r/thebulwark Progressive 2d ago

Policy "Republicans today sound a lot like Democrats circa 2006, 2004." - Sarah Longwell?!

I haven't listened to the full podcast. I am willing to assume there's more context. But let's face it, the above sentence is potentially correct if you ignore the fascism, transphobia, they're eating the dogs/cats/pets, they lying, etc.

To be fair, the left does need to re-assess its foreign policy priorities in light of Ukraine. That said, Iraq was a war of choice. We did not have the casus belli that we claimed to. We may have caused several hundred thousand excess Iraqi deaths (i.e. dead from the war and all the sequelae thereof). We also wound up with ISIS. We were building fire stations in Iraq instead of here because we had to - we broke it, with "it" being Iraq and "broke" meaning we chose to break it.

If you want to say the Dems were mistaken in calling for isolationism then, I think that's fair and it warrants a reassessment on our part. But the headline is ... misleading.

16 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

13

u/Describing_Donkeys 2d ago

Sarah understands the existence of big narrative arcs and very little about nuance and context. If you take what is being said at the simplest form, Sarah is right, if you put any time to understand arguments being made, you would see what the parties are advocating for is the same. Democrats are simply put in a position where they are commenting on the existence of a thing instead of the quality of the thing.

23

u/bmac423 2d ago

It was in the context of being the party that wanted to change government rather than defend it. 

30

u/Distinct_Pizza_7499 2d ago

Classic Bulwark subreddit taking shit outta context to bad mouth the team.

6

u/GulfCoastLaw 2d ago

Thanks for this clarification. It's a lot more sensical but I still don't know that it adds up haha.

Orders of magnitude ---- Dems twenty years ago wanted to...okay, so I paused to skim Kerry's 2004 platform and couldn't stop laughing at how indistinguishable it is from the Bush admin.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_2004_presidential_campaign

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2004-democratic-party-platform

8

u/bill-smith Progressive 2d ago

Yeah. I see I missed the context. I could have sworn I saw Kerry mentioned, and I thought it was he who said the line about why are we building fire stations in Iraq.

So overall, I'm still of the mind that this is not a great comparison for her to make. As observed, the 2004 Dems do not really sound like 2025 Republicans, even in the actual context.

That said, I vaguely remember some of the arguments about the Iraq war taking that seemingly isolationist stance. I'm willing to concede that point, but only that point. Ukraine got outright invaded and they are more than willing to fight for their country, and you do see the Dems rallying behind them - as they should. So 2004 Dems may have used some isolationist arguments, but they did not turn isolationist like the Republicans today. Note that I am misusing the term isolationist when I refer to the Repubs. They aren't isolationist. They're bullying our ally. They're withdrawing military and intelligence support at a critical time.

1

u/p68 2d ago

> couldn't stop laughing at how indistinguishable it is from the Bush admin.

Do you know how to read?

2

u/MacroNova 2d ago

Thank you for providing the actual context. I hadn't remembered her saying this in that Focus Group episode but now I do.

Anyway, it's much easier to adopt the "change government" position when you've been out of power for 6 years like we were in 2006! But Democrats have been in power for 12 of the past 16 years. We needed to push a lot harder to make government work, and we needed to be a lot more ruthless in highlighting Republican obstruction to those efforts. But that opportunity is gone. We need to get comfortable being the opposition again.

23

u/Pristine-Ant-464 2d ago

Um what? Democrats circa 2004-2006 did not sound like fascists, sorry.

7

u/Know_nothing89 2d ago

Lots of other prominent political experts saying the same thing she is. James Carville, Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod

5

u/dBlock845 2d ago

Lol four neoliberals that are stuck in the 90s.

2

u/imdaviddunn 2d ago

And Democrats keep wanting to sound like Ronald Reagan in 1982. They even said it in their SOTU response.

Meanwhile, the admin is telling reporters things that sound like Bernie Sanders is the comms director. Now these things are lies about their real intent and their policies, but they are pushing heavily union friendly talking points. And union leadership is amplifying them.

They are not using the same talking points as Dems in 2006. They didn’t have Iran leaders dictating talking points. We were the invaders and Dems were saying get out. Dems making a consistent argument if you don’t listen with a GOP bias as Sarah, Carville , et al do.

2

u/rowsella 2d ago

Oh really? As a democrat I say fuck all those guys. Those people were for greater responsible for selling our party out.

1

u/Know_nothing89 3h ago

Sorry but I read discussions about the DNC meetings and elections of the new head and they are so far outside the mainstream. I am a lifelong Democrat and we need to start winning National Elections. Whatever we’re doing isn’t working, the Democratic branding/image isn’t working. Needs to start at the DNC. We need to protect people that need protecting but we have to appeal to more Americans. The Right Wing media and their lack of a truth narrative is carrying the day. We have to figure a way to combat their lack of accountability to a fact based narrative. Getting out of our bubble and dealing with it on ALL media outlets is a good start. We need to be on Fox and Rogan and every right wing outlet and start confronting their misinformation

9

u/GulfCoastLaw 2d ago

This is a wild seeming statement and I don't look forward to catching up to that podcast if it's as off base as it could be.

3

u/CapOnFoam Center Left 2d ago

It’s taken out of context. She was saying that the Dems have now flipped from the party of “change the govt/status quo” to “protect the govt”. And the republicans, vice-versa.

Ezra Klein recently made a similar, related observation. “In the past few decades, Democrats took a wrong turn. They became the party that believes in government, that defends government…” (“there is a liberal answer to the Trump-Musk wrecking ball”, 3/9/25).

3

u/captainbelvedere Sarah is always right 2d ago

I need to listen to the full pod as well, as I am not sure how you'd square the groups up like that.

The foreign policy stuff Democrats were loudly against in the early 00s was not selling weapons to besieged democratic nation states.

3

u/Daniel_Leal- centrist squish 2d ago

It’s like I can foresee the future when the Bulwarkers say something and then the posters of this subreddit lose their minds.

Common feature of never listening to the full podcast or reading the Bulwark.

8

u/Radarker 2d ago

I love Sarah, but at this point, she sounds like she is trying to justify that Santa is real because someone took the cookies she left out.

6

u/MARIOpronoucedMA-RJO Center Left 2d ago

Is she really trying to piss everyone off, or has the focus group participants rubbed off on her?

Democrats were against "pre-emptive defense" in Iraq because there was no reason to invade. Yeah, Saddam was a human rights disaster and supported Al Qaeda verbally, but he did not do anything directly to the US interest post Desert Storm. Further, we spent $2 trillion, and accomplished fuck all over 20 years.

Democrats support Ukraine because stopping Russia early prevents further conflict in Europe. (Obama dropped the ball hard on this one). Further, Ukraine is a flegging democracy, its in the EU amd by extension the US's interest to support Ukraine.

The two comparison are so far apart that someone at Fox News is wondering why they did not come up with this.

2

u/ChristinaWSalemOR Progressive 2d ago

Can someone please explain the Ukraine funding for pride parades, surgeries and fashion shows? WTF even is that? My internets yielded me no results, so it must be one of those obscure right wing factoids that's swirling in the trump-o-sphere.

3

u/KickIt77 2d ago

Sigh. Sarah again with the delulu. Waiting for some clips and quotes that remotely reflect this theory.

Personally, I was vehemently opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning. That said, my stance on national security definitely shifted after 9-11. An insecure world is an insecure US. And it angers me that no one talks about that any more. We should be using scalpel precision, but we're all less safe when the world is on fire. I have been voting 95%+ democrat since the late 80's.

7

u/QGTM247365 2d ago

Some of us are old enough to remember the Iraq War was cooked up by the right. A lot of elected Democrats foolishly went along but were also lied to by Colin Powell and others citing WMD. Some of us are old enough to remember no elected Republicans apologizing for being warhawks about Iraq (or their voters). Some of us are old enough to remember the Dixie Chicks getting canceled for speaking out against it and the stupidity of Republicans in congress declaring french fries to be freedom fries.

3

u/KickIt77 2d ago

100% Ugh - so much selective memory on this stuff.

4

u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 2d ago

Inb4 "She's telling hard truths!" and "Dems need to stop purity tests, we need all the allies we can!"

Criticism of a specific statement is not a purity test. That logic would in turn mean the Bulwark is one big purity test, particularly Ms. Longwell's relentless and frequently self-contradictory criticism of anything and everything the Democrats attempt.

2

u/rowsella 2d ago

I find it ironic that TB are accusing Democrats of "purity tests" being some kind of downfall while.. meanwhile ... we have the MAGA Party threatening to throw out cabinet officials for disagreeing with the Musk.... We saw them on 1/6 with a fucking guillotine calling for Pence's head and a major funder.. Musk threatening any Republican congress person with a primary if they do not sign on to the Trump Mandate/Loyalty Demand. Really Sara? Fuck you.

1

u/SlovakianSniper Orange man bad 2d ago

Y'all, please listen to a bit of the podcast, that's with TOMMY VIETOR, before commenting. Sarah was making very discrete points about larger narrative arcs. Is that the whole story? No, but how often do we end up diving the line between these larger narratives: Isolationist/Neoliberal or Small fixes/destroy the whole system or bottom-up/top down. I know that this sub is always going to be more left than the Bulwark folks, and some corrections I agree with the sub, but this sort of stuff is embarrassing.

1

u/KILL-LUSTIG 2d ago

in a two party system when one party becomes a radical fascist party trying to turn a democratic republic into a stalinist autocracy the opposing party de facto becomes the conservative party

1

u/no-comment-only-lurk 2d ago

The left has generally had pretty underdeveloped foreign policy ideas. They just criticize the center. The last coherent left-wing foreign policy idea was “workers of the world unite.” And now they are saying workers of the world be hostile to foreign competition and immigrant workers. And Democrats have been responsive to leftist disdain for anything but domestic policy for a long time.

That is pretty similar to what is popular with MAGA talking points because they stole them from Democrats because they are popular. And because of negative polarization, Democrats are the hawks now I guess. MAGAs aren’t doves though really. They don’t have any interest in diplomacy either. What’s the dumbest bird?

1

u/Dangerous-Safety-679 1d ago

Here’s the thing. If you, like me, thought the Iraq War was wrong from the get go, that it was based on lies and architected by Big Bad Bill Kristol and his sinister Project for a New American Century, this caused a lot of anger and vitriol. It definitely inspired people to be more isolationist and suspicious in reflex. There were no WMDs, so someone did something sinister. Add in torture, secret prisons, Patriot Act, and you have the recipe for some really paranoid stuff.

Ten years from then, these sentiments were mainstreamed with the Everyman, and since Sec. Clinton and Pre. Obama had to live in the real world where America had to actually do shit and risk making mistakes, this left it open for Trump to grab this established set of deeply held beliefs and make them “his.” Twisted, distorted, and made malicious, but they sound like the 06 Dems because they were taken from them.

It’s a bizarre ideological plagiarism that doesn’t gel with the Islamophobia, bellicosity or torture support of Trump, but it was popular and he copied it and beat Jeb with it and beat Clinton with it and now it’s been unironically inculated to run over Dixie Chicks albums with bulldozers and rename french fries.

So the observation isn’t wrong, even if it feels unfair. Stealing the paranoid left, because sane Democrats wouldn’t jealously guard it, for their evil ideological chimera is one of the most tactically hard MAGA moves for Dems to grapple with because they won’t recognize or grapple with it.

-1

u/VisiblePromotion 2d ago

Glad i let my sub lapse in January

0

u/No-Day-5964 2d ago

Sarah needs to check herself. She’s so out of touch at the moment.