As President Trump’s consolidation of autocratic power gains steam, it’s often been argued that the failures of liberal governance meaningfully helped to bring us to this moment. In this reading, the Biden administration—and other Democratic leaders in recent years—allowed well-intentioned caution and respect for parliamentary safeguards and procedures to hobble ambition, frustrating voters and making them easier prey for demagogues peddling authoritarian governance as our civic cure-all.

This reading has now picked up the endorsement of a surprising group: A large bloc of former high-level members of the Biden administration.

The left-leaning Roosevelt Institute is releasing a major new report Tuesday—with input from nearly four dozen former senior Biden officials across many agencies—that seeks to diagnose the administration’s governing mistakes and failures. The report, provided in advance to The New Republic, may be the most ambitious effort involving Biden officials to determine what went wrong and why.

In the report, Biden officials extensively identify big failings in governing and in the execution of the politics around big decisions—but with an eye toward creating the beginnings of a Project 2029 agenda. The result is a kind of proto-blueprint for Democratic governance to show that it can work the next time the party has power.

“We must reckon honestly with how we got here and why the American public has been so frustrated with these institutions for so long,” Roosevelt Institute president Elizabeth Wilkins writes in the report’s introduction. “The rising authoritarianism we see today shows us the stakes.”

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
      92·
      2 days ago

      I don’t believe that. I honestly also believe the majority of internet tankies probably originated as an unfortunately successful psyop campaign against the left.

      True tankies and right wing extremists have a lot more in common than they seem to be willing to acknowledge. If you’re unable to critique authoritarian policy or murder of innocent civilians and political dissidents, regardless of which side of the political spectrum the policy was coming from, then you’re helping to normalize authoritarians like Trump, Putin, and Orbán.

      For example, I have a very hard time believing this is not a right wing psyop disguised as a radical leftist movement in France:

      For me, Robespierre made one major mistake in the Revolution, in not addressing the issue of women’s right to vote. He’s often cast as the architect of the Terror. But historians, especially Jean-Clément Martin, have shown how far the Terror was in fact invented after Robespierre’s death by those who killed him.

      I believe it’s fact that Robespierre had people conspiring against him, but “one mistake?” That seems to be an extreme understatement/deflection of reality. Robespierre initially had (or at least claimed to have) beliefs that most rational people would probably agree with. Like the belief that no one has the right to hoard heaps of wheat while his fellow man is starving.

      That doesn’t change the fact that way too many innocent civilians were sent to the guillotine under his rule. Or the fact that people continued starving under his rule while his cabinet made some very odd financial decisions. Why does anyone need to prop a historical figure up as the representative of a modern leftist movement, and rationalize the mistakes he made in order to argue that you don’t believe anyone has the right to hoard money and resources by exploiting individuals who are starving and being oppressed?

      The historian she cites in the article seems to argue the reign of terror was basically fake news created by Robespierre’s enemies after he died. One of the more recent articles I could find about the historian is an interview he gave discussing his work in a right of center publication. In the interview, he says that it was a complex period and shouldn’t be reduced to its decapitations. Seems reasonable.

      Then he goes on to talk about examples of good that came from the time period, like the idea of free education for children. I understand you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you also shouldn’t conflate achieving something positive with very unnecessary political violence. Choices were made. Decapitating everyone was not somehow excusable because Robespierre had reason to be paranoid/it was a chaotic time, and some good did come from it. That is exactly how people always manage to justify clearly unjust bullshit.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      72·
      2 days ago

      It just means we have another couple of decades of suffering to do before people catch on and decide to organize, but hey, that’s cool. 🤷

      • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
        38·
        2 days ago

        Some kind of system that treats people fairly and equally with guaranteed rights? One where everyone gets a say in how things are done? Maybe could call it: Deem-ewe-cra-teak Rep-oob-lick, rolls off the tongue.

        Tankies claim to take us in the same direction we all want to go, but then their actions like abstaining from elections or instigating violence leads us towards GOP victories.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          74·
          2 days ago

          right, right, because USA hasn’t moved so far right, center doesn’t exist, and Democrats didn’t hand-wring and capitulate at every opportunity. Meanwhile, the EU is certainly a shining example of democracy…🧐😮‍💨🤮

          • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
            36·
            2 days ago

            Democratic party platform is healthcare for all, removing money from politics, and taxing the rich. People like you seem to never be able to elaborate how the USA is further right, but that never stops you from repeating the lie.

            You want the USA to stop moving to the right? Elect more than 48 DNC senators for the first time in over ten years.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              44·
              2 days ago

              MF we’ve pointed it out repeatedly! Nixon was to the economic left of Clinton, Obama or Biden, I’ve lived here for six decades, but do go on at telling me I’m wrong!

              Platforms don’t mean shit without codification and Dems conveniently excuse not doing any of it for 40 years, meanwhile GOP GET THINGS DONE. Not that they’re good things but they deliver what they promise. Dems wear kente cloths and vote for Rep agendas.

              ETA moreover, Nixon was environmentally left of Democrats since then, too.

              • edible_funk@lemmy.world
                21·
                1 day ago

                The solution was to roll your sleeves up and pull the country back left but you were apparently too busy jerking yourself off over being above it all. You register in closed primaries, stump for progressives and primary incumbent and establishment dems that aren’t progressive enough. You get grassroots support because these are wildly popular positions and always have been. But that’s a lot more work than just wanking off to “both sides bad”. Bit late for all that now though isn’t it Maeve?

                For the record the guy you’re arguing with clearly doesn’t understand what the terms he’s using actually mean, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to spout literal Russian propaganda points.

                • Maeve@kbin.earth
                  22·
                  1 day ago

                  I voted and supported my candidate who damn sure didn’t run on genocide and campaigning with Liz Cheney. That was the solution, not wanking off and voting to “move farther right just one more time bro, I promise this time it’s going to work!” 🤡🌎

                  The candidate, I will add, whom Democrats sued to keep off ballots in swing states.

                  • edible_funk@lemmy.world
                    3·
                    1 day ago

                    There it is. Congratulations, your principles and/or lack of understanding of how our federal system operates is responsible for Trump. Own it. You are the American that failed the open book test. I hope you get first have experience of everything you voted for.

                    Edit: wait holy shit did you vote green party? Did you vote for the actually literally a Russian spoiler party and wanna talk about Democrats? That’s a choice alright.

              • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
                22·
                2 days ago

                Nixon sold drugs to black communities, is recorded on tape ranting about jews, kept a war going for personal gain, etc.

                He might have saved some trees and whales, but he wasn’t left of jack shit. Here’s him talking about the dangers of homosexuality:

                “They have a problem. They’re born that way. You know that. That’s all. I think they are. Boy Scout leaders, YMCA leaders and others bring them in that direction and teachers,” Nixon said. “And if you look over the history of societies, you will find, of course, that some of the highly intelligent people - Oscar Wilde, Aristotle, etc., etc., etc., were all homosexuals … Once a society moves in that direction, the vitality goes out of that society.”

                • Maeve@kbin.earth
                  62·
                  2 days ago

                  Tell me you don’t know the difference between “economically left” and “socially left” without telling me you don’t know the difference.

                  Uh guyz, people are starving and homeless but it’s fine if we arrest the homeless with rainbow zip ties! 🤓

                  • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
                    12·
                    1 day ago

                    Left means progress. There is no distinction between economically and socially left in the context of progress, you either lead to a better future for everyone or you don’t.

        • edible_funk@lemmy.world
          21·
          1 day ago

          Name one instance of a fuckin tankie instigating real world violence in the US. Like, I’m a proper leftist and despise tankies as their general worldview is as reductive and stupid as libertarians, but there are no tankies wielding any sort of left wing influence. Certainly nothing remotely affiliated with liberals or the Democratic party. There’s less tankies in America than trans people. They’re not the problem, they’re just annoying. The problem is half the country, which would probably self-describe as liberal in context, couldn’t tell the difference between Trump and Harris.

          • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
            12·
            1 day ago

            https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752

            Though I suppose you absolutely needed an example of “in the USA”, but they’re in this very thread saying that voting doesn’t work cuz boTh SIdEs and that we need a bloody revolution. There is also CPUSA who have a literal weapons stockpile.

            • edible_funk@lemmy.world
              31·
              1 day ago

              So what real world violence was instigated? We all know ml are nutcases but they have no impact or influence.

                • edible_funk@lemmy.world
                  31·
                  1 day ago

                  So no real world violence was actually instigated then. I asked for a specific example because that’s what you said. You failed to provide an example and deflected to Russian interference in our elections, which has been definitively proven but isn’t really relevant to the discussion at hand. Conflating tankies online with the actual nazis running the federal government is ignorant in no small part to the fact no tankie wields any real world influence, while the nazis in the white house do.

                  • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
                    21·
                    1 day ago

                    Tankies are instigating violence, whether effective or not, and proving it was or was not itself is a herculean task. Nothing I’ve said was wrong or a lie.

    • finitebanjo@piefed.worldEnglish
      95·
      2 days ago

      All I’m saying is it would be really very easy to oppose authoritarianism instead of railing specifically about liberals and very specifically western capitalism. It doesn’t help that such a large tankie community and psyop exists on Lemmy in the first place, if it didn’t then maybe we wouldn’t have to be so skeptical of everyone.