Now that the midterm elections are officially over, it's abundantly clear that predictions about the death of Democratic political fortunes were, as the saying goes, greatly exaggerated. But there is a funeral of sorts that Democrats should be noting. Not a funeral for MAGA extremism, which, unfortunately, is very much still alive and kicking. This is a funeral for an old, destructive, morally bankrupt political philosophy. In the wake of the 2022 midterms, triangulation is dead.
As the mythology goes, it was strategist Dick Morris who birthed the political concept of triangulation. In 1994, after Democrats were trounced in the midterm elections — with Republicans winning control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 42 years — Morris slithered into the Oval Office and convinced then-President Bill Clinton that he should pursue a proverbial "third way": a new course that would accommodate "the needs the Republicans address" while still hewing in some way, albeit vaguely, to liberal priorities and principles. A more honest description of triangulation would be Democrats betraying their base and trying to woo swing voters by embracing Republican policy positions and ideas. It was triangulation that led Democrats to push welfare reform, free trade agreements, school privatization and the expansion of the carceral state — all ideas birthed in conservative think tanks. This did not exactly lead to decades of unfettered Democratic political Valhalla, but it definitely led to increased pain and alienation on the part of Black and brown voters as well as many working-class whites. (It's no coincidence that Morris, who once called himself a Democrat, is now a Republican.)
