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.”

  • 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.