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Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center
A recent history of the Democratic Party that identifies its chronic errors—the “pathologies” of the New Democratic mindset—and argues urgently against a return to the status quo
Why did the Democrats initially abandon their principles, and why haven’t they been able to grasp that they need a new strategy in the face of decades of diminishing returns? In Chaotic Neutral , political scientist Ed Burmila breaks it to us, tracing the party’s metamorphosis from bold defender of labor rights, civil rights, and a robust social safety net to a timorous, ideology-free, regulation-averse lifestyle brand.
Chaotic Neutral tracks the evolution (or devolution) of the Democratic Party from the New Deal era to Biden’s status-quo candidacy and the pandemic, when, even in the midst of a national crisis, the Democrats could not manage to pass sweeping progressive legislation. It is a timely analysis and, simultaneously, a timeless one that pinpoints why Dem politicians act like also-rans even when they’re in power.
Burmila doesn’t pull any punches as he describes the Democrats’ brand of futility politics, but he also doesn’t claim that all is futile, instead laying out a potent strategy for how the party might abandon its lesser-of-two-evils strategy and shift back into drive.
Why did the Democrats initially abandon their principles, and why haven’t they been able to grasp that they need a new strategy in the face of decades of diminishing returns? In Chaotic Neutral , political scientist Ed Burmila breaks it to us, tracing the party’s metamorphosis from bold defender of labor rights, civil rights, and a robust social safety net to a timorous, ideology-free, regulation-averse lifestyle brand.
Chaotic Neutral tracks the evolution (or devolution) of the Democratic Party from the New Deal era to Biden’s status-quo candidacy and the pandemic, when, even in the midst of a national crisis, the Democrats could not manage to pass sweeping progressive legislation. It is a timely analysis and, simultaneously, a timeless one that pinpoints why Dem politicians act like also-rans even when they’re in power.
Burmila doesn’t pull any punches as he describes the Democrats’ brand of futility politics, but he also doesn’t claim that all is futile, instead laying out a potent strategy for how the party might abandon its lesser-of-two-evils strategy and shift back into drive.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
November 12, 2022
Far from the usual type of political naval gazing that finds a way to justify whatever it is we have been doing by placing the blame elsewhere, Chaotic Neutral’s is criticism from the left at what the left itself has been doing wrong for the last 50 years. It is entertaining and informative while never shying away from the entirely depressing situation we find ourselves in. You will likely not agree with every word written, (who wants to read a book where you do), but it’s hard to disagree with the central thesis that what the Democratic Party has been doing isn’t working. Burmila has also changed the way I think and will talk about partisanship. The notion that hyper partisanship is a vice best to be avoided only serves those that aren’t at all interested in virtue. It’s like continuing to play by the rules in a game where your opponent is blatantly cheating on every single turn. I will definitely pass this book on and recommend it to others.
January 31, 2024
Burmila does an admirable job explaining the history of the Democrats' trend both rightward and downward after FDR. His thesis is straightforward and indisputable and his style is engaging.
Unfortunately the book gets extremely repetitive toward the end. This is partly the fault of the subject matter--Dems absolutely refuse to change their losing strategy. But even after addressing the difficulty of offering solutions in "The Last Chapter Problem", Burmila stretches 3 pages of ideas into 30. Skim or skip the last 2 chapters and the book is closer to 4 stars.
Unfortunately the book gets extremely repetitive toward the end. This is partly the fault of the subject matter--Dems absolutely refuse to change their losing strategy. But even after addressing the difficulty of offering solutions in "The Last Chapter Problem", Burmila stretches 3 pages of ideas into 30. Skim or skip the last 2 chapters and the book is closer to 4 stars.
October 24, 2022
In the midst of our endless obsession with political polarization between the left and right, we’ve lost sight of the real problem with US politics: namely, that there is no longer any party genuinely interested in advancing the needs of the working class—and there hasn't been since the era of the New Deal.
One the one hand, you have the GOP, which pretends to be populist while enacting tax cuts and deregulatory policies (what’s new?) that could only ever exacerbate already egregious levels of inequality, and on the other, you have the GOP Lite, otherwise known as the Democratic Party, which has, especially since the presidency of Bill Clinton, advanced a neoliberal agenda that, for all intents and purposes, might as well be Republican. The party that was once a champion of the working class now bends over backwards to appeal to moderates and to the highly educated, wealthy segments of the party.
Working-class people who voted for Donald Trump were therefore not wrong to think that the Democrats had turned their backs on them, but were entirely delusional in thinking Trump, or any other Republican, wouldn’t do the same, or far worse. The bottom line is that for the working class, the “lesser of two evils” argument to vote Democrat completely lost its appeal.
How this happened—how the Democratic Party has drifted so far to the right, especially economically—is the subject of Ed Burmila’s debut book, Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center. Burmila takes us through the depressing history of the Democratic Party since about the late 1960s, describing in great detail the party’s devolution from being a champion of the working class, the poor, and the powerless to the soulless technocratic party of the highly educated upper-middle class.
As Burmila makes clear, the Democratic strategy is as ineffective as it is infuriating. Lately, and throughout recent history, whenever Democrats lose elections, they engage in two tiresome habits: (1) blaming voters (and anyone else other than themselves) for the loss, and (2) shifting ideologically to the right. To Democratic leadership, the only explanation for a loss is that voters failed them, not that their campaigns were uninspiring or that they tend to govern in an utterly dispassionate way. This sense of entitlement to your vote, without offering any clear incentives for that vote, is the reason voter turnout is typically so low among left-leaning individuals. “Vote for me because I’m not a Republican” is not exactly an exhilarating proposition.
No less unnerving is the tendency for Democrats to respond to an electoral defeat by becoming more conservative, which, even if this works, succeeds at the cost of becoming indistinguishable from your opponent, which isn’t really much of a victory. Not to mention the fact that it alienates the more progressive segments of your base as you slowly cede away ideological ground to your opponent that is almost impossible to recover.
Republicans love this, by the way. They obstruct Democrats when they have power and then blame them for governing poorly. Then, as Democrats seek to appease Republicans by watering down their agenda and proposals (and in the process harming the working class), Republicans give them absolutely no credit for doing so and then criticize their “socilaist” agenda anyway. The result is that even very reasonable proposals, like guaranteed healthcare for all, seem radical. And this is entirely the fault of Democrats.
Republicans simply laugh at Democrat’s attempts at appeasement. As Burmila wrote, regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA):
"No matter how much progressivism was stripped from the ACA, the reaction from the right never changed pitch. For all the difference the efforts at appeasement made, the Democrats might as well have enacted fully automated luxury space communism."
Republicans are simply not interested in bipartisanship. So why are Democrats obsessed with it? If Democrats will be villainized by the right regardless of the policies they advocate for, then why go out of the way to work with them? Democrats should instead focus on using their power to implement popular policies that make sense for ordinary people and let the Republicans bitch and moan like they’re going to do anyway.
Burmila also correctly points out that voters simply don’t care about bipartisanship or pragmatism or anything else Democrats like to tout; they care about the government doing something worthwhile that will make their lives better. And this, by the way, was the appeal behind the Bernie Sanders campaign, for those who were not brainwashed into thinking he was a socialst when he was in fact a defender of New Deal-style progressive capitalism. As Burmila wrote:
"[Bernie Sanders] tells voters struggling to make ends meet despite working hard that their poverty, their needs, their failure to enjoy the American Dream is not evidence of their own moral deficiency. Lack of material success is not a personal failing. The economy needs insecure, cheap, compliant labor to function, and it has been designed to produce it. That’s it. That’s the appeal of Bernie Sanders."
While this is correct, it’s also somewhat of an oversimplification. Sanders had a very specific policy agenda that sought to secure benefits for the working class while taking steps to reduce the rampant economic inequality that we all know exists today at unprecedented levels. This is an agenda that Burmila fails to address in any detail.
Which segues into a criticism I have with the book. Burmila probably spends too much time repeating the same points about the flaws and oversights of Democratic strategy when he could have devoted more time to either Sanders’ campaign or to the more progressive platforms that provide the blueprint for avoiding common Democratic shortcomings. The Sanders campaign, after all, did not emphasize bipartisanship, pragmatism, and technocratic management; it emphasized reducing inequality and securing benefits for the working class, something the Democratic Party should be doing. This seems to be Burmila’s point, but it also seems that he’d rather spend his time bashing Democrats he doesn’t like and making clever jokes than outlining what might work instead.
Burmila is justified in his outrage, of course. Mainstream Democrats want nothing to do with Sanders or with any policy that may actually help people secure basic necessities like healthcare, housing, and education. In contrast, they adopt the stupid strategy of appeasement that allows Republicans to get concessions for absolutely nothing in return and pisses off voters who get watered-down legislation that makes them worse off. That’s why it's not so crazy to think that maybe Democrats would have better luck if they focused instead on developing an agenda that people actually like and then doing whatever they can to pass it when in power. Well guess what? That was the approach of Bernie Sanders.
A final criticism of the book is the concluding chapter, which is an ironic and rather disappointing ending to an otherwise phenomenal book. Burmila spends a good majority of the book complaining that Democrats, once in power, spend the majority of their time explaining all the reasons why they can’t pass worthwhile legislation, even if they may have wanted to. Burmila calls this out for what it is: weak, ineffectual leadership that produces self-fulfilling prophecies of mediocrity rather than the pursuit of ambitious goals against steep odds.
Which is why it’s puzzling that Burmila begins the last chapter with exactly the same mindset he otherwise critiques. Instead of outlining a clear strategy, he takes the meek approach of explaining all the reasons why certain solutions won’t work, or how there may not be anysolutions at all, period. He sounds like the cautious technocratic leader he seems to despise. And if Burmila himself—as one of the Democratic establishment’s biggest critics—can’t outline a platform that is ambitious and exciting, then how can he expect any other Democratic leader to do so?
It’s also worth mentioning that Burmila is puzzlingly lukewarm about ranked-choice voting, even though this is the only realistic solution to the two-party problem he outlines whereby Democrats don’t feel like they have to earn people’s votes because the alternative, the GOP, is so bad. But if Democrats had to suddenly compete with viable third-party candidates, especially if those candidates were left-leaning, then this would force them back to the left of center. Yet he doesn’t want to advocate for this, under the technocratic assumption that it’s not “realistic.” Could anything possibly be more ironic?
Overall, Burmila could not have outlined the problem any better. But his lack of enthusiasm in the concluding chapter is both off-putting and ironic. When he does get around to his suggestions—including the on-point recommendation for Democrats to stop appeasing a GOP party that has no interest in anything other than obstruction—the energy and zeal have already been sapped out of the reader.
One the one hand, you have the GOP, which pretends to be populist while enacting tax cuts and deregulatory policies (what’s new?) that could only ever exacerbate already egregious levels of inequality, and on the other, you have the GOP Lite, otherwise known as the Democratic Party, which has, especially since the presidency of Bill Clinton, advanced a neoliberal agenda that, for all intents and purposes, might as well be Republican. The party that was once a champion of the working class now bends over backwards to appeal to moderates and to the highly educated, wealthy segments of the party.
Working-class people who voted for Donald Trump were therefore not wrong to think that the Democrats had turned their backs on them, but were entirely delusional in thinking Trump, or any other Republican, wouldn’t do the same, or far worse. The bottom line is that for the working class, the “lesser of two evils” argument to vote Democrat completely lost its appeal.
How this happened—how the Democratic Party has drifted so far to the right, especially economically—is the subject of Ed Burmila’s debut book, Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center. Burmila takes us through the depressing history of the Democratic Party since about the late 1960s, describing in great detail the party’s devolution from being a champion of the working class, the poor, and the powerless to the soulless technocratic party of the highly educated upper-middle class.
As Burmila makes clear, the Democratic strategy is as ineffective as it is infuriating. Lately, and throughout recent history, whenever Democrats lose elections, they engage in two tiresome habits: (1) blaming voters (and anyone else other than themselves) for the loss, and (2) shifting ideologically to the right. To Democratic leadership, the only explanation for a loss is that voters failed them, not that their campaigns were uninspiring or that they tend to govern in an utterly dispassionate way. This sense of entitlement to your vote, without offering any clear incentives for that vote, is the reason voter turnout is typically so low among left-leaning individuals. “Vote for me because I’m not a Republican” is not exactly an exhilarating proposition.
No less unnerving is the tendency for Democrats to respond to an electoral defeat by becoming more conservative, which, even if this works, succeeds at the cost of becoming indistinguishable from your opponent, which isn’t really much of a victory. Not to mention the fact that it alienates the more progressive segments of your base as you slowly cede away ideological ground to your opponent that is almost impossible to recover.
Republicans love this, by the way. They obstruct Democrats when they have power and then blame them for governing poorly. Then, as Democrats seek to appease Republicans by watering down their agenda and proposals (and in the process harming the working class), Republicans give them absolutely no credit for doing so and then criticize their “socilaist” agenda anyway. The result is that even very reasonable proposals, like guaranteed healthcare for all, seem radical. And this is entirely the fault of Democrats.
Republicans simply laugh at Democrat’s attempts at appeasement. As Burmila wrote, regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA):
"No matter how much progressivism was stripped from the ACA, the reaction from the right never changed pitch. For all the difference the efforts at appeasement made, the Democrats might as well have enacted fully automated luxury space communism."
Republicans are simply not interested in bipartisanship. So why are Democrats obsessed with it? If Democrats will be villainized by the right regardless of the policies they advocate for, then why go out of the way to work with them? Democrats should instead focus on using their power to implement popular policies that make sense for ordinary people and let the Republicans bitch and moan like they’re going to do anyway.
Burmila also correctly points out that voters simply don’t care about bipartisanship or pragmatism or anything else Democrats like to tout; they care about the government doing something worthwhile that will make their lives better. And this, by the way, was the appeal behind the Bernie Sanders campaign, for those who were not brainwashed into thinking he was a socialst when he was in fact a defender of New Deal-style progressive capitalism. As Burmila wrote:
"[Bernie Sanders] tells voters struggling to make ends meet despite working hard that their poverty, their needs, their failure to enjoy the American Dream is not evidence of their own moral deficiency. Lack of material success is not a personal failing. The economy needs insecure, cheap, compliant labor to function, and it has been designed to produce it. That’s it. That’s the appeal of Bernie Sanders."
While this is correct, it’s also somewhat of an oversimplification. Sanders had a very specific policy agenda that sought to secure benefits for the working class while taking steps to reduce the rampant economic inequality that we all know exists today at unprecedented levels. This is an agenda that Burmila fails to address in any detail.
Which segues into a criticism I have with the book. Burmila probably spends too much time repeating the same points about the flaws and oversights of Democratic strategy when he could have devoted more time to either Sanders’ campaign or to the more progressive platforms that provide the blueprint for avoiding common Democratic shortcomings. The Sanders campaign, after all, did not emphasize bipartisanship, pragmatism, and technocratic management; it emphasized reducing inequality and securing benefits for the working class, something the Democratic Party should be doing. This seems to be Burmila’s point, but it also seems that he’d rather spend his time bashing Democrats he doesn’t like and making clever jokes than outlining what might work instead.
Burmila is justified in his outrage, of course. Mainstream Democrats want nothing to do with Sanders or with any policy that may actually help people secure basic necessities like healthcare, housing, and education. In contrast, they adopt the stupid strategy of appeasement that allows Republicans to get concessions for absolutely nothing in return and pisses off voters who get watered-down legislation that makes them worse off. That’s why it's not so crazy to think that maybe Democrats would have better luck if they focused instead on developing an agenda that people actually like and then doing whatever they can to pass it when in power. Well guess what? That was the approach of Bernie Sanders.
A final criticism of the book is the concluding chapter, which is an ironic and rather disappointing ending to an otherwise phenomenal book. Burmila spends a good majority of the book complaining that Democrats, once in power, spend the majority of their time explaining all the reasons why they can’t pass worthwhile legislation, even if they may have wanted to. Burmila calls this out for what it is: weak, ineffectual leadership that produces self-fulfilling prophecies of mediocrity rather than the pursuit of ambitious goals against steep odds.
Which is why it’s puzzling that Burmila begins the last chapter with exactly the same mindset he otherwise critiques. Instead of outlining a clear strategy, he takes the meek approach of explaining all the reasons why certain solutions won’t work, or how there may not be anysolutions at all, period. He sounds like the cautious technocratic leader he seems to despise. And if Burmila himself—as one of the Democratic establishment’s biggest critics—can’t outline a platform that is ambitious and exciting, then how can he expect any other Democratic leader to do so?
It’s also worth mentioning that Burmila is puzzlingly lukewarm about ranked-choice voting, even though this is the only realistic solution to the two-party problem he outlines whereby Democrats don’t feel like they have to earn people’s votes because the alternative, the GOP, is so bad. But if Democrats had to suddenly compete with viable third-party candidates, especially if those candidates were left-leaning, then this would force them back to the left of center. Yet he doesn’t want to advocate for this, under the technocratic assumption that it’s not “realistic.” Could anything possibly be more ironic?
Overall, Burmila could not have outlined the problem any better. But his lack of enthusiasm in the concluding chapter is both off-putting and ironic. When he does get around to his suggestions—including the on-point recommendation for Democrats to stop appeasing a GOP party that has no interest in anything other than obstruction—the energy and zeal have already been sapped out of the reader.
June 23, 2022
In Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center Ed Burmila uses historical examples, incisive analysis, and engaging (if sometimes accurately profane) writing to show just how inept the Democratic party has become.
I admit to being one of those to the left of the party, well to the left. This book supports the stance many have that the Democratic party of today is the Republican party of the 50s, and frankly isn't that far removed from Nixon's brand of conservatism. It wouldn't be so bad if this weren't a de facto two-party system, but it is, which means we have a party of openly anti-democracy sentiments and a party that is conservative and moving steadily further to the right. This does not bode well for most people in the country.
The history here, from FDR to Biden, is presented with an eye toward understanding the bigger picture. For instance, at what point does doing the "safest" thing for a short-term goal become counterproductive for the long-term life of the party and potentially of the country? I'm not saying that the Democrats are the future of the country, but there needs to be representation across the range of people in the country, not two parties that each support the well-off while at best paying lip service to those struggling to survive.
Perhaps the most frustrating parts of the book aren't the many missed opportunities of the past that might have made for a healthier democracy and a better society. Instead, it is the analysis of the past couple of decades, the things that feel like the here and now. This creates not just frustration but borders on a sense of hopelessness. In our personal lives we usually try to do some genuine reflection, what have we done wrong, what can we do better. We might lament the things others did that impeded our success, but ultimately we look at what we need to do different. The Democratic party has resolutely avoided doing this, preferring to only look at what others did (those stupid voters, that evil GOP, the traitors within our own party) but never looking at how to change to better survive (theoretically by representing the people).
I wholeheartedly agree with the assessments about the outside things that have kept the Democrats, and the country, from succeeding and growing stronger. But those are really small compared to what the Democrats could do internally, and thus project externally, to counter their decline. Take a freakin' stand for something!!!
This book will reward, and likely sadden, any reader who wants to know why there is not a party that actually makes substantive improvements to their life. While GOP readers will enjoy the criticisms of the Democrats they will be upset by the assessments of much of the GOP. Readers who are Democrats will likely fall into two camps, those who think Burmila is overstating the case (in other words, those who are almost GOP but not quite) and those who will be relieved to see evidence that what they have been thinking about the Democratic Party isn't simply in their mind. But everyone should read this so they will have a more informed position when they have to make a stand, and make no mistake, this country is coming to the point where a stand will have to be made, electoral or otherwise.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
I admit to being one of those to the left of the party, well to the left. This book supports the stance many have that the Democratic party of today is the Republican party of the 50s, and frankly isn't that far removed from Nixon's brand of conservatism. It wouldn't be so bad if this weren't a de facto two-party system, but it is, which means we have a party of openly anti-democracy sentiments and a party that is conservative and moving steadily further to the right. This does not bode well for most people in the country.
The history here, from FDR to Biden, is presented with an eye toward understanding the bigger picture. For instance, at what point does doing the "safest" thing for a short-term goal become counterproductive for the long-term life of the party and potentially of the country? I'm not saying that the Democrats are the future of the country, but there needs to be representation across the range of people in the country, not two parties that each support the well-off while at best paying lip service to those struggling to survive.
Perhaps the most frustrating parts of the book aren't the many missed opportunities of the past that might have made for a healthier democracy and a better society. Instead, it is the analysis of the past couple of decades, the things that feel like the here and now. This creates not just frustration but borders on a sense of hopelessness. In our personal lives we usually try to do some genuine reflection, what have we done wrong, what can we do better. We might lament the things others did that impeded our success, but ultimately we look at what we need to do different. The Democratic party has resolutely avoided doing this, preferring to only look at what others did (those stupid voters, that evil GOP, the traitors within our own party) but never looking at how to change to better survive (theoretically by representing the people).
I wholeheartedly agree with the assessments about the outside things that have kept the Democrats, and the country, from succeeding and growing stronger. But those are really small compared to what the Democrats could do internally, and thus project externally, to counter their decline. Take a freakin' stand for something!!!
This book will reward, and likely sadden, any reader who wants to know why there is not a party that actually makes substantive improvements to their life. While GOP readers will enjoy the criticisms of the Democrats they will be upset by the assessments of much of the GOP. Readers who are Democrats will likely fall into two camps, those who think Burmila is overstating the case (in other words, those who are almost GOP but not quite) and those who will be relieved to see evidence that what they have been thinking about the Democratic Party isn't simply in their mind. But everyone should read this so they will have a more informed position when they have to make a stand, and make no mistake, this country is coming to the point where a stand will have to be made, electoral or otherwise.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
July 21, 2023
After finishing Ed Burmila’s CHAOTIC NEUTRAL: HOW DEMOCRATS LOST THEIR SOUL IN THE CENTER, I happened upon a post in my Facebook memories from July 17, 2019; the post was about the first time impeachment was floated regarding then-President Trump, two and a half years into a Presidency that began with an anti-Muslim immigration policy and his open admission that he fired the head of the FBI to stymie an investigation into his collaboration with Russia to disrupt the 2020 election. Impeachment was under consideration for racist statements he had made about four freshmen members of Congress—he said they did not belong in Congress or the United States and, based entirely on their skin color, insisted they should “go back” to “where they came from”. The post I shared was about the vote on the impeachment resolution in the House of Representatives. The result was 332-95 to table the resolution: all Republicans voted against it, but they were joined by 137 Democratic Representatives—that is, the majority of Democratic members of the House. In fact, Democrats could hardly get on the same page about condemning the remarks as racist, much less whether Trump should be impeached for it or for any of his conduct to that point, halfway through his term.
I begin with this story because I think it is a good summation of Burmila’s whole point, which is that the Democratic party is terribly dysfunctional and despite professing to be the “liberal” party is in practice mostly a center-right party, one which either defers to Republicans because of some sorely misplaced belief that doing so will result in something other than an electric shock this time!, or which aids and abets Republicans because in fact what mainstream, elite Democrats want is the same thing Republicans want—namely, the continuation and further entrenchment of the status quo. It’s pretty upsetting!
The book is sort of a survey of how we got to the present moment, from FDR and “the New Deal” to today. I can’t quite explain what the difference is, but there’s a definite feeling I got reading the book that Burmila felt more confident and passionate in his stance the closer the narrative gets to the 21st century. Something snapped on the way to the present; at some point, Democrats accepted Republican framing. They no longer represent the interests of the working class, no longer proud to maintain the social safety net—they’ve accepted that it is “welfare” which should be withheld from the undeserving, that the way out of structural discrimination and extreme income inequality is picking yourself up by your own bootstraps. To the extent that Democrats do make any positive strides, it’s always in half-measures: means-tested, complicated, difficult to comprehend half-measures. Instead of giving money to those in need when they need it, money is given through complex tax credit schemes no layperson understands or appreciates, or often it is given to the bank or lender in the enraging and idiotic fealty today’s Democrats have to the idea that private enterprise and the “free” market are the solution to social ills despite their unabated track record of exploitation.
To some degree I recognized already the lack of ambition coming from the Democratic party: the way they claim to be the party of adults who can get things done but then once in office spend their time making excuses about why they cannot do anything, often not because of Republican obstruction but because of one or two holdouts on their own side—“conservative” Democrats who are will not go along with progressive policies and, oh bother, I guess there’s nothing we can do about it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At first I worried that the book wouldn’t have much to offer, then, but in fact it did a good job of raising my awareness of just how insidious the problem is. Burmila describes how Clinton expended all of his political capital focusing on reducing the federal deficit—which nobody cares about, except for Republicans when they can use it as an excuse to bash Democrats—and of how he created bad law like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, oversaw punitive welfare reform, and sold out American workers with NAFTA. So often these things are at least done in the hopes of mollifying Republicans whose bigotry Democrats feel must be represented. Burmila objects to Democratic politicans’ constant emphasis on bipartisanship, as though that ideal means anything in the abstract. So they bend over backward to accommodate Republicans, who easily succeed in pushing the country further to the right and corrupting the law. It makes one want to scream.
The same holds true for Obama, who is often viewed by many highly-educated people—the kind of people who are well-off and for whom politics is a game which rarely has any real-world repercussions—as a beacon of liberal politics. It was Obama, not Trump, who ramped up cruelty in immigration policies (again, in a cynical effort to win Republican favor by voluntarily sacrificing a minority on the altar of conservatives’ racism… and I bet you can guess how much reward that trade-off provided). Obama and Clinton both spent a good part of their Presidency working to “reform” social security, a Republican priority. Yes, Obama created the Affordable Care Act, but it is a complicated and inefficient half-measure with the goal not of providing healthcare to every person but of providing access to healthcare… you know, if you have the money. He pointedly refused to support universal healthcare, though he could have used his position of influence to create buy-in. That is, he claimed that the ACA was the best we could do. Obama, like many prominent Democrats, loves to talk about making small steps forward over a long period. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. He creates those boundaries by asserting that they exist in the first place.
And it continues to this day. Biden barely beat Trump in the 2020 election, and he campaigned on the tired maxim of bipartisanship, even as Trump and his goons were prepping to literally attack the Capitol to stay in power. The media tried to turn the suggestion of expanding the Supreme Court to combat Republicans’ successful stealing of half the seats into a boogeyman during the last Presidential election, but now that Biden is in office there is absolutely no movement or discussion about this option. There is no eagerness to fight against Republicans and for many members of the Democrats’ base, and I admit I’m implicated in this myself, there’s a sense that if a Democrat is in the White House then everything is fine for the moment… even as Republicans continue to change the rules state-by-state to steal control of the governorship and legislature to advance their stranglehold on the country. Democratic leaders are not mobilizing against this because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s unseemly to do so (wouldn’t it appear partisan to combat Republican corruption?!), because they’ve convinced themselves it is impossible (this has affected the morale of the average voter, who has come to accept that certain stairs are irrevocably “red” and there is no cure), or because they have become absurdly short-sighted and have no vision except what they believe will help them hold onto a position of power for no purpose other than enriching themselves.
OH MY GOD I want to tear out my hair. I guess all of this is to say that I liked the book. I follow Ed on Facebook and had a positive impression of his voice and analysis already, so that doesn’t come as a great surprise. Some of the attempts at humor fell a little flat for me, and as mentioned I felt that the earlier chapters were more research-based and therefore had less life to them than the later chapters where the author’s passion grew more apparent. But once it got going, CHAOTIC NEUTRAL is a compelling argument for how much of a disappointment the Democratic party has become and how far it has strayed from actually representing the country. Yes, of course, Republicans are and will always be worse; that’s no excuse for the Democrats also being bad. They maintain their base by relying on the threat of Republicans’ chaos and don’t feel any compulsion to provide real, progressive solutions to the country’s ills because they feel you’ve got no other choice but to run to them. Burmila’s ultimate argument is that the voters need to demand action from Democratic leadership and the only way to do that is to hit them where it hurts—that is, refuse to give them your vote by default unless they make good on their talk of progressive priorities. Wouldn’t refusing to support Democrats allow Republicans to win? In the short term, yes. But Democrats’ failure to take bold action when they are in power is already allowing Republicans to win. Democrats may be slow-walking Republican domination (barely), but they’re not going to get the message through their thick skulls that that isn’t good enough if they know they’ll get support from Democratic voters without even trying. It’s a terrifying but persuasive argument.
Anyway, like I was saying, I liked the book. It made me think about things in a different way. It made me recognize my own complicity in the status quo a little bit. It made me crave a different path forward. It’s a good book.
I begin with this story because I think it is a good summation of Burmila’s whole point, which is that the Democratic party is terribly dysfunctional and despite professing to be the “liberal” party is in practice mostly a center-right party, one which either defers to Republicans because of some sorely misplaced belief that doing so will result in something other than an electric shock this time!, or which aids and abets Republicans because in fact what mainstream, elite Democrats want is the same thing Republicans want—namely, the continuation and further entrenchment of the status quo. It’s pretty upsetting!
The book is sort of a survey of how we got to the present moment, from FDR and “the New Deal” to today. I can’t quite explain what the difference is, but there’s a definite feeling I got reading the book that Burmila felt more confident and passionate in his stance the closer the narrative gets to the 21st century. Something snapped on the way to the present; at some point, Democrats accepted Republican framing. They no longer represent the interests of the working class, no longer proud to maintain the social safety net—they’ve accepted that it is “welfare” which should be withheld from the undeserving, that the way out of structural discrimination and extreme income inequality is picking yourself up by your own bootstraps. To the extent that Democrats do make any positive strides, it’s always in half-measures: means-tested, complicated, difficult to comprehend half-measures. Instead of giving money to those in need when they need it, money is given through complex tax credit schemes no layperson understands or appreciates, or often it is given to the bank or lender in the enraging and idiotic fealty today’s Democrats have to the idea that private enterprise and the “free” market are the solution to social ills despite their unabated track record of exploitation.
To some degree I recognized already the lack of ambition coming from the Democratic party: the way they claim to be the party of adults who can get things done but then once in office spend their time making excuses about why they cannot do anything, often not because of Republican obstruction but because of one or two holdouts on their own side—“conservative” Democrats who are will not go along with progressive policies and, oh bother, I guess there’s nothing we can do about it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At first I worried that the book wouldn’t have much to offer, then, but in fact it did a good job of raising my awareness of just how insidious the problem is. Burmila describes how Clinton expended all of his political capital focusing on reducing the federal deficit—which nobody cares about, except for Republicans when they can use it as an excuse to bash Democrats—and of how he created bad law like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, oversaw punitive welfare reform, and sold out American workers with NAFTA. So often these things are at least done in the hopes of mollifying Republicans whose bigotry Democrats feel must be represented. Burmila objects to Democratic politicans’ constant emphasis on bipartisanship, as though that ideal means anything in the abstract. So they bend over backward to accommodate Republicans, who easily succeed in pushing the country further to the right and corrupting the law. It makes one want to scream.
The same holds true for Obama, who is often viewed by many highly-educated people—the kind of people who are well-off and for whom politics is a game which rarely has any real-world repercussions—as a beacon of liberal politics. It was Obama, not Trump, who ramped up cruelty in immigration policies (again, in a cynical effort to win Republican favor by voluntarily sacrificing a minority on the altar of conservatives’ racism… and I bet you can guess how much reward that trade-off provided). Obama and Clinton both spent a good part of their Presidency working to “reform” social security, a Republican priority. Yes, Obama created the Affordable Care Act, but it is a complicated and inefficient half-measure with the goal not of providing healthcare to every person but of providing access to healthcare… you know, if you have the money. He pointedly refused to support universal healthcare, though he could have used his position of influence to create buy-in. That is, he claimed that the ACA was the best we could do. Obama, like many prominent Democrats, loves to talk about making small steps forward over a long period. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, though. He creates those boundaries by asserting that they exist in the first place.
And it continues to this day. Biden barely beat Trump in the 2020 election, and he campaigned on the tired maxim of bipartisanship, even as Trump and his goons were prepping to literally attack the Capitol to stay in power. The media tried to turn the suggestion of expanding the Supreme Court to combat Republicans’ successful stealing of half the seats into a boogeyman during the last Presidential election, but now that Biden is in office there is absolutely no movement or discussion about this option. There is no eagerness to fight against Republicans and for many members of the Democrats’ base, and I admit I’m implicated in this myself, there’s a sense that if a Democrat is in the White House then everything is fine for the moment… even as Republicans continue to change the rules state-by-state to steal control of the governorship and legislature to advance their stranglehold on the country. Democratic leaders are not mobilizing against this because they’ve convinced themselves that it’s unseemly to do so (wouldn’t it appear partisan to combat Republican corruption?!), because they’ve convinced themselves it is impossible (this has affected the morale of the average voter, who has come to accept that certain stairs are irrevocably “red” and there is no cure), or because they have become absurdly short-sighted and have no vision except what they believe will help them hold onto a position of power for no purpose other than enriching themselves.
OH MY GOD I want to tear out my hair. I guess all of this is to say that I liked the book. I follow Ed on Facebook and had a positive impression of his voice and analysis already, so that doesn’t come as a great surprise. Some of the attempts at humor fell a little flat for me, and as mentioned I felt that the earlier chapters were more research-based and therefore had less life to them than the later chapters where the author’s passion grew more apparent. But once it got going, CHAOTIC NEUTRAL is a compelling argument for how much of a disappointment the Democratic party has become and how far it has strayed from actually representing the country. Yes, of course, Republicans are and will always be worse; that’s no excuse for the Democrats also being bad. They maintain their base by relying on the threat of Republicans’ chaos and don’t feel any compulsion to provide real, progressive solutions to the country’s ills because they feel you’ve got no other choice but to run to them. Burmila’s ultimate argument is that the voters need to demand action from Democratic leadership and the only way to do that is to hit them where it hurts—that is, refuse to give them your vote by default unless they make good on their talk of progressive priorities. Wouldn’t refusing to support Democrats allow Republicans to win? In the short term, yes. But Democrats’ failure to take bold action when they are in power is already allowing Republicans to win. Democrats may be slow-walking Republican domination (barely), but they’re not going to get the message through their thick skulls that that isn’t good enough if they know they’ll get support from Democratic voters without even trying. It’s a terrifying but persuasive argument.
Anyway, like I was saying, I liked the book. It made me think about things in a different way. It made me recognize my own complicity in the status quo a little bit. It made me crave a different path forward. It’s a good book.
September 29, 2022
I was on the hunt for something about what was wrong with the Democratic Party after what felt like a bajillion books about the Republican Party, and oh boy did I find a read. Burmila is an unapologetic partisan and frustrated with Democrats (for the last few decades) to the point where, if you don't like snark and swears in your book, you probably won't enjoy this. This book even has salty footnotes (read aloud within the audiobook so you don't miss them). I found myself surprised into laughter at several points by Burmila's level of frustration-laced sarcasm. This book is for people who don't support the Republican Party but also have a hard time being okay with the "vote for us because we aren't Republican message" the Democrats trot out in lieu of getting much actual stuff done, and how the party got stuck that way whether in or out of power. While, at times, I could have gone for more depth and less sass, the fact that the footnotes were read aloud in the audiobook (without! ruining! the! book!) meant that I got a really good sense of where Burmila's sources were coming from, and I did note a few to examine on my own later. The only other read I've seen (so far) tackle the current frustration with the Democratic Party has been This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for American Democracy, but it did not have the historical perspective or personality of this book. In the end, Burmila talks candidly about how many nonfiction books try to offer "solutions" in their last chapter that will magically fix the problem discussed and how he finds it impossible to do that honestly, which I also just enjoyed as a reader of nonfiction tired of bonkers "last chapters" where fairytales as the solution. He does give it a go, but anyone looking for blind optimism will not find that here.
August 25, 2024
America’s political system seems broken. In Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center, author Ed Burmila describes America’s political situation as being “stuck in a cycle: Democrats win power when dissatisfaction with the GOP surges, talk themselves out of governing, and the GOP come roaring back into power and goes on a rampage. Things slowly, gradually, consistently get worse.” Chaotic Neutral tells the story of how we got to this place.
Burmila begins by describing New Deal Democrats, the party of FDR, who issued-in culture-changing progressive programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs highly valued in today’s America. The New Deal generated millions of jobs investing in the public good, improving the economic status of multiple classes, not just the poor. This provided Democrats a winning coalition for the next forty years. But this coalition included some strange bedfellows, such as minorities and (sometimes racist) working-class whites.
In 1968 and 1972, Richard Nixon was able to split the New Deal coalition, forcing Democrats to reevaluate. What Democrats decided upon is that election success is dependent upon moving to the right, and discarding New Deal philosophy. In doing so, Democrats also discarded the working-class and unions in favor of HEPs (Highly Educated Professionals) and suburban moderates. Burmila explains how Democrats rejected New Deal goals of poverty elimination and equality to embrace market-based policies. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, Democrats effectively started supporting a Republican-lite version of governing. Democrats hoped this would win over moderate Republicans, but Republicans kept moving further right and attacked Democrats continuously. Thus, this new centralist strategy only served to alienate the working-class core of the Democratic base, and gained no Republican support.
Repeated election losses in the 1980s lead to more strategizing by Democrats, but they consistently came to the same conclusion: Democrats needed to double-down on their move to the right. This philosophy inspired new, young Democrats like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who committed to shrinking government and promoting market solutions to societal problems. Burmila states that “Clinton accomplished more of Reagan’s agenda than Regan did”. Clinton supported the export of jobs through NAFTA, deregulation, tougher criminal penalties and more policing, and the “ending welfare as we know it”. Democrats calculated that even though these policies hurt the working class and minorities, these constituencies would continue to support Democrats, because Republicans were so much worse. “They’re worse than us” continues as a core Democrat campaigning strategy.
In the 1990s, Republicans decided that they could better achieve their far-right goals if they stopped playing by traditional political rules. Newt Gingrich showed Republicans just how successful discarding decorum could be. Gingrich’s efforts, amplified by new media avenues, such as Talk Radio, Cable TV and something called the internet, began to move fringe-thinking into the mainstream. Republicans crafted simple talking points that were endlessly amplified on rightwing media. Mitch McConnell perfected the art of obstruction when Obama became president, yet Obama showed fierce determination to ignore this, and insisted that Democrats continue to play by rules abandoned long ago by Republicans. That’s another key point Burmila keeps coming back to: Republicans play hardball partisan politics, while Democrats refuse to respond in kind, and instead respond by wagging their finger at Republicans to play fair next time. Additionally, Democrats insist on investing heavily on unwinnable Senate races in lieu of supporting Democrats at the local level. This has led to massive Democratic losses in state legislatures and governorships, and because of Republicans willingness to use their power to “tilt the political playing field in their favor”, it is now extremely difficult for Democrats to win back local control.
Fast-forward to today: Republicans are hard at work to discard American democracy. Under the guise of baseless claims of voter fraud, Republicans are making it harder for people to vote, as well as installing partisan believers of The Big Lie to run local elections, count the votes, and anoint election winners to suit their liking. Burmila states that the January 6th insurrection was “effectively a dry run for Republicans to overturn future election results.” To this, Democrats continue to show no real sense of urgency, and have been unable to pass legislation to protect elections and voting rights, and seem unwilling to develop a plan to counter Republican efforts to control the electoral process.
Burmila describes how Barak Obama continued the Democrats ‘Republican-lite’ strategy. Instead of trying to govern ambitiously like FDR, Obama insisted on bipartisanship, but, surprise! The GOP absolutely refused to work with him. In 2016, Hillary Clinton represented the status quo, which didn’t work out so well. Trump, as feared, proved incompetent at actual governance, and horrified much of America. Thus in 2020, Joe Biden won the presidential election (honestly, he did), but Democrats were unable to obtain resounding wins down the election ticket. Now it seems the Democrat campaign strategy of 2022 is centered on “we did all we could” and that “Republicans are really bad”, as support for Democrats withers.
Burmila admits there is no simple solution to redirect the Democratic Party, but he does offer some guidance. He implores Democrats to abandon trying to be the party of the center-right. Democrats need to develop a political and economic worldview that “appeals to a wide enough coalition of working-class voters and professional-class liberals”; to again become “a party of the people.” Democrats should learn from Republicans and abandon attempts at bipartisanship, and instead strive towards being more successful partisans. Democrats need to stop supporting candidates who don’t support basic liberal policies such as voting rights (read Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema) and not help fund their campaigns. Democrats need to focus on the long-term, not only on the next election. Burmila doesn’t provide a failure-proof action plan, but his message to Democrats is pretty straight forward: get the party back to New Deal progressive goals, and do your damnedest to deliver on those goals.
Chaotic Neutral provides a well-written history of how we got to this point, and I found Burmila’s tone at times LOL funny. (Hint: read the notes at the bottom of the pages). Burmila states that “I don’t have a ton of faith” that Democrats can turn things around. Given the past fifty years, I can’t blame him. Democrats seem remarkably lost at a time when the need to fight like hell to ensure American democracy prevails, and to provide government that works for the majority of Americans, seem pretty obvious. It seems, once again, that effective change needs to be led by the bottom.
Burmila begins by describing New Deal Democrats, the party of FDR, who issued-in culture-changing progressive programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs highly valued in today’s America. The New Deal generated millions of jobs investing in the public good, improving the economic status of multiple classes, not just the poor. This provided Democrats a winning coalition for the next forty years. But this coalition included some strange bedfellows, such as minorities and (sometimes racist) working-class whites.
In 1968 and 1972, Richard Nixon was able to split the New Deal coalition, forcing Democrats to reevaluate. What Democrats decided upon is that election success is dependent upon moving to the right, and discarding New Deal philosophy. In doing so, Democrats also discarded the working-class and unions in favor of HEPs (Highly Educated Professionals) and suburban moderates. Burmila explains how Democrats rejected New Deal goals of poverty elimination and equality to embrace market-based policies. Beginning with Jimmy Carter, Democrats effectively started supporting a Republican-lite version of governing. Democrats hoped this would win over moderate Republicans, but Republicans kept moving further right and attacked Democrats continuously. Thus, this new centralist strategy only served to alienate the working-class core of the Democratic base, and gained no Republican support.
Repeated election losses in the 1980s lead to more strategizing by Democrats, but they consistently came to the same conclusion: Democrats needed to double-down on their move to the right. This philosophy inspired new, young Democrats like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who committed to shrinking government and promoting market solutions to societal problems. Burmila states that “Clinton accomplished more of Reagan’s agenda than Regan did”. Clinton supported the export of jobs through NAFTA, deregulation, tougher criminal penalties and more policing, and the “ending welfare as we know it”. Democrats calculated that even though these policies hurt the working class and minorities, these constituencies would continue to support Democrats, because Republicans were so much worse. “They’re worse than us” continues as a core Democrat campaigning strategy.
In the 1990s, Republicans decided that they could better achieve their far-right goals if they stopped playing by traditional political rules. Newt Gingrich showed Republicans just how successful discarding decorum could be. Gingrich’s efforts, amplified by new media avenues, such as Talk Radio, Cable TV and something called the internet, began to move fringe-thinking into the mainstream. Republicans crafted simple talking points that were endlessly amplified on rightwing media. Mitch McConnell perfected the art of obstruction when Obama became president, yet Obama showed fierce determination to ignore this, and insisted that Democrats continue to play by rules abandoned long ago by Republicans. That’s another key point Burmila keeps coming back to: Republicans play hardball partisan politics, while Democrats refuse to respond in kind, and instead respond by wagging their finger at Republicans to play fair next time. Additionally, Democrats insist on investing heavily on unwinnable Senate races in lieu of supporting Democrats at the local level. This has led to massive Democratic losses in state legislatures and governorships, and because of Republicans willingness to use their power to “tilt the political playing field in their favor”, it is now extremely difficult for Democrats to win back local control.
Fast-forward to today: Republicans are hard at work to discard American democracy. Under the guise of baseless claims of voter fraud, Republicans are making it harder for people to vote, as well as installing partisan believers of The Big Lie to run local elections, count the votes, and anoint election winners to suit their liking. Burmila states that the January 6th insurrection was “effectively a dry run for Republicans to overturn future election results.” To this, Democrats continue to show no real sense of urgency, and have been unable to pass legislation to protect elections and voting rights, and seem unwilling to develop a plan to counter Republican efforts to control the electoral process.
Burmila describes how Barak Obama continued the Democrats ‘Republican-lite’ strategy. Instead of trying to govern ambitiously like FDR, Obama insisted on bipartisanship, but, surprise! The GOP absolutely refused to work with him. In 2016, Hillary Clinton represented the status quo, which didn’t work out so well. Trump, as feared, proved incompetent at actual governance, and horrified much of America. Thus in 2020, Joe Biden won the presidential election (honestly, he did), but Democrats were unable to obtain resounding wins down the election ticket. Now it seems the Democrat campaign strategy of 2022 is centered on “we did all we could” and that “Republicans are really bad”, as support for Democrats withers.
Burmila admits there is no simple solution to redirect the Democratic Party, but he does offer some guidance. He implores Democrats to abandon trying to be the party of the center-right. Democrats need to develop a political and economic worldview that “appeals to a wide enough coalition of working-class voters and professional-class liberals”; to again become “a party of the people.” Democrats should learn from Republicans and abandon attempts at bipartisanship, and instead strive towards being more successful partisans. Democrats need to stop supporting candidates who don’t support basic liberal policies such as voting rights (read Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema) and not help fund their campaigns. Democrats need to focus on the long-term, not only on the next election. Burmila doesn’t provide a failure-proof action plan, but his message to Democrats is pretty straight forward: get the party back to New Deal progressive goals, and do your damnedest to deliver on those goals.
Chaotic Neutral provides a well-written history of how we got to this point, and I found Burmila’s tone at times LOL funny. (Hint: read the notes at the bottom of the pages). Burmila states that “I don’t have a ton of faith” that Democrats can turn things around. Given the past fifty years, I can’t blame him. Democrats seem remarkably lost at a time when the need to fight like hell to ensure American democracy prevails, and to provide government that works for the majority of Americans, seem pretty obvious. It seems, once again, that effective change needs to be led by the bottom.
September 30, 2023
I agree that the party’s obsession with courting highly-educated professionals to the exclusion of its other constituencies, and the economic politics that has entailed, has been disastrous, and has mostly served to feed the egos of a few officeholders (I think Burmilla is too kind to Bill Clinton, which says something if you’ve read the book) and party apparatchiks’ end-of-history fantasies about the replacement of politics with meritocracy. And I agree that the correct response for other Democratic constituencies is to withhold votes unless and until the party delivers results, just as Republicans do. (However awful the Republican Party is, and it’s awful, it behaves in every way like a normal political party—its officeholders try to produce results for their constituents, and the constituents punish them unsentimentally if they fail.) My suspicion is that there’s no practical way to implement this, and the next realignment of the American party system will be an exogenous shock—my hope is that it is not a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression.
December 11, 2022
This is an entertaining and funny book that has the merit of limiting its focus precisely to its subject - the utter failure, even on its own very limited terms, of the Democratic Party.
December 29, 2024
Fifty years ago, the Democratic Party was in crisis. Organized labor, the institutional pillar of the party, was declining; its leaders often cared more about protecting the benefits of its own members than about the working class as a whole. Civil-rights activists (Black, feminist, gay) were demanding their own places at the policy-making table, and the old white guys in charge did not want to make room for them. Controversy over the Vietnam War divided the party. Nixon won a decisive victory over his Democratic opponent in 1968, and a 49-state landslide in 1972.
Into this malaise, Democratic-leaning intellectuals offered a solution. The country was moving into a post-industrial age. Blue-collar workers, the intellectuals said, would be replaced by robots, and college-educated, skilled professionals would be the working class of the future. The Democratic Party, therefore, should catch the wave of this demographic change by rebranding itself as the kind of party educated people could trust: a party that emphasized meritocracy instead of solidarity, win-win solutions instead of class conflict, unchained markets instead of big government, bipartisanship instead of ideology.
This class of intellectuals won over the Democratic Party. The party, thus transformed, won over college-educated voters. (In 1984, college graduates favored Reagan over Mondale by seventeen percentage points. In 2024, they favored Harris over Trump by fourteen points.) But, as you may have noticed, it has done a mediocre job winning elections. (Our post-industrial economy still depends on a crap-ton of “unskilled” labor: it’s just that these workers are more likely to be changing bedpans than building cars.) And even when the Democratic Party does win elections, it has done a mediocre job channeling its power into actual accomplishments.
Ed Burmila’s Chaotic Neutral is partly a history and partly a polemic. It quite properly excoriates the Democrats for how, obsessed with appealing to a mythical political center, they lost touch with their moral center. At the same time, it lays out the narrative of how they got that way, and how, like a gambler doubling-down, the party has persistently treated its failures as cues to become more centrist, to throw more of its core constituents under the bus.
It’s a fast, bracing read. As someone who’s been observing the party’s follies since the Reagan era, I can say that Burmila has seen the same things I did. If you can stomach a few hundred pages of prose in the Why We Are All Doomed genre, I highly recommend his book to you. I also have some quibbles with his message, which lead me to be not quite as Doom-oriented as he is.
First, I think Burmila is a little bit too cynical about the Democratic Party, and not cynical enough about… human beings in general. His white-hot rage at the party’s compromises is stoked by an assumption that of course, if it would only return to the purity of its old ways, it would win back the loyalty of the toiling classes. But neither Reagan nor Trump were the first to convince less-well-off people to vote for their prejudices instead of their material interests; that has been a factor in democratic politics since nineteenth-century France. And during the 1970s and 1980s, the whole developed world, not just the United States, retreated away from social democracy and towards market-worship. (The Soviet bloc was only able to put off this retrenchment for as long as high oil prices kept its apparatchiks afloat.)
Second, throughout his narrative, Burmila contrasts the pathological niceness of Democrats with the cold-blooded determination of their Republican contemporaries, which leaves the Democrats looking… really awful. But, over the sweep of the last fifty years, if you compare one generation of Democrats with its predecessors, the more recent generation comes off as… slightly less awful. Clinton, by signing NAFTA, accelerated the decline of the American auto industry; under Obama, the Treasury devoted tens of billions of dollars to rescuing it and protecting its retirees. Obama arbitrarily refused to countenance a stimulus package of more than a trillion dollars; the rescue plan under Biden approached two trillion.
The party is a long way from curing its pathologies, but if it needs to re-reinvent itself, it can. As one of Nixon’s economic advisers famously said: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Into this malaise, Democratic-leaning intellectuals offered a solution. The country was moving into a post-industrial age. Blue-collar workers, the intellectuals said, would be replaced by robots, and college-educated, skilled professionals would be the working class of the future. The Democratic Party, therefore, should catch the wave of this demographic change by rebranding itself as the kind of party educated people could trust: a party that emphasized meritocracy instead of solidarity, win-win solutions instead of class conflict, unchained markets instead of big government, bipartisanship instead of ideology.
This class of intellectuals won over the Democratic Party. The party, thus transformed, won over college-educated voters. (In 1984, college graduates favored Reagan over Mondale by seventeen percentage points. In 2024, they favored Harris over Trump by fourteen points.) But, as you may have noticed, it has done a mediocre job winning elections. (Our post-industrial economy still depends on a crap-ton of “unskilled” labor: it’s just that these workers are more likely to be changing bedpans than building cars.) And even when the Democratic Party does win elections, it has done a mediocre job channeling its power into actual accomplishments.
Ed Burmila’s Chaotic Neutral is partly a history and partly a polemic. It quite properly excoriates the Democrats for how, obsessed with appealing to a mythical political center, they lost touch with their moral center. At the same time, it lays out the narrative of how they got that way, and how, like a gambler doubling-down, the party has persistently treated its failures as cues to become more centrist, to throw more of its core constituents under the bus.
It’s a fast, bracing read. As someone who’s been observing the party’s follies since the Reagan era, I can say that Burmila has seen the same things I did. If you can stomach a few hundred pages of prose in the Why We Are All Doomed genre, I highly recommend his book to you. I also have some quibbles with his message, which lead me to be not quite as Doom-oriented as he is.
First, I think Burmila is a little bit too cynical about the Democratic Party, and not cynical enough about… human beings in general. His white-hot rage at the party’s compromises is stoked by an assumption that of course, if it would only return to the purity of its old ways, it would win back the loyalty of the toiling classes. But neither Reagan nor Trump were the first to convince less-well-off people to vote for their prejudices instead of their material interests; that has been a factor in democratic politics since nineteenth-century France. And during the 1970s and 1980s, the whole developed world, not just the United States, retreated away from social democracy and towards market-worship. (The Soviet bloc was only able to put off this retrenchment for as long as high oil prices kept its apparatchiks afloat.)
Second, throughout his narrative, Burmila contrasts the pathological niceness of Democrats with the cold-blooded determination of their Republican contemporaries, which leaves the Democrats looking… really awful. But, over the sweep of the last fifty years, if you compare one generation of Democrats with its predecessors, the more recent generation comes off as… slightly less awful. Clinton, by signing NAFTA, accelerated the decline of the American auto industry; under Obama, the Treasury devoted tens of billions of dollars to rescuing it and protecting its retirees. Obama arbitrarily refused to countenance a stimulus package of more than a trillion dollars; the rescue plan under Biden approached two trillion.
The party is a long way from curing its pathologies, but if it needs to re-reinvent itself, it can. As one of Nixon’s economic advisers famously said: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
October 4, 2022
I've followed Ed Burmila (Gin and Tacos) on Facebook since about 2014-ish, when he was a Prof. at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. I've been looking forward to this book for at least a year, and it did not disappoint. This should be required reading for DNC brass, operatives, pols, and anyone whose politics are left of center. Burmila's background as a historian helps him set the stage as he walks the reader through the last century of Democratic Party policy and (in)action. His sharp wit and dry sarcasm drive home his point: bipartisanship only works when both sides are acting in good faith. Unfortunately, this has not been true of the Republican Party for decades, so we need to stop doing it. It will not work. Placating psychopaths won't make them more reasonable. Being nice and taking the high road misses the entire point of politics: to solve problems and affect change. If nothing else, pick up this book and read the Introduction and Chapter 10: Obama Cometh. If you're not seething at the ineptitude and complacency of Democratic Party leadership -- if you're not furious at the myriad ways in which they've turned their backs on regular folks over and over again in favor of bankers, oligarchs, and the military industrial complex -- you're probably a Republican.
September 27, 2022
If you at all identify yourself on the liberal side of the political spectrum, this is a must read.
The TL;DR for Democrats is:
1. Be partisan.
2. Fight fiercely for what really matters without instantly watering it down.
3. Do real, tangible good without unneeded complexity.
The book is seriously worth reading to understand how the Democratic Party got to the terrible state it’s in, and I appreciated the lack of pat answers.
I would think even conservatives would want a more worthy opponent, but, even if not, the Democrats should provide worthy opponents at all levels of government in all elections.
It will mean many more people getting much more active in politics on the left side of the aisle, which may be a tall order but is entirely necessary.
The audiobook was great (footnotes are clearly identified) so don’t hesitate if you enjoy reading that format!
The TL;DR for Democrats is:
1. Be partisan.
2. Fight fiercely for what really matters without instantly watering it down.
3. Do real, tangible good without unneeded complexity.
The book is seriously worth reading to understand how the Democratic Party got to the terrible state it’s in, and I appreciated the lack of pat answers.
I would think even conservatives would want a more worthy opponent, but, even if not, the Democrats should provide worthy opponents at all levels of government in all elections.
It will mean many more people getting much more active in politics on the left side of the aisle, which may be a tall order but is entirely necessary.
The audiobook was great (footnotes are clearly identified) so don’t hesitate if you enjoy reading that format!
November 27, 2022
As if you hadn't realized already how wacked out the Republican Party is and has been for the last few decades, Prof Burmila goes into excruciating detail SHOWING the reader. If the problem could be solved in a court of law, Burmila, even though he holds a Ph.D. and not a J.D., the case he makes would easily convict them.
However, the condition of the GOP is only secondary to the fact that millions of concerned citizens loathe, or at least distrust the Democratic Party.
Beside demonstrating that Ranked Choice Voting and other innovative systems will not solve anything in the big picture for us (and US), the good doctor does not have any panaceas. He does give some good direction for us to move in directions that can help. And it can be more substantive than the boring, "we're not the Republicans."
However, the condition of the GOP is only secondary to the fact that millions of concerned citizens loathe, or at least distrust the Democratic Party.
Beside demonstrating that Ranked Choice Voting and other innovative systems will not solve anything in the big picture for us (and US), the good doctor does not have any panaceas. He does give some good direction for us to move in directions that can help. And it can be more substantive than the boring, "we're not the Republicans."
September 25, 2022
Burmila’s book is hard to read. It’s well written but it’s hard to read because as someone who doesn’t really identify with the Democrats, but hopes that they win over the other guys, a lot of the book is just a list of all the dumb things that the party has done over the years to marginalize themselves and not fight back against Republican selfishness.
For better or worse, he also eschews simple, pat answers at the end. It made me think of Selfa’s “ The Democrats: A Critical History” but snarkier. And you can feel that Burmila is a bit invested in the success of leftish electoralism and hasn’t fully given up.
For better or worse, he also eschews simple, pat answers at the end. It made me think of Selfa’s “ The Democrats: A Critical History” but snarkier. And you can feel that Burmila is a bit invested in the success of leftish electoralism and hasn’t fully given up.
October 30, 2022
Great book. Burmila does an excellent job of tracking the Democrats lurch to the centre / centre-right of American politics, and, in particular, stresses that the Democrats have turned into a party that believes that the end goal is to win elections, not to govern or implement policy once they have won an election (which they are increasingly bad at doing). The book is well researched, easy to read, and well argued, and Ed is an incredibly funny author. For anybody who feels that the Democratic party is a disappointment, or that there's something wrong with the Democrats currently, this is an excellent read.
December 13, 2022
"Chaotic Neutral" summarizes how the Democratic Party lost its hegemonic New Deal coalition in pursuit of mythical "moderate" voters, who turn out to be highly educated professionals. While there are numerous books that tackle discrete aspects covered here -- and Burmila points you where to go if you want to read an in-depth treatment -- "Chaotic Neutral" ties everything together in an entertaining, accessible manner. Because he can't help himself, Burmila includes footnotes on the origins of certain phrases ("writing on the wall," "leeway," etc.) as well as other snarky asides that call to mind the narration of "Arrested Development."
September 22, 2022
Alternately laugh out loud and quietly infuriating, "Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center" is an excellent rundown of how the party of FDR became Republican-lite during my lifetime. If you are familiar w/ his work, Ed Burmilla delivers the insight, research, humor, and non-sequitur footnotes you'd expect, nay demand, from this irreverent, engaging author. Go get this book. I'm currently fighting the urge to send it to my state's US Senate candidate, Cheri Beasley, but, ultimately, I will likely succumb.
November 5, 2022
Very, very solid. The first half is a bit of a slow recap of American Politics 1950-1990, but then when we get into Burmila’s lived/attention-paid experience, the observations become very sharp indeed. The end of the book does a masterful job of linking up themes from throughout (so don’t skip the first half!), and despite promising no solutions, provides the most lucid set of options I’ve seen laid out.
December 15, 2022
Highly recommend this book for anyone frustrated with the Democratic Party’s ineptitude and learning how they got themselves where they are today. As a former student of the author, he has always broken down issues in a way that anyone can understand. Not only does this book give great insight but the author’s humor makes it that much more enjoyable. I’m really looking forward to see what more books Burmila writes in the future
August 20, 2023
This book presents a pretty concise and logical perspective on a course of events which have brought the Democratic Party to it's present day, a subject matter that deserves more scrutiny. I can't particularly speak to how comprehensive it is in covering such broad and complex a subject matter (Rick Perlstein's books on the rise of modern American conservatism for example is 4 books, 3,500 pages and possibly not complete), but it is well researched and organized. Most off all, loved reading it.
September 25, 2022
Hilarious and infuriating, I was laughing out loud between scowls. Burmila backs up his thesis with data, anecdotes, context, and wit, and the story he tells in one that people need to hear. If you read this book, I hope it inspires you to take political action to better our country and our politics.
December 8, 2022
Nailed it! Most revealing and accurate addressing of how the Democratic leadership and candidates have failed to meet the basic and/or core needs of the 99%. The Party members can get it right, but far too often necessary solutions/actions aren't embraced by the leadership and most candidates.
They still beat the Hell out of Republicans.
They still beat the Hell out of Republicans.
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April 22, 2023I always jump at the chance to examine political polarization. I felt like this book shed light on something that is not very easily handled. The history of the Democratic party highlighting the depressing start to its ineffective present, I thought, was extremely helpful in decoding what's going on in politics today. We have to do better than the lesser of two evils.
September 5, 2023
I’m a fan of the author, and was surprised how much of the book went over stuff I already knew. That is not a criticism of the book, as I went through a Clinton-era reading phase a couple of years ago. I found the post-2008 discussion interesting. I really enjoyed the last chapter, and wished the rest of the book had been more like it. Big fan of the footnotes.
April 19, 2025
3.5 . The first half was much better than the second half. I generally have policy agreements with the author, but I disagree with his interpretations of some of the more results especially about the 2020 primary and I think he drew the wrong conclusion. However, I strongly support the thesis of this book
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December 16, 2022Ed Burmila ’99
Author
From the author:
A recent history of the Democratic Party that identifies its chronic errors — the “pathologies” of the New Democratic mindset — and argues urgently against a return to the status quo.
Author
From the author:
A recent history of the Democratic Party that identifies its chronic errors — the “pathologies” of the New Democratic mindset — and argues urgently against a return to the status quo.
May 26, 2024
This was an interesting and well-informed look at how we got to where we are today. It does a good job of illustrating how and why the party follows certain patterns and strategies, and why they have led to a frustrating amount of failure.
August 4, 2022
Very good.
November 19, 2022
A fantastic exploration of why the Democratic Party has routinely underperformed and failed its voters from a left-leaning political scientist.
December 25, 2022
Did not finish. Too boring and dry.
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