Your first point is the strong one. Since 2016 the Republicans have had a direction. The Democrats have had an opponent. Those are fundamentally different things, and the elections revolved around the Republicans as they gave people something to vote for, whereas the Democrats were simply seen as the alternative.
No doubt MAGA meant very different things to different people. But it did a real job anyway. It made tariffs, immigration restriction and staying out of foreign wars sound like one position rather than three, and it completely overran the traditional approach of free-trade Republicans.
A slogan changed what counted as Republican. And that is the best argument going for what you're proposing.
Your second point is the one I'd want to test. The claim is that people already like Democratic policies and it's the party name doing the damage, so change the name and the policies get a fresh hearing. Bernie Sanders is the obvious test case. Vermont voted Republican in every presidential election from 1856 to 1988, with a single exception, and Sanders has represented it since 1991 as an independent who calls himself a democratic socialist. Hence, from one angle, he looks like proof of your premise.
But he cuts both ways. He didn't rebrand. He took the most off-putting word available in American politics - socialist - kept it, and won anyway, over and over. If the name were the obstacle, he is the last person who should have won. Though Vermont was already moving left before he arrived, so he isn't a clean experiment in either direction.
So what policies would this new Reconstructionist party have?
Richard Rorty spent the nineties arguing that the American left had switched from being a movement about the economy - who had money and who didn't - to one about culture and stigma. His prediction was that the people left out of the culture conversation would eventually go looking for a strongman.
It's easy to imagine people attacking your salons with the same charge. The ancestry remembrance work, the amendment framework covering voting rights and bodily autonomy and DC statehood and the Electoral College - it's all the cultural type of politics, rather than the cost of living one.
That isn't me saying the naming exercise is a distraction. It's simply that Rorty's objection is the first one anyone serious is going to make.
Finally, on the name itself, it's interesting to me that both "Reconstructionist" and "Make America Great Again" hanker back to the past. And whilst Reconstruction covered legal status, through the 14th amendment which you name, it also covered material conditions, through the Freedmen's Bureau and its work on food, medical care, schools and labour contracts. It was one project which covered both sides of the equation, in much the same way that the MAGA Republican party covers the cultural side through immigration and the economic side through tariffs, and bringing jobs back to the US.
None of this is to make any comment about what is correct - MAGA, Reconstructionism or anything else - but rather it's to ask what is actually needed for this approach to work.
AMEN! Love and miss you...It's been an exhausting decade to say the least, and without a doubt, we must find our way through to the other side. I remain committed to liberty, justice, equality, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
👏👏Love this, Ann! Inspired and beautifully laid out.
This is clear articulation of what I have been thinking and talking about in my communities. Thank you Ann!
Your first point is the strong one. Since 2016 the Republicans have had a direction. The Democrats have had an opponent. Those are fundamentally different things, and the elections revolved around the Republicans as they gave people something to vote for, whereas the Democrats were simply seen as the alternative.
No doubt MAGA meant very different things to different people. But it did a real job anyway. It made tariffs, immigration restriction and staying out of foreign wars sound like one position rather than three, and it completely overran the traditional approach of free-trade Republicans.
A slogan changed what counted as Republican. And that is the best argument going for what you're proposing.
Your second point is the one I'd want to test. The claim is that people already like Democratic policies and it's the party name doing the damage, so change the name and the policies get a fresh hearing. Bernie Sanders is the obvious test case. Vermont voted Republican in every presidential election from 1856 to 1988, with a single exception, and Sanders has represented it since 1991 as an independent who calls himself a democratic socialist. Hence, from one angle, he looks like proof of your premise.
But he cuts both ways. He didn't rebrand. He took the most off-putting word available in American politics - socialist - kept it, and won anyway, over and over. If the name were the obstacle, he is the last person who should have won. Though Vermont was already moving left before he arrived, so he isn't a clean experiment in either direction.
So what policies would this new Reconstructionist party have?
Richard Rorty spent the nineties arguing that the American left had switched from being a movement about the economy - who had money and who didn't - to one about culture and stigma. His prediction was that the people left out of the culture conversation would eventually go looking for a strongman.
It's easy to imagine people attacking your salons with the same charge. The ancestry remembrance work, the amendment framework covering voting rights and bodily autonomy and DC statehood and the Electoral College - it's all the cultural type of politics, rather than the cost of living one.
That isn't me saying the naming exercise is a distraction. It's simply that Rorty's objection is the first one anyone serious is going to make.
Finally, on the name itself, it's interesting to me that both "Reconstructionist" and "Make America Great Again" hanker back to the past. And whilst Reconstruction covered legal status, through the 14th amendment which you name, it also covered material conditions, through the Freedmen's Bureau and its work on food, medical care, schools and labour contracts. It was one project which covered both sides of the equation, in much the same way that the MAGA Republican party covers the cultural side through immigration and the economic side through tariffs, and bringing jobs back to the US.
None of this is to make any comment about what is correct - MAGA, Reconstructionism or anything else - but rather it's to ask what is actually needed for this approach to work.
AMEN! Love and miss you...It's been an exhausting decade to say the least, and without a doubt, we must find our way through to the other side. I remain committed to liberty, justice, equality, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
So smart and uplifting!!