Omarova’s Failed Nomination Hints at the Left’s Long Game

While we ask why Biden would risk damaging Democrats’ electoral hopes by nominating Marxists for top jobs, progressives laugh . . . and transform our society.

Charles C. W. Cooke’s column on Wednesday compellingly noted all the reasons why it seems crazy for President Biden to have nominated Saule Omarova, an unreconstructed Marxist, to be comptroller of the currency. But I think there’s a rational calculation behind the apparent madness, which is why, as Charlie points out, only 10 percent of Senate Democrats voted Omarova’s nomination down. For the rest, as for Biden, supporting the inevitable loser was a solidarity-signaling freebie.

The problem is what Charlie aptly describes as “the lunatics and fabulists” in Biden’s party. The sad fact is that they represent the Left’s energy, its muscle, and a lot of its money. These Bolsheviks cede no ground to norms: doxing opponents, making mayhem at their homes, harassing their children, giving them no peace upon encountering them at a restaurant or a store, unabashedly defending allies who riot and perjure themselves, etc.

Funny thing about extortion: It works.

Biden and congressional Democrats are not going to be able to give these people the utopia they demand. But unfortunately, establishment Democrats are not just afraid of the Bolsheviks, they need them. The hard Left is less of a fringe than we’d like to think. It is a meaningful minority bloc of voters, and it is now powerful enough that, having thrashed the Democratic establishment in many elections, it runs several major American cities. It makes the blue states blue.

So, as a very relevant someone famously asked, “What is to be done?”

Biden figures that he must signal he is with the hard Left, and congressional Democrats figure that they must vote accordingly. Omarova is a case in point. She wasn’t going to be confirmed regardless, so her nomination gave Biden and Senate Democrats a cost-free way of keeping their crazies on board.

Cost-free? I must be nuts, you’re thinking, because when the next election rolls around, voters will remember that so many Democrats backed an out-and-out socialist. Maybe, maybe not. No one ever went broke underestimating the memory of voters, after all. But consider the alternative scenario: What if Biden and establishment Democrats lost the hard Left by refusing to engage in these gestures? The result would be internal fracturing, primaries, and the party establishment on the receiving end of the tactics for which the Bolsheviks are notorious. (You may have noticed that it wasn’t conservatives who ran the Cuomo brothers out of their powerful gigs.)

Moreover, it is a blunt fact that Marxism is respectable on the modern left — even popular. Communism is not in the depths of disrepute, as it was a generation ago. That’s what happens when (a) you no longer have in Moscow a concrete example of what a monstrosity communism is, and (b) you cede the universities, as well as primary and secondary education, to Marxists. Polling over the last several years (see, e.g., here and here) shows plunging support for free-markets (labeled “capitalism,” which would have brought a smile to Marx’s face) and surging support for socialism. That socialism’s supporters have no idea what they’re talking about — well, see (a) and (b), supra.

These are the Democrats’ voters. With the electorate closely divided, Democrats need them to vote. Ergo, Democrats have to come up with ways to keep them in the tent and energized, without actually doing too many of the ruinous things they want done, which would hurt Democrats along with most Americans.

Omarova is one example of how they do this — the appointment of radicals to top posts in the administrative state (especially the “quasi-independent” agencies). Another is the appointment of progressive-activist lawyers to the federal bench, something to which the public pays scant attention but which the hard Left watches closely. There is also the pronouncement of mandates and executive orders that direct implementation of progressive policies (or the undoing of anything associated with President Trump, no matter how beneficial the Trump policy in question). These, too, are relatively cost-free for Biden: The administration knows its usurpations of legislative authority will instantly be challenged and probably stayed in court, so no real harm will be done; eventually, the administration will probably lose the litigation, but by then, when the public has forgotten what little it knew in the first place, Biden will have shown radical leftists that he is on their side, fighting for their objectives.

The rational person’s reaction to this is that it has to hurt Biden and the Democrats with the electorate at large. But modern political theory begs to differ. Today’s strategists contend that elections are at least as much about catalyzing a party’s base voters as appealing broadly to the public. President Trump made this easier for Democrats to pull off — while the Biden campaign signaled that it was with the Left on core issues, the candidate was able to win over the vast middle of the electorate simply by not being Trump and staying out of sight.

That is why, for example, Biden steadfastly refused to say he was opposed to court-packing and to ending the legislative filibuster, even when these positions put him at odds with most voters. Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court had brought these issues to the fore immediately prior to the election, and Democrats lacked the votes to stop her confirmation. Biden couldn’t afford to infuriate the base at that point. So, even though he had a long public record of opposition to these radical proposals, he declined to say he’d oppose them if elected, opting instead for another rope-a-dope maneuver: a presidential commission that would brow-knit over “transformational change” without actually doing anything..

It should go without saying that the GOP has radicals of its own to worry about. But Republicans lack Democrats’ unity, organization, and internal discipline. Though Trump’s still-ardent followers wield significant influence, they know the Republican establishment is not with them. They know many elected and otherwise influential Republicans will often rebuke them in a way the Democratic establishment wouldn’t dare rebuke its base constituents.

The replacement of a politics built on cultivating broad electoral appeal with a politics built on appeasing and energizing your party’s extreme elements is a ruinous development for the country. I hope it can be reversed. For now, though, I think we need to be grimly realistic about the fact that Biden will continue to nominate radicals and announce radical policies — precisely because, in the long run, it is to his advantage to do so.

In the mafia, being prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison has always been deemed a cost of doing business. So mob groups divert some of the proceeds of their crimes to take care of the families of the imprisoned. To further encourage loyalty, mobsters are promoted or otherwise rewarded upon release from prison if they’ve kept their mouths shut. The Left makes similar arrangements, in recognition of the fact that winning elections is not an end in and of itself, but a short-lived opportunity to push for transformational change.

Losing elections is a cost of doing business. For the Left, the point is to exploit election wins by issuing radical decrees and taking hard votes that usher in statist policies and drastic cultural change. Yes, it will be unpopular and will probably cost Democrats control of Congress or the White House for a cycle, or a few cycles. But based on long experience, Democrats are betting that Republicans will never even try to roll back the tide. In the meantime, the leftists who lose their elected and appointed posts will be handsomely rewarded — with board memberships, think-tank fellowships, academic perches, top executive positions in ever-more-woke corporate America, and so on. In no time flat, Republicans will stumble, the public will forget, Democrats will gradually win back control of the government, and the cycle will repeat itself.

While we ask why the Left would risk so damaging its electoral hopes by nominating Marxists for top jobs, the Left laughs . . . and transforms our society. (read more)