Moderate Democrats Need to Stand Their Ground on Progressive Policies, Says Author of “Begin Again”

The current stalemate in the Democratic Party between moderates and progressives proved to be destructive after Congress failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Author Eddie Glaude says appeasing Republicans should no longer be in the interest of Congressional Democrats, who instead need to stand their ground on progressive policies. 

“The Democratic Party often acts like a scorned lover … the center of the party’s political imagination is a white hetero male wearing a construction hat … that particular constituency drives political strategy it seems.” –Eddie Glaude Jr., Princeton University 

Listen: Eddie Glaude Jr. on pushing back against Democrats’ stalemate in Congress.

Guest 

Eddie Glaude Jr. is Chair of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s American and Its Urgent Lessons.” He says the Democratic Party that came into existence to respond to Reaganism is no longer relevant. “We are witnessing in real time the collapse of the age of Reagan, its ideological pillars have revealed themselves to be hollow … that all government is bad or that tax cuts are the source of economic stimulus … many of those precepts are revealed to be bankrupt.” Glaude says Democrats need to press progressive agenda instead of attempting to appease modern Republicans. “The Democratic Party often acts like a scorned lover … the center of the party’s political imagination is a white hetero male wearing a construction hat … that particular constituency drives political strategy it seems.”

On the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that Congress failed to pass, Glaude says the legislation was doomed by Democrats’ complicity in allowing it to be framed as an issue of law and order. “Most people who respond to ‘defund the police’ negatively are acting in bad faith … we know it was a slogan aimed at budgeting values …. Instead some politicians used it to focus on our fears.”

Glaude says many moderate Congressional Democrats are uninterested in addressing the systemic background to the issue of police overreach. “Now we’re beginning to see that crime is a much more complex phenomena that requires a much more complex answer … every community deserves to be safe, every community deserves to be secure, but what that entails goes beyond more police and more incarceration,” he says.