Culture, like all other aspects of our being as social animals, is inextricable from economics, to varying degrees, as you, the author of a book entitled ‘The Social Animal,’ should well know, David.
20
Recall the deep bench of some 17 or so GOP Presidential candidates? A GOP that believed in deficit reduction, free trade, loyalty to allies in defending the architecture of long term peace and prosperity, and the now quaint concept of keeping commitments? Trump mowed down the field being exactly what he is, an unprincipled fraud.
The GOP leadership failed to hold him accountable for a myriad of offensive statements and autocratic maneuvers. The House Intelligence Committee openly complicit in obstruction of justice. Both they and Trump pilloried the DOJ, FBI while ridiculing the intelligence community.
The GOP stood idly by with Family Separations, trade wars, assaults on consumers and the environment. Non-stop lying just Trump being Trump. Deficits soaring time to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Not a single Statesman in the GOP. The Speaker busy firing the Chaplain. I guess blessed are the poor offended Ayn Rand.
The Democrats may be guilty as charged by Mr. Brooks. The facts remain the GOP picked him as the standard bearer of the party when he clearly was unqualified and willfully ignorant. Failed miserably to exercise control over his worst impulses. Their crowning legislative achievement passing a tax bill tailored to favor wealthy donors and corporations while exploding the deficit.
Trumpism can only, and I stress only be destroyed, by Republicans forcefully repudiating it.
46
I have tried to rally the left around the Democratic Liberty and Justice movement right after the family separation debacle and I get crickets in response. It seems like Dems cant seize the moral high ground even when it is right there for the taking.
I recommended my senator Jon Tester use it, and since he has not, his opponent has been able to ride the trump coat tail to a toss up race. It is super frustrating. Tester refuses to hit Rosendale with any thing trump did wrong while rosendale beats Tester up with Schumer and Pelosi adds and for not being trump. Gah.
18
I think David is living in the past -- the time before conservative media, including internet media, allowed the right to live in their own hermetically-sealed world. The overarching subject of Trumpism and its associated ills can't be addressed in local House races. It's like Hillary's campaign -- spent all her time attacking Trump; it didn't work, and that's in a national election. Much as Trump wants to nationalize this election to energize his base, I don't think the reverse approach works. For on thing, Trump is so much out there, every day, dominating the news cycle that there isn't anything new a Dem Congressional candidate can say about him or Trumpism which is new.
To take on Trumpism, the Dems need to control the House, so that they can run investigations, with subpoena powers. Then in the 2020 national election, with the focus upon the presidency and the Dem candidate for president getting a lot of media time, the case against Trumpism can be made. We are in the 'here's the sugar' phase of irresponsible tax cuts. It will take time for the economic downside to become evident. Ditto on the international front.
Trump's schtick has been the next great thing in political communication and his bombastic, lying, never apologize for past lies approach has been enabled by all the media, right/left/center, who use him to sell clicks/eyes. Like all novel schtick, the appeal of the Trump approach to political speech and media relations will wane. Thus far it has not.
25
Working Americans are sick and tired cute, well scrubbed and coifed politicians telling them sweet nothings and white lies over and over again, and getting re-elected anyway! That’s why President Trump, in all of his crude roughness and girth, is so refreshing and acceptable to the taxpayers today. (We know who pays the bills for the largesse and free-stuff promises...Hint: “It ain’t Bernie and his free-loaders who are paying the bills!”)
9
From the first disgusting emergence of Trump as a candidate for president, his lack of ethics, morality, competence, knowledge, and empathy has been the basic reality of our political landscape. All of us with expectation of those basic qualities for any leader have reacted in horror as Trump’s ignorant racist fans have accepted and even delighted in Trump’s lies, hate speech, bullying, mocking of victims, and rampant materialism. Even worse, a large segment of Trump’s fan base call themselves Evangelical Christians. Certainly this election is about normalization of immorality on the part of Republicans. Democrats wish to impose basic moral standards and competence to governance.
19
“The Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers . . . little moral case against his behavior . . . . [I]t’s very hard to make a universal appeal to Americans as Americans, or defend the basic American norms that Trump calls into question.”
Maybe nobody has quite put their finger on it with respect to Trump. There are certain truths that are immutable. There are certain basic HUMAN norms that are unassailable. I defy one reader to say that it is right to derive pleasure from causing pain, suffering or humiliation to other people. And yet Trump does it day after day. He is consumed by it. In fact, he can’t stop doing it. There is a term for such people, sadist.
To say that he is not PC or that he is challenging norms is to allow for the possibility that he is reaching for some other as yet undiscovered good. He is not. It is exactly what it is. It is sadistic behavior, and the people who are drawn to him are in some sense drawn to his ability to hurt other people. Perhaps they feel powerless and hurting others or seeing him do it gives them some empowerment.
Does anybody laugh at a Trump rally? Is he telling jokes when he attempts to degrade his enemy of the moment? Is it funny? No. It may give pleasure, but it is not comedy, funny or anything other than deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering and humiliation on other people.
Sadism cannot form the basis for a political philosophy; it does not better anyone but the sadist. It is just sick.
35
This is very simple.
The GOP has been taken over by oligarchs. These moneyed interests issue divisive statements (bigoted, racist, misogynist, sexist, nationalist, moralizing statements) as a ploy. The goal is to distract working class people from the issues that matter - the cost of taxes, the benefits that those taxes deliver in return. The distraction allows oligarchs to redouble their wealth by externalizing the cost of participating in society to others.
The only solution is to educate people to receive these statements as a ploy by an elite who sees democracy as its adversary. Voters need to resist the urge to debate with allies about social justice. Its counterintuitive, but our country depends on our seeing what's really happening.
It looks like nationalistic racism, but it's a moneyed class dividing working people to expand its wealth and power.
26
Much of the Republicans' cultural thrust revolves around the issue of immigration: the need to control our borders, building a wall, illegal immigrants changing our culture and "stealing" jobs, etc.
As part of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal, what Democrats need to do to diffuse the issue is to AGREE on the need to control the southern border. The exact means for doing this can include building walls in some places -- but also other methods, including "natural walls" like mountains and higher tech methods where applicable. Leave it up to the experts to optimize this.
People should only enter the country legally. If they come from places where terrorists live, then they SHOULD be thoroughly vetted. ICE should not be abolished; it needs to do its job of controlling the inflow of drugs, weapons and trafficked humans.
That said however, Democrats should also espouse the need for more LEGAL immigrants. Immigrants who will be paid minimum wage or higher (therefore presenting less of a threat to native-born workers), pay all taxes, purchase health insurance, and have drivers licenses and auto insurance.
This would expand our economy and significantly, it would increase government revenue of income, Social Security and Medicare taxes. The latter would help make these middle class entitlements solvent, thereby eliminating the need for less desirable options like tax increases, increasing retirement ages and cutting benefits. Everybody wins!
15
Yes, Republicans are more effective at arguing divisive cultural values while Democrats argue on economic and equal access issues; they have been for many decades. I’m waiting to see how well that cultural victory will feed, clothe, and house the population, once the full costs of that “victory” comes due: collapsing wages, unsafe infrastructure, inadequate healthcare, toxins in the food supply, decimated public education, and a destroyed environment.
The effectiveness of the Republican strategy defies logic, notably among their supporters who continue to vote against their own economic interests. But then, our species is not known for any broad-based reliance on logical decision-making. Emotional decisions are so much more satisfying, right?
14
Agree. Trump will leave the country desolate in his wake, economically and otherwise. Unfortunately once he leaves office it will become the problem of whoever follows, hopefully a Democrat in 2020. And that administration will be blamed. Politics as usual.
13
Given the absence of mutual trust exploited so well by Trump and other Republicans, I think that to achieve a restoration of decency and morality in our politics, conservatives like Brooks must talk to those who feel loyalty with Republicans about trusting in the basic decency of those who don't t share their opinions, and liberals like Obama must talk to those on the left who feel that Republicans are no longer trustworthy, similarly. The polarization is too extreme for any reasonable discussion across the political divide.
3
Since, Mr. Brooks, you believe Republicans are morally superior beings, please explain the absence of Republicans who are standing up to Trump.
25
If David Brooks didn't convince me that the Democrat's failure to take on Trumpism could lose them the election, the number of commenters that went off on preexisting condition tangents or criticized Brooks as a commentator, did. They are missing the article's most salient and dire point: Failure to take on Trump and Trumpism could turn the Big Blue Wave into a puddle. It is a moral failure on the Party's part. Apparently Schumer, Feinstein, Pelosi and Perez did not feel the need to take Trump on head on. Why? For fear he might Twitter them? Karl Rove said you attack your political opponent's strongest point, and Trump's is that he's a conscienceless crook who is destroying the US for his own self enrichment and aggrandizement. And where is Gov. Jerry Brown hiding? He's articulate and thoughtful and straightforward. Why isn't he on TV stating the Democrats' case? Our country, our nation is being torn asunder. Why aren't our Democratic politicians exposing the amiinistration's rampant corruption? Regrettably and pathetically, the Democrats did not have a strategy to take on Trump or Trumpism and their failure to do so will hurt a lot of people and our further divide our nation.
15
"Now, as many have noticed, the core debate is open versus closed. Do you favor basic openness, diversity and pluralism, or do you favor closed ethnic nationalism?"
False choice David, there's a third option.. Let everyone choose for themselves and natural law will take care of the rest. Think Chinatown or Little Italy. Why is so hard to accept (to the point of demonization!) that for some it's simply more comfortable to live among those with whom one shares cultural, social and even racial similarities? It's not complicated and those who do choose such a life are no more racist or xenophobic than the man in the moon.
10
I agree with Mr. Brooks, though here in the bluest of blue zip codes, we are spared the barrage of national political ads from right and left, since the outcome is already decided.
Regarding the Democratic Party, I sense a lack of strong leadership. I listened to an extended podcast / interview of Nancy Pelosi by Larry Willmore ("Black on the Air".) Listening to her, I got the impression of a nice, polite grandmother who is still mostly sharp in mind, but a little slow to respond, and lacking the fire and vigor needed to stand up to the outrages that Trump and the GOP leadership are committing against the idea of equality and prosperity, and the foundations of good government. Call me ageist, but we need someone younger to appeal to the millenials. Nancy should step down a.s.a.p. I fear this lack of strong leadership in the DNC will cost the left many votes and races in November.
9
Mr. Brooks, it is Democrats who have hammered away at Trump's lies; it is Democrats who have repeatedly raised the alarm about corruption surrounding the President and his staff and cabinet members; it is Democrats who have vigorously criticized Trump's praise for dictators and enmity for allies; it is Democrats who have pushed to keep the Congressional investigations into Russian meddling honest; it is Democrats who have pushed back against Trump's immoral attacks on the environment. So maybe they aren't always putting these issues front and center in their campaigns, but it's the midterms, and they have judged voters to be more worried about health care and economic inequality than constitutional crisis. They are probably right.
19
So the desire to provide health care for Americans is “materialism,” David.
Got it.
What of the GOP tax cuts for the 1%? Not materialistic?
This argument is absurd, even for a republican lackey like yourself.
23
It’s really not the Democrat’s job to take on a mob of nationalist’s who constantly lie & scream. It’s your nasty party to fix, not the Democrats!
15
Dear Mr. Brooks: I agree with much of what you say in your column today. The democrats need better strategies. But what about the GOP and what they have done by lying and obfuscating to the citizens of this country for decades? Are you ready to expose the Republicans fully? Because you have a podium of privilege in a world class newspaper I wonder why you are still an enabler to the Republican party and it's plan to demise the U.S.A. Where is your outrage? Your success in life is dependent on the democratic process held dear to our political system. Would you be as secure economically and politically if you lived in another less democratic country? You owe it to the rest of the nation to shout out of a window "I'm mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more." While you are at it, will you please divulge who are you voting for in November and why? Thank you, an avid NYT reader
10
That does it. I'm done with reading David Brooks' column. His desperation is leading him in strange directions, and I'm tired of being disappointed. Not a deep or rational thinker.
16
So by this argument the party that rammed through a $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthiest in our society is not the materialist party. The party whose leader cannot bring himself to break from the Saudi royal family in the face of a real "political hit job" involving a bone saw, justifying his lack of action with an appeal to save billions in arms deals, that is not the materialist party. The party that denies the reality of our changing climate while sucking vigorously at the teat of Koch Brothers money is, somehow, not the materialist party.
Mr. Brooks, this does not make for a good argument.
15
What are the candidacies of Gillim, O'Rourke, Ocasio-Cortez, Keitenkamp, Stacy Abram's . . . have you not heard them????
5
I find it very disheartening to read the way Mr. Brooks declines Trump's grammar. If it is true what he writes, then nothing has any meaning any more. Morals, ethics, mutual love, community - all worthless "materialist" concepts for Mr. Brooks. What a nightmarish landscape he paints. If I understand him correctly, he wants the other 50 or more % of us to start mimicking the Trump supporters in their denial of civilization, culture and civility. As their "great" leader so laconically tweets: "Sad".
8
You want a unifying theme, David? How’s this: competence versus incompetence. To quote Roy Blount Jr., referring to another republican administration also hell bent on destroying all good things our government (used to) do: if the republicans were in charge of a refrigerator, they’d define their job as melting ice.
12
Republicans play offense. There is a fundamental difference in the basic approach that Republicans take vs. Democrats take in messaging, which is representative of the differences in their worldviews.
Repubs will use any message they deem effective to win, at any cost. It is cynical, spartan, and often amoral. What matters is winning, even if that means violating every "principle" they claim to stand for. "Principles" to a Republican are a just a prop, to be used as messaging tools in of themselves, until they become ineffective, (i.e. free trade).
Democrats still make the political mistake of trying to appeal to electorate with reason. Inherently in politics, this is not a message at all. It assumes the electorate is well informed enough to make well-reasoned decisions. Most people are not.
Until the Dems learn to create a narrative with the goal of winning as opposed to academic lecture, they will always be playing defense. Unfortunately, this requires being wired differently than most Democrats fundamentally are. Social Darwinism tends to favor those hell bent on winning at all costs.
9
The silence of the Republican's in congress regarding the daily lies and ineptitudes of Trump has been eclipsed only by the silence of the Democrats. Can you imagine if it were Obama?
2
Mr. Brooks, you could give a more helpful message to voters for the upcoming election. It is that everyone needs to vote only for Democrats so that decency, informed and thoughtful decisions, honesty, and respect for everyone involved in our democratic republic (Which of course includes people who disagree with you.) stands a chance of returning to at least some of our national leaders. It has become apparent that no elected Republicans have the courage to actually vote against Trump on anything and are endorsing his boorish behavior, his lack of any morality, his false daily utterances, his general stupidity, and his authoritarianism.
6
Democrats should be running as the only party that embraces the still radical self evident and utterly American truth that all people are created equal. Everything else derives from that.
10
Damned if you {x}, damned if you {y}. Talk healthcare? why not take on Trump's amorality? Talk Trump, why not focus on issues, a "message," etc. etc. If I didn't know better, I'd think Republicans, even NeverTrumpers (is Brooks one?) had only one thing to add to this mess: Democrats are wrong.
There is know known solution to Trumpism, because it is completely unprecedented. If Democrats are talking about healthcare 60% of the time, that leaves plenty of time to talk about Trump's amorality at length also. And as far as I can tell they are.
9
Why pretend that principles matter. Conservatives have succeeded because they have always positioned Democrats as "taking away" something you love--your guns, your right to sell your wares according to your religious beliefs, your opportunity to use the environment for economic security, jobs that should be held by "real Americans." And then they gut our justice system and destroy our infrastructure and social contract--all while the truth be damned.
There is no path to empathy through outrage. Holding one's nose and looking the other way is how Trump made it this far.
Republicans want to take away health care coverage--it has the merit of being true. Use it.
8
Since when is health care a materialist issue? Proper affordable health care is a very basic moral issue, and it represents concern for all members of our society.
But to state this in moral terms would invite more of the savage attacks on the values of "libtards" that we have witnessed since 2016. It's far better to keep it simple and effective.
12
To have successful communications between people there needs to be a common language and mutual understanding and openness, which demands trust. Lack those factors and communications will not be satisfactory.
Right now Trump is deliberately sowing mistrust and misrepresenting reality and the Republicans are buying into to it, 8 out of 10. In addition, he has the attention of a lot of independents and former Democrats, all buying into untruths but trusting in Trump's good intention towards them so that they are indifferent to everything he does that they consider to be unworthy of a President.
Now how are Democrats going to convince these people to change their attitudes and open up with them when they clearly loath Democrats and refuse to consider that the Democrats have anything in common with them?
2
Well done, Mr. Brooks
I have for over thirty years started and run the largest (no longer largest) private human rights NGO in Poland for Eastern Europe. I have a PhD in Constitutional Law specializing in human rights. I say the latter for from my experience as a Canadian Jew of holocaust survivors it is that we see that the way out rising of economic disparity is culture. To succeed (i.e., less violence) it needs to be a sharing culture, but a culture non the less.
I will say no more here for it is a bit of a story (written fourteen books on it in other languages).
2
This the best column that Mr. Brooks has written perhaps in my memory. I fully agree with just about everything he states in it. The Democrats are so tepid and afraid of offending everyone that they don't really stand for that much, other than that they are obviously better than the Republicans.
2
When they came for the sick, the brown, the female, and the transgendered, I scoffed because the opposition was IMO not running as tight a ship as the neo-fascists in power.
Congratulations David, you chose the best party!
Enjoy your anti-materialism and your employer-provided health insurance in your ivory tower.
4
Democrats are not capable of tackling moral issues largely because they don't want to repeat Hillary's "deplorables" comment. Let's face it, they think it & and believe it. The health care argument is yesterday's debate...
1
This is what the complicit Republicans have encouraged, they must be proud.
https://www.facebook.com/131459315949/posts/10156257486345950/
oh really? how about you change the title to
"The Materialist Party. The Republicans fail to take on Trumpism."
Then let's have a conversation, Sir.
5
David Brooks....as always you miss the point. midterm elections are primarily about what's happening in your community and in your life. what's happening in DC is secondary. if the dems ran a national campaign about trump, it would force candidates to talk about democratic norms and processes rather than the issues that get voters to polls. seriously, dude, you need to get out more. stop having nice DC dinner conversations and actually meet some real folks in Colorado or Tennessee.
5
The populists are rejecting the fundamental principle of democratic government, mutual trust. They do not trust anyone outside of their tribe. Now how does one change their minds? How does one convince them to trust in the basic decency and common cause that they have with the other, the stranger?
What made this country work was not some cultural blending, but the sense that despite difference we could work towards common goals, most material ones. Catholics were treated so badly in the early 19th century that whole regiments of immigrant Irish joined the Mexican Army during the war with Mexico. Even Kennedy had to deal with being the first Roman Catholic elected President. The participation of all groups in the growth of the country and in fighting wars are what brought people to trust each other and to accept each other as countrymen.
Trump is playing on fears and differences, exaggerating them for political advantage. At this time in our history, anyone who buys into that is not going to be swayed by any argument about it not being nice to act like a jingoist and a bigot. If their lives have not taught them that then they are off on some other planet. Seriously, they are deluded.
3
David Brooks wants us to know that we have a treasure trove to pull from to help win the elections if we look straight into the flaming eye of the cultural moment that we are in: Donald Trump is a fascist and he's trying to make America in his image.
Lets include the fact that Trump cannot tell the truth. This alone is more than enough to impeach Trump. Scratch a liar and you find a thief. How about the fact that he has positioned himself into being the leader of a racist cult? Kind of a big cultural issue. What about the fact that he has ruined the reputation of America and daily attempts to strip us of our basic protections. Health care is an issue any sane person would find important, but if Trump's cultural "charms" succeed we will have concentration camps (oh, yeah, we already do) and the regular murder of journalists. Health care? Pshaw. Give me death instead...wholesale. Yay.
I think Trump has the ability to become an American Hitler. He is filled with hate and lots of violent thoughts. That should be an issue all colors and creeds can see. Goodbye America as we know it if Trump is not stopped. Talking like Brooks wants us to is an ugly, ugly task. Maybe too ugly for the newspaper. We will all be the subjects of a psychopathic mob boss. By then healthcare won't even be an option. If you're poor you will be expected to die just like it was before Obama. America is being culturally poisoned to make robbery easy. Trump wants me dead. Good enough, Mr. Brooks?
5
Trump is a narcissistic abuser of his party and the American people. All retorts and arguments against his behavior and policies are rebutted with more maddening lies. What's next, 'go low', fist fights? It's a far better strategy to simply not engage with their crazy-making and build a local ground game. And that is what the Democrats are doing. Unfortunately the news media sticks to the Trump antics like fly paper. Try covering the full town halls and the platforms of these new, young candidates!
6
The only good line in this piece is “you can’t fight something with nothing”. Democrat party has nothing, and will lose badly in the midterms.
4
Yes, the Democrats have a lot of work to do to figure out what they stand for as a party, but please no more Republicans telling us what to do. Brooks, Stephens, Douthat, clean your own fetid house which is reeking ever so much more than that of the Democrats.
5
David Brooks, like his conservative colleagues, Ross Douthat & Bret Stephens, can't stop himself from giving moronic advice to Democrats. For reasons that elude me, he (and they) under the impression that there are real Democrats out there who listen to him (& them).
Believe me, we don't. No matter how poiite you are, how amiable you are, how (apparently) concerned you, we know you are not on our side, and never have been--and never will be.
We know that what you want is the same thing Donald Trump wants, only without the vulgarity and the threats of violence. We know that what you want is a return to the Good Old Days, when conservative white men ruled the roost & the rest of us knew our place. We know what you want, and all your "friendly" doesn't fool any of us.
8
Indeed, Democrats promise things that require money. Duh. Please explain to Republicans that nothing gets done without money. You can't start even the smallest business without money. Big businesses can't grow bigger without spending or borrowing big sums of money. Being capitalists, you'd think they would know that. As politicians, they seem to understand it when it comes to the military or some Congressman's pet development project back home that puts money in his cronies' pockets, if not his own. Deficit-financing, or "leveraging," is fine with them if their cronies benefit from the project or program. Build that wall! because they have contractor buddies who will donate generously to their next campaign. But let Democrats want to help sick people get medical care or bright, ambitious young people get a college degree, and it's "How you gonna pay for it?" and "Tax-and-spend liberals gonna raise your taxes!" I wish Democrats would start calling out the free-spending habits of Republicans every time Democrats are harassed about the cost of something they want to do for ordinary Americans. Have those Republican pork project budget items and total military and foreign aid spending figures on an index card and carry it all the time.
4
Unfortunately it is hard to translate Mr. Brooks thesis into political strategy. It is also hard to fight against a party of amoral candidates who will say any lies that gives them an advantage. We are in a new era of carnival. Those who vote against Trump or for Democracy are clear that the Republicans do not stand as patriots. Those who vote Republican are either driven there by the Fear buttons (abortion, immigration, "socialism") or simple greed (the 1% who are not truly patriotic in the grand sense nor truly "Christian").
6
I disagree. The Democrats definitely can beat something with nothing. If you see a lunatic with a crowd surrounding him yelling at himself and harassing people as they walk by, does it really make sense to engage him? Does it make sense to try to convince the people listening to him that their profit is a fool? Everyone who has an ounce of reason, or even the capacity to reason, knows what Trump is. Everyone else is a lost cause. Why incite the mob? Just go around the corner come back with the police and a bigger mob and throw him in jail for disrupting the peace at your earliest convenience.
2
If Republicans gain ground in the senate Mr. Brooks it's because GOP leadership has embraced Trump and ignored all the despicable aspects that he's brought to the White House. I study the photos from Trump rallies in some attempt to understand how my fellow Americans can support this abomination of a man. The lies, the contempt for others who disagree with him, calling the press enemies of the people and insulting women are unconscionable I thought. Guess I'm wrong. We are a nation with some very ugly, hateful and distasteful citizens.
4
When David Brooks starts calling the GOP the 'Culture Party', and the DNC the 'Materialist Party', you know that George Orwell's long-ago warnings have come true: up is now officially down. For those of us still 'woke', it is pretty obvious why the GOP doesn't want to talk about money. It's the same reason a dieter doesn't want to talk about cake.
8
Did you really just equate living because you have health insurance to bring materialistic? Look, the Democrats do have a counter narrative: society is a social contract between its citizens. Part of that contract is we educate our children, we do not let our citizens starve, we do not let our citizens die of treatable conditions because they can’t afford health care, we expect our citizens to pay taxes proportional to their income as members of our society. That is not materialism, that is patriotism.
10
@Susan: Brava!
1
Sorry Mr. Brooks, Trump is not questioning US morality or culture. He is speaking to the long held ideas of the white majority in the US. That argument is we -- i.e., white Americans -- are the rightful owners of this country and all others are interlopers. This nativist argument is not new and the white US population has been nativist from the beginning.
Somehow or other, white Americans don't understand they too are immigrants! The US economy was built on the backs of slaves and poor people. Now, the US economy is maintained by putting all of the burden on working class people. Nothing has changed
Your argument that Democrats are materialist party fighting for benefits for all and equal rights for minority groups misses the challenge Trump presents to the nation does not hold water. The notion that every can has to stand on its on bottom has always applied to people not businesses. Government at all levels have had no problems putting private business on the dole. It's people that government has a problem putting on the dole.
Its pass time that government, at all levels, take the welfare of the public into consideration. The morality you hold so dear is a false morality. At the heart of morality is to take care of your neighbor as you would take care of yourself. This one "law" is the highest morality. If the Democratic Party is able to get the public to realize that people come before business and public morality, all else will change.
2
Living where I do, I come in contact with many hard-core Republicans and Trump lovers. The main interests of the people I talk to are their religious faith, abortion and gun rights.
Many of them have the idea that Democrats only like undocumented immigrants, black people, gays, lesbians and transgenders.
Yes, they are concerned about healthcare, but it's way down on the list.
4
The senate was always out of reach, or at best, a very long shot. - 40 or more seats in the house and it's game on for trump and the supreme court. Can anyone say 5 to 4 decision, without wincing?
1
It could be that, in attempting to woo Trump supporters, Democrats appeal to materialistic concerns because they believe that appealing to moral concerns would be like singing to the tone-deaf.
1
State and local politics affect readers' daily lives far more than what goes on in Washington.
Although national media outlets sometimes have decent journalism when they're not putting out propaganda, the average voter does not get enough news about the pure unadulterated cronyism coming out of Sacramento, Helena, Pierre, Hartford, and Carson City. It is these policies that are truly raping the middle class.
In fact, one set of policy prescriptions that may be inappropriate at the Federal Level are wholly appropriate at the State level.
To the extent national media organizations are corporate citizens rather than manipulative mockingbirds, They should make an effort to inform the voter of what is going on in their own backyards. The pitiful excuse for "debate" in California's governor race is a case-in-point, and don't even get me started on the California Air Resources Board, CalTrans, or Cal WaterFix.
Mr. Brooks has a point here. Democrats have not taken the moral high-ground in defiance of Mr. Trump to the degree they should. Democtrats need swing votes to take the house and Senate, and a better appeal needs to be made to these voters.
Well, David is Dem-bashing again. But if there is a point in all his blather it is that no Democrat is making talking about democratic values as central to their campaign. Rather they are all mostly talking about bread-and-butter issues. Maybe it IS time to challenge Americans to live up to their democratic values. Who knows, though. It is important to WIN this campaign, rather than go down honorably.
2
I disagree with those commenters who fault Brooks for overlooking the angst and ink spilled in 2016 until today on the increasingly futile cry that Trump is an evil, morally bankrupt person helping the very rich meet their vision of supremacy. That is obviously true, and as many have noted, no one currently enthralled by Trump seems to care.
Healthcare is a paper-thin issue, easily batted down in campaign times by Republicans simply changing their espoused positions, however cynically and with the likelihood they will do nothing about it in their quest to deny as much healthcare as possible to the public.
This is particularly true in the current Democrat narrative where health care tends to stand alone as an issue, without being integrated into a more comprehensive and coherent story of what Democrats stand for and how they (we) will address the angry concerns that are igniting a lot of ordinary (i.e., mostly white, mostly middle class) people on the right. Perhaps Democrats do not know what that story is or should be.
Or if they do, the problem is that Democrats do not speak with a clear, consistent voice. At some point, this will be a necessity if they are to prevail in an anti-democratic, jury-rigged voting system in which Republicans have seized the upper hand again and again.
1
The prime mover of our economic system is the desire of rich people to get richer. Some might call this greed, others just reality. Both parties are heavily subject to the gravitational pull of this force, but to suggest that the Democrats are the "materialist" party is alternately naive, preposterous, and insulting. Trump's election and his continued support was and is the result of a certain cadre of wealthy individuals caring about their own bottom line. They get their political support by having "branded" a certain version of America that resonates with enough of the electorate, largely white and male. They hate the fact that America is as much based on the protection of minorities from the tyranny of the majority as it is on any other principle.
The Democrats have plenty of flaws, but please spare us the "materialist" label.
6
Dems talk about healthcare, Repubs say "Where is your counter narrative to Trump?" Dems talk about Trump, Repubs say "Run for something, not against Trump".
1
I'm normally well on the side of those who think Brooks should tend a conservative garden.
This time, I think he's on to something. There are a lot of people in the middle who are persuaded that Trump is bad, and that he's dragging Republicans along with him.
But Dems as a party are merely defining themselves as not-Trump. It's insufficient to the moment, and means that once again, this election will come and go without a semblance of mandate or direction.
2
What do you want from us?! Whatever we do is never good enough right enough or on point enough. That strategy of calling Trumpism didn’t work! Why not spend the rest of the news cycle reporting on the dems and what they are doing instead of once again blowing up the networks with Trump Trump Trump. That is what will lose us this election again. Trump this, Trump that. I am sick of it and prefer the positives of Medicare for all and a return to civility in actions
It’s all about cheap labor, consolidation of wealth, citizens as nothing more than consumers.
I used to think of David Brooks as a gentleman. Now I don’t think of him at all.
2
"But the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism."
That's because the Democrats are behaving like you want them to: like Conservative Republicans. Is there no pleasing you?
1
All dead wrong except for the last premise: "These days, culture is more important than economics."
What the Democrats do or don't do makes not one iota of difference when it comes to the success or failure of "Trumpism."
Trumpism succeeds not in spite of any Democratic efforts to undermine it. It succeeds because a majority of American voters now believe everything that Trump, Fox News, and Alt.right pedagogues tell them to believe.
For this new majority, the American standard is hatred, voilence, bigotry, and cynicism, to name just a few of their patriotic virtues.
Indeed, this kind of culture is more important to the majority than economics - and everything else.
Okay, so you got that one thing correct. Now, did somebody mention something about "Democrats"? What are those things, and what do they have to do with anything?
1
I might not agree with Mr. Brooks with Democrats being the materialist party but they are sure are bad at winning elections.
If Mr. Trump was a Democrat and Democrats were controlling both houses of Congress, I assure you that Republicans will be winning minimum 50 to 70 seats in the House and 3 to 4 seats in the Senate.
As I always say, Democrats are like College professors with good ideas, while Republicans are car salesmen.
2
"It has now become evident that Republicans are better at politicizing cultural issues ..." Did you mean just "now evident" in the last half-century?
1
If wanting to address healthcare for Americans makes Democrats "materialistic", how to you reconcile the cognitive dissonance you must of, Mr. Brooks, of the Trump brand and lifestyle? If gun sense legislation that protects communities and children is "materialistic", what do you consider Mr. Trump's not paying taxes to enlarge his wealth? If respecting and empowering women and minorities is "materialistic", what do you call Trump's excessive golf outings? You are grasping at straws, Mr. Brooks, by looking for anything to critique of the Democrats' compared to the mess of a Republican Party. If being "materialistic" as how you define it in your article is wrong, Democrats shouldn't want to be right.
5
Brooks is always civil, but at the end of the day he's still a republican. I don't think it would benefit the Dems. to pay too much attention to him.
David Brooks is totally wrong on this issue. When anyone attacks our current president about his constant lies, racism, misogyny, anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT tactics — to mention just a few negatives he has — he only grows stronger and grabs more headlines. The upcoming election is very local, congressional district by congressional district. Even senatorial and gubernatorial races are individual to each state. It is best for the Democrats to ignore our current president as much as possible and emphasize issues that matter in each location. The Republicans would like nothing better than to turn Nov. 6, 2018, into a national referendum.
2
"It has now become evident that Republicans are better at politicizing cultural issues and Democrats are better at offering economic benefits to those who are struggling." This is news? Ever hear of abortion? Gay Marriage? This has been the playbook of Republicans forever. The change is they now care nothing about the deficit or foreign policy. They are morally bankrupt and are morally and fiscally bankrupting this country.
So, according to Brooks, Democrats should make this all about Trump. Because that worked so well in 2016???
I'm really curious to know exactly how he would propose we Dems campaign: if pointing out the negative consequences of Trump's racism and bigotry are just sjw whining, and the principled Pro-American conservatism of politicians like Flake and Corker is such a lost cause that many
moderate Republicans are losing or leaving the fray by retiring, what does that leave Dems to run on? What's left? We've been pointing out Trump's lies and corruption since the beginning. Why do you so seem sure that suddenly the electorate cares???
3
Wow! Who'd a thunk that Healthcare would be considered a material thing! Now, bigger tax breaks to buy more yachts - THAT'S material!
4
Robin Lakoff has been saying this for years. Obama attempted to invoke the American social contract repeatedly, but he never kept it up very long. Is Joe Biden our only hope?
Trump's (and by default the GOP's) message is, Our country was once great, but has been laid low by the "Other" (including but not limited to, people of color, immigrants, gays, lesbians, poor people etc.} The "Other" have one thing in common and that is to take away what you have worked hard for.
So despite what Brook is arguing, Trump's message is based on economics. "They want what you have!"
Trump and the GOP are masters at using emotional wedge issues to frighten voters into voting against their own interests.
1
Make America civil again.
Vote for checks and balances.
Vote for honest leadership.
simple themes, easy to understand.
3
Mr Brooks, as well as most commentators here, miss the current situation by wide mark. Trump is not the reason, he is the result. The result of a poorly educated, deeply divided, badly led, self destructive nation. He is us.
2
You can tap dance around it with all kinds of fancy language, but those who support Trump see an improving economy and a strong leader who will protect us from the hordes that would destroy our country from without and the liberals who would destroy it from within. The brainwashing was been very effective.
2
Mr. Brooks, you saying Dems are selling materialism, even though your bosom buddy, ‘President’ Trump is the one shouting from the roof top that he must sell arms to his Saudi buddies, because it is worth $100 billion! Isn’t that extreme materialism? By the way, Saudis have coveted Islamic nuclear bomb for a long time, giving humongous amount of Petro dollars to Pakistan to develop it. We better hurry to sell it to Saudis before Pakistan takes away that opportunity from us too.
No Mr. Brooks you still don't get it. The bragging and exaggeration, the insults and and history of immoral decisions, the promotion of fears of immigration. All these are just one side of Trump.
You still fail to see the other side. You fail to see the master persuader and the incredibly hard worker. You fail to see the business instinct and the single-minded loyalty.
One side is all you see and as long as you campaign against one side you will lose.
1
Mr. Brooks,
What happened to Republicans policing their own and taking some responsibility to for the horror they've enabled to undermine our institutions, rule of law and standing on the world stage? It's absurd to suggest that Democrats are a party of materialism when Republicans rammed through a large tax package that blew a $1.2 trillion hole in the economy that further eroded our ability to maintain an adequate social safety net, or maintain our domestic infrastructure. I suggest Republicans take a thorough and unflinching moral inventory before abdicating their responsibility to maintain order in their own party to the Democrats. Sheesh.
2
True enough----Democrats have not taken on Trumpism in any meaningful way. However, it is a bit disingenuous for Brooks to remain silent about the degree to which his own party continues to enable, enhance, and even promote the lies, deceit, racism, and cynicism of Trump. That is unforgivable, but apparently not as disturbing to Brooks as the ineptitude of the Democrats.
2
The Republicans are the party of “don’t take from me; leave me alone.” The Democrats are the party of “we deserve this and this and this. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.” We need a new party system.
1
Okay, David, I sort of get it. It seems you're wrestling with how to be a conservative when your party is messing with your mind. The thing is, the Prez is appealing to the ineffable -- a sad, lost longing for a lost, imaginary, perfect white guy world-- and he doesn't need to speak English to get to them -- they hear the dog whistle and understand. Democrats keep hanging out in reality; trying to be rational and stay on point -- this only works with people who have the capacity to face and deal with real world problems. Obama had a way of speaking that got to the gut feelings of real American patriotism -- but Obama could also be compassionate and practical; people sensed it if they weren't blinded by his skin color and the loathing that inspired in the Trumpers-to-be. Now they've found their man, plus he's given them a target for the empowering feeling of anger. With him they them feel strong, righteous and manly. Since the Party has lost their sense of morality, nothing will sway those who are morally lost. Let's just keep calm and vote ...
2
Trumpers don't care to show their amorality very openly.
Democrats dare not do the same.
Let’s say Democrats make this election all about the moral failing of the Republican Party? Why in the world would you think that would make a difference? This is a party that ripped babies and children from their parents arms and didn’t even care enough to keep track of where they put them. They are shameless and nothing the Democrats say will change that. Voters who support the GOP are morally bankrupt. I can only hope that turnout is strong because there are more of us than there are of them.
3
This column gets it right. We Democrats have lost our way and, I fear, will not win a majority in the House or Senate. Awful as he is, morally repugnant and ignorant as he is, Trump has tapped into the concerns of ordinary people. Can I get a good-paying job and provide for my family? Can I buy a home and a car and take a vacation each year? Do my kids have a chance to do better than I did? Will I have a reasonably comfortable retirement? For whatever reason, many Democrats have stopped addressing these and other questions. I think our party needs to start all over again. Until then, we won’t be relevant.
3
Why should those Democratic politicians waste their time listening to ordinary people on the campaign trail when they can read David Brooks’s column and share his view from high atop Mount Olympus?
1
Many of the things Brooks says in this are true, but it's time for more than just 2 parties and I, for one, am sick of the lies that our creation myth of white superiority makes out of genocide and slavery. Until those are legitimately inculcated and taught (to our vaunted children - the next generation that we care so much about making it a better place for) then it's all lies.
Mr. Brooks, the Democrats tried your suggestion in 2016 and got beat. This election is about core issues, not a popularity contest. Save your lofty issues for 2020.
Jim Harris
3
Once again immigration is being ignored by Democrats and they will pay a terrible price for it.
5
Shorter Brooks, all the time:
1) Some people in some town somewhere are doing something without the government's help. Also, they believe in God. Community!
2) The Democrats are always to blame.
2
"As a being is, so it acts".
About 6 months ago, I met a highly educated, wealthy man, a Republican who said to me, "I voted for him, but isn't he a horrible person"?
I just looked at the man, I was too shocked to respond. Isn't it true that a horrible person thinks, says, does horrible things?
Have we all lost our minds?
Really, we're back to the age of the barbarians.
3
Somehow racism, Xenophobia and “my money” as the new Republican “moral” code escaped this comparative analysis.
Most Democrats I know have deep fears of how our country will ever adjust away from this basis of Trumpism. Ever.
1
Brooks again is trying to squirm around and feel good in his Republican coat that no longer fits him. Truth is, people care more about real things that affect their lives and Health Care is gigantic. Pipe down Brooks and find yourself a new party.
3
"The Democrats fail to take on Trumpism", says Brooks.
If so, that means Brooks and the Democrats finally have something in common.
4
Exactly! If my fellow Democrats want to win, they need to end their addiction to partisan, tribal echo chambers and appeal to broad themes that will convert undecided voters. In addition to health care, about a real tax cut for the middle class, offset by tax hikes on the wealthiest? I bet there's simmering resentment out there about the Republican's bait-and-switch tax bill, and some of us, including me, have actually received a tax increase while billionaires get hundreds of millions of dollars of tax reductions.
In addition, Democrats need to reclaim patriotism, defining it the way Franklin Roosevelt did. The Republicans are vulnerable on the charge that they are not just hurting, but actually looting, the country.
Moreover, the tribal identity thing is toxic to the votes the Democrats need. For example, though not lacking compassion, the majority of American voters nonetheless do not believe their primary moral obligations include helping economically disadvantaged foreign nationals by awarding them citizenship. They'd rather help their own children. Why is that so hard to understand?
Finally, the Democrats, from Schumer and Pelosi to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, are woefully inarticulate. Margaret Thatcher realized she needed to change her accent and diction to win, and she did. Political realism may be harsh and even humiliating at times, but nowhere near as harsh and humiliating as losing to Donald Trump.
1
Mr Brooks implies that the democrats can stand on some kind of moral high ground and lob epithets at Trump. That’s a deplorable suggestion. Decent healthcare and slowing climate change are not moral dilemmas. They are essential to the existence of the USA.
1
David Brooks: The DEMOCRATS are materialistic????? Give us a break! Government money collected from taxpayers should be used for the American people, (hint: healthcare...BIGGER HINT: HEALTHCARE) not to line to pockets of the very wealthy few, and the pockets of corrupt, greedy, thieving, lying CREEPS like trump, ryan, mcconnell, et. al. I would not be surprised to learn that with this kind of A LIE--that Democrats are "materialistic" (stunningly idiotic statement if ever I heard one, and I've heard so many since donald trump came onto the political scene) -- that like most republicans, you were raised in a parallel universe, or are simply from another planet, where up is down, black is white, good is bad, and lies are truth.
3
Pathetic. "Conservatives" sell their souls to become HisbaTrump and that's the Democrat's fault? Grow a backbone. The once-Party of Lincoln wraps itself in the Confederate battle flag and says there are "good people" among the neo-Nazis?
Trump is your monster. Power at any price, the ends justify the means, good is evil and evil is good. You've debased yourselves, nationally, since Ike needed Nixon to shore up his Right wing. Trump didn't make you stupid. You made you stupid, dishonest and immoral.
When the "Conservative" party celebrates phony tax cuts paid for with deficits, puts unworthy frat boys on the Supreme Court and separates parents and children because the base like it, it doesn't matter if Trump, Cruz, Rubio or Romney is your figurehead. Your "principles" are as empty as a Trump business plan.
Your advice on how to oppose Trumpism hasn't worked, why should anyone pay attention to you?
6
In our system, the party that does not have the presidency does not have a party leader. There is no one person to craft a coherent ideological, cultural, economic message; no one person for the media to focus on.
This, coupled with the fact that our modern media is extremely fragmented, inevitably leads to a very fragmented message by the party w/o the presidency. This has nothing to with the Democratic or Republican parties.
What is happening is Democratic candidates are crafting messages specifically for their local voters. It is true that by and large candidates are not engaged in Trump bashing. Instead candidates *are* selling a mix of bread and butter / good government along with personal integrity, and belief in fairness, hard work, etc.
I disagree that Dem candidates are not providing a cultural counter point to Trump and the Repubs. They're just doing it locally.
1
Trumps poll numbers are at an all time high. Republicans are still strong at the state and local levels. Even if Democrats changed their tune would this strong base care?
2
Let’s not forget that the Dems have no real answer to the immigration hysteria that the GOP has been so good at fomenting. Talking in esoteric ideas and abstracts are fine when dealing with like minded opponents but insufficient when people feel that even if one criminally minded immigrant sneaks in, it’s one immigrant too many. As Mr. Brooks suggests this election is a missed opportunity. The Dems will be stunned to miss control of the House by just a seat or two.
3
I've said it early and often. The Democrats don't have a defined plan for America and the negativity of the GOP. Despite that, I'm voting ALL BLUE for the first time to push back against the GOP.
3
Part of the problem is that Democrats denie their popualist tradition - Midwestian Popualism - that values coummunity, ground up, rights over policy.
2
"Second, we’ve learned that when Democrats do raise a moral argument, it tends to be of the social justice warrior variety."
You know, the moral argument that women and minorities are entitled to equal rights and equal standing with straight white men is pretty legit. You should refrain from using the dismissive and derogatory term “social justice warrior variety” to describe those arguments if you want to be taken seriously.
Look, I don’t WANT to be a separate “identity” group. Dems aren’t trying to discuss women, LGBT persons, racial, ethnic or religious minorities as separate groups, it’s that REPUBLICANS (ie—you) insist on putting into place policies and social structures that marginalize those groups. I want to be treated with the same dignity and legal rights that straight white men are entitled to. YOU are the reason that “identity politics” exists.
One more time for the people in the back:
Republicans: “Let’s enact policies that harm/reduce the rights of specific groups of people, like bans on abortion after 6 weeks.”
Dems and thinking people: “Hey, that policy is unconstitutional because abortion is legal and it’s immoral because it harms women.”
Republicans: “Whaaaaa IDENTITY POLITICS! We’re all AMERICANS! Why do you divide us like this!? Gosh, you’re so terrible at messaging.”
Republicans will stop at NOTHING to blame other people for the discord and pain that they create.
7
Silly Democrats with all their appeals to fairness, equality and justice. Why can't they just settle on a more unifying message, like "keep them out!" or "lock her up!" or "the other party is evil!"
4
How's this for a column title? The Chattering Class: David Brooks Fails to Take on Reality.
David Brooks dumps on Democrats because they want to talk about issues that affect the life and death of hundreds of millions of Americans: healthcare. The health and well being of everyone, young or old, regardless of race and creed, and - most importantly - regardless of wealth and privilege, does not have sufficient moral dimension for David Brooks?
I'm tired of the David Brooks of the world. I am tired of the worthless op-ed column writing chattering class. If you know Trumpism is wrong, then why don't you use your influence to mobilize people to the polls instead of dragging the only organized political movement fighting Trump right now?
3
Thanks, Mr. Brooks, I really needed a belly laugh, and this headline gave it to me.
Of course you ignore any GOP responsibility for tRump. The party rolls on the floor waving its hands and feet in the air, burbling in babytalk: Rub m' belly, Unca Don; rub m' belly, whenever he deigns to glance their way.
But no, you point your finger at the Democrats, alone on the constitutional teeter totter, which the Group of Puppies abandoned.
But don't worry, if those ineffectual Democrats fail to get out the vote, there will be, by and by, plenty of drama and blood in the streets when nihilist Putin and his trumpuppets bring this house down.
"Democrats fail to take on Trump."
I love it.
Mr Brooks, Trump is YOUR guy.
3
Clearly your are attempting to demoralize here David that is a cheep shot but not unexpected from this reader. Perhaps you should remove the blinders and notice that the reality, especially in times of such gaping economic disparity, is more like culture informed by economics, perhaps even derived.
Dear David Brooks, stop trying to blame Democrats for the depraved depths into which your fellow travelers have descended. It's your party; do something about it and clean up your mess instead of doing what your crowd always does - offload the responsibility for work onto someone else. I have been reading your bloviating prose for years and you had no problem with any of the repulsive actions that have led to The Grifter. In fact, you encouraged most of them. What you, as an upwardly mobile parvenu, do not like is that The Grifter is so very vulgar and obvious as he guts the nation. Most of what he has done, however, you have been cheering for the last 15 years from the sidelines. Remember the old Psych 101 lesson - we tend to dislike people who exhibit traits that we find distasteful in ourselves. The Grifter is you - just writ really, really large and you don't like that mirror. Well, a pox on you and your house.
2
Pure garbage. Brooks giving advice to Democrats is like the wolf advising the chicken on how to escape! Republican's "values," indeed! Those great values like blatant voter suppression, like tax breaks for the wealthy resulting in a huge and rapidly growing national debt and threats to cut out the middle class and the poor, values like the complete corruption of the White House (How many have already pleaded guilty?). One could go on and on. You can't be serious, can you?
2
My second post here on Brook’s fascinating logic (amuck comes to mind for some reason).
This opinion piece just smacks of supreme logic so afoul it’s puzzling (to politely say the least).
Brooks lost me at "The Materialist Party...The Democrats...".
5
It looks like Brooks kumbaya moment as a community organizer is over, back to blaming and bashing Democrats for the follies of the GOP.
4
Dear Mister Brooks,
Have you given up on the Republican Party?
1
Mr. Brooks, rather than projecting on Democrats, try looking in the mirror.
2
The thing is, the people that run and finance the republican party don't really care about the cultural issues that they push at election time. Their real agenda is to cut taxes and deregulate to benefit the moneyed interests. Just look at Trump's cabinet--who they are and what they've done. The cultural stuff is just a very effective device to manipulate their ignorant and, frankly, stupid constituents.
3
This is a powerful essay, not the usual temporal, watercolor, pastel-based drivel that Brooks tends paint of fairly serious matters. We are better for this provocative essay and owe some thanks to Mr Brooks for it. Why? Because it's an overdue call to latter day pacifists to come to terms with what's at stake. If the Trump Administration is very much today's version of Jack-booted Brownshirts, and it is, and if today's GOP is every bit as toady as Vichy, and it is, then today's Democratic Party isn't unlike Jews before the Holocaust quietly being herded to their demise. The Democratic Party could learn a lot from Golda Meir and in general modern Israel which, by existential threat, had to learn to fight for change rather than hope things will get better. Trump's Brownshirts and McConnell's poodles will own what's left of this country until Democrats learn how to use smash mouth tactics. Where Brooks may be misinterpreted is in his subtle implication that thugs and bullies can be overcome by Gandhian pacifism. It was never thusly so.
Democrats govern
Republicans loot
Its that simple
3
.
It's the culture, stupid.
(I wrote that in mid 2016.)
#longlivethepatriarchy
Sure it is cultural. Our culture used to be America the "good guys", the "shining city on the hill", the moral leaders of the democratic, liberal world order, with fair rules and human dignity and rights, opposed to ruthless dictators. That should have been a starting point, from there we insist on fair waged, fair health care, fair treatment of all races and women. Why is the touchstone of our culture and values at risk? Not just here but in Philippines, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and perhaps Brazil? We all learned who we were in HS and college history, but something has changed our culture and Trump has taken advantage of it. Racism, xenophobia and now blatant "nationalism". This is how Hitler started. The Democrats are playing by the old culture rules, its true, but why are our fellow citizens willing to give up on this basic value? And what do they think will be put in its place? You obviously see the danger, and yet the general media (twitter) gives Trump a megaphone, free by the way, to lie and speak unfettered against our values every day. We live in a Reality TV show and something in that must be poisoning us. Rome fell because of Lead poisoning (maybe), we are going to fall because of voluntary brainwashing and falsehoods poisoning.
Is anyone else growing just a wee bit weary of Mr. Brooks?
He is wrong more often than he is right and lately seems to have too many columns to fill with too few great ideas. insights or themes.
Of course, we can easily gauge his predictions here in the short term, but longer term I wish the Times would look for someone to help/fill on for him.
1
Poor dumb Republicans, being "pushed back to Trump" by clueless Democrats who, instead of meeting Trump's hallucigenic "issues"..... run on health care.
2
If the Dems had gone after Trump hammer and tongs on his wretchedly immoral rule, you would have written a column about the fact that they had ignored “bread and butter” issues. You are such a classic pundit.
3
Mr. Brooks criticizes Democrats for trying to beat something with nothing, but the example he gives is that in his view Democrats are trying to beat Trumpism with health care and other policy proposals with which he disagrees (ie, something) rather than with critiques of Trump’s style (ie, nothing). I would respectfully suggest that while Mr. Brooks may not like the Democrats’ policies, his observation about their strategy has things exactly backwards.
5
David gets it.
I mailed in my ballot yesterday, and after voting for Democrats for the past thirty years, I checked every one of the boxes for the Republican candidate.
As a gay, white man getting Social Security and Medicare, I can no longer support a party obsessed - as the Kavanaugh/Ford confrontation demonstrated - by the anger of the Victim-Feminists at one half of our population: men.
I'm sick and tired of the constant accusations in the echo chamber of the establishment media, the New York "Times" in particular, that men have ALL the power, that women have NO power, that the US is a "patriarchy," etc. etc., while choosing to ignore the actuality: that the suicide rate for men is three times that for women, that women live longer than men; that an estimated 80% of the nation's homeless are men; and on, and on.
I would love to return to a new Democratic Party which addresses the rigors of capitalism for ALL Americans. But that time is not now, nor is it likely to change as long as the Democratic Party is in hock to the anger of the feminist politics of victimhood.
And, yes, I know: there is more than enough anger on the Republican side, but, you know something else? They learned a lot of that from the Victim-Feminists.
Frankly, it does the real feminist cause no good to always open options for women while keeping options closed for men; or when something is wrong in society, never hold women responsible.
80
@VCR maybe you deserve the bigotry the GOP will throw at you and gays for your foolish vote for the oppressors.
And maybe you also deserve to lose your medicare/social security/free press/environmental protection by your silly vote
And maybe so do all Americans if we don't halt the slide towards autocracy while we still have the chance.
10
@VCR You collect both social security and medicare; I'm sorry to tell you that you just voted against your own interests. The Republican Party plans to cut those benefits in order to address the spiralling debt caused by their tax cut for the wealthy. Never mind, perhaps living with the knowledge that there will be women suffering from those cuts will take the sting out of your own loss in income. Happy days.
15
@VCR
because you get social security and medicare...both thanks to democrats, you are safe. You have " social security". For people who are working, who do have preexisting conditions, who find Trump and the republicans morally corrupt, life is untenable. We pay the taxes and the rich do not. They get the spoils and we get the leaves. Our wages are not going up, prices are. Our healthcare costs more than $20,000 a year and requires co pays and deductions of $4,000 prior to paying out. So, sit comfortably with your white privilege and do not care for those around you.
9
So many great observations on the state of our country. And Mr. Brooks is right. The Democrats have no answer for the cultural existential questions that Trump keeps asking. The audience, ie. the voters understand. Because Democrats don't understand the question though, they haven't even been looking for an answer...except to to the exact opposite of what Trump says. It really doesn't get any more complicated to them than that. Hillary is still speaking for the party when she says she doesn't even feel the need to be civil to Republicans (most of which live in the heartland).
It’s very rare for someone to be this completely wrong. “Coastal elites” like Brooks (and myself) are horrified what Trump is doing to our democratic values. You who doesn’t care about that? 98% of voters.
I cut back on my hours at work to help Democrats win back the House, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours volunteering for campaigns and talking to voters. Losing healthcare is visceral. Whether or not our country is holding true to our values is abstract.
Also, considering the incredible gains Republicans saw vowing to repeal the ACA from 2008-2016, it couldn’t be clearer that it IS a winning issue. This is what gets us Congress back.
4
The Democratic Party closely parallels the Republican Party on the key domestic issue of the concentration of wealth and power in the one-percenter neoliberal capitalists, and maintaining the U.S. global military presence and its wars. The Democrats’ national focus on preserving coverage for pre-existing conditions is ridiculously out of touch with the economic, social, and cultural pain experienced by poor, working, and middle class Americans of all nationalities. Trump manipulates his base’s racial and gender anxiety and right-wing Christianity to enrich the economic oligarchy and amass power for himself. The federal and state governments are two-party political machines run by PACs and corporate lobbyists. The only way to stop Trump is to democratize America economically, politically, and socially by taking money from corporate America and power from Washington and distributing it to local governments, both urban and rural, for education, healthcare, housing, daycare, and infrastructure.
4
I've heard a great explanation for this perceived struggle with the "message" of the left.
Each time there's been a cultural divide in America over the past 60 years, the right has staked its claim on what they saw as the winning side at the time: white, Christian, rich, male, straight. The left has indeed been in reaction mode: they've effectively said "we're not just that - we'll also include everyone else".
It's a lot easier to message to that one identity - a lot easier cling to a nostalgic mythical past, to pretend there's only one part of the country that's "real" and claim we can freely ignore and banish the rest.
It's a lot harder to actually work on resolving differences and work on realizing democracy with diverse people. There might not be an easy answer.
3
Challenge to the status quo, which Trump represents, requires forceful speech and iconoclasm. Check. Democrats have changed our culture and demography since at least the end of WWII. Today’s political clashes are proxy wars fought on a surrogate battlefield that are just beginning.
Trump, or no Trump, the struggle for the future of our country will continue. The Democrats are way ahead. But they recognize a threat when they see one and react accordingly. This showdown was foretold 50 years ago
1
I have never fully understood where you come down on issues or if you understand the issues. The morale narrative that you are talking about defending is playing itself out on on TV every night. Your assumption is that this lack of morality is permanent so therefore Democrats needs to restore it. No, it is not permanent and people are aware and smart but frustrated. Temporary lapses don't justify not highlighting some serious and long lasting facts. It might take a while for everyone to sober up to those facts that affect them but they will eventually and naturally prevail.
Sometimes you have to let the fire to burn itself out.
1
Mr. Brooks points out that the Democratic party cannot chew gum and walk at the same time . Why is it an either /or decision. Why can't the Democratic "brain trust " come up with a platform that shows that a more diverse and non-authoritarian U.S. will result in a more prosperous country ? Many of us already believe this , lets work to convince the rest of the country.
2
There are times Mr. Brooks is so prescient he causes shivers. It's obvious the Democratic Party has made extremely small gains despite the not only huge unpopularity of Donald Trump, but despite an almost visceral anti-Trump reaction of most Americans.
The issue is not purely material - it is cultural. For those of us who think in moral terms, it is specifically moral. The Democratic Party, whether we love it or not, has failed to offer a unifying counter-narrative to the obscene manipulations of the Trump Administration.
What this article fails to fully articulate is that the Republican Party is a _de facto_ far more materialist party than the Democrats, just better at misdirection through political speech. It is the Republicans who run anti-spiritualist and immoral candidates; it is the Republicans who declare "there are no facts" (Reince Priebus) and the President chooses "alternative facts." It is the Republicans who leverage the tax system to create an endowed, protected aristocracy.
The Democrats fail to see this because they are equally beholden to Materialism (especially the Friedmann variety) but poor at Machevellian strategy. If they could only express a coherent vision that speaks to the character of America, they probably would take both houses.
222
@pastorkirk
If in this day and age, after all the damage to our world that Trump and the Republicans are doing and continue to do, which we have all witnessed and you still need a Democrat to spell it out to you in just the right way, just the right message , then you were never going to vote for diversity, fairness, values, a clean world, or basic kindness. You were always going to lean towards Trump's view of humanity. I have met no one who needs these things explained to them on deciding their vote. By this time I think it is very clear where each of us stands on how to treat each other. I am not sure how the differences could be made more clear in just watching and listening to what this man and his allies and doing and saying.
6
No Marie. Politics is all about passion. If you cannot muster it, you will persuade nobody with your cool confident common sense, no matter how much you think it obvious. If that is what you believe, tears await in a few weeks hence.
@pastorkirk
You make some excellent arguments, except the parts where Mr. Brooks prescience "causes shivers", and that a better articulation of our "vision" would probably result in winning both houses of congress.
Your third paragraph totally shreds what Brooks was trying to say. After reading dozens of similar reader rebuttals, it almost makes me believe that he wrote this column just to annoy us, not necessarily because he actually believes it.
It's hard to know if he's really as obtuse as he seems or if he's intentionally trolling us.
4
If you want to know how the Democrats are blowing it, read the comments in the article on the migrant caravan.
Americans may be open to a lot of things. But when half the immigrants in this country are here illegally--based on the new Yale study cited by the Times that found 22 million here illegally among 45 million total--people want to hear something from Democrats about the caravan of thousands making for our border.
The Democrats have made a strategic decision to avoid discussing immigration before the midterms and instead focus on healthcare.
Maybe that's wise. But it is also leaving them open to accusations of wanting open borders and to put all 22 million people here illegally on a path to citizenship.
163
@Talbot The Republicans control the House, Senate and White House and they don't have an answer for immigration, outside of blaming Dems. If you drill down on the subject you find Republicans don't agree on the issues and have no interest in solving the problem. So with Republicans in power they need to govern and blaming Dems is short sighted.
9
@Talbot
It’s a cynical voter recruitment strategy, nothing else.
3
@Talbot What should Democrats say about a bunch of folks traveling through another country? What do you say? We could bomb them, I guess; would that help? We could enact new laws to, what? stop them at the border, maybe. Well, current laws stop them at the border. They don't just waltz through; they'll be stopped, their request for entry considered and, according to our stringent laws, they will be turned away or permitted entry provisionally.
A majority of Democrats like that our borders are protected in such a fashion. Please tell me what fault you find in this.
12
GOP stitches together a Frankenstein’s Monster of abject, amoral Greed, Corruption, Lies and Fantasies... sets it loose upon the nation... howls with delight as it destroys everything in its path...
... and the problem is... Democratic “materialism”.
uh... right.
349
Brooks, like Parker over at the WAPO, just will not admit reality. I could barely stop myself from laughing out loud when I read this drivel.
Let me get this straight, Mr. Brooks. You're letting the GOP ( your party ) leadership and every member of the GOP controlled House and Senate off the hook for containing Cadet Spanky McBonespurs outragious behavior and actions. And instead, choosing to blame the "materialsm" of the Democrats. There are no words to explain how tortured your reasoning appears.
However, Mr. Brooks has a lot of company by joining the recent chorus of never trumpers who are shouting about their percieved lack of direction in the democratic party. While, completely failing to recognize their part in this governmental fiasco.You can hear it every day on Morning Joe.
Mr. Brooks opinion pieces appear to be generated from the maxim..."often wrong, never in doubt."
Enough nonsense Mr. Brooks, get real.
11
When did David Brooks become a campaign strategist?
3
Oh good Lord. Another round of finger-wagging at Democrats from David "how does he keep getting paid for this?" Brooks.
The Democrats are "pinioned" to healthcare? Well guess what, so am I, and so are millions of Americans who know that policy decisions about healthcare are matters of life and death (something an unjustifiably wealthy man like Brooks couldn't possibly understand).
Though, to be honest, I can barely figure out what Brooks is talking about here, because it's just more useless concern-trolling and chin-stroking from an overrated right-wing pundit. Democrats should do THIS...oh no wait, Democrats should do THAT! Enough already!
Here's some advice for YOU, Mr. Brooks: why don't you spend your time and word counts focused on what YOUR Republican party should do to make amends to the American people for decades of fiscal, cultural and moral damage? And why don't you start this noble journey of redemption with YOURSELF, apologizing for years of propping up and normalizing these monsters? Until then, please spare us your inane and useless musings on the only major political party in this country that is actually trying to do some good.
15
This will be the last column of yours that I waste my time reading.You refuse to evolve, admit you're wrong and seem blind to the corruption, greed,stupidity and bigotry of the GOP.Democrats believe that by helping those who have less we all profit.Take off your blinders Brooks and have a good look at your despicable GOP.Good bye.
8
Mr Brooks, why is it that all conservatives can do is project? You are so wearying to read because not only are you always wrong (unlike broken clocks), but err in such an uninspiring way.
5
It is one of those rare occasions that I agree with Mr. Brooks. This moment demands more than talk about health policy (although that is an important issue). I have hoped in vain to hear a Democrat speak about the threat to democracy itself, let alone decency, civility etc. We need to be forthright and honest, not driven by polling and consultants. Democracy is at stake in two weeks.
2
Admit it Mr. Brooks: The Republicans are simply as corrupt as their leader D. J. Trump. They lie like Trump. They support massive debt like Trump. They hate like Trump. They demote democracy like Trump. It is institutionalized corruption that drives the Republican Party, and you know it.
10
couldn't disagree more. Donald Trump is not running for election in 2018. running against him only pushes more of his base into the contest. When Donald Trump runs in 2020 then that is the time for the moral and cultural debate. In the meantime Independence don't need to become Democrats, we just need for them to vote four Democratic candidates.
1
Mr. Brooks,
Bull. Wrong again.
5
Lets see who want healthcare for all you are a communist. If you want illegals treated as humanly as we treat our chickens you are a race traitor. If you are Pro Choice you are a baby killer. If you are against sexual abuse you are a femnazi. If you care for the poor and want more just society with equal opportunity of everyone, you are a libtard. If you value science and facts you are a snowflake, If you protest heavy handed police actions you are Antifa. Koch, Mercer and Adelson and Russian money via the NRA tens of Million of dollars are good but Soros' millions and he a international globalist, "Jew" There is not a Liberal equivalent of Jeanne Pirro screeching DEMON RAT on FOX NOISE a new low on cable news if there ever was one.
Never underestimate how deep pockets of extreme conservatives and the propaganda media of FOX and Sinclair news can distort politics when they completely abandon objectivity. The GOP's complete abandonment of truth and decency in politics is a difficult nut to crack.
Democrats are right to pick their battles. the extremest GOP Conservative mob ad machine is a well oiled Cabal.
8
I disagree somewhat with the characterization of Democratic efforts, but the truth that does lie therein is based on two facts about American government.
1. This is a Republic. And, it is one designed to give disproportionate power to the minority of voters. This has been exacerbated over the years by extreme Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression, now to become much harder to counter because of the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the invasion of far right conservative judges in lower courts via Trump.
2. Too many people don't vote. The ones that do tend to be the ones most intent on controlling everyone else rather than negotiating; the ones that don't often tend to have learned that they get screwed whoever is in control, so why bother. It's not quite true, but our education system is so poor that millions of people can't discern the truth. Theoretically, America should be the country that has the highest voter turnouts during elections. Not even close.So much for all of our rhetoric about the Constitution and We The People.
Democrats are forced to the economic appeal because the cultural one doesn't work against the tide of the minority wagging the national dog. They are attacked for "identity politics" and 'globalism" when they try culture. America has degraded away from the common story, sadly. And too many of those who feel our identity...just don't vote. Even immigrants endangered by Trump!
3
Conflating providing for people’s basic needs - healthcare, shelter, nutrition - and working to provide equal opportunity for all - funding education - with any sort of materialism is dishonest, at best. And to believe we can have equal opportunity without ensuring basic needs are met ignores fact-based/evidence-based reality. Just stop.
9
"Their basic political instinct is that you win votes by offering material benefits" is quite the glib assessment. Democrats want societal benefits to exist not just because the recipients are voters, but because the benefits -- as the words themselves suggest -- reverberate throughout society. The student who can afford an education becomes the researcher who cures a disease. The patient not driven to bankruptcy by medical debt becomes the citizen living a productive life, enriching his community (both literally via expendable income and figuratively), paying taxes, etc.
But I'll give you this much, Brooks: that's the "common story" you're asking the Democrats to better highlight instead of focusing on the material benefits themselves. Perhaps a slogan like, say, "Stronger Together" would be more to your liking?
4
The Democratic Party should have done deep research on what messaging will split away the faction of Republican-leaning voters who are truly disgusted by the racist policies of division currently being pushed by the braying ass in the White House. The base of the GOP is a bunch of insecure white nationalists and Christian fundamentalists, but this does not capture all Republicans. Many of them come to the party for a variety of other reasons. These Republicans can be shamed into backing away from their allegiance to a party that has metastasized into a vile cancer before their eyes. This is the thrust of Brooks' argument. We do not help the viability of the Democratic Party by attacking this message. Merely arguing that the Dems offer better material benefits is not enough.
It's maddening that the Repubs can lie, cheat and steal all day long and screw their supporters left and right but their supporters just keep blindly supporting them. Will they ever learn? How screwed can they get before they figure it out?
Meanwhile the Dems keep trying to put in place policies that actually help people and they get screwed by the structural defects in our political system (right-wing biased electoral college and senate).
4
By now every woman of every color on the verge of becoming more liberal or vote Democrat has already become that, thanks to MeToo and Trump’s disparaging comments. Like a recent NYT opinion expressed there will continue to be significant number of women who will vote GOP no matter what, either for religious reasons or financially conservative ones. Same goes for Hispanics. African Americans and LGBTQ have historically voted for Dems. It’s a wasted resources to keep these voting blocks convinced they should vote DEMs. Also the gun control battle is lost: the GOP has won it. No point talking about it unless there’s a chance of veto/proof majority in Congress, or at state level like CA. Hence the Democratic Party should distinguish itself not on cultural or social issues, not on identity politics, but instead on pocket book, kitchen table issues that affect all regardless of political affiliation. It was indeed identity politics that lost Hillary 2016. At the moment and for some years to come, LGBTQ and left-leaning immigrant community will continue to be a fraction of the overall Democratic voting base, much less of the entire US population. Focusing on those communities may garner sympathy but not votes.
1
I have a theory about voting. I think that sometimes when people get very unhappy about their own lives, they deliberately start voting for candidates and political parties they believe will make the country unhappy for other people, regardless of the cost to themselves.
To the extent that my theory is correct, Trump is essentially a punishment that his supporters are inflicting on the rest of us.
9
David, are you serious? Do you think pointing out the conspicuous moral failings of Trump and of his fear mongering politics will sway his “base”? Those 40% are either morally bankrupt or have come to believe that Democrats are an evil far worse than someone with the conspicuous moral failings of Trump.
2
Davex, We have beek taking on Trumpism sonce before he thought of running or at peast made the final decison to run. With Bull’s help.
If you think 'the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment' you haven't taken a look at what Beto O'Roarke is doing down here in Texas.
Everyday he fights for 'respect and a sense of what's right' for all us. If you want to see a Democrat changing the culture of Trumpism, all you have to do is listen to the man talk. We're lucky to have him.
Go Beto
6
Trump now owns and defines the Republican party. Democrats do not seem capable of mounting a unified, cohesive response. Is it time for a third party to rise up from the middle in an attempt to unite moderate conservatives and liberals? Compromise and sensibilty sound better to me than the deep divisions we now experience. It appears to be the only way out of this mess
1
"Culture" is clearly not the important consideration for most of the president's supporters.
Nativism is not culture. Racism is not culture. Misogyny is not culture. Bullying is not culture. They are tools being employed by the political equivalent of a three-card monte dealer to make his marks feel like they are winning.
The fact that his accomplice is lifting their wallets as they lean forward to collect their $1 winnings is irrelevant. They come forward to lick his boots because he makes them feel important and empowered, even as he takes away their health care, fails to get them the "good" jobs he promised and institutes Christian sharia.
It's pathetic.
But your expecting the Democrats to save the country from this nightmare that the Republican party foisted on us by failing to do something about him early in 2016 -- before he really got started? That's just ridiculous.
4
I disagree Mr. Brooks. I think rather than forcing the saner 2/3 of the electorate into an idealogical war, the Dems are concentrating on more pragmatic arguments. The counter to Trump isn’t anti-Trump it’s finding common ground on issues that we can all agree are import.
Trump is toxic and it seems like you’re looking to one party for the antidote. While we can help provide a counterbalance, and we will, it would be more effective to have the assistance of the center right being willing to take a stand against Trumpism rather than just ignoring him. But they couldn’t win primaries doing that and so were caught between an extremist right agenda and attempting to appeal to a moderate electorate with a distinct distaste for extremism in both parties.
4
Lose your health insurance David. ( don't wish that on anyone )
Then write about what people need.
10
Listening to David Brooks' career-long projection of blame on absolutely anyone and any thing other than conservatives and Republicans is like spending an equally long time getting twice-weekly variations from the Saudis on how Jamal Khashoggi died.
8
Of course, if Mr Brooks is so horrified by the new Totally Trump Republican Party, and wants Democrats to promote Democratic policies, he could actually become a Democrat and and advocate for those policies.
Instead, he tells the Democrats, who he doesn’t support, how to advocate positions he doesn’t support. The jfrkg
3
So we have two weeks what should be our slogan? For Brooks it seems to be "Stronger Together"....hmmm seems I heard that one.
1
If Republicans, particularly Congressional Republicans who have all violated their oaths of office, had taken on Trumpism, neither Democrats nor anyone else would have to do it.
Mr. Brooks, you're a member of a party of abject prostitutes. Is there anything more materialist than that?
10
David's like a fellow standing over the hulk of his own wrecked car giving driving advice to the passersby.
4
David. You remind me that Conservatism is merely a critcique of liberalism and not an actual ideology of its own. The economics are fuzzy, the politics are toxic. Conservatism from Friedman through to Buckley are merely a critique of progressive liberal ideas - and you are at your best when critiquing liberals/progressives. The reality of the conservative movement is that an intellectual critique of liberalism has been co opted by a toxic, racist regressive elitist ancient regime and no genuine conservative wants to face this frontally so they continue nipping at the edges critiquing the liberals, pretending that if the liberals aren't perfect then the conservatives don't even have to be coherent
7
The Democrats fail to take on Trumpism?
And what did your Republican Party do about Trumpism, Mr. Brooks?
Don't look now, David, but you're wearing it.
6
Voted early today. Five times the usual early turnout at my largely retiree polling place. I sense people are just sick of Trump and his enablers.
3
Wait, isn't Brooks among the endless stream of Republican pundits telling Democrats not to campaign on identity politics??? Make up your mind. Better yet, stop telling your political opponents what to do.
5
Party, schmarty! Trump couldn't care less about a republican or a democratic party. He's buttering the toast of anyone who will support and cheer him. He couldn't care less. I wouldn't give him the credit for "changing the party"....... the yellow-bellied republicans are grappling on to him because they think he brings power. And those who don't know how to think for themselves follow them.
5
Since when ADVOCATING HEALTHCARE FOR EVERYONE became a "MATERIALIST" ideal? Healthcare is no more materialist as basic food and shelter are to human. A party is trying to provide a fundamental necessity to this country, and you call it "materalist."
8
So David, are you finally admitting that the myth about Trump voters voting based on economics was a lie, but rather, as many have said, that he attracted the people who voted for him because he was anti immigrant, racist, bigoted towards LGBT people, claiming to be anti abortion, etc? If so then it isn't a myth , despite what you yourself have written about, that Trump voters mostly are white, rural and southern, working class voters who want to make America white again.
Arguing that Trump voters care about morality is really, really interesting, because again, what kind of morality? Donald Trump breaks ever moral rule out there, he is a sexual hedonist with multiple affairs, he has shown nothing but contempt for women, he is a serial liar (thou shalt not bear false witness, remember?) and he certainly puts himself before God; he certainly doesn't treat others as he would want to be treated, and he doesn't love others as he loves God and himself, Trump only loves himself..so where is the morality?
5
Gosh David I don't think there is anything materialistic wanting Social Security and Medicare which myself and huge numbers have paid for. I also want to have decent insurance as well as have other people healthy so we don't have people dying in the streets and potent pandemics.
I think the Republicans led by a totally vile, cruel, transactional and physically and mentally unhealthy fraud, stand for cruelty and immorality.
David Brooks you seem like a decent sort why don't you call out your Republicans in name only?
9
@Javaforce: I agree with everything you said until you called Brooks, seemingly, " a decent sort." I don't think it is "decent" to blame the Dems for the gop's corruption, cruelty, sadism, thievery, immorality, greed, arrogance, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, rot, lying, lack of character/integrity, and sexual and financial predation! And then to call the Dems "materialistic?????" Geez! Brooks is outrageously off base, and just as callous as his fellow republicans, he doesn't really care about anyone who doesn't have health care, or anyone who goes hungry. Brooks is a republican shill; a sycophant, a trump supporter. He is just like any republican who says or thinks: "I've got mine, and I don't care if you've got yours!" Because IF he CARED, he would be a DEMOCRAT. Brooks won't be calling out anyone but Democrats. He seems to like blaming them for all that is foul in the gop. republicans never find fault with all the corruption, suffering, economic upheaval, and evil that they cause; they simply turn around and blame...Obama, Hillary, or the nearest Democrat.
2
The people Trump and the GOP have hoodwinked into believing things are bad and getting worse due to "threats" posed by immigrants, minorities, foreigners and government will not be won over by pointing out that their cultural warlord is a nasty man.
We all thought Hillary could easily beat Trump by pointing out that he is an ignorant bloviating buffoon, but that didn't work.
Maybe not too late to try to show the intersection between culture and economics as more threatening than manufactured enemies.
2
Republicans love to fear and hate to love.
Democrats love to love and fear to hate.
Vote Blue and be true.
3
1) This is a midterm election. Candidates are running local or state races. The Dem playbook since 2016 has been to run local messages. If health care is important to your constituents you should absolutely be running on it. Polls show it is a topic of HIGH concern to Americans--for many it is the #1 concern. So I am VERY confused why David Brooks argues what candidates should really be running on is values. Dems have been out demonstrating their values: they call Trump on his lies, they show up to visit internment camps for people seeking asylum, they showed up for the dreamers. If Mr. Brooks is lamenting that we don't have a national policy stance as a party right now--he may be right. But for the midterms--we don't actually need one. The House isn't going to be won on "HEY--MORE CIVILITY GUYS!"
2) If I had a dollar for every white guy who cries "Identity politics" I would wad them up and choke them. Seriously. If you can't see that Trump and his base are the definition of identity politics you are wantonly burying your head in the sand. Women, poc, the disabled, LGBTQ are all asking for the same thing. We want the values codified in our founding documents. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We want to be treated equally in the eyes of the law (and law enforcement) and we want to live in a place that actually treats us equally. This isn't divisive. AT ALL. Liberty and freedom are not a zero sum game: there is enough for all, at no cost.
2
Everyone knows what Trump is by now. If someone is not already sufficiently repulsed by his boorishness, corruption, and general absence of human decency to vote Democrat, nothing is going to change his mind.
The way to win is to stop making everything a referendum on Trump. Show up, and show people that you will fight for the things that matter to them every day. Health care is the best example of that. Everyone needs health care; everyone pays a lot for it; and health issues are an outsized problem in red areas. The issue is a winner for Democrats.
Mr. Brooks is mistaken in his assessment that this is the "1980-2008" playbook for Democrats, because that period precedes Obamacare. One thing all politicians know is that no matter how much people oppose a benefit before the fact, they will not let you take it away once they have it.
Republican voters may not say it out loud, and they may not even acknowledge it to themselves, but they benefit from Obamacare. They don't want Republicans taking it away. That's critical for Democrats who are trying to win in places where appeals to transgender rights and protecting illegal immigrants just don't play.
2
Culture more important than economics? This country is all money all the time. The country cares about Wall Street, Corporations. Even the so called Christians have abandoned one God for the money God. I don’t understand Brooks here. The bottom has decided to support those who are truly only taking care of the top 5%. They don’t seem to care about themselves or their families as long as the very wealthy are well cared for.
So speaking to the materialists seems to be the only way to go. The supporters of the GOP have left all else behind.
Offering economic benefits to those who are struggling IS a moral issue. To many of us Democrats, it is the central moral issue of our times.
Rampant inequality, worse than at any time since the Gilded Age, is the wellspring from which all other resentments come. Articulating this clearly and unequivocally, however, slants the message too far to the left to win over swing voters or disaffected Republicans, so the moral issue of fairness to all is left largely implicit while we focus on the details (such as healthcare access).
1
Democrats SHOULD NOT be taking advice from people like David Brooks, a conservative elitist who refuses to acknowledge the central issue in this election, which is,
in the words of that "commie socialist" Paul Volker, that "we’re developing into a plutocracy,” and "We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive. And they don’t like government, and they don’t like to pay taxes".
THIS is the issue, and Trump is the standard bearer for this plutocracy, and Republicans who were initially concerned that Trump would give a bad name to being rich and entitled were willing to coalesce around him and protect him once it became clear that he could get away with not showing his tax returns, not divesting himself of business interests, and running the country exclusively for the benefit of corporations and their shareholders.
Republicans have shown no interest in holding Trump accountable for his financial frauds, his self-dealing and his family's shameless and unfortunately not uncommon and fequently legal way of avoiding paying taxes.
Conservatives who supposedly hate Trump have remained silent while this fraud who gamed the system and inherited enormous wealth tax free mocks Elizabeth Warren for choosing to identify as Native American in a law journal, and while their colleagues accuse Democrats of waging "class warfare" for daring to point out the entitlement of the wealthy.
314
@DebbieR
Well said!
3
@DebbieR
yup. Brooks is a super elitist.
1
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."
JFK, 1961
"Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship."
Obama, 2009
"We will follow two simple rules: buy American, and hire American."
Trump, 2017
1
I'm 45 years old and follow politics very closely and could not tell you who the Democratic speaker-house majority leader was before Nancy Pelosi
Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn -- all in their 70's...
This party is hopeless without new leadership.
1
The irony of calling the Democrats the materialists when the GOP leaders favor the extremely wealthy and Trump's apartment is filled with gold-plated everything and while the reason we can't be upset about a journalist being killed and dismembered is due to all the money the Saudis spend ! No Mr. Brooks is about the ability to stoke fear. The Republicans are great at stoking fear. Real fear is not being able to afford insulin. Real fear is not being able to get coverage for pre-existing conditions. Real fear is having a child born with a health problem. Anger comes next. Anger at a totally corrupt and irresponsible government which refuses to take care of its citizens. This is the message the Democrats need to take to the electorate. And the thing you are correct about is that they are not doing a good enough job with that. But do not call them the materialist party.
3
This is too deep an analysis of a much simpler problem. Republicans have two different but equally useful sources of support: 1) The plutocrats and wannabe plutocrats, who know perfectly well how GOP policies hurt the country, but are still fine with that, and 2) the simple folk, poorly educated, misled shallow thinkers, who like being told the things they naturally like to hear. It's so much easier to win by promising to group 2 a return to a mythical past when regular folks had a shot at a decent living, while group 1 knows full well their policies won't deliver, but doesn't care. You don't have to offer a viable program that makes sense. This looks like an unbeatable strategy.
3
David,
I have one question:
Did you use your bully pulpit to speak out against the Republican tax cuts?
If the answer is no, then you have no moral authority to judge whether the Democrats are too materialistic.
8
You had me there for a while, but lost steam and the argument completely fell apart when you start talking about social justice warriors....of course that’s what Dems should be about....that is the counter-narrative to Trump and his weak allies in the GOP....that is the rallying cry that all Dems should be making....women, people of color, LGBT....vote and have your voices heard.....
3
Mr. Brooks, and his colleague, Mr. Douthat appear to live in an alternate reality. Try as I might I have not been able to find any value in the writings of either of them for a number of months now, other than to remind me how disconnected from simple objective reality conservatives have become. Their columns say much more about their characters than about the world they attempt to describe. They would do well to take some direction from Ms. Rubin's work over at WaPo.
4
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Well, I wouldn't exactly equate Brooks with a ravening wolf, but it is silly to listen to a center-right pundit telling Democrats what they are doing wrong. Does Brooks actually want Democrats to do well, for example to win back the House, or does he want them to be a party that better represents his views? I suspect the latter. Perhaps he should write a column addressing those right of center, who still oppose Trump, and tell them how to do so more effectively. Oh that's right, why bother with a column when a few phone calls might be enough to reach the remaining handful of anti-Trump conservatives.
7
He says: "But if you think it’s motivated by cultural identity, a desire for respect, a sense of what’s right, loyalty to a common story, the Democratic strategy leaves a lot to be desired." HUH? A desire for respect - a sense of what's right? HUH? The GOP is disrespecting anyone who is not white. A sense of what's right? HUH? The words from Trump's mouth are not 'RIGHT', they are lies and the supporters KNOW he is lying. They love his unabashedly shameless attacks on those they DISLIKE intensely. I can agree that the Dems should be attacking the underpinnings of his actions, but the GOP base that supports Trump will be unmoved.
2
So, honestly, do you believe that Republicans care about truth, or honesty, justice, or a moral government, or about the killer terrorists and MS-13 gangs at our borders coming to rape our women and steal from the Treasury?
That's what Trump is selling, and that's what his fellow Pols and voters are buying.
Yes, I agree that Dems are wasting an opportunity, but the reality is smoke, mirrors, easy slogans and hate whip up the crowds in a froth unable to muscle past the niceties Dems seems to be concentrating on. Health care? Really?
A no-win situation for anyone.
The beam is in the eye of the GOP, David. You helped to put it there. It;s everybody's problem, but it's your legacy, and how, at this crucial moment in history, have you and the Conservatives and the rest of the humiliated Vichy GOP responded?
With palaver like this.
8
Who, exactly, would be the target of this Democratic campaign strategy?
People either love or loathe the president. You're not going to win over anyone by pointing out his moral failings. Any attempt to create a counternarrative will be seized by him and his minions to stir them up and get them out to the polls.
Please stop asking Democrats to do what the Republican party should have had the ... umm, guts ... to do in 2016.
6
David Brooks, you certainly can do better than this. To label Democrats materialistic because they advocate for social justice and a fair playing field by using government programs is a "stand on your head and gargle peanut butter" attempt to justify remaining in the historically materialistic party of corporations and special interests. Try again.
3
David Brooks seems to conflate materialism with empiricism. Liberal-minded people and Democrats are generally more prone to respect empirical evidence, fact, reason, logic and the scientific method as means for apprehending and validating truth claims regarding objective reality — in stark contrast to Trumpian Republicans who pathologically misconstrue their subjective beliefs, stoked by cognitive dissonance, selective inattention, confirmation bias and fear, etc., for objective, material reality.
3
Wow. In case you missed the last election, there was a huge amount of airtime and digital ink spent showing that Donald Trump is a horrible person. And he still won.
Since then has proven himself to be all those horrible things and worse. And yet his popularity with Republicans continues to grow. What exactly would you like the Democrats to do about half a country that thinks that way?
532
@cellmaker "What exactly would you like the Democrats to do about half a country that thinks that way?"
well that was the point of the column. maybe read it again? not trying to be rude. The trump voters are looking for something that the democrats have not offered. They like the fact he is disgusting because the disgustingness is pointed at the dems. The dems need to find a message that is moral and resonates with them. Just blaming people for who they are won't get their votes. You have to be smart, patient, and understanding. Martin Luther King understood that he was u p against racists and entrenched ideas, but that didn't stop him from inspiring many you would have thought were out of his reach.
1
@cellmaker, I think that Mr. Brooks sees that 1/3 of the population wants a dictator and the other 2/3 does not. He wants the Democrats to say that they care about democracy and Constitutional government only 2/3 as much as before and now like Vladimir Putin's government one moment out every three.
Sorry, Democrats still have values.
3
@cellmaker
Democrats need to show that they're better (we don't know how). Not that Trump's worse (we all know that).
David Brooks has created an inverse argument when he says that the Republicans are more concerned with culture than economics. Establishing a culture also means upholding high character and Mr. Brooks seems to forget that poor character is Trump's undoing and the Democrats have mentioned that numerous times.
3
" It’s Democratic spending promises versus Republican tax cuts. This familiar, orthodox argument pushes left and right back into their normal categories. It destroys any possibility of a realignment."
Except that for decades already, it's Democrats that install the pay-as-you-go rule as soon as they take over Congress, and then systematically cut the deficit they inherited from their GOP colleagues.
And Obamacare, the Democrats latest signature legislation, CURBS federal healthcare costs, compared to GOP proposals.
Finally, can you please explain how saving half a million American lives a decade (= what Obamacare does, on top of the lives saved by the previous system) somehow is supposed to be "materialistic", whereas destroying the healthcare of 30 million Americans (= causing the death of more than half a million Americans a decade) somehow would be a perfect illustration of the idea that the GOP would be "the party of values" ... ?
This entire column doesn't make any sense at all.
And no, lying about immigrants and other minorities is NOT something you can use to argue that a party that does somehow would be morally superior to a party that has the guts to tell the truth, AND to fight hard for more equality and inclusiveness.
More than half of the people identify America with those values of inclusiveness, rejection of any form of discrimination, cultivation of all different cultures that make up the United States of America. That the GOP doesn't shows its immorality
2
"Materialist" issues are arguably the main reason we have government.
If the Democrats are offering solutions to people's material concerns--healthcare, tax reform, making education more affordable, fighting income inequality, action on the climate--then they are doing what parties are supposed to do. They have a governing philosophy.
Republicans have no philosophy. They are the party of nihilism. They have outsourced policy-making to blood-soaked special interest groups like the NRA and private prison industry. They drive us deeper into endless deficits when they are in power, even as the economy is expanding, and then insist we're too broke too do anything for the poor and middle class when Dems are in power. They are gutting education. Their refusal to address climate change is insane.
So, it makes me wonder about your standards if you can complain about Dems failing to counter Republican nihilism with some grand spiritual vision. The Dems don't need to be virtuous in the exact proportion that Republicans are nihilistic. Dems' primary goal now must be electoral victory, even if that means having a variety of messages to win votes in a variety of districts.
And this fear of Dem identity issues is absurd. It makes no sense to say LGBTQ issues are somehow opposed to American issues. If people can't exercise their full rights because of official prejudice, then the American people need to respond. The rights of the oppressed aren't a luxury to be sacrificed.
6
So, now Democrats are materialistic. Because they are interested in making government work for everyone, not just the wealthy and corporations. So, there are some things the government can do better than volunteer organizations, like providing a social safety net for everyone who might need it and everyone who is old. It is obvious to me that the motivators for the Democratic party are a whole lot more than materialism, although money certainly provides an opportunity for these spiritual motivators to flourish in everyone. Are the Republicans not materialistic? What would you call what they are these days?
3
I used to argue that we are a flawed and messy country, but what we have done well is take everyone from all over the world, throw us together in schools and neighborhoods- and in many cases, we learn to live together, and take joy in each others' languages, customs, and (of course) food. It didn't always work, but when it did, it was wonderful. I loved this country for our aspirations if I was often saddened by our failure to meet them.
Well, silly me. It seems that many who are not big fans of Trump still would vote Republican because 'the GOP is good for my 401K' and care nothing about morality, honesty, relationships with allies, women, the poor, asylum seekers, children, anyone not white—It's all cash, bottom line. So appeal on cash. Appeal on selfish grounds. We've fallen quite a distance since the days of "Ask not what your country can do for you..."
1
The Democrat's challenge isn't about material policies. It's about finding a way to counter Trump's desperate-but-oh-so-effective dominance of the 24/7 news cycle.
Remember the day that Trump's people leaked a story that Rosenstein had been summoned to the White House to be fired, just as the Kavanaugh hearings were heating up? What came of that? Now they've leaked that Trump plans to define gender by genitals at birth, effectively erasing the civil rights of trans people. Nothing will come of this, either.
Trump's masterful manipulation of the media and his base is hard to match, leaving Democrats a very difficult challenge.
2
Funny how conservative "intellectuals" now believe that attacking welfare and doubling the deficit and focusing on destroying a bill that allows American citizens to have access to decent healthcare somehow would NOT be a perfect illustration of the greed and corruption and utter materialism of today's Republicans, whereas trying to treat every American equally, regardless of race, color of skin, gender or religion - and including when it comes to healthcare - is now called, in their "alternative facts" world, "materialism" and lack of values.
Now op-ed illustrates better the moral disaster that the GOP has become than this one.
2
I'm not sure what has happened to David Brooks. He used to be wise, although often on a different side of the debate then me. But the fake news seems to have gotten to him too.
Not sure how higher morals wins elections these days, but it's doubtful that it would resonate on either side at this point. What's activating Democrats is both outrage about Trump, but as importantly, to every new attack, legislation and lies that Republicans make to undermine women's rights, the environment, free speech, and a check and balance on the keystone cops executive branch. Please, please go back to saying important things vs. trying to hedge some bet so you can still claim the mantle of being Republican.
3
We as a Western society is anything but materialistic: we value material less than we value the earth, and that is saying something.
I don't often agree with Mr. Brooks but in this case his aim is accurate and to the point. The Dems have done a miserable job of making the case that Trump represents the Anti Christ to democracy and political and moral decency in this country. The ride to the bottom since his election has been stunning and like nothing this country has seen in its history.
1
David, I think you give him too much credit. He would LIKE to do those things, but hopefully the midterm election will stop him from that and not give him the confidence to do them. It's we the people who can stop him. VOTE. We have checks and balances for these fears. Lets put them to work. VOTE
1
Nonsense. If cultural issues Trump all others, to coin a phrase, then why has Trump's approval rating been underwater longer than any other recent president?
Democrats are emphasizing healthcare now because every poll tells them it's the top issue for most voters. Brooks would have them do what, exactly? Ignore that issue and go back to arguing about who should use which restroom? How well did that work in 2016?
Brooks is hardly the right person to complain about Trump's tactics in any case. Long before Trump became a candidate, Brooks' party was using cultural issues to persuade working people to vote for an agenda of tax cuts for the rich and trade treaties that sent blue collar jobs to Mexico and China. Brooks had no problem with that UNTIL Trump showed up. Obviously, it's the man rather than the tactics he objects to.
1
Mr. Brooks is right on in this piece.
The Republican Party is morally bankrupt.
The Democratic Party is functionally bankrupt.
Both parties are helping wreck American democracy.
Where in the US Constitution are political parties addressed?
Nowhere.
Political parties could nonetheless have a net positive role to play in US politics, as long as the checks and balances of the US Constitution helping protect America against the negative impacts of political parties remain intact.
But the current two party duopoly afflicting America has become a huge disaster. The sooner America is rid of these two fiendish albatrosses the better.
1
As usual, David Brooks is an apologist for the right-wing Republicans. Instead of pointing his vitriolic commentary at the Republican party, the party who runs the Federal Govt, he chooses to blame the Democrats. He chooses to frame every argument so that if Trump's party continues to reign it's all their fault. And how can he ignore all the Democrats who have railed against his immigration policies and recent Supreme Court nominee in the most moralistic way one can? They are not making materialist arguments, but moral ones. Stand up Mr. Brooks and take account of the Republicans. At least the Democrats are trying to push against this nationalist wave.
4
The Democratic leadership is, as expected, asleep at the wheel. While social justice is important, as is affordable healthcare, even those issues have been ham-fisted by the fecklessness of the leadership.
The tone deafness continues to resonate in decreasing decibels to the whisper of a mouse when it comes to their leadership. They couldn't craft a policy message with verve if their life depended on it. Unfortunately, our lives depend on it , too... and even more.
It's about human rights for everyone of us, left, right and in- between. It's about progress for ALL of us, not some of us. That's the message we need to be informed about by the Democrats and Trump, with his merry band of ne-er-do-wells,grifters and yes men/women, have led us down a rabbit-hole of degradation, infamy, derision, and destitution morally, ethically, and spiritually.
Mr. Brooks, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve been wondering why Dems seldom bring up the corrosive effect Trump has on the country. I have to quote Jim Comey that Trump is morally unfit to be Pres. and “the nature of the person” is the reason.
If I were to run for office to fight Trumpism, my message will begin with restoration of democratic and moral values and end with the same message. All Presidents make mistakes but at least they have tried their best to serve the nation. Trump intentionally steers this country to a down hill so he can survive and remain in power. He doesn’t care what he destroys on the way. The man has never been taught to live an honest, moral life. All throughout his life, ends justified the means.
In order to save our country, the Dems’ message has to be “Trump destroys our most fundamental values,” not health care, economy, or LGBT rights. Have we ever been so hateful and divided? This is Trump’s unforgivable sin: dividing the nation and turning people against people.
1
You may believe it's culture, but it's only part of the strategy. The recent Hidden Brain Podcast, Red Brain Blue Brain, illustrates the tactics Republican or conservative strategists use to influence the "fight or flight" segment of society.
The culture worriers (not warriors) are easy stoked by fear mongering, even if at a low conscience level. Conservatives fear the unknown and change much more than liberals, so just play into that and they'll let you reach into their pocket and steal their future.
Liberals seem less susceptible to fear mongering because they have a more curious side and will to experiment with alternative methods to reach a goal. This is what makes great military generals, who overcame their paranoid thinking to evaluate strategy in a greater context by liberating their thinking.
Conservatives don't seem to liberated these days; fear works for them. I call it emotional immaturity.
2
So what should the Democrats do? Adopt their own rhetoric of hate, fear, racism and xenophobia to match the GOP's? I mean, you're right, Democrat messaging can't begin to match the GOP's, because the left refuses to traffic in fear mongering.
The left is constrained by its fidelity to truthfulness, pragmatism and morality. We will never offer a message as punchy as the GOP because we refuse to stoop to such depths.
Does that mean we're doomed to lose? Maybe. Or just maybe the sad third of our country that props up this anti-American regime will come to its senses.
8
One of the most amusing pieces of life in the U.S. today is that one side of the political/cultural divide has worked assiduously for the past fifty years to undermine all of the norms of society because those norms are repressive. These same voices are now decrying the loss of norms!
1
Well off Christian white people have culture. Everybody else has identities. Plus there is no interaction between group oppression and economic inequality.
Sanders has it right, our morality is based on equality. Any attempt to single out groups as being unworthy for whatever reason must be fought. At the same time the concentration of economic power and the failure to provide all with decent security and opportunity in the wealthiest nation in history is simply immoral.
On the other hand the morality of Trump and the Republican Party has always been about subtle and not so subtle elevation of white men, particularly white men with money and power, above everyone else and calling it the public good.
1
Trump's election and the fizzling out of any Democratic wave have to be laid squarely at the feet of the feminists who have effectively hijacked the party. It's been nothing but sanctimonious throat ramming of there ideology. It has turned even the most harden and longtime Democrats away from the party.
@Smoke'em If U Got'em Well, I disagree. And it hasn't turned anyone I know from the party.
Mr Brooks raises an important point: Democrats have consistently failed to articulate what they stand for, besides the only alternative to Republicans.
It's clear what Republicans stand for: A zero-sum game of plunder capitalism that redistributes wealth to donors and corporations and leaves everyone else behind. That's hard to sell to the millions of voters they need. So they created an alternative "trickle-down" reality, and a well-developed propaganda apparatus to articulate it in short, visceral slogans.
With nothing constructive to offer the "99%," Republicans appeal to the basest aspects of human nature: Fear, greed, hatred, nationalism, bigotry, and lies. The divisive rhetoric also gives Republican supporters a sense of identity, uniting them in their hatred of the liberal enemy who seeks to take their guns, slaughter their fetuses, suppress Christianity, oppress White men, install an illegitimate Black president, and open the borders to criminals. That also unwittingly fertilized the ground for a demagogue like Trump to take it over.
Republicans control the form and content of political discourse. But Democrats haven't figured that out. They react to the relentless attacks by sitting passively, or offering pathetically weak defense. They're fighting Republican tanks with water pistols.
If Democrats don't understand and adapt to this toxic environment, they will be condemned to permanent minority status. And there will be no hope of changing anything.
1
Maintaining affordable healthcare (health = life) is seen as "materialistic" by Mr. Brooks, but maintaining endless tax loopholes, vast untaxed corporate wealth and trillions in off-shore accounts (contributing nothing to our country's well-being) for the monied G.O.P. (Pirates) is somehow not? Astounding.
Mr. Brooks, you really need to get out more.
2
To boil the Democratic Party down to a simple adjective, "materialist," is to ignore the underlying values. Democrats want to extend material benefits like health care and social security to everyone because they believe it is fair and just and compassionate. There is a deep morality behind the "materialism."
3
"the good, decent people of the heartland are being threatened by immigrants, foreigners and other outsiders while corrupt elites do nothing..."
Gosh, when did this narrative spread malignantly before in the 20th century, I wonder?
Mr Brooks has some insight in his diagnosis, but is utterly trapped in Washington conventional wisdom in his analysis, I'm afraid (as indicated by his use of the phrase "social justice warrior", which, like "political correctness", is a reactionary appropriation of what was originally a progressive meme). Today's Democratic party does attend to identity-based interests, perhaps in ways that are sometimes detrimental to its electoral success, but to call the party's leaders and elected officials social justice warriors is simply right-wing propaganda.
2
Since the 1980's, at the state and national level, the GOP has been cutting taxes across the board and spending on education, housing support and other social services. The GOP lionized the self-made man and vilified anyone needing a leg up when hard times hit. It was, to them, all a moral argument.
But now here we are, with so many Americans living paycheck to paycheck, with few protections against skyrocketing costs of medical care and prescriptions. The public school system is under great strain for lack of funding and kids wanting to work their way up to better job opportunities thru college emerge saddled with enormous debt.
And so the Democrats are focusing on those basic paycheck issues because they are critical issues for survival in the lives of millions of Americans.
The Democratic party message is one that is moral to its core.
4
The Democrats don’t have that material advantage anymore—and haven’t in a long while. For better or worse, it has been more like a bidding war for votes between Democrats and Republicans over federal spending. If you take off your philosophy hat for a moment and exchange it for a politics one, do you really think that Republicans are not going to protect pre-existing conditions coverage, for example? Is that remotely plausible?
Mr. Brooks
It is clear to many, including some, such as myself, who formerly supported the GOP that they are morally bankrupt, and beholden to the very rich.
The "republican party" of today is what trump has given voice to: shallow, self centered, inward looking cowardice.
In the midst of that reality, you *choose* to attack the Democratic Party for (gosh) wanting to ensure a basic right of health care as a central tenant of their platform in 2018?
Sir, you need to tend to your own house....it has become burnt to the ground as trump fiddles and the fools cheer.
468
@Paul P. You are so right Paul. I think it horrible that he label the Democratic Party materialistic while the Republican Party is so obviously morally bankrupt. Clean your own house. Clinton may have had some moral issues that were of grave concern to me, a woman, but at least he balanced the budget unlike most Republicans who cater to the rich with enormous tax cuts that hurt the rest of us.
4
@Paul P.
Yes, its the Dems job now to fix the damage Trump and the blighted GOP are doing...
His party. His party is the problem, his sycophancy for decades helped them achieve this "win" with Trump, and now the Dems better rally and fix it!
4
What would have Democrats do? It’s so much easier to divide than unite. It’s so much easier to convince people that their problems are someone else’s fault; someone foreign. If an appeal to our better natures was effective where are the Republican candidates who espouse that. After all your party is the one who claim the spiritual high ground. How did you end up with the cast of characters like Trump, Cruz, McConnell, et. al. Maybe that appeal doesn’t work so well anymore.
2
Some good insights but Brooks misses a big point when he claims the Democrats focus on healthcare benefits rather than moral issues. To most of us healthcare IS a moral issue.
9
As a long-time, fervent Democrat, I must say I agree with Mr. Brook’s column today regarding the Democrats failure these past 2years to rally and be effective in ridding our country against current republican horror show. Just targeting Trump has not worked out. While we all know that Trump is morally opprobrious, it’s his support in Washington and around the country that needs to be targeted with some type of unifying message. In my mind, the Democrats have not succeeded in this. We’re not coming together in the way conservatives have. The clock is running down and we need unifying politicians and ideas. NOW!
3
"But the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers no counter-narrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism. In politics you can’t beat something with nothing" It is all well and good to point Democrats in this direction; they actually can show empirically why government programs work, and not just for the welfare of the targeted benefitted group, but for the society and culture as a whole. And it is not as though conservatives do not know this: they have many programs of giving tax breaks to the rich, that have benefitted all of us. Conservatives know government can do these things. But none of what Democrats could do in this, will matter, as long as conservatives hold onto a certain ideological framework of believing that helping the wealthy is more important than helping the poor. My question is this: where was Brooks and all the 'knowing better conservatives', when outright propaganda was being thrown at Obama, Obama being the most recent example of a liberal who would work with conservatives, but conservatives would not budge from their ideological framework concerning the rich and poor? The time then was to shake some sense into conservatives, as it is the time now. Brooks and the rest need to turn inward and ask if they really believe conservative principles, or if they have been just convenient props to keep the rich, rich. Table what you think Democrats should do until then.
3
There is no pleasing you. When dems take Trump on they are being divisive and uncivil and when they are not they are being materialistic.
Admit it Mr. Brooks you really don't mind Trump being in charge. At least it isn't the democrats and all their identities....
8
The key to the Republican message is "tribalism", fostering an us vs them mentality, stoking fear and separation. This is a hard message to counter. The key to a successful counter-message was Hilary's "stronger together", the idea that we were all (except for Native Americans) once immigrants to a New Land, and we are now all in this land together and need to work together to solve our many challenging problems. Unfortunately for Hilary, the message didn't work for a large enough part of the population, and we know the result. Yet it still is a good message -- united we stand and succeed, divided we tear our nation apart. Together we can build a strong safety net, advance educational opportunity, rebuild our infrastructure, solve climate change, give due rights to all, provide quality health care to all, keep our economy strong, help the middle and working classes, build strong alliances with our friends, solve our immigration problems, and so on. This is not only an economic message, but also a cultural message that can still resonate with a majority of Americans, although there will always be a strong minority with a "tribal" (us against them) perspective. Perhaps this message can't be the one now without a strong leader of the Democratic party -- it is, after all, the midterms. But I hope that, as leadership emerges in the Democratic party, so will a strong positive message that is designed to build a common theme and resonates with vision and idealism for the future.
"little moral case against his behavior" -- because people don't seem to care. Because if they cared, they'd never have elected him to begin with.
I used to take it for granted that, while I might differ with heartland people on the issues, we share core things -- like a commitment to key elements of democracy, which include good-faith acknowledgement of shared indisputable facts. Trump's election shattered that illusion. I need something new to make me feel that we share enough to be co-citizens.
4
Republicans are better at campaigning, democrats are better at governing. Republicans govern to campaign, democrats campaign to govern. Mind you, it isn't that republicans campaign well in a good way, as they scorch the earth and mislead and divide while doing it and it isn't that democrats campaign poorly in a bad way, as they tend to go wonky and analytical to a fault, but they fight major forest fire with garden hoses, rhetorically speaking. Republicans take advantage of their voters' many weaknesses. Democrats take their many voters for granted. The republicans are always willing to take the election where no election should go. The democrats always seem able to let an election go, for the want of "going there." The republicans always use malevolent brushes to paint the big picture. The democrats seem to always brush off the big picture. Republicans have held sway, in either owning leadership outright or through our country co-opting their policy choices, since 1980. Take a good look at where the country is right now and at all the analytics concerning our economy and country generally, if all this doesn't make you happy, there is one party to blame, the republicans, and another party to make better, so later on there are not two.
1
The party that wants to provide everyone with affordable health care and retirement is materialistic, and the party that says doing these things is too expensive is not materialistic, but rather the party of culture.
This column is yet another case study in how an intelligent person can look deeply at something and see the exact opposite of what it is.
Joe Biden, for example, takes on Trumpism the way Brooks wants. And what conservative voters hear and reject is a bunch of fancy talk that will end with defending big government and the taxes necessary to fund it.
The other Republican candidates took on Trumpism the way Brooks wants. They wanted to win the Mitch McConnell way, using or stealthily subverting the existing system, and that way did not work. Obama was reelected and rammed his Republican-sourced health care program down the throats of its inventors. Trump has no respect for the system and is willing and even eager to destroy it to win and get whatever it is he wants, and his supporters sensed that.
Taking on Trumpism the way Brooks wants does not work. Democrats are taking on Trump by advocating for the needs of ordinary people, and leaving it unsaid that if ordinary people get more of the pie, the rich and superrich will have to make do with a smaller slice. The pie is never big enough or fast enough growing that they are satisfied with their percentage of it; that is their culture, and it is beyond mere materialism.
I think that Brooks is right, and I've said that from the very start. The Democrats need to point out the tax reform that is really shifting of wealth, voters wealth, what little we have. They need to point out that corporate tax revenues have fallen 16% in LAST half of the fiscal year. Does that mean that the drop in corporate revenues would actually be 32% which would only exacerbate the national debt (which is nothing more than malfeasance on the part of every elected congressperson).
They need to hammer on each and every thing that Trump and the GOP have managed to repeal, rewind, reverse. Including EPA, FDA, Consumer Protection Agency, and of course immigration. Democrats must say, they aren't for open boarders, that comprehensive immigration reform a path to citizenship is what they are talking about.
In terms of healthcare, education, the democrats need to be honest, and say we don't collect enough money in taxes to pay for universal healthcare, higher education, etc. That a tax would have to be implemented, either a Federal sales tax, or and added payroll tax, that those that don't want to participate can check an opt out box. They can then go out and buy private insurance. But we need to get insurance companies OUT of healthcare, because that's their bread and butter in terms of profit.
Most people would rather pay a tax for full access to healthcare, and never receive a bill, as opposed to having a HSA, that ties up income that most of us don't have....
2
I agree that running on a single issue - healthcare - is to say the least a "weak strategy". The D's are show signs of an extreme loss of confidence. They are nervous to touch anything that could back-fire - like it always seems to do. Sign of a party without future - sad to say. Its a party in bad need of new blood.
Why can't we have a narrative on strengthening the country for our children and grand-children. Focus on areas which will take us forward - education, world class health-care, infrastructure, innovation, technology, etc.
In addition there is plenty to talk about on serious ethical infringements within the top levels of government, the Saudi's and their money, Kim Jong, tax returns, and the widespread ethical infringements rampant in the cabinet.
Let's first talk about lying and fair play--fundamental to respectful dialogue and cooperative problem-solving--before we get to an analysis of "cultural narratives." We have seen how easily these basic norms are erased by raw power plays, by politics as a zero-sum game. Who are those engaged in voter suppression measures? Which partisans obstructed a legitimate exercise of constitutional authority by a previous president? They seem to have no regard for the institutions that distinguish our system of governance (checks and balances, for example). And, by the way, the president does not act alone: it breaks my heart that a portion of my fellow Americans are willing to look the other way, to embrace, the indecency of the present administration (self-aggrandizing, self-enriching actions; ridiculing women; denigrating the Other--the laughter at the rallies is startling and appalling).
1
Maybe some aspects of liberalism have moved too far too fast. Social issues that appear "settled" on TV and in progressive cities, are very far from settled in many parts of the country.
Personally, I support gay marriage, however, I have many relatives in rural areas who just wholly disagree, and it's a very very big issue for them and they're not going to change their minds.
Also, our immigration policies are to the left of liberal Canada. With over 15% of the population being foreign-born, maybe there is a limit to how much immigration a country can absorb. And this isn't an American thing, we see it now in Brazil.
Supporters of Trump and Bolsonaro view them as human battering rams with the strength to push back against the social change which seems to have the inertia of an avalanche.
2
I think Brooks is on to something here. Republicans win with their cultural animus story. Fear stoking. Us versus them. Hordes invading our heartland. Threats to our way of life.
Democrats need to fight this fear-based narrative with a call to decency and compassion, to our better angels. Too often, they shy away from that narrative in favor of bread and butter economic issues which, while part of the political mix, are not the driving motivation in this era. Cultural issues , cultural issues, cultural issues. “It’s the culture, stupid!”
122
@David Warburton
Elections are won based on ideals, not details. The party that sells the ideals better wins. FDR/Ike/JFK/Reagan are all examples of this.
Obama won 2 elections based on idealism of "our better angels". Trump won his electoral college appointment to the Presidency based on a false idealism of "our angels are better than your angels".
Democratic leadership should return to embracing the big picture and leave the details to sort out after the election.
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@David Warburton Maybe Dems could style it not as "cultural" but "moral" or "values" issues, to regain a high ground they deserve when compared with the Republicans. Here are value-based points I emphasize (taken from my recent blog entry):
1) Governments--and journalism reporting on them--are allies, not enemies of the people they purport to represent, as Republicans regularly intimate. Without being apologists for government, Democrats need to be clear on how it can benefit the people and how worthy are its costs--taxation, regulation, & an educated electorate.
(2) Taxation is the ordinary material price citizens pay for the benefits of government. Links between taxes and their benefits must be strong, a strength essential to preservation of both. Without justifiable taxation and benefits, self-confidence lags in a people’s government and in the values supporting it.
(3) Regulation of markets by a people’s government is basic to collective prosperity and to the common good, so that treasured common goods can be delivered. Free markets are not unregulated markets (as per Republican propaganda), but markets regulated--with as few burdens as necessary--to maximize free access to them.
(4) An educated electorate called to historical values is also requisite to a functioning democracy and republic. Essential civic values must be learned and reinforced, because society and government are complex and nuanced, and the electorate easily confused or otherwise led astray.
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@David Warburton
OK, fine, everybody here knows that, including the columnist, fear and tribalism win the day on that side of the fence.
He takes the Democrats to task that you can't "beat something with nothing".
Brilliant, flawless logic there, except for the fact that you can't really debate or reason with people who go along with the kind of mindless, corrosive amorality that Trump offers.
Being "decent and compassionate" doesn't exactly resonate with people who buy into Trump's narrative in the first place and scream "lock her up" at his rallies.
This isn't a messaging contest any more to convince undecideds what we can offer that the other side can't. Everybody knows what each side stands for by now.
It comes down to having candidates who resonate with people and gets them out to vote.
What they say doesn't even matter anymore, it's how they say it.
As much as I hate to admit this, it basically boils down to whom you'd like to "have a hamburger with".
Remember that oldie but goodie?
That guy won.
"These days, culture is more important than economics."
The culture of the liberals is basically to fix problems that affect the welfare, and quality of life, of the broad public - the working class, and the poor. The conservatives are focused on minimizing the dispersion of wealth that they feel should be concentrated on the pursuit of wealth and the retention of wealth.
So yes, the Democrats concentrate concentrate on health care for all, and yes, the Republicans concentrate on blocking any attempt do that. But probably the most preposterous clash concerns global warming and the scientific certitude that, without drastic action, there will be world wide deterioration in the human habitat.
But the Republican/conservative culture can't accept this scientific certitude because because to do so would mandate a vast dispersion of wealth for the common good, rather than for the plutocracy. But to the Democrats (and the rest of the world) Global warming is a reality that must be attacked on a massive scale.
But Mr Brooks is right that the Republicans are much better at hiding their objectives behind hate mongering and a total commitment to whatever level of mendacity and invective is required to win approval. The Democrats are not pure as the driven snow, but in comparison to the alternative, it's like comparing a little league team to one of the majors.
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Political parties play to the electoral field they're given. The electoral system of the Senate (where North Dakota has as many senators as 40 million Californians) and a largely gerrymandered House disproportionately favors the votes of non urban conservative (at least not blatantly liberal) whites. Democrats are running a "materialist" campaign because that's how they win on this turf with "kitchen table issues." If the United States had proportional representation where urban coastal votes counted the same as rural votes then Democrats would likely be pushing back more against the cultural issues created by Trump and GOP.
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Not a bad analysis. Surprised, though, that David didn't acknowledge the strong economy with the incredibly low unemployment as a key driver that is keeping the "materialist" message muted right now. If we were in recession, I think the political picture would look very different.
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I think many commenters are misunderstanding the way Brooks uses the term "materialist." He is not stating that Democrats are greedy.
He is pointing to the fact that what is animating the electorate right now is not so much concerns for material well-being, but meaning. What does it mean to be an American? What is the value of citizenship? What do we owe each other? What are borders for? Who are our foreign and macro-economic policies designed to benefit? Who are we as a nation? What traditions are of value and which need to be overthrown?
These are the questions roiling the wealthy, developed world today. But Democrats (and Germany's Christian Democrats, and England's Labour Party, etc.) seem to be terribly out of step with these deep concerns, focused on merely ensuring their countries remain good places to work and shop in the global marketplace.
The real tragedy of this is that the Democrats, if they were to be true to their roots once more, would be the answer to these vital questions of nationalism and meaning. Populism is only a bad thing when bad leaders practice it.
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David Brooks: It’s great that the GOP has taken the moral high ground. It’s good to know that all those tax cuts for the very wealthy are treated with contempt by the recipients. And I’m sure all those working class GOP’ers will stop complaining about inequity as they try to keep up with the Jones. However, as a political strategy it seems like a bad idea to abandon the politics of resentment. It’s paid dividends ;-) for the GOP.
3
As long as R terms like "death tax, job killing, and death panels" are not refuted; tax cuts (for the rich) are not exposed, and the rest of R lies are not rebutted, we will not prevail. DNCC will never get a drop of my money. I give to particular candidates, some in other states.
It is more important for trump supporters to dwell in the hate of other ethnicities than to have health care, retirement, education for their kids, and a new job to replace the old one that has become obsolete.
The people of the Democratic Party are for a good life for everybody including trump supporters. DNCC and most national Democratic candidates fail in getting that message out while devoting all their energy on LGBT and abortion, which alienates the right wing.
3
Unfortunately, however wise David Brook's advice, it can only be accomplished by convincing voters of its wisdom though the use of words. And words promulgating fear, as proved time and again, too easily and too often trump (if you will) words of wisdom, especially in times of trauma or disruption. So just think what will happen when there's a true calamity, be it financial, environmental, violence-based, digital ....
Perhaps, though, our cultural/intellectual/media elites will rise to the occasion and fearlessly champion, with a unified voice, the extent to which we have brought this state of affairs upon ourselves. Of course that would mean championing stories we don't want to tell ourselves.
I will, nonetheless, continue to hope that there are such stories and that those elites, should they cross paths with such a story, will recognize that it would be better to take the risk and tell it than to continue down the path we are currently on.
For 40 years, we've watched the radicalization of the Republican Party fold. From the Southern Strategy to Voodoo Economics to Gingrich, it has finally delivered us Trump, who took over the GOP with barely a shot fired.
He and his party -- looking at you, Mitch McConnell -- are today actively undermining the norms that have made our republic work for 240 years. And so it falls to the Democratic Party to save us? And they are failing, and therefore to blame? They cannot articulate a "cultural narrative" to seize this golden opportunity for a grand realignment because ... they are "materialists?"
As Frank Bruni recently wrote, nothing Trump says or does -- nothing -- erodes his base of support. How easy it should be to capture the "cultural" high ground! Except that it's not. I don't see David Brooks, or anyone else, concocting a political-cultural story to reverse the GOP's malignant course.
"Have you no decency, sir?" was enough in 1954. What's the story today? All we need is another Lincoln or Roosevelt, no big deal. Meanwhile, at least the materialist Democrats support real things, good things, like fixing our abysmal health care system.
I don't know what "narrative" will turn the tide, and neither does David Brooks. Ideas welcome.
3
There's a fundamental intellectual and moral dishonesty to looking at the idea of providing health care to all of our citizens, regardless of income or social status as nothing more than a materialistic gift.
And therein lies the difference.
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I am surprised that this is framed as a Democratic or materialistic viewpoint. Why do people need to be told by anyone, from any party, that basic norms of honesty, decency, compassion and moral conduct are required of a leader? Voters need to forcefully reject anyone on the ballot who does not endorse this view.
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First, I don't think this is the opportunity of a lifetime for Democrats. It doesn't really seem to me that there are centrists who are ready to be swayed to the Democrat side. If there are, then you have to essentially be Joe Manchin, who is in the Democratic Party but is far more conservative than every other member. So, if this is the opportunity of a lifetime, then it is one for "Team Democrat," assuming that all you care about is that Team winning, no matter the cost policy-wise, politically, ethically, etc.
Second, I recall that Barack Obama ran a campaign in 2008 based on unifying the country. He ran it well and won. But that was a national election. It seems to me that so many of the races this November are very, very local. Menendez, for example, may be in trouble in a blue state because he's assumed to be corrupt (that assumption is probably right too). Orange County, CA might swing Dem. because in OC, Trump's approval ratings are lower than in other red districts, and there was a recent redistricting. In this district, it seems the vote is about being for or against Trump. I don't know that a campaign based on unifying the country and offering a non-Trump moral path is what will win a local mid-term election.
A presidential election, on the other hand, better be about those fundamental issues and not just the same old big gov't vs small gov't nonsense.
David, I have disagreed with you, vociferously at times, however this time you subtly take the cake in trying to pin the strawman of Materialism on the Democrats when they are merely trying to preserve the RIGHTS of Everybody to be able to eat, have access to medical care and have an income actually large enough to live on.
I would love to see one of these so rich and powerful Politicians, from either side but mostly Republicans, actually live for 6 months on the Government SSI I am assigned to after being run thru the mill, nearly literally, as far as health destroyed by Navy and Industrial accidents. I live on $750 cash benefit, with $180 in Food Benefits, and Medicaid, which covers prescriptions.
But let one of THEM try finding some place to live, without using their own wealth, family or friends, in a town they don't know or have any connections in.
Let THEM actually do the waiting time with NO income because the Govt/VA is 'still deciding the case' which is usually at least 2 years, and then go on the SSI. I had an 8 year wait, was only back-paid for half of it.
Here in this city it is hard to find a ROOM to rent for less than $600, this does not include phone, power, water, sewer, garbage and a host of other taxes and a sales tax.
Try doing it with a massively rebuilt C5-6-7 and permanent nerve damage.
And THEN come back to me and tell me if I am being materialistic or not, when I am just trying to survive with a modicum of sanity and decency with less hypocrisy.
6
I did forget to add that the $750 and $180 are per month, and if the person is not disabled, let them go about the business of trying to get a job at a service-type, minimum wage job that fits with the work or search requirements to continue receiving services.
Require them to go thru the expense and embarrassment of doing the drug testing themselves, in the normal clinical setup, not their own high paid doctors.
And THEN let them rewrite the laws a bit, to reflect the experience found by "The Common Man".
Otherwise we will be controlled by individuals that think labor force and poor people are just another commodity, to be bought, sold and traded like cattle, only it is Our hours, weeks, moths and years of labor and the injured, maimed disfigured and killed victims of the Industrial Stocks that are bought and sold on the Stock Market.
Yet the people doing the work, putting in the hours, being injured, and NOT paid anywhere near as much as the profit that the owners make off the backs of our Labor Force.
The Stock Owners, who never put anything other than money (often borrowed) into it, are getting, literally, money for nothing if they receive 'Dividends' of any sort.
Those "Dividends" are taken directly out of the pockets of Labor, which is already strained to the breaking point, and into the pockets of The UberRich, who cannot possibly, realistically, spend all their money in their lifetimes even if they stopped making any money at all right now, they would survive.
David, You nailed this one but sadly my fellow democrats can't hear what you are saying. I see you rooting for the democrats, trying to give them the keys. They do no not realize that they are the materialists. Weighing their quality of life monetarily, because in the city and suburbs everything costs money. And the media including this paper forces barrages them with the message of consumption. Using ads, polls, and facebook to dissect their psyche. Trumps people tend to be rural, and many without much disposable cash. But they see themselves as self reliant, the can garden, fish and hunt to eat and trade with their neighbors. What matters more to them is the structure of society. Democrats here will say Trumps people see themselves incorrectly, but that is a mistake. They are sincere. The self reliant folks will provide for themselves from food to bullets. They have enough doctors and engineers among their ranks to provide higher level services. These are the people that democrats must reach out to. It will take patience and understanding, and learning to deal with nationalism and even racism. The question is not if that is the task. The question is can the democrats face up to it.
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@Ethan
You paint a very positive picture of conservatives and there are some like you describe, but you neglect to see the materialism on the right as in lower my taxes and I'll vote for you. They never make the connection that the small amount of tax cuts they might get will be paid for elsewhere.
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@Kate all people are fairly materialistic. but the lowering of taxes is partially materialism, it's equal parts the desire to be left alone! and it's not the point. there is more than lowering taxes which motivates trumpers. When David says stop focusing on materialism it doesn't mean ignore money or worldly needs. It means focus on other things as equally important, besides social justice issues. what are the emotional needs of the trump voters. answering xenophobia and racism doesn't help. There are other core motivators such as fairness, tradition etc. fwiw i'm not conservative. I'm very comfortable with change including full rights and protections for everyone. But it's just common sense that some people accept change slowly.
@Ethan
In real life, it's precisely those red state voters who are receiving most federal aid.
The GOP is built on a false myth - and that myth includes the idea that rural areas already have enough doctors for instance, as studies show that the exact opposite is true.
The only reason why those people believe that bashing immigrants and other minorities is somehow compatible with caring about "values" is because the GOP has been spreading horrible lies about those groups for more than a decade already. And needless to add that there's nothing morally decent about making people scared of other people based on lies ...
1
You are wrong. Healthcare is the number one thing on people's minds. The Entire U.S. healthcare system is beyond corrupt. We are being squeezed and chiseled by a corporate base that is acting more like gangsters than business men. My health insurance has increased 42% over the last 2 years. I am basically paying the equivalent of a 2nd rent. It's criminal.
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@Bartleby S If you read the column again you will find David already agreed that the healthcare issue could be enough. But he says since we don't know that for sure, he is offering other ideas
Trump is trading on culture wars. However, he has no hope of acquiring converts. His fear mongering and lying is intended to make sure he gets more turnout from his followers. He has enough at 40+%, particularly given gerrymandering that favors GOP in many districts, to retain control of the House providing they vote. Democrats have the same problem respecting voter turnout. Competing for cultural orientation is much harder for Democrats because they would have to campaign on fear of Trump’s neo-fascism, racism, and desire to create a new world order where a consortium of autocratic despots would rule the world like a consortium of organized crime families. True as that might be, too many Americans cannot accept that is possible here. No free society ever believes that it can become unfree even when some obvious demagogue stands up and repeatedly spouts demagoguery. Why are we so deaf, blind, and subservient?
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Democrats are materialistic because they favor health care for all and support the rights of oppressed minorities? Well call me a materialist then.
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Classic Brooks: Lament a lack of strong response for a situation he helped pave the way for!
Did he speak out against Mitch McConnel's vow to completely block Obama initiatives? NO.
Did he speak out against "You lie!" an unprecedented insult hurled during a State of the Union address? NO.
Did he speak out against Birthers and the Birther-in-chief, Donald Trump. NO.
Instead he ignored these things are wrote about moral fables, which mean absolutely nothing to Trump or his millions of followers.
And Brooks blames the democrats for lack of a better response. Does he not own a mirror that he has to look into periodically? Does someone else have to comb his hair for him?
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People are missing the point, here. Trump is different in that he believes politics and policies should focus on group identities, giving to one group at the expense of another, natives over immigrants, white men over brown people or women.
.
How best to fight that? First, to fight for various other identity groups vs. white men is to concede to Trump's illiberalism, and then lose, because whites and men are likely to triumph over other races and women if politics is reduced to a race/sex war. Second, to counter Trump's illiberal politics of white identity with warmed over materialists policies (health care) is to ignore that the conversation has shifted. Democrats must not be seen as campaigning for women, or black people, or immigrants. They need to be campaigning for equal treatment for ALL Americans, because that is what Trump is fighting against when he promotes white identity. And rather than framing healthcare as helping those people with pre-existing conditions, Dems should be campaigning for equal access and coverage for healthcare for ALL Americans, even if that mostly amounts to the same thing.
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The way to defeat white identity politics is to abandon all identity politics and campaign for universal treatment for all Americans. Avoid campaigning on narrow materialist issues like pre-existing conditions -- have a bigger focus on bringing America together again, and promising equal treatment for all. You beat Trump by having a bigger and better vision.
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David, unless you change your party affiliation now, you're going to look pretty bad soon. Watching from the sidelines and calling out democrats for failing to take on trump is the height of hypocrisy. You have been shilling for the Republican, conservative agenda forever, making you partly responsible for this situation. There is no Republican ideology left to cling to, only bigotry and fascist dreams dearly held by the base. There's nothing left for you to defend or equivocate - this is the spartacus moment. you either step left or cast your lot with Trump, as your colleagues have.
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Any voter who doesn't understand how dishonest, immoral and corrupt Trump and his followers are is not going to be convinced by a Democratic candidate for office.
This is just another version of blaming the Democrats for Trump.
It's the Republicans' fault, David. When will you accept your share of the blame?
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Accusing Dems of being “materialists” is so patently ridiculous, I won’t bother to respond, Mr. Brooks. But let me ask you something, since you claim to be a centrist: why haven’t you shouted from the hilltops that HILLARY and THE DEMOCRATS WERE RIGHT!? The Dems called him dangerous, unfit, unhinged, lacking the appropriate moral compass, lacking judgement, a danger to democratic norms, etc. And yet, all I hear since 2016 was how Hillary was a joke and deserved to lose. The Dems said ALL the things you’re calling for, and it was met with eye-rolling by an ocean of moderate Republicans who believed they could control the obscene demagogue they were in the process of elevating.
And now you’re furious that the Democrats aren’t repeating the same message that was greeted with a collective yawn in the last election? Why don’t you come back and issue a mea culpa instead of bashing Dems who are rightly CONFUSED? Nobody wanted to protect the good ol USA in 2016, nobody cared for Democratic messages about our shared American values of liberty and justice for ALL. Tell Dems they were right — raise them up! Give them a much needed shot in the arm! Stop tearing them down — it only benefits the Trumpublicans.
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@PieceDeResistance
Very well said!
That after all that the GOP has done to lower itself to become the most greedy, corrupt, dividing, hateful, immoral party in US history, Brooks can somehow still try to argue that it would be "the party of values", whereas the fact that Obamacare will soon have saved half a million American lies is rejected as too "materialistic" shows how much GOP elites have lost all sense of reality - AND all sense of moral behavior.
The people at Trump rallies seem to be having so much fun. Body slam the fake news weaklings. Ha ha.
The key race is Beto. He isn't so much like JFK as like Napoleon Dynamite. It all feels like high school. We all knew Trump in high school, the cold dominant set bully whose daddy's money bought him later success, this time the forum to pretend, via a “reality” show, that he was competent at something other than the con job. Let's see how much fun the Dem House and then the incompetence-fueled crash is for the doomed bully cheerleaders.
1
Mr. Brooks, if your lifelong conservative advice had anything to do with where the Republican party is today, I'd thank you for keeping your advice to the Democratic party to yourself.
3
The most disappointing aspect was that reporters on television interviewing Republicans who said they believed that something happened to Dr. Ford, not asking if the Republicans could come up with any possible scenario where Dr. Ford correctly identified the date and place as well as the four males there, before it was known that Kavanaugh’s diary/calendar unambiguously puts Kavanaugh and three people Ford identified as being there in the same house on July 1, 1982. Ford’s description of the interior of Gaudette’s house in Rockville, MD exactly matches that of the actual house, which still exists.
The real crazies are claiming that since Chuck Schumer has a niece who is an actress, Dr. Ford did not actually testify at the Senate Hearing about Kavanaugh, but rather it was actress Amy Schumer. That is not true. However, it is theoretically possible, in that no laws of science would be violated if Hollywood make-up experts were able to make Amy Schumer look like Dr. Ford.
What is not possible is that Dr. Ford misidentified Kavenaugh, Judge, Gaudette and J.C. as the people she was with on July 1, 1982 at Timmy Gaudette’s house in Rockville, MD. Once Ford’s account included three other people she said were there and his calendar also had them all at Tim’s house on July 1, 1982, the only way that Kavanaugh is not lying is either: Ford somehow previously obtained access to his 1982 diary/calendar, or Ford has a time machine or Ford stalked Kavanaugh in 1982
4
Mr Brooks lost me in the second sentence when he wrote "Trump . . . told a different narrative."
Trump lies soften as he breathes. Euphemisms such as "different narrative" provide cover for the damage to the US polity that Trump has unleashed.
3
Tell me what good a "counternarrative to Trump" does for Democratic campaigns?
Over the last 3 years, Trump supporters have continued to provide overwhelming support for him despite his despicable and erratic behavior. In this era of extreme negative partisanship, there is nothing a Democrat can say that will persuade Trump supporters to change their minds about him. If it was going to happen, it would have by now. All the evidence is in.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the most successful Democratic strategy turned out to be using reverse psychology. Get Clinton and Warren and Pelosi and LeBron on the campaign trail encouraging red states to vote for Trump again!
1
Brooks is talking to different people than I am. The bases of the republican and Democratic parties have already made up their minds about the moral issues he mentions. The republicans simply don't care about the president's lying , sex life, and vulgarity. The base Democrats do. The nationalism/international debate has no traction among the voters I talk to. I know it may for the xenophobic right, but here in my small town America, it is an intellectual debate that has little effect on voters.
But health care is THE issue both my republican and Democratic relatives and neighbors are motivated by. It has more effect on their standard of living than any other issue. And they LISTEN to the politicians' ideas on this subject.
3
Mr Brooks has described the Achilles heel of the Democratic policy in its failure to clearly articulate any unifying national themes to match the Trumpian themes of fear and grievance. Trumpism works because it is both simple and simplistic. You don’ t have stable well paid employment, blame immigrants and elites negotiating trade treaties; don’t like “#MeToo”, bemoan the difficulties for “good men” and sons; don’t like “ Black Lives Matter”, turn it into a debate about the national anthem or flag at football games. The Democrats lack any countering themes. We need an “E Pluribus Unum” moment showing Americans united, facing our common challenges without atomizing us into women’s, LGBTQ, minority, immigrant’s, religion or poverty advocates. As an Army retiree I saw this done extremely well in the active duty military - men, women, minorities, immigrants, the religious and atheists and Gays serving together, not always without friction or problems, but always striving towards a common goal and proud of it. We need Democratic candidates able to enunciate what unites us and what animates the principles embedded in our COMMON constitution.
1
There are times when it does not matter whether a majority or a minority of people have the commanding ruling voice. If the ruling voice is indecent and immoral, selfish and sadistic....then the ruling few or the many......are totally wrong.
What's the difference between a Christian and an atheist.....and the difference between separation of church and state?
Blessed be those that believe in His name: who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
1
I'm not sure anyone could call Trump an ideologue. White nationalist, yes, but beyond that his views are all over the place. And Democrats do have an ideology, which is called "inclusion'. It is remarkably abject, even for this opinion writer who has not distinguished himself for moral courage, to claim that helping poor people is "materialist".
1
Brooks seems to ignore the role of an individual voter voting according to their own conscience, as voters are merel passive consumers of political parties’ campaign products. Maybe Brooks is right. Maybe it’s all about lathering up mobs, fomenting them with fear, anger and greed and getting them so riled up they rush to the voting booth and vote for whomever Trump commands them to.
But it is at least theoretically possible that an individual, without a counter campaign as ingratiating to base instincts as Trump’s is, could choose, one district at a time, one state at a time, the candidate who impressed them as authentic, honest, competent, and genuinely good.
What’s wrong with good?
2
Normally, I respect Brooks' opinions, even though I usually disagree with them. In this case, the argument is so flimsy and embarrassingly shallow that it's hard to find something to like. (Did an intern write this one?)
When confronting a nationalist movement that is stoking racial angst, fighting fire with fire is not a good idea because you would be working within that nationalist frame. Trumpism isn't about patriotism or even America first. It's about stoking racial fears and dividing the country against itself. It's ugly, but effective (see the 1930s).
Democrats are wisely offering an alternative. They are saying, "we know people suffering, and reliable healthcare is one way your government can offer some relief." They're also talking about fair wages, environmental protections, and improving infrastructure.
Responding within the nationalist frame will get Democratic ideas dismissed, no matter how many flags Democrats wrap themselves up in. (Get out your America #1 foam finger.)
I suggest the Democrats keep arguing for the things people need and leave the ugly nationalist (racial) politics that Brooks seems to be hinting at. Eventually, the racial fever will pass, and we can begin the process (again) of building a better republic that is based on decency and respect.
5
Mr. Brooks -- I get what you're saying and what you mean by "materialism". Not the "rich get richer" Republican materialism or the "Get Regulations out of the Way so Industry can function unimpeded" kind of materialism. But the, "we offer federal one-size-fits-all" solutions to material problems. You are right that the Democrats are blowing the chance of a lifetime in terms of campaigning and messaging. But in terms of real governance, we the people are blowing it. Obama came into office with a more focused message of hope, of morality and culture. And while he may have lived it, a great deal of the federal government did not change. Obama was a Messiah if there ever was one and he failed to bring the country together.
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@Reader
President Obama's job was to be President of the United States. He tried to do his job; the Republicans in Congress stood in his way out of spite. They are the ones who bear ultimate responsibility for the failure to "bring the country together" because their divisiveness was deliberate and division was their goal all along. It is impossible to work with unreasonable, spiteful people, traits that epitomize the Republicans in Congress then and now.
The only people who referred to President Obama as "Messiah" were the people who hated him and held him in contempt. The rest of us called him "President."
Mr. Brooks requires a confrontation, when and if he ever goes out. He would actually benefit from speaking to real people, who are not of the upper crust, or wrapped in a swath of ideology.
1
The Democratic party and America needs a great man or great woman to take the fight to Trump and the Republicans and carry the people to a better safer place and out of peril.
David Brooks makes a cogent and rousing case, but someone with leadership skills and yes charisma must electrify and propel the opposition
Where is our Dr. King or FDR or take your pick of great leaders?
The people will fight back, but...
1
First, the GOP talking heads tell Democrats not to just run an anti-Trump campaign. That just hardens his supporters.
Now, Brooks says, run against Trump. In fact, it’s a Democrat’s moral obligation.
Whatever.
David! Really? " We’ve learned a few things about the Democratic Party. First, it’s still fundamentally a materialist party. The Trumpian challenge is primarily a moral and cultural challenge."
Democrats argue in favor of all people, especially those in the middle and lower economic classes. You have bought into the FOX messaging, which highlights some aspects of that democratic message.
And Trump has so dumbed down the moral and cultural ideals of America that he is no longer, perhaps has never been a man of culture or morals.
This is an embarrassing column. Reread it, I hope, and offer a mea culpa.
You have become part of the chorus supporting Trump, even if you don't know it.
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It is a fight for the american white soul, mainly whites without a college degree and white men. Do you believe in equality ? That all people white, black and brown, men and women, are equal and deserve the same economic and career opportunities in any field ? Do you agree that a small number of immigrants, skilled and unskilled should be allowed to become US citizens to cover the millions of empty job openings ? Also that every US citizen, regardless of race and gender ahould have a fair shot at reaching his or her full natural potential ? Do you agree that the president should be someone honest, steady and a person of character and integrity ? Do you agree that a supreme court judge should be impartial and his temperament should be good ?
Every time Trump utters the word nationalism, ask him how much business he and his family do outside the US! Every time Trump says "jobs" ask him how many immigrants he has employed in all his ventures form construction to hotels to golf courses, world wide? Every time he says the word American, ask him why he and his son in law have evaded taxes for decades, that money they owed could have been used to fix the crumbling infrastructure all over the country and generated jobs jobs (he pronounces it jaab jaab).
4
The democrats should be running more forcefully on the issues but at the same time calling Trump on his lies (they are not mutually exclusive). Yes, talk about health care but point out it is Republicans who more recently and cynically portray themselves as the defenders of Medicare and pre-existing conditions, while, in truth, they are plotting legal actions against it. Talk about immigration and the caravan--that Trump shamelessly, now claims the "mob" is paid by Democrats-- and remind folks that the Senate passed an Immigration Reform Bill that has been lingering in limbo for over two years because Republicans refused to bring it to the floor of the House for debate. Trump has been spreading the lie that Democrats did nothing about immigration when in reality Republicans obstructed every move to deal with this issue. I fear that Democrats will again shoot themselves in the foot by being too timid and let this opportunity pass. Imagine two more years of Trump and his destructive policies-- more tax cuts for the multimillionaires and corporations masquerading as tax cuts for the middle class and the poor.
The ignorant people of this country have gone mad .
1
David, Trump is not a populist. He is a Republican. Own it, you helped make him.
8
Distinctive identity groups...you mean 'not white men', I assume, are under threat from an oppressive society, and here I think you mean 'old white men?'. That seems correct.
As for the Democrats counter strategy to these OWM's regressive vision, rhetoric, and lies; plus trump's mental illness, there is no strategy to fight this much indecency.
It is up to our citizenry to see, clearly, what is happening, and vote to protect themselves and their fellow citizens.
The GOP and Trump deserve each other. Together they have ushered in a new age in America or revived one that hasn't been as visible since the years preceding the Civil War. The stakes are very real but they are not about how much most of us can get when it comes to material.
Our country is one of the least civilized of the developed countries. Either Americans are naïve or they are extremely selfish when it comes to understanding what taxes do. The richest corporations and Americans do understand but don't want to pay to support the country that, with its labor, supports them. Quite a few of these corporations and Americans use their money to influence legislators (thanks to the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United) or they have top secret meetings where they solicit money and promise the donors that no one will know what's being funded or by whom.
I have no problems with people being rich. I do have problems with rich people, rich corporations, and politicians telling me and others like me, on the basis of nothing, that everything is bad. Immigrants are bad. LGBTQ, bad. Education, bad and elitist (and how many GOP members have gone to the Ivy League schools?). Intelligence: awful.
Health care: only for those who can afford it.
America is eating its citizens alive. Worse yet, we've voted in these malevolent snakes. We need to vote them out no matter what the Toddler in Chief or David Brooks say.
6
Like all David Brooks columns, this one has decent points and glaring mistakes. Trump has changed much about the Republican party, but it's still a large group likely to vote for whoever has conservative instincts. Democrats are still those with progressive instincts.
I agree Dems often fall short on moral arguments, but it's because they have little loyalty to truth--though quite a bit more than Trump & the GOP. Their "values" arguments often fall flat, generally because they care as little about core values--truth, love, peace, justice--as Republicans, who are superficial in a more overt focus on "values". Both teams are hopelessly materialistic and grounded in manipulative means.
Dems could win on health care, IF and WHEN they can find a repeatable and resonant message. Pre-existing conditions is a good choice, but their main message needs to be that Republicans have no alternatives to the ACA and they do, albeit nothing of consensus. Dems actually avoid the money issue that David's Republican ears hear.
Republicans are the morally and intellectually corrupt party that Americans need to overthrow--asap. They're the anti-government party (anti-democracy), the free market party (free of regulation, not of access by all), and the anti-truth party (climate change denial, supporters of a pathological liar). I urge voters to vote Democrat, if only because this is the only party capable of holding American values high.
1
Republicans have never been opposed to "Big Government" any more than they have opposed to government deficit spending or interference with "state's rights". They are simply opposed to the government interfering with their agenda. Mr. Brooks mistakes arguments of convenience meant to bolster fairytales for statements of principle.
4
The 2018 Election is just another broken gear amongst the faulty cogs of the American system of government. Even if Democrats win control of the House, we will still be left with only a dysfunctional government at our disposal.
Hopefully President Trump and the Republicans and their agenda will maintain enough control beyond these elections to be re-elected in 2020. America must go through the entire cycle of a two term Trump Presidency in order for any national cleansing to take place.
1
Trump's a populist? You cannot intelligently discuss difficult issues without respecting language clarity. "Populist" both historically and etymologically represents the idea of people-oriented policies and decision-making in politics. What could "populist" possibly mean if it applied to Donald Trump and today's Republican Party. The Koch brothers are populists? Very sloppy language, indeed.
1
From @TicToc by Bloomberg yesterday: "Cancer is a 'life or debt' situation: 42% of new cancer patients exhausted their life savings in just 2 years, according to a new study from The American Journal of Medicine." This is a very real fear that most Americans live with every day. Health care should be a top priority for any candidate who hopes to win an upcoming election.
1
Democrats want to spend more? What about Mr Trump's military posturing? Renewing the nuclear arms is a huge spending commitment.
Well, trans people are under attack, defined out of existence, with anti-discrimination protections withdrawn.
The message is hope or fear, what we can do together or focusing on non-existent threat. Hospitals, or bomb silos. Supporting the weakest, or crushing them. Telling the truth or lies. This is a moral decision, absolutely.
1
There should have been a carefully orchestrated and yet passionate campaign developed to address Trumpism. Start with a basic question: "Why did 81% of the tax cuts go to the 1%?" Then provide this answer: "Democrats will repeal the tax cuts so that 81% go to the bottom 50%, and the rest to the wealthier citizens."
Then show Trump on the world stage with this headline: "Trump shows disdain toward democratic world leaders"...Then have photos showing him with an annoyed look when meeting with democratically elected leaders. Continue on with lying, ineffectual promises made between Trump and Kim Jong Un, while Trump is saying how great the deal is and showing dissenting, factual views to the opposite.
You can take this approach with about a dozen things he has said and done. At least that way, you can highlight the disaster that Trump has foisted on this country, and really have a fighting chance. Weak attacks, based on "you can see how bad Trump is so we don't need to say anything" are just that...WEAK.
Nice try, David. Yeah, why aren’t the Democrats speaking out about Trumpist politics and Trump? And working to gain or regain the “high road”? Because it doesn’t matter. That is: Democratic voters already know Don and that party and what’s left of the GOP is corrupt and should not get another term in any race. Those on the Trumpist side won’t hear Democratic messages at all (Fox News, conservative radio don’t admit a second of other messages) and won’t vote against Don or his surrogates on any level. People who sit “in the middle” are aware of the rot being peddled by Don. They are. But I think anyone who wants to know what each party offers knows where those parties stand. And, most of all, in this election, it’s the local that seems to be mattering most. And, yes, health care.
3
"Materialist Party"? The D's are definitely struggling with "THE" message, or the small bundle of messages, that will capture the public imagination and nudge them back toward sanity. But as for materialism, and policies grounded in personal and corporate gain, the Republicans have claimed total victory.
And to the extent that the public continues to be deluded by the illusion, we will continue down a very bleak, materialistic (and militaristic) road here in America. In this and the 2020 election, the U.S. is I think truly at a crossroad of epic importance--and while the D's aren't quite yet on top of "THE" message, the R's are busy switching the signposts so voters will, willingly, take the wrong road to the future.
2
And once again, Brooks like everyone else fails to mention the obscenely bloated budgets devoted to the military and national security, billions and billions of dollars that could instead be spent for the betterment of the people. Don't blame him. The Democratic establishment is terrified to mention it either.
2
Outstanding. This essay should be required reading for the DNC.
THIS is what for Democrats and most Americans is called "values":
- respect and freedom of the press and media
- respect for this country's main institutions and congressional procedure
- NO LYING
- respect for ALL Americans, independently of color of skin, origin, religion or political affiliation
- cultivating compassion for EVERY American who suffers, whether it's from low wages or no healthcare or no access to college or gender/race/religious discrimination
- respecting other countries and strengthening our relationships with both allies and foes, all while denouncing criminal behavior and human rights issues
- taking full responsibility for the fact that the US has the highest carbon footprint per capita in the world, and becoming a leader on this issue, reuniting all of the people and countries all around the world to start working together and protect the earth for generations to come
- cutting the federal deficit (Obama cut Bush's $1.4 trillion deficit by two thirds) and adopting the pay-as-you-go rule for new spending bills (in other words, not adding a dime to the deficit). Some used to call this "fiscal responsibility", before they decided to create an "alternative facts" world instead
- respect for unborn life (studies show that it's Democrats' policies, NOT the GOP's, that effectively lower the number of abortion).
Conclusion: today, the GOP rejects ALL of this, and actively tries to destroy any progress made.
Obviously, the Dems are the 'party of values" now!
3
And just as obviously, the Republicans either have something on you or have you on their payroll.
Else why would you call them a "Grand Old Party," the way you did just now? Twice?
Let them catapult their own propaganda. Just call them by their name.
Well, David, your memory is short. Hillary Clinton already tried to run on big ideas about the values that make us all Americans, as well as a raft of well-crafted policy proposals. Remember her 2016 campaign theme? “Stronger Together.” I thought it captured the essence of values that make me a Democrat. Remember her saying “We are a big-hearted country”? News media pilloried her for having “no message.” To them, it was just another thing that old woman Hillary couldn’t do right. They preferred to dwell on her email problems, story after story. Obama won on “Hope! Change!” but somehow “Stronger Together” wasn’t meaningful enough.
3
"But the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism. In politics you can’t beat something with nothing."
That's totally absurd.
The GOP has invented an "alternative facts" narrative that actually isn't based in reality at all.
More than half of the American people know that their "narrative" is a pure fiction, totally false.
As a consequence, Democrats decided to focus on real issues and problems instead, and problems that will become much worse if we allow the GOP to continue to control DC, and to anyone paying attention, healthcare is clearly the main issue here.
Obamacare insures 20 million more Americans, which is saving an additional 40,000 Americans a year.
Soon, the Democrats will have saved a whopping HALF A MILLION American lives.
ALL Republican legislative focus in DC has been and continues to be on healthcare, not on immigration (on that issue, they clearly prefers things to be as they are, without more border security or stricter immigration laws, if not they would already have passed comprehensive immigration reform).
What the GOP is trying to do will literally cause 40,000 additional deaths a year.
Those are REAL death panels.
Anyone who calls this "nothing" is just part of the cynical elites who live in such a bubble that they only see political games rather than what real people are going through.
1
The Democrats are materialistic??? In articles I read of Trump supporters saying that they don't like his crudeness, language, tactics, lying, etc. -- but they continue to support him wholeheartedly because of how "successful" he has been. They see that success in the stock market going up [who is really most benefiting from that?], the economy is looking great, they have more customers,....
Who is being materialistic here? Those who believe that as long as I'm getting mine, it doesn't matter whether others are struggling to make ends meet, have no health coverage, are living in polluted and unhealthy conditions; whether we are destroying the future of our planet for our grandchildren and great grandchildren so that we can have more money and be more comfortable today.
I see no point in addressing my very serious concerns about what Trump has done to basic decency and civility and honesty in this country when I know anything I say about moral standards and fostering a civil and fair society will not be enough to "trump" the attitudes of those who are all about "me first."
Anything I say to those people will fall on deaf ears. Better that I talk about health care and other immediate needs to care for ALL of our people -- about decency, honor, fairness, the social contract.
5
One giant eye roll - the hypocrisy inherent in David Brooks's argument is hard to look past.
Leaving aside that one of the only major GOP victories laid claim to even bigger material benefits to the wealthy (the GOP's traditional base), he completely missed the point that the moral issue he describes is a rot within the GOP and is not just limited to Trump. Some careful introspection on the part of right-thinking people in the GOP, like those David Brooks appears to believe he is one of, would be a fantastic starting point.
It is all fine and dandy to point fingers at the Democrats, but you can't really blame them for at least trying to salvage what is possible from the burning cesspit that is the challenge of dealing with the modern GOP, of which Trump is only a symptom.
The current Dem strategy of focusing on issues that have wide-ranging appeal even in Trump country is the first pragmatic step that they have taken in eons and acknowledges that these all-American values, which Brooks implies can be appealed to, simply don't exist. That is not the reality of current day America, and that's a shame.
1
Mr. Brooks, you need to come to Florida and listen to our next governor. Andrew Gillum is not afraid to speak up to Mr. Trump in no uncertain terms. He goes there, calling Trump "weak, a bully" to a national audience (CNN debate), and then outlines exactly how and why the Democrats are different.
Andrew Gillum is showing the whole nation how it's done. The energy behind him is growing. For the first time since the 2016 election, I know hope.
Wait until the inevitable crash happens--looking to be sooner, rather than later. Many of those who favor forty five's red meat rhetoric will pivot on a dime. One of the worst things Republicans have done--without much press coverage--is to gut consumer protections. Wait until forty five's voters lose what little safety net they have and see what happens. In the long run, materialism (having enough money to survive) will trump (pun intended) cultural identity.
3
Brooks is partially correct. The Dems (and their lack of message) are pathetic at the national level. If they win, it will be despite the party's ineptitude.
They have betrayed their constituencies -- citizens, workers, families (of all types) -- and continue to FAIL massively as party for the past 40+ years. They are in need of major changes to their leadership in the House, the Senate and their national organizations.
At this point, i remain totally unimpressed by the ones who think they have what it takes to be president, making the rounds of late. Bush leaguers. We need a seasoned, successful, reality-based Dem governor as the candidate, no current senator is qualified nor could win a national election.
Meanwhile Brooks needs to look in the mirror to hold accountable they kinds of people who hurrahed the republicans and conservatives that have created the materialists and destroyers of national culture and morality.
There is a moral message that some Dems have used and it is the message of gross inequality. When you have a huge number of families living paycheck to paycheck, and you're giving billionaires huge tax breaks, that's a moral issue. When we spend more on our military than all the western democracies, and then some, combined, that's a moral issue. When our teachers have to buy supplies for their students from their own paychecks, that's a moral issue. Besides all the groups traditionally left behind and held back by institutional racism, homophobia, and misogyny, average white and non-white workers are being shafted by the rich and corporations, and that's a moral issue. Whether your politics is formed by a personal philosophy that has a religious, or a non-religious foundation, we have a moral crisis in this country and it is tied to inequality.
Democrats win when they campaign on the premise that we're all in this together, that the things we have in common are more important than those that divide us. Bill Clinton ran--and won--on that theme. That's why I am so moved by Bill Nelson's best TV ad in this year's Senate campaign, per this comment from "Florida Politics":
'Nelson’s other new commercial, “Strapped,” has an entirely positive tone. It renews Nelson’s reflections on his time as a U.S. Congressman sent into space as a payload specialist astronaut on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986. At what appears to be a town hall meeting, Nelson recalls looking down on the Earth and seeing “we’re all in this together.”
“I look back at Earth. I didn’t see religious divisions. I didn’t see political divisions. I didn’t see racial divisions,” he says in a speech, a point that’s been a staple of his speeches for many years. “What I saw is, we’re all in this together. If we just remembered that, we’d get a lot more done.”'
1
"Trump and the other populists have transformed the G.O.P. "
IMHO the GOP was transformed by Newt Gingrich and Ronald Reagan. Their lies paved the way for Hastert, McConnell, and Ryan to decompose our political discourse into the cesspool of deception it has become. Trump simply inherited a corrupt organization that had already given up any noble ideas in exchange for the expediency of mendacity and hate mongering. The last straw was the corruption of the Supreme Court by Senate Republicans intent on making their paper majority permanent.
Mr. Brooks appears quite naive in his blindness of the Republican goal of "natural aristocracy".
1
I have to wonder how the term populist has become such a negative. the word is derived from the Latin populus, the people, and is defined as 1. A supporter of the rights and power of the people. (populist. (n.d.) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011).)
It would seem to me that that is what democracy is all about, the rights and powers of the people. Is it the case that Mr. Brooks et al have a problem with democracy, or just with their vocabulary?
1
Read today’s NY Times DealBook article about Paul Volcker by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Volcker tells us all that we need to know.
David - speak to Volcker. You might learn a few things.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the Dems need a stronger message charging that the Reps will cut Medicare, Social Security and other programs that most voters have paid into all their working lives. The Reps are positioned to finally starve all those paid-for programs that we have already paid for and have counted on. People always react when you threaten to take their hard-earned money. They will vote to keep their money.
The Dems need to keep pounding that message until the close of polls on November 6, 2018, Pacific Standard Time.
2
I look and and observe that the Democratic Party is remaining true to President Obama's unifying speech in 2004: "There is no liberal America and conservative America. There's the United States of America." Also, the U.S. is not about Democrats and Republicans, right or left, but the president best equipped to make a better America for our children. That is what won the Democratic Party the election in 2008. I'd say that was a cultural message. It still exists, David. Why not point that out once in a while? When I watch Trump debase America now as president, I remember Obama's goals and I want to scream.
I watch and enjoy your comments on the PBS Newshour. I see you working hard lately not to criticize Trump yourself these days. You did criticize him strongly after the election; you were flabbergasted. You said Hillary Clinton made too much of criticizing Trump's personality and not appealing to voters on other issues. Why have you changed your tune now? Are you having a hard time trying to maintain your Republican credentials? You've written that a third party might be the answer . . . but I know that's not possible now to stop Trump.
I guess the Dems should remember to emphasize that this is the "United States of America" before they get into health care, infrastructure, the environment, respect for identity, a living wage, what taxes pay for, all the "materialist" necessities that people need to maintain their lives.
@Carol Richmond
President Obama gave a lot of speeches and said a lot of things. Mr. Brooks liked the crease in his slacks. The way he governed was a lot different than his speeches.
"it’s very hard to make a universal appeal to Americans as Americans, or defend the basic American norms that Trump calls into question."
My hope has always been that the argument for doing something is because it is the right thing, not because it benefits my community, my city, my state or my country. Trump is all about those selfish benefits. The Democrats need to argue more persuasively that the things they want to do are right, not that their benefits are better.
If I read this correctly, the premise is that Democrats have no coherent message to address the cultural dynamics in our country. Trump intuitively understood those forces, ruthlessly exploited them, and has co-opted the GOP. Underlying Mr. Brook's argument is the notion that if Democrats had a viable cultural identity message to parry the trumpian tribalism, they would be more successful. Inherent in this argument is the notion that there was no such option in 2016. I disagree. We had 8 years of an extremely talented, articulate, and arguably moral president that had a cultural and national vision for this country and ALL of it's citizens that tried to uphold what we all think of as best in ourselves and America. He was stymied at every turn by the GOP. HRC tried to run a campaign extending that world view and policies. She was rejected and lost the election because 77,000 voters in 3 key districts handed trump the electoral victory against a popular vote loss of over 2.5 million. I don't think it's a vision articulation problem. It's a voter problem amongst a clearly identified majority in this country that reject trump, but won't put forth the effort to elect representatives that are aligned with them, gerrymandering notwithstanding. The angels of our better nature are abdicating in favor of the demons we carry with us that revel in us vs. them, tribalism, and reviling the "other". We are all responsible for what's happening in our country.
2
Brooks's idealism is showing. If appeals to the good nature of Americans could work, Hillary's TV Ads showing children listening to Trump's outrageous remarks would have won her the election.
1
One could just as well argue that on the left and right, "the basic logic is that distinct identity groups are under threat from an oppressive society". For the Democratic left, the identity groups are women, minorities, LGBT etc. for the Republic right, the identity group is whites who feel like their identities are under attack from immigrants and those groups represented by the Democratic left. The economic-oriented people of both parties will still argue for the superiority of their side: Republicans will argue for economic growth under Trump. Democratics will argue that the recovery started under Obama and that more people need to benefit from it through raising the minimum wage, family leave or health benefits. I don't see culture trumping economics but the cultural and identity issues are here to stay. How about a more generous view of what it means to be American???
The Democrats are following the inclusive moderate messaging that Mr. Brooks usually prescribes. Their emotional displeasure with the Kavanaugh confirmation was condemned by David at the time as a low point of civilization. The real low point of our civilization is that Trump is President and that the Republicans control both houses of Congress. That fact should be enough to motivate anyone to vote. David's riff on materialism seems to follow the logic that feeding the hungry is materialistic. Could it more appropriately thought of as an expression of the Golden Rule. If I had to reduce the applicable argument to single syllables it would be that the Democrats care and the Republicans don't.
Sadly,Brooks is right.Trump has turned politics into a television show.Winning elections isn't about which group cares the most about what is best for all of us.....it is about who is the most entertaining.The sort of statements,no matter how outrageous,that get our attention and stoke our fears are what most people listen to.When you only have 50% of those eligible voting,this strategy works and Trump knows it.If Democrats don't become more forceful and call Trump out directly,they may win the House narrowly but it will be all downhill from there.The outraged victims of the Parkland school shooting could show the Democrats how go speak.As in the sixties,our only hope for honest outrage comes from the young.All the comments pointing out which party is right or the most moral are missing the point.First you have to win the election.
3
Health care is about social, community, and individual well being. If that isn't moral and cultural I don't know what is. After your outstanding column-typing performance in the last election maybe just give it up David.
2
Don't ever let me hear you use that word again: Social Justice Warrior. The second you begin internalizing your opposition's dialectic, it means they've already won the war of words.
We cannot allow our opponents to define what we stand for. We are progressives. We stand for everyone, not just minorities or single issues. And supporting healthcare and fair wages for all is our way of demonstrating that. Identity politics may get us the House, but it won't deliver us the Senate or the White House, and in time we will need both of those if we're to change this country for the better.
6
Democrats will have an uphill battle, always. This struggle for leverage is both economic and cultural. It’s much easier to appeal to people’s base nature, than not. And the primal fear for survival is especially triggered in a culture where the threshold for failure or risk is diminishing. The proverbial pie is being hoarded. This is reflected in Democratic leadership itself that adopts a half-hearted approach in fighting for those who potentially threaten their elevated status (see Chuck Schumer.) Democrats need to channel their leadership in numbers, from the bottom up. But the fix is in to disenfranchise this majority and many Americans are too politically naive to realize it.
2
Another way of saying this is that Democrats keep assuming Americans will vote their rational self interest, and it is obvious that assumption is not true. When the political party that represents the interests of maybe one percent of the population controls the entire government, you know the opposition is incompetent. I have read some of the research on how people actually vote, and it is not pretty. On a good day, maybe ten percent of voters actually vote issues. The major reason for this is that most cannot understand issues. Consider the evidence: since 1980, Republicans have dominated government. In that period, they have engineered three major tax cuts that went almost exclusively to the richest one percent, run the national debt from under $1 trillion to over $21 trillion, with a huge increase now underway, threaten SS and Medicare to deal with the deficits they created, and people still vote for them. Oh, and they haven't stopped people from having abortions or being gay. Clearly, Democrats have to find some new approach, but personally I don't think there is any reason to suspect that the Democratic Party with its present leadership s up to the task.
3
Well, despite what Trump says, he's not on the ballot. It's not a national campaign, it's an 'all politics is local' election. As for defeating Trump-ism, hopefully that will come with a Democratic house. Elizabeth Warren is the latest cautionary tale of a Democrat trying to take on Trump personally.
1
Mr. Brooks says the Democrats' basic political instinct is that you win votes by offering material benefits.
Of course, the Republicans promising their big donors tax cuts is not a material benefit....nah!
So who is more materialistic - the ones giving big tax cuts to the wealthy in return for big donations, or the ones suggesting health care and education are basic human rights?
And which ones are more moral?
7
More than economics, even more than health care--important though that is, the central issue in the USA today is a moral issue. Although David Brooks op-ed is a call to Democrats to address this, everyone needs to be urged to address the central moral issues, no matter the political affiliation. Moralists in the Republican party need to step up as well. Time to address "the elephant on the table."
3
Thank you Mr. Brooks. Your insights into the thinking of the leadership of the Democrats is accurate and useful. In addition to a strong "caring" policy, the Democrats also need to change the moral discourse in America. American principles must make a comeback. Thank you for spurring a much-needed discussion, and for making a difference.
4
I get your point about the Democrat's failure to focus on larger issues of inclusion but think your conclusion that "culture is more important than economics" is wrong. I often thought that Trump would have no traction if there was a sense of greater economic security among some portion of the 40% who feel uncertain about their finances, retirement, and opportunities for their kids. To be sure, some portion of the 40% is driven by bigotry and racism...but that portion has always been there. Its the portion that is economically insecure when combined with the zombies that gives Trump his base. Sadly, that economically insecure group is a byproduct of globalization - the inevitable byproduct itself of an ever modernizing world. The 'golden age' experienced by the US after WWII when we fed the world and were its hardware store was destined to come to an end. With that end came economic changes driven my multinational corporations behaving the way capitalists behave. In the end, economics drove what has become cultural divisions. It is all about the economy. But I get your dismay and angst and ambition that someone will stand up to Trump on grounds based upon principles. The Democrats are an obvious group. But what about Republicans? Are there no principled Republicans left? Where is Paul Ryan? Or Lindsay Graham? Or so many others. If the issue is one of morality or values and principles, where are the Republicans? Isn't this a job for everyone.
1
I've never been able to buy a bag of groceries with respect. My doctor does not take it as payment for his services. Republicans have shown little or no respect for the average American to the contrary the only thing that they have accomplished under trump is to give away our money to the already wealthy. Just who is the materialist party.
7
My belief is there's a third "party" that holds the fate of the Nation in their hands. That "party" is made up of the vast number of individuals who chose not to vote in 2016 for whatever reason. A conservative estimate of that number is somewhere north of 80 million. If even a third of those folks picked a side, the world is milking us dry and coming to our borders with guns drawn or let's try to help those in need, they would determine both the mid-term elections and the fate of our Nation. Polling of these folks is sketchy at best.
2
@JTG These people do not vote because they are paying no attention to anything other than pop culture, social media, black Fridays and the petty squabbles of their lives. They cannot name the Vice President or the branches of government and could not locate China on a globe if their lives depended on it. Joining and voting for an independent, centrist party is the furthest thing from their minds.
I think that after 40 great years, the tax cut message has probably run its course, with an aging population. Also, the Republicans messed it up this time, with not enough cuts for everyone and actually seeming to raise taxes for some blue state voters.
Democrats might make some headway by promising reform and responsible government. It would be a legitimate message that is backed up by their history, but they'd have to sell it a whole lot better than they do now.
If the Democrats don't take back the House they need their own TV show some other ideas. I don't see anyone able to counter the Trump megaphone in the Democratic party, and that will cost them.
2
I have paid into Medicare for over fifty years and still pay into it.I do not seek extra benefits.I want what I have earned.
9
Reading American and European history about the colonizing of the so-called “New World, and the cruel institution of slavery, I'm struck by the pervasive religiously held belief in entitlement. Entitlement was how the most aggressive colonizers justified their frequently inhumane behavior. The curse of entitlement is has never left us and and periodically raises its ugly head as in the kinds of racism and misogyny now infecting the Trump brand of the Republican party. It's not just an American curse and it's not a curse that is very susceptible to political remedies but it's sure not something we want to keep empowering. It's time to perform a little exorcism at the ballot box.
4
All over the world leaders who irresponsibly borrow from future generations to give handouts to voters reap short term benefits. Trump and the GOP are benefiting from a hot economy that started getting on pace during the 2nd Obama Administration and that has been bolstered by massive tax cuts and associated deficit spending.
If Trump wins a 2nd term, which seems likely right now, it will be during that term that the economic impacts begin being felt, and then we will see a temporary blue resurgence.
There is no percentage in telling Americans what they already know about DJT -- that Daffy Donald is impetuous, uneducated, bullying, lying, narcissistic, unstable, hurting the US abroad, unable to run the White House effectively -- there are abundant books, videos, articles, interviews and so on establishing this for all. What we see is that Americans don't care how immoral or stupid a leader is if they have money in their pockets...
2
I am very disturbed by Democratic senators on TV right now, who are just not getting it. A counter narrative is indeed what this situation demands, and clear-eyed, impassioned statements about what is at stake if people don't vote. It's NOT ENOUGH to urge people to vote, because those who are sick of politics and uninformed are not going to be swayed by typical talking points like healthcare, no matter how important or valid that is.
2
Thanks, but no thanks, for your advice, Brooks. You apparently do not understand that everyone who is going to dislike Trump and vote contrary to the policies of him and his lackeys, are already outraged enough about Trumps moral and sociopathic bonafides.
The Democrats should not take your losing strategy because--guess what?--Trump does a great job of reaffirming several times a day the many reasons why he is unfit to be president of the United States.
If the Clinton-adverse still want to back Trump, nothing the Dems can do to call out the Orange One for what he is, and has always been, can change their minds. Trump himself stokes that fire with more lies and hate mongering every day.
The Dems are right to run on health care. Whether they can counter the GOP outright lies about the GOP position on health care remains to be seen.
Open your eyes and ears, Brooks. No one on any part of the political spectrum needs to be reminded that we have a creep for president.
They will vote accordingly, no matter how absurd it may be.
4
It appears Mr. Brooks is reaching for the stars to criticize Democrats. While there is plenty of criticism to be leveled against the party, he misses the mark suggesting moral issues must take precedence. Indeed, economic policy is what matters most to non-Republican people who actually vote. And of course economic policy often reflects moral issues, as well. Perhaps worst of all, Mr. Brooks speaks as if a single unifying policy is something preordained. In fact, Democrats have chosen to adopt more localized policies that better reflect local communities as opposed to a one-size fits all approach. So, let's stop the moralizing and better reflect our mandate to separate church and state. Ity's painfully clear that Republicans would repeal and replace this constitutional mandate with their moralistic nonsense. That's our choice in November.
6
Yo, Dave, he's your atrocity. The party you just can't seem to quit let him take over and substitute his insane brand of hatred-in-action for policy. Your party could have stopped him before he got traction. What did you do to make that happen? Don't tell me you didn't know. My six-year-ld son took one look at him on the escalator and asked, "Is he a bad man"" with no prompting. Yes, son he is a bad man, and all that is required for evil to prevail is for good people like David Brooks to do nothing. Because that is what all your hand-wringing amounts to: nothing.
17
@appleseed
I don't like Trump's careless talk and his disrespectful style of dialogue. However, I hope your son learns that Trump is not nearly as evil as those who want abortion to continue in this country.
What motivates at least half of Republican voters is not Trump, but the abortion situation. Pro-lifers like myself recognize that the human fetus is human, that all humans have human rights, that the right to life is the most essential human right, and that a just government should equally protect to each and every human life.
Yes, there are other important issues, economy, health care, immigrant rights, etc., but they all pale in comparison with the atrocity which is legal abortion.
As a father who has likely seen your own unborn child on an ultrasound, I hope you can recognize that abortion is the greatest evil in this country.
@Jonathan
And yet, the army of anti-abortion voters have allowed themselves to be manipulated into a position where in order to cast their pro-fetus vote, they also cast an anti-human vote, since ALL other Republican policies demonstrate utter disdain for the basic dignity of all humans. Criminalization of abortion will NOT lower abortion rates. But it will spike the death rate for lower income women with unwanted pregnancies. Abortion rates GO DOWN in Democratic run states where sex-ed and access to birth control are promoted. THESE are the tools to fight abortion, if you actually want it to stop. Selling out all living humans to pack SCOTUS with anti-abortion ideologues is a bargain you have made with the devil. And I mean that literally.
@appleseed
Amen.
Republican apologist Brooks is at it again. It's the Democrat's fault. Forget the fact that we have ignorant racists, the investor class, a mentally deranged, dictator loving, president, a cowardly un-American Republican Congress, a forever tainted Supreme court, global climate deniers in what was once our proud country voting by and for greed, white supremacy, and
hatred of everything moral, ethical, and humane. David, you cannot have it both ways, you either stand up to evil or you embrace it. Sadly, you have chosen the latter.
8
Yes. When if ever will Democrats learn? Trump is right. This election IS about him. If it is not, then we are lost. The attacks on our moral principles and democratic values are the defining issue, as Obama has stated. Democrats who don’t know how to run on this are sadly missing the message. But you Mr. Brooks aren’t much better. Perhaps I have been remiss in failing to read the columns where you attacked the Electoral College or the Senate system as huge suppressors of the will of the people.
4
I generally disagree with Mr. Brooks but I have to agree that Democrats have been very ineffective and pathetic during last few months. The handling of Kavanaugh was at best ineffective and worst disastrous to Democrats. The allegations of sexual misconduct should have been referred to FBI in July 2018 and not in last days of hearing. Clinton and Holders comments did count. It is not time to DNA tests to fall in Trump trap. I do not hear Democrats defending the borders as vigorously as defending the right to seek of asylum from political (not economic) persecution. More importantly I like Democrats leader to say what Biden did a day ago emphasizing the nature of American Society including openness, equal opportunity and role of law. I agree health care and medicare for all are important but Trump and far right conservatives are posing existential threat to American threats which require mobilizing beyond the liberal, progressive democratic base.
5
Another liberals did it con from Brooks.
Perhaps he is not visible in mirrors so does not know he has the problem?
4
You are the #fail, Mr. Brooks.
You are out of time. You belong neither to this era, nor one that existed in the past or future.
You are neither good nor bad, but more of the latter than the former. (You are, after all, a conservative...)
Time to give it up. You have no raison d'etre.
See ya... Don't let culture hit you in the face as you leave out the service exit...
3
Brooks missed it again! trump said it well in Dallas, I'm a Nationalist! The bigoted, racist, Nationalist Party of trump: lie, fear monger, corrupt to the core, no moral or ethical values... wave the flag and shout: I'm a Nationalist, USA, USA!
10
Trump really seems to reflect America now. The economy ranks over morality, weak checks and balances and corruption.
1
Why doesn’t he lack of honesty among Republicans like Brooks have any negative repercussions? Blame the Democrats for the wholly created by, supported mindlessly by, and revered by Republicans Trump? The problem with this election is not Democrats, it is the frightening combination of the complete abandonment of any pretense of morals, truth-telling or actual patriotism by Republicans, combined with the ignorance, stupidity and outright evil of the Republican booboisie. The spectacle of demonic sheep chanting the most heinous of lies amd nonsense at Trump’s ego-fests would turn moral Republicans against the party, were there any. Alas, the right has made it clear that they believe morals, basic humanity and true patriotism are for “snowflakes”. This, kiddies, is what moral rot looks like. Brooks, had he any morals, would run screaming from the Republican Party instead of lying in support of it.
3
According to articles in today’s New York Times, the Republicans have principally abandoned their chief policy on health insurance and are now focusing on the threat of foreigners invading the United States. Apparently this seems to be a more moral position than the Democratic position. It bothers David Brooks little that they have blown a big hole of debt into the current budget. That the Democratic platform is largely to help under-privilege men and women in our society is characterized by Mr. Brooks as the materialist party. This perversion is also characteristic of the supporters of the Trump regime.
8
hmmm
fasting for Democrats and gluttony for Republicans
honesty for Democrats and lies for Republicans
spiritual "love" - caring for everyone for Democrats and hatred and exclusion for Republicans
More fetuses but please let's not support mothers, babies, and families.
Hypocrisy as church
The list goes on and on.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Republicans narrow the definition of what they regard as a person and keep the god made in their image front and center: greedy and shameless, it's all about trickle-up and jailing, deporting, killing, and disenfranchising as many of "those people" as possible.
Ugh! Evil is abroad in the land, and Republicans seem to worship it, because it keeps them and their buddies in power and wealth and keeps the rest of us down.
15
This is an awful piece. Trump, the GOP and the top donors are only about economics. Trump made the point as clear as possible with his unwillingness to sanction Saudi Arabia. He simply has lied his way to a message that he is also for ethnic nationalism. His supporters are just too stupid to understand that he is fleecing America and they are essentially getting nothing out of it, but more pollution and debt.
10
"These days, culture is more important than economics."
That is only due to the economy doing well right now. Wait til it changes and you will see a large shift towards economic issues, and culture issues receding to the background. And that day is coming; perhaps not before the Midterm election but the economy has been riding smoothly for a long time and a cool down or recession is over due.
The "health" of an economy is not solely based on the stock market and unemployment. Many "health issues" are prevalent in the economy waiting to do damage; income inequality, the debt, and the deficit, to name three.
3
Fourth - They have lied and lied and lied (without being challenged in any way - especially by the press)
That is the new paradigm, where many low information voters are influenced by and believe what they want to believe. (especially in the face of hard facts that are obvious and counter any such narrative)
It is simply going to take extra effort (when Liberals regain power) to ''reeducate'' and ''deprogram'' all of these people that have been brainwashed by the lies.
We will have to govern for all. (as we always do)
4
Unfortunately, the Donkeys are the 70# weakling getting sand kicked in his face by the bully from the GOP. Until this narrative gets changed, the GOP will continue to control the stage.
2
Why don’t you just say “white nationalism” instead of side stepping with “ethnic”?
3
While it is true that the Democrats seem to be lost and fall back on the true and tired (I meant tried) approaches, Mr. Brooks' OpEd is a classic case of blaming the whiplashed and disoriented victims for the terrible things that are being perpetrated on them. Sort of like blaming young boys for being there alone with the predatory priests.
How about starting to blame equally eloquently the sycophants and proto-fascists, who call themselves Republicans, as does Mr. Brooks. Perhaps the three branches of current US government and 30 million Americans need to change their filthy behavior.
7
Well known is the truism, Republicans bring a gun to a fight, Democrats bring a knife.
1
Ever since Trump rode his golden escalator. David Brooks has lost his way. He columns have turned to mush. In this column, he drags out golden-oldies from the GOP playbook.
Mr. Brooks, the GOP had opportunities time after time in the 2016 primaries to stop Trump, but they failed. Instead, the GOP embraced Trump 100%. The GOP is dead. In it's place there's the Trump Party. Jump in David, the swamp is fine!
5
Sir...I shake my head. There are political narratives speaking to people of good will in most places.
Opinion writers who are so ensconced in their own oeuvre they reveal their bias while thinking being evenhanded. It’s innocent in most cases. Learning how to think.
But from a NYT opinion writer? Accusing the Democrats of materialism when the Republicans are religiously dedicated to serving gold to their benefactors. And kill dreams.
Democrats at least believe in some sort of equality. With republicans there always a but..
5
Donald Trump is a populist like I'm LeBron James. Mr. Brooks, how can you be so sloppy and careless in your writing?
Elimination of health care for the poor, tax cuts for the wealthy, endless disparagement of women, minorities and immigrants. These are not populist notions.
Trump is a demagogue, a hater, a divider. This column is surreal to me.
8
Trump's lies, contradictions, willful ignorance and cruelty are so plain on their face and unlike anything we have seen in this country in decades. Does one have to have a counter-platform? Isn't it enough for politicians running in opposition to this to say that we are not Trump ? Or is it a losing platform because as much as we hate to admit it, we are a country that harbors a large population of racists, poorly educated and immoral people who get their kicks out of demeaning others and sleep better at night after scapegoating immigrants, blacks, gays and intellectuals?
8
Looks like David missed the debate between Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis. I'll just let his closing statement explaining "Bring It Home" speak for itself:
https://twitter.com/andrewgillum/status/1054188086618255361?s=21
I can only speak for Florida. But down here, we are fighting back tooth and nail against Trumpism. We're just not fighting it on the airwaves or in the pages of the New York Times.
Sen. Nelson and his wife seem to have found new purpose in restoring torn social bonds. Clearly Mr. Brooks isn't going to come out of his bubble to see the hard work we're putting in on the ground, so maybe he should start with them.
Sen. Nelson might be the last Senator in the mold of Joe Biden and John McCain. And you know what? He's pretty centrist. But progressive activists throughout the state are working as one to make sure he wins.
The Big Tent is reopened for business, and that is how we're beating Trumpism - leadership by example. And Mayor Gillum is the heart of it all. David will never see past the "progressive" label, unfortunately.
1
Trump has a huge advantage. Most voters at any given moment are not adversely effected by inadequate health care. Only when it's too late. Many do feel that democrats have abandeded them and their values and while admitting Trump is sleazy enough share his make America great 1960 style vision
1
The title makes the Democrats sound like all they care are about materialistic things.
But then David says what he means by that is that Democrats want people to have healthcare.
Those terrible Democrats!
9
David Brooks helped make the new Republican party and now he wants the Democrats to help him out of his mess. I am really tired of these Republican opinion writers getting paid to bash their own product. Get a grip, admit your failings and eat your own dog food. Some of us have had enough of your whining. As we put it in the south you need a Come to Jesus moment. In the interim write about what your Party can do to mop up what you and others have accomplished.
3
How on earth can anyone respond to a party who has sold their soul to the devil and not one GOP leader will take a stand against this fascist regime? It’s mind blowing and something nobody could have been prepared for. The dems message may be flawed but the gaslighting of America has been bought and paid for by the GOP and it’s leaders are perfectly fine with it so long as they get their conservative judges and Supreme Court picks.
10
What you smell is the lingering stench of Clintonism. They turned the party to the right in pursuit of money and away from liberal democracy. However, you are still beating the wrong horse.
Talk to your crowd, David. They are the people who are greedy and who hoard all the benefits of government for themselves. You chide the Democrats as "tax and spend", but the spending is on what is needed: repairing infrastructure, funding education at all levels, assuring that our cities are not surrounded by slums full of homeless people like so many great cities around the world, making health care a human right like other countries, and providing for the elderly and disabled. Why aren't you chiding the Republicans for "tax cuts and spend" which is far worse and is aimed at comforting the unimaginably comfortable while stealing food from school children and letting the roads and bridges crumble? That is where the rot lies!
Where are all your good Catholic Republicans voting to help the disadvantaged and showing their Christian charity? Oh, right, they are harassing women over birth control and abortion while children are being irreparably harmed at our southern border.
How dare you call us "materialist" when your party allows the Cabinet to rob the treasury blind by taking perks to which they are not entitled - although "entitled" is where the word fits best. You are just an armchair scold doing nothing but pontificating from a very safe and very comfortable seat.
13
Ah yes, of course, another column by David Brooks criticizing Democrats. It is that time of the calendar, isn’t it?
Mr. Brooks spent a career building the Republican Party into what it is today. He was fine with the racism, fine with the xenophobia. He knew tax cuts for rich people were the way to grow the economy. In 2002-3, if you didn’t support the ill-fated invasion of Iraq you were a traitor, in the eyes of David Brooks.
Now, on the pages of the New York Times, the same David Brooks lectures Democrats how to be good citizens and win elections.
Mr. Brooks positions himself to conclude — reluctantly, of course — that he’ll just have to support Republicans again, while continuing to attend cocktail parties in Washington, D.C. as a “moderate.”
5
You'd think it would be easy to counter all the racist BBQ Becky's and Permit Patty's of the country with a platform of openness, tolerance, and globalism. But fear is a deeply ingrained human emotion. Trump is a moron in all ways except his ability to motivate people with fear -- in that way he is a genius.
I don't have the answers, or else I might be running for office. But it does seem obvious that, at the moment, you can't counter fears deeply rooted in the brain stem with economic issues that reside in the frontal lobe. Democrats need to build a narrative that connects to the brain stem of average people.
If Democrats are failing to energize the brain stems of nonwhite people with their platform, then they need to do some serious soul searching around their story. The right story also would appeal to open, tolerant, and global white persons, both on the coasts and in progressive enclaves. Come on Democrats, seize it!
8
I fully agree.
1
Oh wow look, David Brooks has finally turned to the subject of his own party and its pursuit of profit and inequality at any cost--
"We’ve learned a few things about the Democratic Party. First, it’s still fundamentally a materialist party."
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??
9
The democrats need a bigger liar than Trump. That seems to be what works now.
1
Fourth - They have lied and lied and lied (without being challenged in any way - especially by the press)
That is the new paradigm, where many low information voters are influenced by and believe what they want to believe. (especially in the face of hard facts that are obvious and counter any such narrative)
It is simply going to take extra effort (when Liberals regain power) to ''reeducate'' and ''deprogram'' all of these people that have been brainwashed by the lies.
We will have to govern for all. (as we always do)
2
I was flabbergasted when you mentioned that vulgar Trump is winning on cultural issues. Really? Trump, our brutus ignoramus in-chief is the least cultivated man except in his expertise in cheating on us and selling snake oil to his uninformed and prejudiced base...that refuses to think for itself. Trump is a cultured aberration, an opportunist that will say anything, and usually based on lies and insutls, freely exchangeable, according to his convenience. On the other hand, in this deeply unequal capitalistic society, with stagnant wages, and unjust laws that discriminate minorities from an equal education, health and housing, it may be smart for democrats to offer material gains if elected, don't you thimk?
3
David does not get it. He may have married a Christian wife, but he does not understand Christian principles. Importing labor with no citizenship rights, who are "invisible" to clean our offices, serve our food, wipe your children... is not healthy. It makes your workers, and your labor policies, fall flat. No enforcement, period.
If and when the Blue Wave is overwhelmed by the purple and red, will you consider hiring some non-Jewish, non coastal editorial writers to help you better understand why our country votes the way it does?
Just because we don't prioritize the transgender elite, open borders, and smashing labor laws does not mean WE are the ones who do not support America. Some of us even send our sons, and daughters, to fight for America's wars, not for another country where we might hold dual citizenship... That's rare.
2
Mr. Brooks this is one of the worst columns you've ever written. We're sick to death of the culture wars. They are destroying our country. It's about time politicians got back to the issues that people actually care about in their real lives as opposed to their "cultural" and spiritual voodoo nonsense.That's not materialism it's common sense. All this culturalism and tribalism is a distraction from the real issues facing the country. Politicians are supposed to deliver tangible benefits not spiritual succor to the spiritually thirsty. Get a grip!
9
David Brooks never fails to twist himself into a spiral in attempting to explain why 60 million television addled people voted for a sociopathic conman. Its very very simple. Fascism is a psychological and sociological cancer that begins and ends with vicious lies about "the other" in collusion with the uber rich, corporations and the military.
For the blue collar Archie Bunkers ignorants and bigots who make up the bulk of the 60 million they need (mostly) containment and education and perhaps no televisions. Democrats need to focus on the redistribution of wealth towards the rest of us. Very materialistic. Exactly.
4
Brooks Bashers: maybe it’s time to start listening. Read David Leonhardt- the Democrats’ chances of LOSING the house are increasing by the day, which is (or should be) terrifying to any sane person in this country. If the Democrats’ narrative results in the catastrophic losses in 2016 and 2018 (and 2000 for that matter), is it at long last time to countenance that something more fundamental is wrong with the party’s message? I fear it may be too late - and David Brooks, long the easy target of the facile critiques of the commentati, will be sporting his “I told you so” t-shirt. What profit a party if it sticks to health care, and the nation loses democracy?
3
Everyone seems to be blind to the fact that nothing of Trumpism and its manifold quislings and running dogs have anything to do with politics or policy or deeply-felt beliefs, rather it is all about mountebanks-cum-mobsters wresting control of power, and denuding or uprooting any institutions that might prevent them from consolidating that power. Just as in total war there are no longer such distinctions as “civilians” and “soldiers”, there can no longer be entities such as “Republicans” or “Democrats, — how could there be when civility, when manners, when morals have been potted like the millions of passenger pigeons that once darkened American skies?
2
Good Lord David
There you go again......the Republican fixation on wealth transfers to the 1, .1, and .01 percent make them the ultimate party of materialism.
Just because you want a livable wage, affordable housing and reasonable health care doesn't make you "materialistic".
You just don't want to live in your care and die in a ditch after leaving the emergency room with 2 aspirin that cost the hospital $50 each because of the drug company monopolies...
Vietnam Veteran and U.S. Army Officer
5
Mr. Brooks, you must be jibing us readers, or you're purposely gas-lighting us. All through 2016 you demonized Clinton, especially on her focus of trumps unworthiness, his lack of honestly and his devisiveness. Now you attack the Dems for not focusing on trumps dishonesty and lack of morality. Duh??? Swing voters don't care about plurality. They stayed home in 2016 knowing full well that a non-vote was a vote for trump. The Dems are doing what they're supposed to be doing: emphasizing health care as an issue that's important to the majority, even to on-the-fence white nationalists.
4
When Warren tried to challenge Trump on a moral level by taking a DNA test to prove she wasn't lying, Trump doubled down on calling her Pocahontas because her native American ancestors were several generations removed. When asked if he felt bad about accusing Cruz's father in the assassination of Kennedy he said "No, because it worked." In other words the ends justify the means and I don't think that is how the Judeo-Christian ethic is supposed to work. The culture that Trump is promoting is personal aggrandizement and stuffing his pockets at the expense of others. It's calling names and denigrating others while bragging about how perfect he is. And if a wife in Designer clothes (including $50,000 coats) and gold plated everything isn't materialism I don't know what is.
493
@Julie Carter
Democrats and liberal media might have sympathy to those poor and helpless people in the caravan who are coming from the collapsing countries in the south. But, they show no sympathy to many of those who are suffering poverty and loss of meaningful life in this country.
Yes, it's true that severity of those in the caravan are incomparably worse than those suffering in this country. But, as Americans, what we have to do first is to take care of our people in the right and respectful way. Helping other countries to learn from us for caring their suffering people can be the next goal only if we are successful in the first job. That's my understanding of what 'America First' means and I believe that's what Mr. Trump and his followers are thinking when they say that even though their languages are rough and tough at many times.
But, you have to understand that it is very difficult to see decency from suffering people when they believe the reasons of their sufferings mostly come from your betrayal of them. I am saying to you, so called 'liberal elites', for whom decency and high morality is more important than 'the (basic) material' which they already have sufficiently.
@Julie Carter. Harry Reid - Mitt Romney hasn’t paid taxes for ten years. Found to be a lie, asked after the election if he lied...we won didn’t we? Was his answer. You gotta be kidding me...
1
@Julie Carter If there are any non "materialistic" Republicans out there who have moral scruples why don't you band together to get rid of Trump and his political supporters. Clean you own party up or start a new one. Don't expect the Democrats to do your dirty work.
1
It's easy to say Democrats are dividing and polarizing moral discourse in society by taking on the causes of various identity groups. However, women are one-half of society, including members of all the various other identity groups, and many men feel and share their struggle to become free of the reactionary forces which oppress them. This was symbolized best in the Kavanaugh hearings, where at the #MeToo moment of change the draconian old Republican guard closed ranks again and told women to shut up and stay in their place. This was a moral struggle of the first importance.
2
With reference to Mexico, Trumps casts himself as a cultural and economic savior to his followers. Playing on the politics of fear, Trump doesn't provide facts and truth to his adherents; rather, he provides them false hope, granting his followers the illusion that their economic and social positions will be restored despite irrevocable change.
While dealing more with reality, Democrats nevertheless fail to inspire and mobilize their supports in a manner akin to Trump. The Democrats, moreover, have been much slower recognizing that the political and socioeconomic consensus of the Reagan Era has ended. Trump certainly represents the culmination of said era, but he's also the denouement of and reaction against it. Defeating the GOP establishment enabled Trump to alter America's political landscape. The Democrats, in contrast, are still fighting a civil war with progressives realizing the need for change, and a party establishment desiring to party like it's still 1999.
3
"Sex, lies, and at-war-with-the-world." The new Republican party, with D J Trump and John Bolton.... the odd couple.
I'll grant your point, David: Democrats seem disorganized and unable to mount an effective response. When the entire political geography is being determined by a demi-demon who can pivot a dozen times in 5 minutes, you must admit that a rational response is hard.
There's a disaster ahead.... we can only hope that America wakes up in time and makes the right responses. With people like McConnell guiding the Republicans, I don't have much hope.
2
Republicans put money before people.
Democrats put people before money.
That enough of a narrative for anyone?
(Of course, a lot of Republican sympathizers put money before certain TYPES of people. That may be the bigger problem.)
6
What a lot of phoney and distorted rhetoric!
To claim that Trump is focused on "moral and cultural" issues while the Democrats are focused on "materialist" ones is baloney. To the extent Democrats are focused on "benefits" and "spending" it is precisely because they reflect a moral and cultural perspective--that of fairness, decency and justice.
Trump aside, the Republican focus is clearly above all else tax cuts and deregulation--I can't think of a more materialist focus than that!
That said, I do agree that Democrats should turn away from identity politics and stick with just plain old decency and fairness for all.
11
DAVID BROOKS .... I agree with you and I'm a DEM.
It is a true unfortunate observation you make.
It's not too late and the fact that you wrote it could influence our behavior and selection of subject matter.
1
Why on earth should the Democratic Party run on issues defined by its opponents?
2
Hmmm. As an ardent progressive, I find Brooks' take pretty spot on. He's not arguing that Trump and his disciples aren't wrong - even heinous - he's saying that you can't fight visceral vitriol solely with an issues-based campaign. The Dems need to make all the points they are making but they have lost the central point - the Republican Party and its titular head are morally bankrupt and literally corrupt. Why is it wrong to bring that to the fore?
The Republican Party is materialist too. And Trump is the most materialist of all. It's just that their materialism benefits only them (In the case of the party, it's billionaire donors, in the case of Trump, himself, his family and his billionaire cronies). With such narrow materialism they need something else to get voters to the polls, so hatred of other ethnic and cultural groups is their ticket. If the Democrats tried the same tactic they would be accused of "class warfare" -- a term that is only used if you are trying to fight back against the class that is winning the war. Politics is "organized hatred" but only one side is allowed to identify the enemy. And since their enemy is almost everyone, they have to be sneaky about it, which they most certainly are.
2
Great column. Clinton’s biggest mistake was overestimating how many people make a rational choice in the voting booth. If humans were rational, Trump never would have stood a chance. Democrats need to appeal to the emotions of the electorate with something other than the defense of oppressed minorities. Our Democracy is under attack by a Republican party willing to trash the constitution and everything the founding fathers believed. They are weakening our international power and sovereignty by isolating us from allies and ignoring Russian attacks on our democracy. It is maddening to watch the Dems squander this.
3
The assumption that Trump is some sort of radical departure from Republicanism is a false one. The Trump Administration is simply Republicanism without a slick, folksy salesperson, rather with a buffoonish distraction. It appears that this is a more effective method for the creation of plutocratic hegemony. Well, that and effectively buying off the opposition.
1
Maybe if people in your profession would actually challenge Trump when he lies, the country might be better off. Instead, you let him off without even answering a question, he just babbles, and walks away.
1
Is this a cynical ploy by the arch conservative columnist to “misdirect” what the Democratic electoral messaging should be? Is Mr. Brooks getting more and more agitated over a prospective Democratic takeover of the Congress with the resulting internal chaos and fury unleashed in his party, possibly leading to its complete demise? Why would Democratic candidates stray from an issue that much research and direct input has shown to be a major issue, if not the #1 issue, for likely voters across the country? At this point, unless they have been in a two year coma, everyone is completely aware of the moral bankruptcy of this Fake and Lying President, a human wasteland of degradation.
1
Someone help me understand why Donald Trump is a Populist or ought to even appeal to populists?
1
David Brooks is correct: the Democratic Party DOES lack a compelling message. Without it, it's tough to combat the misinformation peddled nonstop by POTUS, the accusations that "real" Americans (that is, WASP-y types like Trump) are being denied opportunities due to immigrants, and that immigrants, especially those from south of the border, are a drain on the economy rather than contributors. The hate language directed at communities of the LGTBQ, non-Christians, non-whites and assertive women smacks of the J. Edgar Hoover era.
2
I don't think Mr. Brooks is right on many things, but I appreciate that he tends to argue in good faith. That's why I can ignore some things (claiming that Democrats are divisive because they believe in minority rights), which allows me to see his best point: Democrats are TERRIBLE at politics.
I think all the readers bashing Mr. Brooks (and I'm often one of them), need to also keep in mind this salient point: "[The Democratic campaign] offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism." Democrats are afraid of Trump. If they weren't, they'd run on an impeachment platform.
Democrats are giving this country to Trump because he and his supporters are throwing a fit.
American culture is not defined by this president!
Mr Brooks you are off message,Putin knows more about the 30-40% of America's deep- seeded prejudices. These are the undereducated gullible populations of Americans who feel left behind. Be it a lack of education, or personal inability to learn a trade or profession, because of substance abuse issues they themselves or parents had or have.
Only in America can an individual jump from one income level ,or social class because of human drive and ability.
No matter your country of origin , here its not where you start, its where you finish.
This fool inherited his life from his dad, and squandered it.
Putin and Saudi put him back together again.
Laws rule in America ,NO MAN IS ABOVE THE LAW.
That's our culture Law and Order. US Constitution when allowed to work will reestablish our normal lifestyle.
3
Aw come on Mr. Brooks. Just last week on the PBS News Hour, even you decided that Trump had gone too far. How do you square that with the actions of your own party? Your op-ed should be apologizing for their reprehensible behavior these last few years rather than bashing the Dems. Come clean Mr. Brooks. The GOP should hang its head in shame.
3
For a rare once I find myself in agreement with David Brooks when he writes "But the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment." for II wish, aside of Senator Sanders, they would attack Trump and the Trumpists for their fascism, and Trump specifically for his demagogic lying.
Seems that the opposite of tribalism would have to be wanting everyone to succeed, especially disenchanted white voters. But isn't inclusion what the Democrats are supposed to stand for but just didn't say loudly enough and specifically enough to male white voters who heard "we favor black and transgender folk and you guys should go to the back of the line"? Perhaps Dems just have to let these voters know we will have their back and MEAN it. And to stop talking down to people who like Trump for being the skunk in our progressive faces.
If inclusion and wanting a system that works for all is not adequate counter-narrative then what is? Why is this characterized as "materialist." Where one spends money is a direct expression of values.
David talks a lot about the need for cohesive community as a real solution to broken-ness and alienation. But then next question for David is how he thinks politicians should address this problem and/or speak about it?
I don't know what kind of bubble you are in, but out here on the ground the democratic message is very clear: Love vs. Hate; Inclusion vs. Division; the Future not the Past; Pro-Choice; anti-sexual assault; climate change is real; women should be respected and believed; immigrants make America better and are not scary; college should not be so expensive; America should be more equal; health care for all and coverage of pre-existing conditions; Black Lives matter; Muslims are part of America; the Rule of Law matters and should be upheld; Russia should not interfere in our elections; we should stand with our allies. These are all messages I've heard from Democratic candidates. They sound pretty good to me -- and most of them are not "materialist."
2
Like all your recent “philosophical” columns, this one confirms that you live in the fantasy world inhabited by Trump’s cult. Seeking access to affordable, comprehensive, quality health care for all isn’t materialist. You’re confusing your party’s values with those of Dems. It’s the GOP who rob the poor to line the pockets of the rich, so the rich can amass more riches and the poor can pay for the services the rich and their bought and paid for lackeys in Congress decide are worthy of public funding -- usually defense spending and subsidies, tax cuts/credits and loopholes for big Agra, big Pharma and big Oil, which serve to line further the pockets of the rich. The oligarchy’s version of the virtuous cycle, perverted to its own ends. So the sickness of materialism afflicts your party, not Dems. Moreover, Dems defend the civil rights of women, people of color, those who practice religions other than “Christianity", the LGBTQ community, immigrants and on and on. How are those efforts materialistic? As opposed to stuffing bigger wads of cash into the pockets of the Kochs, the Waltons and the Trumps, to meet their selfish sybaritic desires. Also, you’re projecting. Dems don’t defend the rights of those the GOP seek to oppress because of identity politics. That’s your party’s game. We defend their civil rights because all people are created equal, despite the giant plantation your party would like to create in the shadow of what was once our great nation.
7
"But the Democratic campaign is inadequate to the current moment. It offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism."
And, David, what would that argument look like?
Why wasn't the rest of your column a suggested "unifying argument"?
Because you can't think on one except
E pluribus unum.....three words easily drowned out by the baying crowds at his rallies.
or the cursed "it takes a village". Four words.
Maybe the Dems could use disaster response to show the power of those few words. They need examples!!
1
A lot of Trumpism is simply about angry white people, both male and female, who feel that their status is being diluted by the growing diversity of America. However, unlike the elite strata occupied by people like David Brooks, many other Americans are being threatened financially by the GOP's continued refusal to increase access to affordable healthcare. That one policy captures both the moral and materialistic arrogance and race-based fears embodied in Trumpism. Democrats know that, comfortable conservatives like Brooks are too out of touch to get it.
3
Let's not accuse the Dems of "materialism" till Trump shows us his tax returns.
8
Surely you can do better than this drivel David! Many democrats have tried to counter Trump's hate speech, only to be ignored by the sensation driven media. Democrats presented the most dignified and reasonable, family oriented candidate in modern history in Obama and how did the republicans react?
You can keep searching for reasons, arguments, excuses all you want. This country is run by a racist, greedy, morally bankrupt party and most of the electorate are asleep at the wheel, approve or just don't care.
7
Brooks is exposed by an underlying theme in his columns.
He writes from the viewpoint of a privileged, white, middle aged , man, covering his prejudices with intellectual arguments that really don't address the core issues.
His columns show detachment from issues of diversity, income inequality, and the social structure desperately needed by millions struggling to survive.
7
Sorry David, I just don't think this makes any sense. When Dems talk about moral values like inclusivity and equal rights, conservatives call that decisive or say Dems aren't serious about economic issues. When they have real, responsible proposals for how to make government work better for the people, then they are 'materialist', but Trump somehow gets it because he is screaming racist lies he heard on FOX? Are the GOP not materialist when they campaign on GDP growth and tax cuts? Just because they've been lying about GDP growth/unemployment since Obama was in office, and people have realized that the tax cuts were a giveaway to the rich, so they've had to go to their fallback of selectively highlighting stories about violent people who look different?
Regarding your 2nd & 3rd to last paragraphs, giving more hope and freedom to oppressed groups is the raison d'être for our country, regardless of how much we've failed that ideal in the past, and it is something that I can get behind as a middle-class white guy.
7
If you think expanding health care for all is a material campaign than fails to meet your criteria for a moral one, than you have a point. But no greater moral issue now confronts the domestic politics of one nation under God than the health care issue. Moreover, Trump reveals himself more morally loathsome than the opposition would dare charge. It is a moral strategy to let that play out. David's dichotomies are what divides the nation.
1
Mr. Brooks you are wrong. Trashing Trump leads nowhere. Concentrating on the effects of both the GOP and Trump policies is what is important to voters.
2
Health care is a basic moral issue, related to the right to life. The Democratic party was criticized in the 2016 election of 2016 for "forgetting" the blue-collar workers of the Midwest. Nonsense, of course. Just as the memes that the Dems "take people of color for granted." Score 1, 2 for the conservative "think tanks."
What Trump has stoked is fear and hate: "Lock her up," and "Build a wall." Campaigning in Duluth, he actually boasted that he is an "Elite," and the people roared their approval. They love his bullying tactics and absorb his lies as he feeds on his rally crowds. His party profits, literally and materially. It is ultimately a losing game for all Americans.
1
Are you using the same data that said Hilary was going to win?
Given that the New York Times should have a columnist who supports the Republican Party, it might as well be David Brooks. At least he can string sentences together, which is more that one can say for President Trump.
These days, however, Mr. Brooks does little more than criticize the Democrats, as if liberal foibles somehow made conservative failures acceptable.
A conservative opinion columnist should either stand for and defend our Republican President's policies or clearly disagree with them. Is that too much to ask?
2
Why isn't your column today about Trump's terrifying embrace of nationalism last night at his rally? You are fiddling while Rome is burning.
12
Dems who are angry at this article because it contains criticisms of Dems are missing the point. Mr. Brooks is trying to tell you how to win. But go ahead, focus on issues like transgender bathrooms and tearing down confederate monuments. It doesn't bother the Republicans at all. They want the Dems to focus on those types of things. The Dems will just continue to lose elections.
1
The cultural identity that is being promoted by Trump and the GOP is that of the ugly, morally bankrupt, racist vindictive, greedy
brutish American. This is not an image of America that commands respect but which makes us a pariah in the civilized world. Framing this as the Democrats are a materialist party and Trumps party is addressing moral and cultural challenges is a strange and simplistic use of word definition. Wanting to raise all boats for Americans so they can pursue a meaningful life makes the Democratic party materialist? Providing food, housing and health care for the community isn't the definition of materialist. Protecting and defending the vulnerable is not materialist. It is the definition of being a moral human being. On the other hand, Trump, or the GOP if you prefer, has become the party of perverting of moral compasses and sowing cultural division in the community. So if you are saying the GOP challenge has been to corrupt the moral and cultural fiber of civilized society then you are correct in saying they have been successful in that regard with a significant minority of the population. Trump and the GOP have been very effective at appealing to the basest elements of humanity.
4
Democrats run against Trump, then they are told that they cannot simply be against Trump, so they argue some of their important policy issues, then Republicans tell them they should be campaigning against Trump. As long as there are Republican spin artists, there will also be carping against the Democrats. The Democratic platform of equality and justice, health care for all Americans regardless of income, strong international alliances, and "liberalism" balanced by a social safety net is moral enough. Trump has 40% support because the vast majority of Republicans now support him.
5
And, if you think economic issues are important, then Trump offers a booming economy and lower taxes. Who needs benefits when you can buy what you need with your salary?
Health care remains a sore point, but neither party is will to tackle the high costs that are at the root of our problems. Eventually, some evil demagogue will come along and say that doctors and hospitals make too damn much money, and he will be swept into office.
This column enrages me. David Brooks, where is your criticism of your own party, which brought us "Trumpism"? Where is the dismay within the Republican party against the hate-filled rage that Trump stokes wherever he goes? Who among Republicans is speaking out against the cascade of lies that flows from the White House daily, hourly, the lies that overwhelm sensible political discourse and make it meaningless? Brooks thinks the responsibility falls solely on the shoulders of Democrats to neutralize the poison unleashed by his own party. Yet Republican candidates, instead of renouncing the corruption and stink coming from the White House, are bathing in it themselves, hoping the toxic magic works for them, too. Democrats talk about healthcare, and that's where you focus your criticism? Fix your own house, Brooks.
No David Brooks, it is not the Democrats problem that Trump is who he is and the Republican party has sunk into the moral gutter with him. It is YOUR problem David and you'd best look in the mirror to find the accomplice.
Brooks needs to take time off and decide what his beliefs are. One can tell that he is lost.
2
This is another ho-hum anti Democratic Party screed by Mr Brooks. While he does pay lip service to the damage Trump is doing to the country he fails to move his thinking beyond the same old anti-liberal tropes he has been serving up. Thanks, but no thanks.
1
Meh, so everybody has an opinion about everything.
We'll see how strong white America's affinity to those cultural issues are if the Republicans prevail and set about to realize their long term goal of destroying Social Security and Medicare. They think they are safe casting their votes based on these dog whistle issues and that only those undeserving "others" will be the losers.
Oh my! Mr. Brooks is clearly out of touch. Get out from behind your desk or from wherever you write this stuff and talk to people. Healthcare is a right that every other developed country on the globe provides to its citizens. When you do talk to people (as I have done out doing some canvassing) health care is at the top of their list of their concerns.
Such an overly simplistic analysis. Ignore Trump’s racism. Ignore the fact that many white people like his racism. Ignore the fact that many white people are willing to ignore his corruption and graft in exchange for his making racism great again and/or tax cuts. And presto! You have an analysis that declares Trump demagoguery is populism and decries the Democrats for doing everything wrong. I am tired.
I find that when I am trying to understand this “populism,” I understand it best when I turn off my brain. This hogwash about Elites is so nonsensical, it’s hard to even listen without laughing. Do elites assist minorities? Do elites try to spread health care to everyone? Do elites concern themselves with protecting access to the polls?
While the words used are “elite” and “populism,” the only thing that’s being heard is whites versus minorities.
Perhaps even more ridiculous is the argument that Democrats practice identity politics. While I think it’s often clear that Republicans have little appreciation for the intelligence of much of their constituency, it’s downright abusive to suggest the Democrats would be so stupid as to practice identity politics by TAKING ON ISSUES ONLY SUPPORTED BY MINORITIES!— Not a very winnable strategy!
The only thing the Republicans truly excel at is marketing. The media falls for labels like “populist,” or “elites,” just like they did “liberals” back in the 80s. Once the media starts using these terms, Republicans have already win with many people.
Just once I’d like to see the media really look at some of these labels and express how completely ridiculous they are. The notion that Democrats are engaged in identity politics is completely preposterous. The only identity being offered is the one that protects privileged white man. And, that’s being done by the Republicans.
3
"But if you think it’s motivated by cultural identity, a desire for respect, a sense of what’s right, loyalty to a common story, the Democratic strategy leaves a lot to be desired." Joseph Goebbels could not have said it more effectively or with more clarity.
Succinctly said. Anyone paying attention?
2
David, it's good that you call out the Democrats on not chiding Trump and his immoral behavior. But what about your party? Did you ever behest your fellow republicans to stand for something that is not money and gender and identity politics? NO you have not. I remember a couple weeks ago you wrote that you think Trump did a good job in economy and now you are saying economy is not important, "it's culture, stupid" while for decades you have been chiding Democrats for too focu on the cultural war? David, you are getting more and more like Trump, speaking out of both side of your (gentile) mouth.
You are not honest with your own political affiliation's responsibility on this. Yes, I think healthcare is the most important issue, coming from someone who ha to deal with two bouts of cancer in the family. And I believe that if the GOP win big in November, they would read it as their mandate and start slashing social security and medicare and medicaid to fill the big hole they dig on deficit for the tax cut to the rich. I do not agree with you sometime, but I demand that you be honest all the time. That's the job of a NYT columnist.
1
Brooks outdoes his usual blindness to history and condescending moralizing:
"Trump and the other populists have transformed the G.O.P. and thrown down a cultural, moral and ideological gauntlet."
- Wrong. The Republicans have been doing this for decades: the Moral Majority, the Culture War, the Tea Party! Trump didn't create your party; it has been devolving this way all along, while you and the rest of you putatively "reasonable" Conservatives cheered it on.
"But the Democratic campaign... offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism. In politics you can’t beat something with nothing."
- Huh? We've been shouting the these things since his candidacy. You and your "reasonable" Conservatives have responded with silence, rather than speaking out against him (and against the Rightwing Media which has reacted only with derision and incivility)!
"their basic instinct is that national problems can be addressed with more federal money... that you win votes by offering material benefits."
- Wrong! We offer POLICIES to correct economic and social ills. Yes, policies do require money; but dismissing that as mere "material benefits" is ridiculous.
"it’s very hard... to articulate any notion of what even unites that society... or defend the basic American norms."
- It's not hard to "defend" reliance upon facts and basic human civility (except to uninformed tribalistic people who don't want to listen)!
3
Trump and his egregious GOP sycophants are all about power and money and absolutely nothing else. More power and more money is all that gets them out of bed in the morning. How do they get more of these?
By going to the playbook of those who have held those positions before them since time immemorial. The same tired old tropes of scapegoating the "others", who are depriving everyone else of their birth right and their crack at the American dream.
It's always the fault of the "others", however they are described and marginalised and targeted, that stop the rest from reaching their full potential.
Divide and conquer is as old as the hills and endlessly exploited by those with the means and the will to do so and for their benefit only. Fooling enough of the people, enough of the time, is good enough to be getting on with, until they can crack axiomatic Abe.
For those in opposition, getting the scales to drop from the eyes of enough of the electorate to see the emperor and his pals bollock naked is the hard part. Good luck with that.
Here is David Brooks with his black and white, binary thinking. Sad.
According to Kohlberg's theory of moral development, young children manifest this kind of thinking. If they develop, they move beyond it. Sady, David Brooks has not. Just about every one of his columns exhibit this immature thinking.
Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
Level One: Pre-conventional morality
Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment Orientation
Everything is right or wrong, black and white thinking
The child/individual is good in order to avoid being punished. If a person is punished they must have done wrong.
1
But you forget the important thing about identity politics on the left. It allows Democrats to gain votes from minorities that probably wouldn't have voted for them and it pushes away the white male vote that probably would have voted for them...right? I mean, that is really the only reason to campaign on it. They need to let everyone know that they don't support equality and raising wages for everyone born into poverty...just those born with the correct skin color or gender. And by equality we mean giving women and minorities the power white men had up until about 40 years ago...and taking that power away from white men because sons need to be held accountable for the sins of their fathers.
1
Jess King for PA 11th goes beyond material:
https://jesskingforcongress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/jessking_fami...
Mr. Brooks:
1. Re-read Amos. 2. Watch Nina Turner & Bernie Sanders in South Carolina. 3. Revise Analysis and Resubmit
Respectfully,
Professor Niebuhr's Ghost
The Dems have morphed from young, brash, articulate JFK who had a clear forceful message...about something or other...to the nuances of woman and the rants of Bernie, all nearly twice his age....and God bless all of them. But DJT and his older team members seem more forceful albeit less capable.
A Democratic spokes man or woman...in proverbial armour and sword...at the podium...now...please.
Democrats have made racialism and sexualism their lodestars, and now must live with that decision. Hard to vote for a party whose main concerns are what people do to each other in bed and what color their skin might be.
1
Trump appeals to the worst, the basest, most primal human instincts. The parts in all of us we're secretly ashamed of. Right out loud, he tells all of us it's okay to feel mean, greedy, horny, nasty, selfish, and ugly. That's what his supporters really mean when they say, "He tells it like it is" and "He's so honest."
If that's the "culture" you're talking about David, then I agree with you 100%.
“We’ve learned a few things about the Democratic Party. First, it’s still fundamentally a materialist party. The Trumpian challenge is primarily a moral and cultural challenge. But the Democrats are mostly comfortable talking about how to use federal spending to extend benefits.”
Excuse me, but the Democratic efforts to extend healthcare insurance to many Americans is a moral effort. It may bore you, Mr. Brooks, since you just want everybody to go back to church.
But what have you done lately to insure that Americans and their children who have little money get food, shelter, and care?
Go back. Read the Gospels again. Reconsider.
You are the materialist. You don’t know that?
I disagree. Even if the Democrats don't offer a new counterargument, which I feel they need not, the appeal for a return to sanity in the face of this current travesty should be sufficient. Trump's voters are either racist or deeply gullible and are easily swayed by his lies. No political message strategy will change that.
I’m relieved brooks finds fault with democrats, although who could expect any else? I would be far more worried if deeply morally compromised men like brooks or Stephens liked the democratic agenda. The ugly truth has long been out about these modern gauleiters with their affection for the racism of Buckley, Netanyahu and Charles Murray
Trump, has the pulpit and he’s good at using it. Obama, never stepped up to it, and when he did it was to lecture everyone on how they should go back to school and become Harvard professors. In other words, Obama, didn’t have clue as to any practical employment solution in America. Trump, brilliantly seized on this vacuum, and put the blame where people love to put it, on someone else. Obama, and Hillary said, it’s your fault, and you are lazy and unimaginative. For Trump, it’s the the Mexicans and Chinese fault, and you are all victims. Since Trump has the big megaphone, everyone else has a huge disadvantage. Even if media covers a Trump adversary, Trump ups the anti and calls them schoolyard names. The only solution, is to disparage, and laugh at Republican policies that don’t help and actually hurt everyday people. The tax cuts, pre-existing conditions, children in cages. “Trumpism,” is really a mile wide and inch deep, does it really help anyone, or does it just sound good to peoples ears? Most people know the answer.
1
David,
It comes down to this, whom do you trust? Liars, tax cheats, grifters, greedy, alt-facters, ignorant, racist, misogynistic, anti-immigrant, Ayn Rand acolytes, radical right ideologues, anti-democratic Putin stooges or the men and women of the broadly representative Democratic Party?
Do you really think that the American government is meant to be "for, by, and of the top 0.1%? Or for the rest of us.
Do you really think that health care is only for some and not necessary for others? Do you think pharmaceutical profits are more important than preventing medical cost bankruptcies? Do you think that only the children of the wealthy should get college educations?
Do you really believe that today's bubble economy will last forever? That deficits don't matter? That we make our own truths? That Climate Change is a hoax?
Culture? Which ones? Gun culture? WASP culture? The Noble Cause Neo-Confederate Culture? The States' Rights Culture? The All Tax cuts are Good Culture? The No Nothing Culture?
1
"This election is the Democrats’ first opportunity to push back against a thoroughly Trumpified Republican Party."
Statements like this are a big part of the problem. Is it not Americans that need to push back against this abomination, regardless of party affiliation? Until we reject this false narrative, we, as Americans, deserve the the reprehensible and anti-democratic government that we get.
Another Brooks' column on why Democrats fail. Next up, a book report from David and then an article on how help needs to come in the form of the private sector from small groups of people who have no money but good intent.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
1
This article is so willfully misguided - after the 2016 election, in which Hillary ran on moral opposition to Trump! - that I can only think that Brooks is playing a clever Republican game to outwit the Democrats. Very sneaky, Dave, verrrry sneaky; but Democrats will continue to advocate responsible governance and wise spending, in the face of moral nihilism and naked kleptocracy.
2
How ironic.
After a career of shilling for the Republican party, upon realizing the moral bankruptcy he has supported, Mr. Brooks finds he must criticize the other side for not stopping them now.
What's frightening is that almost everything in this column is true. This election is the first battle in another civil war that Democrats and America can not afford to lose.
Republicans have chosen their spokesman-a corrupt, amoral ignorant conman and are now nakedly in broad daylight screaming their message of racism, misogyny, hate fear and greed. They've left nothing in their closets, they're proud of their white supremacists, their thieves.
Democrats seem to be fighting back with no central command, no central message, no leader. We seem to be banking on outrage to win. We can only hope it's enough.
2
"You can appeal to women as women and to ethnic groups as ethnic groups, but it’s very hard to make a universal appeal to Americans as Americans, or defend the basic American norms that Trump calls into question."
The basis of this so-called problem is Brooks' entirely false premise that Democrats are materialistic while Republicans are defining values. What a crock, when we have just been treated to a president loudly telling the citizenry that we cannot hold a Saudi prince accountable for a brazen murder because he buying military hardware from us.
The yachtsmen's tax cut was not sold on the basis that American values were somehow being upheld but that it "put hard earned money back in the pockets of hard working Americans," as materialistic as reasoning gets.
Democrats expressing outrage at children being separated from their parents is not materialistic. Nor is it "identity politics" just because those children have brown skin. Opposing rape is not identity politics just because most rape victims are women. Opposing voter suppression laws is not identity politics just because those laws target minorities.
All these initiatives are rooted in values Democrats call all Americans to uphold. Basic human decency might just cover it, David.
2
Donald Trump is repulsive everyday and onstage for the whole world to view. Do Democrats really need to spend time repeating the obvious?. Instead of pointing out the Democrats shortcomings, New York Times' readers would be better served if your next column highlighted 'traditional republicans' (you) shortcomings and how they built the platform for Trump to thrive. You might want to add a few comments about our kids' and grandchildren's future outlook regarding climate change and economics.
1
As more and more articles are published in the Magazine format, it’s time for the NYT tech department to enable larger fonts options for these articles for the subscription mobile apps.
David Brooks, Healthcare is a moral issue.So is my immigration and everyone elses.The immorality of this Administration is an immoral vs moral,decency vs not.Science is a moral issue.Truth and lies are a moral issues.Racism is a moral issue when there is only one race and that is the human race. I believe the left is taking these on with a frontal assault. Take Willie Nelson and Beto O’Rourke in Texas,Taylor Swift in Tennessee and Andrew Gilliam in Florida.
5
"no (Democratic) counternarrative to Trump..."
Well, I think the Democrats will have to wait, until after the mid-term, House elections. If they take the House, they then have a green-light to go after Trump and Trumpism to the max.
There are all kinds of weapons that can be used against Trump.
For example, they can use symbols, such as the inverted US Flag, for distress. (Democracy is being threatened by Trumpism.)
I hope that Democrats hold "idea contests" for 2020, etc.
===========================================
From David’s opinion piece here:
“ Their basic political instinct is that you win votes by offering material benefits.”
Absolute rubbish!
Actually, Democrats’ instinct is to just care about MORE PEOPLE!
I just saw two Trump supporters wearing T-shirts that said "Re-elect Trump. Make liberals cry again." Behind that slogan that these two were so proudly displaying is hate and division, Trump's two biggest rallying cries. My country. Our country. Pathetic.
Whoa, Mr. Brooks! Labeling the Democratic Party the materialist party is surprising and probably wrong. The Trumpian Party is truly about materialism. Trump fortifies his brand of materialism with greed, fear, deceit, and bullying. This Trump culture stands for material gain of a culturally white America while framing all others as threatening losers.
So, yeah, Mr. Brooks. This op-ed piece is a big whiff. Better luck next time.
Confident in his point—that the "materialistic" Democrats missed their chance to take the full measure of the moment—Mr. Brooks finishes with what he must believe is a bold pronouncement: "These days, culture is more important than economics." Really? Not sure the majority of middle- and lower-income Americans who can't get ahead are buying that. They may "feel" their culture, even passionately so, but they'll vote their wallets. It's why, in 2018, health care matters...to Democrats and to voters. (Or, maybe you haven't noticed Republicans professing new-found love for pre-existing conditions?) "It's the economy, stupid."
Your party is gone so why dont Democrats turn into Reagan Republicans?
No one likes to admit they've believed a liar. No one likes to believe they've been hoodwinked. Its far easier to go on believing the lies told by this president than admit you're a sucker.
There is no infrastructure plan. There is no wall (and no money to pay for it). There is no Kushner peace plan for the Middle East. There are no new laws dealing with illegal immigration. The tax cuts were primarily to benefit the rich and wages have barely budged.
Walter Mondale echoed a Wendy's TV ad and asked "Where's the beef?" The same question could be asked today. The Trump Nationalist Party delivered Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. If that is all it takes to keep Republicans in control, then so be it. For me, I'd prefer a Big Mac...that's affordable.
OK, David, it's time for you to throw your hat into the ring. Brooks and Shields. The ticket to a better America ! the evil villain versus the enemy of the people. You have my vote, David!
I’m relieved brooks finds fault with democratis, although who could expect any else? I would be far more worried if deeply morally compromised men like brooks or Stephens liked the democratic agenda. The ugly truth has long been out about these modern gauleiters with their affection for the racism of Buckley, Netanyahu and Charles Murray
It is revealing that the NY Times’ two “conservative” columnists have found it essential this week to write columns critical of Democratic strategy. Of course, neither Ross or David are Democrats, they are Republicans - and will always side with the Republicans.
They are not writing columns that relate the atrocities of the Trump administartion, or even suggesting that people vote for Democrats. Let’s be aware of where their bread and butter lies.
The Materialist Party?
Which political party decided Corporations are people?
That money is speech?
The Democrats???
7
This column castigated the Ds as "materialistic." It is an intentional biasing against them. Mr. Brooks knows the term is a.perjorative, suggesting that the middle class cares only about money. But a living wage and Medicare for all are hardly carrying only about money; rather they are concerned with the ability to survive even flourish by providing eco comic security.
This is not. "Materialism" in the generally understood meaning of the word. Shame on u, Mr. Brooks by your biasing and stacking the deck
Net is ," The Social Democratic Welfare State Model ' always a Democratic party banner, hasn't worked. Trump certainly has personality issues, however the elite's heading the Democrats are hypocrites .
The Democrats have refused to go low like their brethren. That may be a mistake, politically speaking, but just because they can't bring themselves down to the same level of moral bankruptcy doesn't mean they can't win (one says with hope).
Trump, the GOP, and other regimes around the world are transforming politics in 3 ways you didn't mention: Lies, fear, and radicalism. There isn't a question about "moral standards for how leaders are supposed to behave". Morals are morals and it's pretty clear that this administration and these movements are hiding behind conveniently manipulated terms such as "conservatism", "populism", and "rights" to justify and sow hatred, divide, and stoke anger. It's the antithesis of The Truth:
“Teacher (Jesus), which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40
This isn't going to end well either here, abroad, or globally. It's just what Bannon and others wanted. There will be carnage everywhere and many innocents (and those who are not) are going to pay for the assault on humanity we are witnessing in real time now. Truly I say and pray, "God help us".
2
Once again a conservative columnist who sees the disaster that is the Republican party can aim his true criticism really only at the Democrats.
The statement that "culture is more important than economics" always rings true to someone. Nazis, White Supremacists, KKK, and the like. Is that who politicians should be aiming their policy statements?
All I hear is trumpism is divisive. trumpism is dividing the country with the rhetoric of hate. And Mr Brooks hears that this type of approach of persuasion should be met with what? Really, what alternative should the Resistance put forth?
Most of America can recognize how destructive trumpism is. So the Dems should play to the 35% (racists) shouting "lock her up"?
Very simplistic analysis and yet Mr Brooks is correct that the Dems can miss the 2018 opportunity of a political lifetime if they don't make a strong case in the next two weeks that the man who only cares about his own money (economics) is exploiting fear of the other (culture) to manipulate his authoritarian power into place.
1
Good grief. Again the comments here explain perfectly why Democrats are where they are.
The defensiveness is overwhelming. “David Brooks has us all wrong.” “David Brooks is part of the problem.” “David Brooks just blames Democrats.”
Actually, David Brooks is trying to throw you a lifeline and you’re rejecting it. He’s not criticizing your values; he’s criticizing your messaging, and for God’s sake you need to listen. The knee jerk reaction to shut down people like him when they tell you why you’re losing is why you’re losing!
Anyone at this point who thinks that political power is obtained by advancing sound policy arguments is in hopeless denial. 60 million people voted for Donald Trump and 40% of the country thinks he’s doing a swell job.
Brooks isn’t telling you that your morals are misguided, your values are off or your policies don’t work, he’s telling you that you’re not advertising effectively and that is all that matters. Advertising. Controlling the media narrative. Projecting strength and determination.
You can shake your head and retreat to your corner complaining that Brooks doesn’t get it. But if you do, don’t expect to win the next election.
5
Adding to my previous: if Trump gets both house majorities, indeed American democracy will be in danger. Mobilizing around saving and extending democracy will then take precedence over material issues. For now howverver, not enough people see this as a problem.
I would do health, university tuition, higher minimum wage etc. for now. Mr Brooks is wrong, deliberately or not. We do not have a plausible counter narrative yet, but we do have the issues in our "minimum program".
Democrats could have just celebrated the US, democracy, our history, the goodness of a people who welcome and honor those different from themselves, the goodness of a country where many throughout history have put country over party. Where we actually have expected our leaders to tell the truth, and actually expected presidents to work to bring differing point of views together. A positive and hopeful celebration of the good in our country may have been a narrative that could have gone a long ways. Democrats have done the whiny, victim routines for a long time and it turns out the Trump is better at it than they are.
It would be grand to celebrate the positive.
And Mr. Brooks, you seem stuck on seeing a national health care system as a give away entitlement idea. In contrast, many see it as a matter of providing equal justice and restoring hope to a despairing people. Life seems hopeless when a fall from a ladder can ruin all your family has saved for decades. This is real life for real people and it matters.
3
Democrats don't need new messages as much as they need better messengers. Look no further than Beto O'Rourke's Twitter feed, which is a case study in how to reach people in a Trump-disrupted world: https://twitter.com/BetoORourke While Trump has used Twitter to break norms, Beto offers a master class in using the very same platform to restore them. Like it or not, Twitter is now the center of political discourse, and whether Beto wins or loses, his is a model for a return to sanity ... and good governance.
1
Only one side has thrown down a gauntlet. Only 40 percent of the nation responds to closed ethnic nationalism. The rest of us treat openness, diversity, and pluralism as simply normal. It's not an issue worth debating one way or the other. You can leave that gauntlet on the ground. We don't care. Let's talk about health care.
To the Sanders camp, health care IS a moral and cultural issue. Obtaining adequate coverage for yourself is obviously nice. However, the argument is whether Americans view health care as a universal human right. The moral argument defends health care for all humans of any variety whether you personally require the medical attention or not.
You might end up saving your own life by supporting universal health care. However, the point is to show mercy and compassion by saving the lives of others. The position has nothing to do with plurality. All Americans deserve health care. Period.
7
It's both, of course. Why on earth does everything have to be reduced to "either/or"?
The evidence is in front of us: Trump's base is activated by fear of the stranger. Democrat's base is activated by identity politics, social justice, and health care - and quite a few other issues.
Reducing the Democrats message to health care only or to ignore the fears so successfully inflamed and constantly stoked by Trump is the recipe for losing another election.
1
The underlying problem is frontal cortex thinking doesn't seem to have much effect on voting behavior these days.
The GOP has focused, laser-like, on issues that motivate their base, and since 2010, it's become extremely easy to know what gets them stomping up and down and heading to the polls. It's not economics, since the party's attempts to foist their tax cut as a reason to vote haven't resonated. The GOP discovered it's always primal fear issues that work best. Trump just dialed this up to eleven.
The Democrats, at least since Obama, have not been able to devise a compelling story to get marginal voters motivated enough to go to the polls. Culture may be more important, but it's certainly not life-threatening, and economic interests may not be enough to bring Democratic voters to the polls either. Healthcare is a bit closer, but still not the lizard brain arguments the GOP depends on to win elections.
Brooks fails to talk about the biggest threat for humanity, global warming, and Trump's denial thereof. Everything else pales in comparison. In 20 years we will wonder why we were arguing about brown people instead of CO2. I'll actually quote Trump here..... SAD!
3
Mr. Brooks is looking to the Democrats to solve the Trump Problem and make it go away, expecting the impossible. Trump's base is behind him, no matter what he says or what he does, including white women who have no problem with sexual predators in the White House or sitting on the Supreme Court. We live in Bizarro World where Trump lies and his minions swear to it. They are oblivious to facts, truth and science. They live in a post-truth, post-ethics, post-norms' based world and they scream for more.
The Democrats know if they make Trump the central issue, it will backfire on them. The entire country has already retreated to its insular camps in our red and blue states. Dems also know they have to fight back with the weapons at their disposal, and health care is one of them.
The U.S has entered a very dangerous phase in our history and it may take generations before we figure out how we got here. Trump seems untouchable. He is worshipped and adored by too many people. That is cultural. How are Democrats supposed to battle white people who are afraid of losing their supremacy? Trump has the upper hand and it will take more than any Democratic political platform to defeat him and his populism.
Mr. Brooks is barking up the wrong tree. He should be looking to the sycophants in his own party who are aiding and abetting an unhinged madman. They are the ones in control.
17
@Patricia Caiozzo How quickly the left forgets about the King of sexual predators - Bill Clinton. Oh but back then, he was given a pass because the left said it was ok since it was his "personal" business. There was absolutely no proof that Kavanaugh assaulted Christine Blasey Ford. I would say that SOMEONE did, since she didn't seem all there -but not Kavanaugh. She was caught with many discrepancies in her story. How quickly the dems forgot about the presumption of innocence in this great counry.
2
@kds
If Clinton had been president in the present Me Too moment, the Dems would have been the first to impeach him. Look at Barney Frank and then look at the Donald. Whether or not Brett assaulted Christine in high school is now irrelevant after his testimony. He does not have the demeanor befitting a Supreme Court Justice and his presence there will contaminate the court for generations to come. He showed himself to be the arrogant, beer-swigging, entitled frat boy that he really is and we will all be the lesser for it. The left forgets nothing. Especially the truth which seems to have been forgotten by the post-truth, post-fact, post-science, post-ethics right and we are surely the lesser for that.
Agreed--but how can there be doubt among ANY people who choose to be educated, responsible, and compassionate that Barack Obama offered a better role model to our children as a president than Donald Trump?
And there is the problem.
4
So the Democrats are squandering a once-in-a-generation opportunity for political realignment. Is that really it? That Donald Trump and his GOP have served up a fat pitch and all the Democrats have to do is swing?
David Brooks says that Trump’s “central story is that the good, decent people of the heartland are being threatened by immigrants, foreigners and other outsiders while corrupt elites do nothing.” That story is indeed a pack of lies that decent Americans might once have laughed at. But in 2018, a very large minority of Americans are quite happy to swallow those lies slimy and whole.
Brooks: “Trump [has] challenged basic norms of honesty, decency, compassion and moral conduct.” Yes, he has — and Brooks puts it ever so nicely. Trump is unequivocally the worst man ever elected President. But the point is that a very large minority of Americans elected such a man, and may well do it again in 2020.
How easy it would be for Democrats to put their “materialism” aside! To articulate a grand “counter-narrative” to stir the better angels of the public’s nature! Except that it isn’t easy. Brooks is probably admitting as much by proposing nothing of his own.
Because the problem is this: it’s not the Democrats. It’s the people who would embrace a Trump as the answer to ANY grievance. How do you reach them? What do you say? Trump is awful and supporting him is awful.
“Have you no decency, sir?” brought McCarthy down. It’s very hard to know what would do so today.
5
The president and his party, top to bottom, are brazenly lying, in the course of the mid term elections.
Boldly misleading their constituents.
They are defrauding their contract to a representative government.
Every day, the leader of the party which opposes the Democrats, is doubling down on the level of consequence and evil of his lies.
Worse, sometimes, he isn't lying, because he no longer cares.
He mulls over how best to lie to his base, about everyone and everything he decides to frame, based on his self interest.
Or, more frighteningly, not to lie.
Today he bellowed that he was a nationalist. He tries to cause a wildfire with the "caravan", and liberal "mob behavior".
When pressed about sliming Blasey Ford, he shrugged his shoulders and said, he got what he wanted, so he's pleased. Without respect to truth.
Asked if he was sorry he'd said Ted Cruz's father conspired in the JFK murder, he shrugged and said, he wasn't sorry, things turned out just fine. Without respect to truth.
His whole party, imitating his audacity, are lying. Misrepresenting their votes, policies, and alliances.
Brazenly trying to steal, yes steal, the election, as sure as if they were any enemy of democracy.
Defrauding their oath to abide by the Constitution.
David Brooks takes issue with how the Democrats are campaigning.
20
This reminds me of the negligent parents who blame everyone else for their children's bad behavior.
The blame falls squarely on Republican leaders to instill honest and ethical behavior. The fact that they are the source of such atrocious behavior and dishonest dealings with their colleagues across the isle does not mean it the Democrat's job to "discipline" them.
(And, since when is healthcare, etc. materialistic?--very bizarre terminology for a critical issue.)
5
Brooks is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Look closely, David, and you will see that what you are accusing Donald Trump of – making culture more important than economics – is precisely what you have campaigned tirelessly for.
A common Brooksian theme in column after column is that we have lost our “common” values and our “common” narrative that once served as the cultural glue to hold the country together – or, as he puts it here: ”cultural identity, a desire for respect, a sense of what’s right, loyalty to a common story.” He has championed small government (localism) and the right of individuals to make choices about their lives. This is all culture. There are no economics in it.
But when Brooks’ theme of common values and narrative is appropriated by Donald Trump, and distilled to the essence it always was – the values of white, Christian, propertied males – Brooks is somehow disconcerted. As if this mythical past he so longs to recreate (Make America Great Again) wasn’t at its core the very unifying cultural narrative Trump champions.
“Culture is more important than economics.” This is what Brooks has in fact always argued, but can’t bring himself to admit.
But, you can’t run a society on Brooks’ faith, hope, and charity, and myths and romanticized history. Culture needs an infusion of the material. If you make sure people have the basics – food, shelter, jobs, healthcare, education – it will temper the worst cultural instincts like racism and misogyny.
10
What's wrong with providing health care? David Brooks might consider that, in the Jewish tradition, taking care of one's health is of utmost importance because you cannot work for social justice or do anything to improve the world if you don't have your health. Having meaningful access to medical care is not materialistic in any way.
From the political standpoint, campaigning on Trump's behavior does not motivate anyone beyond a few zealots. Trump is Trump and that is now baked into everyone's perception of politics in this country. It would be campaigning on "duh."
1
Brooks is a classic case of the never Trumper who relishes in being able to have his cake and eat it too. Trumpism has amplified and exploited beliefs, platforms, and campaign tactics that have long existed on the right but were not called out by the very same people who now throw their hands up in disbelief, ask what happened to my party, and naively cry, “This is not America!” I appreciate your self-righteousness but the party is better off taking advice from someone who doesn’t compare the current challenges of identity politics to the stress of ordering a hoagie without a college degree.
13
Democrats running for the House and Senate are focusing on issues important to the districts and states they might represent-and health care does top the list of issue important to millions of Americans. Mr . Brooks probably has a fabulous health care policy-but millions of us do not. As to fighting the horror that is Donald Trump-all of you "pundits" in the media have been saying for over two years that Dems can't win being anti-trump and nothing else? We can't win for losing according to you-but hopefully our votes on November 6th will put a curb on our own dictator-in-waiting. And by the way mr. brooks, where is the GOPer willing to speak out against Trump-anyone out there? If you are still a republican Mr. Brooks-shame on you.
2
But what are the Republicans doing?? Basking in Trump’s ridiculousness. If Dems push on cultural issues the Republicans will ALL push back echoing Trump. This was proven by Kavanaugh’s angry rant as he showed us how he’d behave on the highest bench in the land. Not a pinch of what America is about in that hearing.
2
"It offers no counternarrative to Trump, little moral case against his behavior, no unifying argument against ethnic nationalism.".....Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but the obvious moral case against Trump's vulgarity and his play to blatant racism and xenophobia has not affected his standing among his core supporters. It is not Trump so much which should cause outrage, but the lack of a moral compass and decency that is being demonstrated by his supporters.
3
It’s not just the Democrats who have (in David’s word) “failed” America. It’s every one of us who fails to see that America has produced and elected a president who is vile, immoral, and dangerous. If we do not check and balance him by electing House and Senate members in November who will do their constitutional jobs, then our president will be unleashed like those autocrats and dictators who are his friends. As for this former Democrat and former Republican, now registered Independent, I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore. In November I will vote against every Republican & Democrat running for any office in my district and state who has not condemned President Trump.
4
What is wrong with David Brooks? Expansion of Social Security, and healthcare would be great in red states. Republicans have been using racism and socialism to scare their voters. Also, it would be nice if Brooks acknowledges this, that gerrymandering and voter suppression is how Republicans win.
"These days, culture is more important than economics."
Where does personal accountability, not raised in this article, fit in, whatever the political ideology and the party? As a norm. As a value. As a process inherent in developing and sustaining a society based on menschlichkeit. Personal accountability is absent; without IT there is no mutual trust No mutual respect. No mutual caringness. No mutual help, when, and if, needed. Between kin, neighbors.colleagues, and strangers. This article's weltanschauung creates an either/or reality. Binary banality! Where is diversity; if one just looks and pays attention? Where are the continua of voices? Voicing types, levels and qualities of pain. Some already muted from unheard efforts. Are there just two viable options, as this article posits, regarding beginning to make needed changes?Consider: each day is yet another opportunity to "Fail better." BEtter. BETter. BETTer. BETTEr.
Incrementally BETTER!
In the NY 2 if you think singing Kumbaya about an open society when Peter King and Donald Trump have stoked the flames of intolerance for, in King's case for years, you are blind Mr. Brooks, to the political realities of Long Island. Being seen as "softies" in the eyes of Peter King and his followers isn't the answer. Here, people are talking about health care, taxes, education and guns in school. Their voices haven't been heard by Mr. King. And, the women of District sent alot of people to the Womens' Marches in D.C. and NYC. Trump doesn't play well with many of the females in this section of Long Island.
But yes the Democrats need a counter narrative to Trump. Wait for the national election for President in 2010. In the meantime, we'll discuss kitchen table issues and hope people can see beyond fear and vote in politicians who care about the common good.
1
Having skipped the article and moved right on to the comments, I heard the voices that matter most.
Divide and conquer techniques of propaganda are fleshed out with colorful lies at the President's carefully selected rally sites that he has continued non stop since the swearing in. He has attacked during these rallies our free press as fake news. The lies told before cheering pre selected crowds and attacks on the press during these events should be of enormous concern to all of us. We are all being manipulated by President Trump, both his supporters and adversaries. Watch out!
Sometimes, David, I think you've come to your senses. Then you write something like this. It's hard to know where to begin.
The fight for health care is all about basic values that were once considered "American," like caring for the least among us. Yes, there's money involved. There's always money involved. Funny whose trying the hardest not to help pay.
Every Democrat I know has had at least one demoralizing conversation with a Trump supporter for whom "the poor" (usually defined racially) deserve their lot and people like "us" owe nothing to anyone because "we" did it all single-handedly--and the "rich" are rich because they're smart and deserve their wealth. In other words, in this view, the values you espouse are reserved for those who have already benefited from what America as we dreamed it once tried to offer to everyone.
As I'm sure many commenters will echo. every decent person left in this country already knows that Donald Trump and the party he has hijacked do not represent the values you list. At this point, to talk to people who cheer violence, laugh themselves silly over the disabled, and kick the helpless about "values" is a waste of breath. They may soon be living in the "America" they deserve.
1
Healthcare, care of our personal health and care for the health of our planet are the two fundamental pillars driving economic and personal security of any kind for the future of the world. Using divide and conquer strategies of racism, vicitimization, cultural dog whistles and policies of plundering our natural resources for short term profits, jobs and power does nothing to make America great. Forget the jobs and the wealth if those same jobs and wealth do care for the health of the planet but instead threaten the demise of the environment we live in. Healthcare.
What if voters Democrats need seem willing to dismiss those fundamental moral concerns out of GOP tribal loyalty? What then? Maybe it's classic denial. Maybe the moral degradation is too much for them to take in."Let's just stick with the club we're in and maybe everything will work out," they think. What then?
Some of us have consistently raised those fundamental moral issues and the radical nature of Trump's racist, authoritarian cult. Those messages have enlivened progressives. But moderates don't seem to want to believe it or act on them.
That is fight that starts after midterms. Right now the fight is about getting power to undermine his ability to operate outside the law, aided and abetted by the Republican party.
The next two years of Presidential campaigns are going to be long and painful. Your suggestion that Democrats rescue a Republican party controlled by race-baiting -white-nationalists by fighting on their turf is laughable.
Most supporters of President Pinocchio do not like being called bigots, even though I have found many of my associates are exactly that. “We are a nation of immigrants” is the meme they use to cover their bigotry, because it requires nothing of them. Telling Democrats to repeat a meaningless meme to mollify the conscience of bigots is not a way to change the political landscape.
Glad to know Democratic leadership still knows how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
They still cannot craft a soundbite or slogan and insist voters use facts and logic to decide.
The counter narrative to trump is affordable health care. Only a conservative would consider fighting for basic human rights materialistic. True the democrats have found no plausible way( at this time) to prevail over the dirty tricks and below the belt insults and cruelty of trump. He reduces everything to a gutter fight and you lose if you get in the gutter with him. That is not to say that we won’t find the right person to take him on.
Net.....buying votes with other people’s money as a political strategy may no longer work.
So what the Dems need to do is start running commercials with Trump yammering his usual epithets - and Aretha singing RESPECT in the background. Maybe some bullet points reading "Healthcare", and other such.
The real antidote to Trumpism is a vision that everyone believes in. Trump found an issue but he has no solution. If the democrats could describe the problem and a vision of how to solve it then they'd win. Actually, if they could just describe it without scapegoating they'd also be way ahead.
As much as I despise Trump and his moral failings I think most people just want a solution.
1
David Brooks seems to miss a key point while being right to appeal to American values. Missing...tribal populism is not that much different from my density politics. “What’s in it for us?”
Why is it up to the Left to counter Trump's ethical and moral failings?
1