The crime-bill myth did us a lot of damage in 2016 and Trump will certainly use it against Biden. But, evil though it is, we can still learn from it. If we look closely at the myth’s weirdest feature, it will lead us straight to the heart of the cause of our disunity — our greatest weakness.
The weirdest thing about the 1994-crime-bill myth is that it erases the Republicans. Hearing the myth, you’d think Joe Biden and Bill Clinton just sat down one day and wrote what they thought was the perfect bill and then passed it. It’s like the Republicans were completely powerless or sound asleep. (My next post on that myth will discuss the Republican role. See also here, here and here.)
But how could the radical left, of all people, forget Republicans?
This is nothing new. Left radicals have been thinking this way ever since “left” became a thing during the French Revolution, and Robespierre guillotined Danton, his former close friend and ally. This brain-glitch is so predictable that it’s become a standard joke. And by far the funniest version is from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979).
In Ripped Apart, this is retold and used to explain “emotional polarization,” which is precisely what the crime-bill myth fosters, and exactly what’s ripping the Democrats apart today. Here’s the excerpt:
“Listen,” shouts the angry but unintentionally hilarious leader of The People's Front of Judea (PFJ), “the only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front” (JPF). That’s from Monty Python’s film, Life of Brian (set in 30 AD). Of course, in the film, the two political sects, the PFJ and the JPF, are almost identical. But each hates the other more than they hate their real enemy, the Romans. They are almost perfectly aligned on their only important issue—they have no issue polarization. But through infighting, their emotional polarization has gone through the roof.
(Full disclosure: In 1968, I voted for the Freedom and Peace Party, not to be confused with the Peace and Freedom Party! Such hairsplitting is a real talent of the radical left.) ...
The danger to the party. In 2016, the Democrats showed once again how infighting causes emotional polarization. To an impartial observer, the differences between Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ positions on issues were insignificant when compared to the differences between either of them and the Romans … er … the Republicans. Issue polarization was minimal. Yet rivalry led to vilification (mainly by Berniecrats), then to conspiracy theories and mutual hatred.
—Ripped Apart: How Democrats Can Fight Polarization to Win,
by Steven Stoft. On Amazon and as a free PDF
Back to the Myth. So how does this explain the Republicans being erased from the crime-bill myth? Simple. The radical left (People’s Front of Judea) hates the Democrats (Judean People’s Front) more than they hate the Republicans (Romans). So naturally, their myth targets the rivals — Joe Biden and the Clintons — who they hated more than their real enemies, the Republicans.
But could this really be true? First, does the radical left hate the Democrats? Take it from Sanders,
“In every single state that we contested, we took on virtually the entire political establishment—U.S. senators, members of Congress, governors, mayors, state legislators, and local party leaders.”
— Bernie Sanders
If you are even the lowliest party staffer, you are condemned as part of the “political establishment,” and you will be “taken on.”
But what about Republicans? You can’t get any more Republican than the Tea Party. But in a fantastical March 2016 op-ed, Professor Robert Reich, Sanders’ most prestigious surrogate, predicted that he would someday look back on Bernie Sanders’ Revolution in which
“Millions who called themselves conservatives and Tea Partiers joined with millions who called themselves liberals and progressives.”
A month later, a bunch of Berniecrats started the Brand New Congress PAC to do exactly what Reich recommended in 2018 — completely take over Congress. (The didn’t even help flip one House seat from red to blue.)
Radical splinter groups. Surely there is something to the age-old joke that Monty Python reprised in Life of Brian. The radical-left is known for spawning splinter groups like nobody’s business. A socialist chart of “Trotskyist organizations” active in the US over the last 100 years shows 42 such splinter groups. (And it doesn’t even list the one that recruited Sander in 1961.) Trotsky himself broke off from the Soviet Communist Party and fled to Mexico where he was murdered by an ice-ax wielding assassin sent by Stalin. Emotional polarization knows few limits.
Fortunately, we have moved beyond the ice-ax age. But let’s take a look at how active this divisive pattern still is today. Sanders spawned three rival PACs, Brand New Congress, Justice Democrats and the one he raised money for “Our Revolution.” In 2018, together they made 117 endorsements for House seats, but in only two cases did the three PACs agree. And none of his PACs aligned with Sanders on endorsements.
Sanders didn’t endorse AOC in her primary bid — the election that mattered. And a month before Sanders fizzled in 2020, Ocasio-Cortez backed away from him because he wouldn’t reject Joe Rogan’s endorsement, and Rogan had said that trans women (like Bruce Jenner) should not get to participate in women’s sports. You see why they splinter. Any ideological impurity is grounds for divorce.
And of course, Sanders and Warren ended up in a spat on national TV, after which Sanders grew desperate and was begging her to endorse him after she dropped out. Of course, she wouldn’t. Looking back it’s always been like this. Being an “independent,” sounds thoughtful, but it’s just a cover for not being able to get along with any organization. The only party Sanders ever joined was the tiny VT Liberty Union Part that he was chairman of until he split with them and they turned on him.
As mayor of Burlington, he organized the VT Progressive Coalition, which became the VT Progressive Party, which he has ever since refused to endorse. He would not even endorse his own brother.
The radical left is all about in-fighting. Naturally, since that is the only way they can succeed, their first priority must be attacking the Democrats. And so it is. But make no mistake. If they were to succeed they would immediately tear the new party to pieces with in-fighting.
So the crime-bill myth is just vicious in-fighting. It’s an old radical tradition (and it happens on the right just the same). And that’s why we will see next time that it erases the Republicans, the constraining factor on the 1994 crime bill.
The sad part of all this is that most of Sanders converts are not part of that tradition. They just get sucked in by the myths. In fact, what Sanders has sold them is not socialism (or democratic socialism). As he told them, FDR was “one of the great, great presidents,” and FDR’s Second Bill of Rights forms the whole basis of his policy proposals. What Sanders followers actually believe in is just FDR liberalism — the same as most Democrats have believed in since FDR (who, by the way, hated socialism).
In fact, quite ironically, Sanders did not learn his FDR-Bill of Rights position from FDR, let along from one of his socialist mentors, he learned it from Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory czar, and a good FDR liberal. (See Ripped Apart and Sunstein’s book.)
So there really is very little issue polarization among Democrats. It’s all just emotional polarization driven by myths used for factional fighting. We must unify around our common, FDR liberal, heritage, and not capitulate to factional demands that intentionally divide us.
(I realize full well that the radicals don’t see it that way. But that’s only because they mistake rhetoric for strategy, and are sure their rhetoric is all the strategy they need. Which is why they believe they can take Congress and the Presidency when they can’t even gain one seat from the Republicans. But that’s for another post.)
