Tonight the Democrats will debate. Or at least, they will participate in a presidential debate. Whether they will actually engage in policy and political disagreements is another question.
Democrats, as a party, are less and less into the notion of disagreement. The Left, as a political force, shows more and more antipathy towards dissent and non-conformity. Does that allow for an interesting debate?
Democrats used to disagree about gay marriage. Now, if you hold the view Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama held a few years back, you’re a bigot who doesn’t deserve civil liberties. Democratic candidates used to disagree about trade, but Hillary has come around to the party line. Democrats used to disagree about abortion, but that’s a sacrosanct issue for them now.
As a sign of the narrow bounds of speech allowed in many liberal circles, consider that Martin O’Malley had to apologize for saying “All Lives Matter.” All Democratic candidates support campaign finance policies that would curb outside groups’ abilities to participate in political debate.
Goldman Sachs recently did a study showing congressional Democrats becoming more uniform while Republicans become increasingly diverse. On the Supreme Court, the Left hangs together while the Right debates.
I’ve written before that the Democrats’ seeming coronation of Hillary and the Republicans; robust, unpredictable, decentralized scrum are both fitting.
Despite the lazy framing of much of the media, American politics is not symmetrical. One side is more into disagreement, choice, independence and debate than the other. What will it look like when the current party of conformity has a debate?
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
