This transcription has been lightly edited for spelling, filler words, and clarity.
Hi, my name is Josh, and welcome to the Fair Deal Democrat podcast. Today, just a short episode to mark the demise of The Liberal Patriot, which was a sub stack run by John Halpin with contributions by Ruyy Texeira and others. They’ve been around four or five years.
And after, 1,500 or so entries on their Substack page, they’ve decided to give up the ghosts. They represented a very specific brand of a centrist rethinking about the Democratic Party.
One that I largely agree with. I found many of their takes very informative. I also appreciated the book, Where of All the Democrats Gone, that Ruy wrote with John Judas a couple of years ago, several years ago, I guess now.
Ruy wrote a a final column and I think really summarized the problem. Let me read the key paragraph:
“Currently, the desire for change [and he’s talking about within the Democratic Party] seems to be hovering around zero as more and more Democrats have convinced themselves that their problems have been essentially been solved. Here at the Liberal Patriot, we know all about that.
Funding for our modest enterprise, always precarious, has now completely dried up. Our view that the party has neither solved its problems, nor is even very close to doing so, has tanked our appeal among partisan Democratic donors, even reform-minded ones.
A little hetero heterodoxy is fine, but there’s a limit! Hence, no money.”
I can’t speak to their financial situation. Apparently there’s no money. There’s a lot of that going around! But I would note that the problem I see in that paragraph and in the final columns that Ruy and John Halpin wrote is their bitterness.
And that’s been a consistent problem of tone with The Liberal Patriot. I never once, as much as I agree with many of the positions they take and found it helpful and informative in many ways, I never once got the sense that they were liberals or particularly sympathetic to the Democratic Party. Maybe they were 20 years ago or whatever, but never once did I sense that there was any genuine love or affection for what the Democratic Party has achieved. And, you know in spite of everything, the Democratic Party has achieved a lot, even in recent years.
In Obama’s first term, we got Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act that has provided health care for millions of Americans. That was a significant achievement that only the Democratic Party could do.
Could the bill have been better? Blah blah, blah, all those things. The reality of politics was it was what got through and it made a big difference. The other big achievement the that Democrats led during that sort of same time period. two thousand and ten s was um marriage equality and sort of full citizenship for ah the LGBT community. Yes, there are ongoing issues around trans rights and whatnot. But, you know, marriage equality was a big deal. The right to serve in the armed forces was a big deal. Full citizenship for the LGBT community is important. And it was a huge victory.
And it was one I like to attribute it largely to the rise of my generation, Gen X, within the Democratic Party. Once we once we turned about 30 and became a force, that’s when things started to turn around on that issue.
But, regardless of the generational posturing, the Democratic Party still produces important results, even in Biden’s term. Some of what he passed, the Inflation Reduction Act, some of the spending on infrastructure, there were important things there.
So, here at the Fair Deal Democrats, we’re always quite clear about why we’re Democrats. I never, ever, ever got that from The Liberal Patriot.
I never, you know, got sent the sense that they appreciated, the Democratic Party’s key role in civil rights movement and in environmental protection, all those things, even if later, the issues got more complicated around identity politics or over-regulation or whatever. Nonetheless those were those were important achievements, lasting achievements to build on, to reform if necessary, but real achievements.
So again, I’m sorry to see The Liberal Patriot go, but I think rather than sort of blaming the Democratic Party, one more sort of shot across the bow, complaining that they weren’t supported, I would say that support is a two-way street. I do hope they continue to write individually or find another um you know platform, but I fully understand why Democrats would not want to take advice from people who seem to have no love for them.
That’s it for today. Just wanted to give a short shout out and acknowledge their demise and wish them well in their future endeavors. Thank you for joining us. Have a great day.
