Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) at a press conference last December
Josh Gottheimer, the ostensible Democrat who represents a Northern New Jersey congressional district jam-packed with Wall Street billionaires, has noted that “even Bernie Sanders” voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill—proof positive, he argues, that the House should take up that bill immediately and blow off the presumably far-left budget plan that the Senate somehow also enacted.
Of course, the same kind of thought process (if thought this be) can yield the conclusion that “even Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema” voted for the $3.5 trillion budget plan, proof positive that the House should take the budget up forthwith.
Gottheimer, who was the subject of an excellent profile on Wednesday by the Prospect’s Alex Sammon, is a protégé of the more retro elements of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and holds the distinction of voting more frequently with House Republicans (34 percent of the time) than any other congressional Democrat.
But Gottheimer isn’t alone in trying to bring the Democratic Party back to the days when it promoted the idea that “the era of big government is over,” as Clinton famously proclaimed in his 1996 State of the Union address. Another figure plainly nostalgic for the Reagan-era Democrats is William Galston, The Wall Street Journal’s designated Democratic op-ed columnist. In his op-ed this week, Galston also calls for an immediate vote on the infrastructure bill, and makes clear he views the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill as pie-in-the-sky progressivism, a niche demand of the left—despite the fact that it’s being promoted by such niche lefties as Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, and President Biden.
One notable feature of Gottheimer and Galston’s critiques of the reconciliation bill is their neglect to single out particulars either for censure or to demonstrate their unpopularity. What is it that they’re against; what won’t fly with the public? Expanding Medicare? Extending the Child Tax Credit? Reducing drug prices? Taxing billionaires? One might conclude that their silence on such matters reveals their awareness of the weakness of their arguments. Or that if sufficiently pressed, they’d admit they would have voted against the New Deal.
Like paradigmatic cynics, G&G know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Gottheimer holds the distinction of voting more frequently with House Republicans (34 percent of the time) than any other congressional Democrat.
Galston is also a leading figure in No Labels, an organization devoted to finding largely nonexistent bipartisan sweet spots. He appears mysteriously unfamiliar with the work of his former Brookings colleague Tom Mann and fellow moderate Norm Ornstein, which authoritatively documented the radicalization of the Republican Party. We’re also compelled to assume that despite his presence on the Journal’s editorial pages, Galston doesn’t actually read Journal editorials, which are a fair measure of Republicans’ drift into far-right sectarian lunacy.
In late 2019, I attended a No Labels event in Manchester, New Hampshire, which was intended to give possible Democratic presidential aspirants an entrée to New Hampshire primary voters. The meeting was almost entirely devoid of mainstream Democrats, however, but did feature such possible candidates as Maryland’s John Delaney, Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard, and New Age guru Marianne Williamson—candidates, that is, desperate for an audience. The event was chaired by Galston, who manfully maintained the fiction that the conclave was tapping into the pulse of the public.
The Wall Street Journal has a long record of eccentric choices in designating its opposing-view columnist. In the 1980s, it ran the weekly ramblings of Alex Cockburn, who was so far to the left of progressives that it seemed he’d been chosen explicitly to discredit the left. In Galston, the Journal has similarly picked a columnist who no more represents today’s mainstream Democrats than Cockburn did. To be sure, Clinton nostalgia is greatly to be preferred to Kremlin nostalgia, but is this the best the Journal can do?
