on what they see as cultural extremism from the left. They want the president to forcefully and consistently condemn the progressive voices who have backed defunding the police or decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Biden has edged in this direction by underscoring his support for reforming but “funding”—not defunding—the police, most visibly in his State of the Union address. But Teixeira said “it defies logic” to think that will be enough to persuade voters drawn to Republicans’ claim that Democrats are soft on crime. “It would take a sustained campaign in and outside the party to really convince voters that Democrats are tough on criminals,” he said. “To simply say that to defund the police is not a good idea—I don’t think works.”

Teixeira also is skeptical that Democrats should push back harder against the GOP’s cultural agenda. He argues that in many instances—such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law or the restrictions on classroom discussion of race—Republican politicians are responding to justifiable parental concerns and that Democrats can’t condemn the initiatives “as sheer bigotry.” “I know people who say the Republicans are so far out of their skis on this that all we have to do is oppose them, and people will come to their senses,” Teixeira said. “And I believe that is not the case.”

For progressives, this counsel once again springs from the Upside Down. “There is an old tendency” among party centrists “to call out the left and do the Sister Souljah thing,” says Ancona, of Way to Win, referring to Clinton’s denunciation of a young hip-hop star who called for violence against white Americans during the 1992 campaign. “That’s an old playbook that needs to be thrown out.”

Ancona argues that Biden should target what she and other progressives see as cultural extremism from the right: the potential overturn of Roe and the wave of red-state laws to restrict abortion, LGBTQ, and voting rights; ban books; and censor how teachers can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation. The advice that Biden should reassure swing voters by picking a fight with the left, she says, ignores the reality of a Democratic coalition that now relies on people of color for about two-fifths of its votes, and also depends on the white voters who “want to be part of a multiracial society [and] in coalition with Black people who are fighting for justice.”

Instead of targeting the cultural left, progressives I spoke with said Democrats should employ the “race-class narrative”—which argues that Republicans are emphasizing cultural and racial issues to distract voters from their real priority of tilting economic policy toward the rich. Ancona says candidates should take their cues from the way Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock integrated economic and racial equity in their messaging during their stunning victories in Georgia. “If I were going to look at who to emulate,” she argues, “I would not look back to Clinton in the 1990s; it would be to look to Warnock and Ossoff in Georgia in 2021.”

The Justice Department has filed federal lawsuits in almost all the policy areas Republicans are targeting. And Biden has criticized elements of that cultural agenda, particularly Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But he has not mounted any sustained effort to call attention to these policies or paint them as extremist. Multiple outlets last week reported that Biden’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion overturning Roe was the first time he had uttered the word abortion as president.

A 79-year-old practicing Catholic who once criticized Roe before shifting his view, Biden has always been an unlikely figure to rally the forces of cultural change. But his choice not to engage more forcefully has dispirited some Democrats—particularly as Republican-led Senate filibusters have blocked House-passed legislation attempting to counteract red-state moves. The enormous show of support for Michigan Democratic State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s impassioned response to a Republican who accused her of wanting to “groom and sexualize” young children shows how hungry Democrats are for a stronger rebuttal to the right’s escalating cultural offensive, Ancona argues. At a fiery press conference last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom also articulated that impatience, describing the Republican cultural agenda as “extremism at a scale I’ve never experienced in my lifetime” and then pointedly asking: “Where the hell’s my party? … Why aren’t we standing up more firmly, more resolutely?”


Read: America’s blue-red divide is about to get starker

The draft opinion overturning Roe seems certain, at least for a while, to sublimate this intraparty dispute: Democrats of every stripe were quick to condemn it, Biden included. Teixeira told me in an email that “this issue is different since Democrats fairly unambiguously are on the center ground and don’t (yet) have any crazy they really need to disassociate themselves from.” But party divisions over cultural issues are bound to resurface as Biden confronts questions such as how to balance criminal-justice reform and public safety and whether to revoke Trump’s Title 42 restrictions turning away migrants at the southern border on public-health grounds.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, a big backlash against it could reconfigure the midterm landscape. But it remains more likely that whatever message Democrats choose, the combination of high inflation, Biden’s sagging approval rating, and the historical pattern of first-term midterm losses for the president’s party will generate significant Republican gains in November.

The 2022 elections, like all midterms, might turn mostly on voters’ assessments of immediate conditions in the country. But that probably won’t stop both sides in the Democrats’ internal debate from arguing that the results show why Biden should move in their direction. After November, the struggle over the party’s identity is guaranteed to grow even more urgent and intense—especially because so many Democrats are afraid that if they don’t get it right, the consequence will be a Trump restoration. “That’s one thing for certain,” Sosnik says. “If Democrats have a bad election, we will have a full-throated, public, six-month debate about why we lost.”

Ronald Brownstein is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN.




政治学
民主党人的中期身份危机
拜登的议程被卡住了。他的政党还没有想出如何取代它。

罗纳德-布朗斯坦报道
一面破碎的镜子显示出民主党人的 "D"。
Getty; The Atlantic
2022年5月11日，美国东部时间上午6点

乔-拜登(Joe Biden)总统上任时，对如何扩大他的政党支持率提出了一个回避理论。他试图将他的总统任期集中在为中低收入家庭提供餐桌福利上--例如，经济刺激支票和广泛的儿童税收抵免--同时淡化他对高调的文化争端的参与，并强调两党合作。哈里-杜鲁门或休伯特-汉弗莱都会认可这种做法。这是经济第一的政治公式的升级版，使拜登年轻时的新政时代的民主党人在大萧条时期到20世纪60年代主导蓝领社区，如他的家乡宾州斯克兰顿。


但在他担任总统近16个月后，拜登的计划受到了两方面的打击。华盛顿特区的共和党人使他的合作希望破灭（除了两党达成的一揽子基础设施协议），而他不强调文化战争的愿望也因红州在社会问题上的闪电战和上周爆发的推翻罗伊诉韦德案的最高法院意见草案而受到损害。同时，来自西弗吉尼亚州的民主党参议员乔-曼钦(Joe Manchin)和亚利桑那州的凯斯滕-西内玛(Kyrsten Sinema)的反对，加上党内左派的不妥协，阻碍了拜登提供他所希望的全套物质利益，使更多不同种族的工薪阶层家庭回到民主党的怀抱。

来自2022年4月号的报道。乔-拜登可以从哈里-杜鲁门那里学到什么

对于总统和他们的政治战略家来说，发现事件混淆了他们最初关于如何扩大和巩固其联盟的理论，这并不罕见。比尔-克林顿希望以其 "第三条道路 "的中间路线赢回工人阶级的白人和无党派人士，但他最终通过在联邦预算问题上与纽特-金里奇时代的共和党国会对峙而重振其总统地位（在再次转变路线以达成一些引人注目的交易之前）。小布什最初希望以 "富有同情心的保守主义者 "的身份吸引温和派选民和西班牙裔选民，后来成为战时领导人，专注于最大限度地提高共和党人的投票率。巴拉克-奥巴马渴望成为一个统一的代际变化和种族和解的人物，但他发现自己正在努力带领国家走出大萧条以来最严重的经济衰退，而共和党的激烈抵制最终导致了种族怨恨的茶党的出现。


这些事件迫使每一位总统做出重大的路线修正，这反过来又帮助他们赢得了第二个任期。拜登面临的挑战是，他仍在寻找能够使他恢复元气的路线修正--在距离中期选举还有六个月的时候，他的支持率还停留在40%左右。

由此产生的真空使民主党人陷入了一场喧嚣的争论中。中间派的党内战略家们比克林顿担任总统以来的任何时候都更大声地坚持认为，总统必须明确放弃民主党的自由主义先锋派，特别是在犯罪和移民等文化热点问题上。同时，进步人士认为，拜登必须通过单方面的行政行动，如取消更多的学生债务，更多地履行其2020年的竞选承诺。他们还希望他更有力地指责共和党人，因为他们在社会问题上的强硬右倾，以及他们对州级投票限制的拥护和支持前总统唐纳德-特朗普关于2020年选举的不可靠阴谋论的候选人。

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谴责共和党人可能是民主党人的一个共识领域。最近几周，拜登似乎更愿意将美国共和党--或者至少是其MAGA派别--描述为 "美国近代史上存在的最极端的政治组织"，正如他在5月4日的演讲中所说。党内不同意识形态的民主党人也认为，来自共和党任命的最高法院多数派和州级共和党人对堕胎权的威胁，将有助于他们在中期选举中激发基础选民的热情，并缩小民意调查记录的共和党人的热情优势。

不过，对于民主党人来说，关于共和党人的统一信息是一个相对容易的难题。他们更大的挑战是确定自己的优先事项和方向--今年和以后。该党现在 "有点卡住了，有点陷入困境，""赢之道 "的副总裁兼首席战略师詹妮弗-费尔南德斯-安科纳说，该组织帮助资助关注有色人种选民的组织和活动。"但我们没有时间继续争论这个问题。"

两党普遍同意拜登支持率低的两个主要原因。首先，随着国家面临四十年来最高的通货膨胀水平，美国人在民意调查中表达了对经济的高度不满，并把很大一部分责任归咎于拜登的政策。其次，随着Delta和Omicron变种的出现，COVID中断的情况持续存在，以及美国从阿富汗撤军的混乱局面，严重打击了拜登投射能力的企图，这是他的核心竞选承诺之一。

安妮-洛瑞：为什么每个人都对经济如此疯狂？

"曾在克林顿白宫担任高级政治顾问的道格-索斯尼克（Doug Sosnik）说："人们投票支持能力和正常状态。"好吧，我们没有正常状态--这在很大程度上不是他的错。当然，在一些领域，你可以指责拜登政府的能力不足。"

对于拜登自己的立法战略和更广泛的定位在多大程度上造成了他的困境，人们的意见并不一致。在共和党人和一些中间派民主党人看来，总统支持率下降的主要原因是他 "作为一个中左翼政治家参选，而他作为一个左翼政治家执政"，正如长期以来共和党民调专家惠特-艾尔斯所说。艾尔斯引用了弗吉尼亚州民主党众议员阿比盖尔-斯潘伯格(Abigail Spanberger)的看法，她在谈到拜登时说："没有人把他选为罗斯福"。她 "说得很对"，艾雷斯告诉我。他说，在包括移民、犯罪、税收和政府开支等问题上，拜登 "一直坚持做出自由派的选择，而不是温和派的选择。"

鲁伊-特谢拉（Ruy Teixeira）是一位资深的民主党选举和人口分析家，他已成为该党左翼最热烈的批评者之一，他在很大程度上同意这一观点。特谢拉说，拜登最初通过强调经济问题和两党合作来扩大民主党的基础的策略，仍然是 "关于如何建立一个广泛的多数派联盟的完美理论。" 但他抱怨说，拜登允许众议院的进步人士在 "重建更美好 "的立法中要求一个更全面的经济议程，而不是现实地通过一个严重分裂的参议院。"他可能想成为'斯克兰顿-乔'，"特克塞拉说。"但他在一个不允许他这样做的政党和政治环境中当选为总统。"


对于那些民主党的左派来说，这种分析可能源自于颠倒世界。他们认为，问题不在于左派将不受欢迎的政策强加给拜登；而在于来自该党中右派的曼钦和西内玛正在阻止拜登通过受欢迎的想法。进步派民调专家肖恩-麦克尔维（Sean McElwee）说："关于这是由经济观念驱动的证据要可信得多"--主要是关于通货膨胀--"而不是拜登太左翼的观点"。

McElwee认为，如果说有什么原因的话，那就是未能通过BBB立法的主要气候条款，导致拜登的支持率与他在2020年的得票率相比，在年轻人中跌幅最大。进步组织 "枢纽项目"(Hub Project)负责民调和分析的高级主管布莱恩-贝内特(Bryan Bennett)指出，该组织的 "导航者"(Navigator)民调最近进行的一项调查发现，三分之二的成年人表示他们支持降低药价、应对气候变化、将医疗保险福利扩大到助听器等服务的方案，所有这些基本上都描述了在国会山讨论最多的缩减版《重建美好》(Build Back Better)。

索斯尼克认为这两种论点都有一定的道理。他同意，如果拜登和民主党人能够通过BBB计划中的一些切实的经济援助，那么他们在2024年的地位将得到改善，尽管他怀疑这些计划能否及时感受到，以促进该党在今年秋季的前景。但他也认为，拜登的野心规模与他的立法多数席位的规模不匹配，而且误读了摇摆选民在减少民主党众议院多数席位时发出的信号，甚至在2020年选举他取代特朗普。"拜登主要是作为反特朗普的一票当选的，"索斯尼克说，"在2020年的选举中，关于他的投票联盟所能接受的积极主义的限度的迹象已经出现。


当选拜登的联盟--主要是有色人种、年轻成年人和受过大学教育、社会自由主义的美国白人--在很大程度上反映了民主党在他一生中的演变。但拜登似乎一直渴望重建他年轻时的民主党联盟，该联盟更多的是依靠工人阶级白人选民的支持。一位要求匿名以讨论内部谈话的白宫官员告诉我，拜登打算 "以一种非常注重蓝领的方式 "来制定他的经济议程。总统经常强调他的计划对没有四年制大学学位的工人的好处--这显然与克林顿和奥巴马不同，他们都强调让工人在教育阶梯上有所发展的重要性。拜登还拒绝了甚至是一些民主党人的呼吁，即取消国际关税或其更严厉的 "购买美国货 "采购规定，以打击通货膨胀。他比克林顿或奥巴马更有可能赞扬工会，对批评中国也不那么拘谨。拜登很少有比出现在一家制造厂时更高兴的时候。

然而，在2020年的选举中，根据大多数数据来源，他只比希拉里-克林顿2016年在没有大学学历的白人选民中的贫乏表现略有改善。作为总统，拜登在这些白人蓝领工人中的支持率在一些民意调查中已经跌至20多岁。

比尔-德布拉西奥：乔-拜登可以从我的错误中吸取教训

拜登仍然清楚地认为他的经济计划是他扭转这些数字的最佳机会。在他的国情咨文中，以及在5月4日的演讲中，他将停滞不前的BBB方案的关键内容--包括更大的儿童护理和医疗保健补贴以及降低药品价格和水电费的措施--重新规划为帮助经济拮据的家庭的一种手段。但是，关注该计划中的任何条款总是有可能提醒选民，民主党人迄今未能通过该计划，而且曼钦可能不会接受拜登曾经希望恢复民主党在新政时代作为为普通家庭服务的政党的任何经济方案的残余。

在文化问题上，民主党竞争派别之间的差距甚至更大。争论的根本在于拜登应该把火力瞄准哪里。

一些中间派人士--包括特谢拉和进步政策研究所的威尔-马歇尔--告诉我，他们认为拜登应该更多地关注他们眼中的左派文化极端主义。他们希望总统能够有力地、持续地谴责那些支持削减警察经费或将非法越境行为非刑罪化的进步人士的声音。

拜登在国情咨文中最明显地强调了他对改革但 "资助"--而不是取消警察经费--的支持，从而向这个方向靠拢。但特谢拉说，如果认为这就足以说服被共和党人声称的民主党人在犯罪问题上软弱无力的选民，那是 "违背逻辑的"。"他说："需要在党内和党外开展持续的运动，才能真正说服选民，让他们相信民主党人对罪犯很严厉。"简单地说，为警察提供资金并不是一个好主意，我认为这行不通。"

特谢拉还对民主党人应该更有力地反击共和党的文化议程持怀疑态度。他认为，在许多情况下，如佛罗里达州的 "不要说同性恋 "法或对课堂上讨论种族问题的限制，共和党的政治家们是在回应家长们合理的担忧，民主党人不能谴责这些举措 "是纯粹的偏执"。"我知道有人说，共和党人在这个问题上已经走得太远了，我们所要做的就是反对他们，人们就会清醒过来，"特克塞拉说。"而我相信情况并非如此。"

对于进步人士来说，这个建议再次从天翻地覆中产生。党内中间派有一种 "旧的倾向"，即 "呼唤左派，做Souljah修女的事情"，"Way to Win "的安科纳说，他指的是克林顿在1992年竞选期间谴责一位呼吁对美国白人实施暴力的年轻嘻哈明星。"那是一本需要被扔掉的旧书。

安科纳认为，拜登应该针对她和其他进步人士认为来自右翼的文化极端主义：可能推翻罗伊法案以及限制堕胎、LGBTQ和投票权的红州法律浪潮；禁书；以及审查教师如何谈论种族、性别和性取向。她说，拜登应该通过与左派斗争来安抚摇摆不定的选民的建议，忽视了民主党联盟的现实，该联盟现在依靠有色人种获得约五分之二的选票，同时也依靠白人选民，他们 "希望成为多种族社会的一部分[并]与争取正义的黑人联合起来"。

与我交谈过的进步人士说，民主党人不应针对文化左派，而应采用 "种族-阶级叙事"，即认为共和党人强调文化和种族问题，以分散选民对其真正优先考虑的经济政策向富人倾斜的注意力。安科纳说，候选人应该借鉴参议员乔恩-奥索夫(Jon Ossoff)和拉斐尔-沃诺克(Raphael Warnock)在佐治亚州取得惊人胜利时将经济和种族平等纳入其信息传递的方式。"如果我要看谁值得效仿，"她认为，"我不会回头看1990年代的克林顿；而是要看2021年佐治亚州的沃诺克和奥索夫。"

司法部几乎在共和党人所针对的所有政策领域都提起了联邦诉讼。而拜登也批评了该文化议程的内容，特别是佛罗里达州的 "不要说同性恋 "法案。但他没有做出任何持续的努力来呼吁关注这些政策或将其描绘成极端主义。上周多家媒体报道，拜登对最高法院推翻罗氏的意见草案的批评是他作为总统第一次说出堕胎这个词。

拜登是一位79岁的执业天主教徒，在改变观点之前曾经批评过罗氏，他一直是一个不可能召集文化变革力量的人物。但他选择不更有力地参与，使一些民主党人感到沮丧--特别是在共和党领导的参议院的拉布行动阻止了众议院通过的、试图抵制红州行动的立法。安科纳认为，密歇根州民主党参议员马洛里-麦克莫罗(Mallory McMorrow)对一名指责她想 "培养和性化 "幼童的共和党人作出了慷慨激昂的回应，这表明民主党人多么渴望对右派不断升级的文化攻势作出更有力的反击。在上周的一次激烈的新闻发布会上，加州州长加文-纽森也表达了这种不耐烦，他将共和党的文化议程描述为 "我一生中从未经历过的极端主义"，然后尖锐地问道。"我的党到底在哪里？......为什么我们不更坚定、更坚决地站出来？"


阅读。美国的蓝-红分歧即将变得更加明显

至少在一段时间内，推翻罗伊案的意见草案似乎肯定会使这种党内纠纷升华。包括拜登在内的各党派民主人士都迅速对其进行了谴责。特谢拉在一封电子邮件中告诉我，"这个问题是不同的，因为民主党人相当明确地站在中间位置，（还）没有任何他们真正需要脱离的疯狂。但是，在拜登面临如何平衡刑事司法改革和公共安全，以及是否以公共卫生为由撤销特朗普在南部边境拒绝移民的第42条限制等问题时，党内在文化问题上的分歧势必重新浮现。

如果最高法院推翻了罗伊法案，对它的巨大反弹可能会重构中期选举的格局。但更有可能的是，无论民主党人选择什么样的信息，高通胀率、拜登不断下滑的支持率以及总统所在政党第一任期中期选举失利的历史模式，都会在11月给共和党带来巨大收益。

2022年的选举，就像所有中期选举一样，可能主要取决于选民对国家当前状况的评估。但这可能不会阻止民主党内部辩论的双方争辩说，结果显示拜登为什么应该向他们的方向发展。11月之后，关于该党身份的斗争肯定会变得更加紧迫和激烈--特别是由于许多民主党人担心，如果他们没有做好，后果将是特朗普的复辟。"这是可以肯定的一件事，"索斯尼克说。"如果民主党人在选举中表现不佳，我们将对我们为什么会输进行为期六个月的全面、公开的辩论。"

罗纳德-布朗斯坦是《大西洋》杂志的高级编辑，也是美国有线电视新闻网的高级政治分析员。