How Democrats Blew It in 2021

Even a most optimistic gloss on 2021 would say it was a year of high hopes and huge disappointments. All the things that looked to have been chased away in 2020—totalitarian Republicans in control, coronavirus out of control—are either back, or a near-certainty to return imminently. Democrats seized power at the beginning of the year and by its end had proven beyond argument that they, as ever, had no intention of wielding it. My year in review traces a few of those steps.

“The New Progressive Left Shows How to Deal With Sedition”

Six days into the new year, a mob stormed the Capitol in a coup attempt that was orchestrated in close collaboration with Republican leadership—remember that? That group intended to ensure that democratically elected Democrats could never again hold power; they might have been happy to pick off a few choice Democrats (and Mike Pence) in the process. And yet most Democrats were content to scold Donald Trump and his conspirators with a few harsh tweets. Only the Squad extended—young members of the progressive flank—were willing to call for impeachment from the get-go, and they’re the only reason that it happened. Moderate Dems were not comfortable with the “message” it sent. Of course, even those progressives couldn’t get Democratic leadership to use its mandate to prosecute Trump, and now those people will just return to power the old-fashioned way, and pick up where they left off.

“Jim Clyburn Undercuts the Democratic Police Reform Bill”

By May, Democrats were off to the races, by which I mean abandoning their legislative ambitions at full tilt. With the anniversary of George Floyd’s death and a late-May deadline on police reform looming, and not long after House Democrats knelt on the floor of the Capitol Visitor Center in kente cloths in an oddball stunt signaling their support for the largest protest movement in American history, third-ranking Democrat Jim Clyburn went into undertaker mode, hitting the cable news circuit to undermine his very own Congressional Black Caucus’s chief ambitions on police reform (and the party broadly). After swearing on national television that qualified-immunity reforms were not important, Clyburn armed Republican Tim Scott to renege on commitments he’d already made in the bill, and condemned it to death. It would be a few months before this was acknowledged broadly, but I wrote about it in mid-May. Another mild legislative ambition rerouted to the dustbin.

“Biden’s Jekyll-and-Hyde Judicial Nominations”

While the Biden administration was showing next to no urgency in its legislative program, attention turned to its judicial appointments, another arena where Democrats swore they’d learn hard lessons from the mistakes of their predecessors. While President Obama decided the courts weren’t a priority, President Trump had done the opposite, stuffing the judiciary full of underqualified ideologues with lifetime appointments. Biden put out a call to his Senate contemporaries for civil rights and public-interest lawyers to help balance out an irredeemably unbalanced court system; that call was heeded only partway, a troubling sign of the widespread disrespect from Senate Democrats toward their former colleague and self-identified Senate whisperer. Of course, with his primary loyalty to norms and not an agenda, Biden just appointed those corporate lawyer nominees he had explicitly disavowed anyway.

“Nina Turner Lost to the Redbox”

This year featured few elections, and with congressional Democrats theoretically in the heat of the legislative process in early August, a special primary election to replace Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge in a D+60 district should have been a non-event. The Marcia Fudge/Shontel Brown race proved to be anything but. A party far more interested in quashing the ascendant progressive bloc than battling Republicans and accomplishing anything in Washington instead went all out in Cleveland. The Congressional Black Caucus, fresh off stranding police reform, went all out to push its preferred candidate, Shontel Brown, across the finish line, with the CBC endorsing Brown without her even receiving a majority of endorsements from caucus members. Brown’s campaign meanwhile relied on a campaign finance gambit of an extremely dubious nature, one that would have been in clear violation of the campaign finance reforms on super PAC collaboration in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, also a priority of the CBC. Brown won, proving that congressional Dems can achieve something if they care enough. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act was not so lucky.

“Clintonism’s Zombie”

If Senate Democrats had no real regard for the Democratic agenda by June, House Democrats caught up in August. In this profile of New Jersey “Problem Solver” Josh Gottheimer, I traced how the face of legislative sabotage in the House was a true institutional make and model, a product of the Clinton administration from his first day in politics—the very sort of centrist, lifetime Democrat who is always accusing progressives of party disloyalty. Without ever summoning an intellectually legitimate argument, Gottheimer spearheaded the corporate-funded attempt to pass a fossil fuel–heavy, lobbyist-authored highway bill (“bipartisan infrastructure”) and untether it from the Build Back Better Act, where the entirety of the “Democratic agenda” resided. He didn’t succeed, nor did he win any style points, but it was evidence enough of a growing appetite for self-sabotage that was ready to reveal itself months down the line.

“Succession”

This session, according to Nancy Pelosi’s own House rules, was sure to be the last with octogenarians Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn in the top three ranking leadership spots. With Democrats staring down a possible House minority after 2022’s midterms, the party was going to swiftly pass its ambitious agenda and allow its leaders to ride off into the sunset, with Build Back Better acting as Pelosi’s legacy—or so she said. Of course, the bench of Democratic talent is paper-thin, and the odds-on favorite to succeed Pelosi, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, had spent the year engaging in internecine squabbles, settling scores with the progressive flank while arming the right-wing minority that helped sabotage Build Back Better. Not long after, Pelosi announced she did not feel comfortable handing over the reins. An aged party gets even older.