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Thankfully, the 90s Are Over

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The lesson of Terry McAullife’s susprisingly progressive record as governor of Virginia is that the executive branch is generally where party change ends, not where it begins:

What’s interesting about this is that before assuming office, McAuliffe seemed like the ultimate political hack. The Clinton crony and prodigious fundraiser seemed worth voting for only because the Republicans were running the odious former state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli against him. As New York’s Jon Chait put it at the time, “McAuliffe is the Democrat Democrats have been dying to vote against, except they can’t, because he’s running against a falling-off-the-right-edge-of-the-map Republican.” And yet, he’s been a good Democratic governor—not a hero by any means, but you won’t find enfranchising former felons in the DLC risk-aversion playbook either.

Skeptics might say that the order was just a cynical attempt to expand the potential Democratic electorate in a swing state. But this would be unfair. Many important progressive achievements, up to and including the Emancipation Proclamation, were also politically expedient. If expanding the electorate helps your party, there’s nothing wrong with that! More to the point, there are many potentially politically expedient initiatives—such as expanding Social Security and substantially increasing the minimum wage—that elite Democrats have nonetheless failed to embrace. Showing that these ideas have a real constituency is one reason Sanders’s run has been so valuable.

The real lesson of McAuliffe is that leaders don’t govern in a vacuum. Political context matters. If McAuliffe had been elected governor in the 1990s he likely would have been much more timorous and inclined to compromise with Republicans. But it ain’t the ‘90s anymore, and McAuliffe has gotten the message.

We have seen this play out in more historically consequential administrations. When Kennedy selected Lyndon Johnson as his running mate, progressive groups nearly revolted, given his frequently conservative record as a legislator and legislative leader. Had LBJ become president in 1952, it is enormously unlikely that he would be remembered as a progressive giant on domestic policy. But assuming office in the context of 1963, he went on to preside over the widest-ranging and least compromised collection of progressive legislation to be passed by Congress since Reconstruction.

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