CREEPING EZRA-ISM MIGRATES FROM THE OPINION SECTION TO THE NEWS SECTION

Ezra Klein seems obsessed with one idea lately. In mid-September, in an appearance on Ross Douthat's podcast, he recommended a course of action to the Democratic Party:

Taking political positions that’ll make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri. Trying to open your coalition to people you didn’t want it open to before. Running pro-life Democrats.

Here he is shortly after that, talking to David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour:

I covered the Affordable Care Act very closely. When that passed, Democrats held Senate seats in Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, and West Virginia. I think competing in these states has become, in many ways, unimaginable to Democrats.

Here he is on his own podcast, talking to Ta-Nehisi Coates:

I’ve been thinking about Obamacare. When Obamacare passes, there are Democratic senators in Arkansas, in Louisiana, in West Virginia, in Missouri, in Indiana, in North Carolina, in South Dakota, in North Dakota.

And I’ve been thinking that, for a lot of us — to twist a line about capitalism — it has become easier to imagine the end of the country than winning a Senate seat in Missouri or Arkansas. And I think that’s a problem.

Whether he's linking it to abortion, to Obamacare, or to nothing in particular, Klein is fixated on the idea that Democrats used to win Senate seats in red states and don't anymore.

But if you think Ezra Klein is just one pundit who gets far more attention than he deserves and ought to be ignored, consider Carl Hulse's story on the government shutdown in the news section of The New York Times:

As they stared down the prospect of political backlash from Congress shuttering federal agencies, Democrats seemed resigned to a messaging battle that they could well lose, or at best fight to a draw. But agreeing to keep the government open without getting something in return appeared to be unacceptable to most of them....

It was a stark departure from January 2018, when Democrats blocked a government spending measure and demanded permanent protection for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — the so-called Dreamers.

Democrats believed widespread public sympathy for the plight of the Dreamers would be enough to protect them from a shutdown backlash. But they quickly discovered that they were mistaken, as the government shuttered for the weekend and criticism of their stance began to pour in.

The blowback was particularly dangerous for 10 Senate Democrats facing re-election that fall in states carried by Mr. Trump in 2016. Back then, Democrats still held seats in North Dakota, Indiana, West Virginia, Missouri, Montana and Florida, and the clash with the White House threatened the already difficult re-election prospects of those incumbents. They searched for a quick way out, and bipartisan negotiations were initiated without the participation of party leaders.

“Should we have ever shut down the government?” Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, asked at the time. “Absolutely not.”

It's creeping Ezra-ism -- the notion that everything in politics should be seen through the lens of "Are Democrats compromising their principles enough to win Senate seats in states where the majority of people hate their party?"

Hulse's list is rather misleading. The Democrats in West Virginia (Manchin) and Montana (Jon Tester) actually went on to win their elections in 2018. Democrats in the other four states lost, but Democrats flipped Republican Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona. And in House elections, Democrats gained 41 seats. In fact, most observers, including Hulse's own paper, called the 2018 election a "blue wave" election. CNN's Harry Enten said it wasn't a blue wave, but a blue tsunami.

In 2018, it's not surprising that Democrats failed to hold seats in Indiana and Missouri -- two years earlier, Donald Trump won both states by a 57%-38% margin. Trump's win in North Dakota was even more lopsided: 63%-27%. Only in Florida did Democrats lose a Senate seat in a state Trump won narrowly, and the victor -- the state's billionaire governor, Rick Scott -- won by approximately ten thousand votes, out of more than eight million cast.

Klein is obsessed with these formerly Democratic Senate seats because he sees himself as a political strategist disguised as a pundit. Hulse argument is that the parties are effectively identical, both of them lacking moderates who could prevent a prolonged shutdown.

The Democrats from red states who decried the shutdown strategy as a foolish miscalculation and pressed for an immediate reversal in the showdown with President Trump seven years ago are long gone.

The ideological makeup of the party has shifted to the left, and Democrats are now bracing for an extended confrontation with the White House and congressional Republicans, despite the clear political risks. The same dynamic is at play in the G.O.P., which has lurched to the right under Mr. Trump and no longer sees room for compromise.

Republicans want to dismantle most of the government and turn America into a one-party police state with a president who rules like a dictator. Democrats want healthcare affordability. Both sides!

Also, if Republicans were so moderate in the pre-Trump era, and Democrats were moderate until they started losing red-state Senate seats, how did the government get shut down for a total of twenty-six days in 1995 and 1996 and for sixteen days in 2013?

For somewhat different reasons, Ezra Klein and Carl Hulse believe America got knocked out of balance when Democrats lost the ability to win Senate seats in red states. I'd say it got knocked out of balance decades earlier, when the Republican Party began to be dominated by extremist rage monsters.