Ruy Teixeira has a fascinating column on Substack titled “The Democrats’ Governance Problem.” Teixeira is a Democrat political scientist who made his big splash in 2002 when he co-authored “The Emerging Democratic Majority,” a book arguing that the Democrat Party was demographically destined to become a majority party in the United States by the early 21st century. Teixeira’s column attempts to explain why his earlier book was wrong and why Kamala Harris and other Democrats did not win the 2024 elections. He claims that the Democrats have a governing problem, which keeps them promoting policies on the economy, on the border, and on crime, etc., that are radical, ineffective, unpopular, and thus, prevent them from establishing a permanent majority.
Teixeira is partially right about his theory. In fact, it isn’t really his theory at all. It has been known since the 1960s that the Democrats had a big problem when it came to governing because they were captive of their out-of-touch, left-wing voters. But Teixeira misses the grand idea that animates these left-wingers – a large portion of the Democrat base just doesn’t like the United States of America. They have a “Blame America First” ideology.
This ideology is manifested in four separate ways:
- Since the left-wing Democrats don’t like the capitalist system, which they believe is inherently unfair, they instead favor socialist policies.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think the U.S. is an evil colonialist power, they tend to believe our enemies are not at fault, and as a result, the U.S. needs to understand the concerns of our enemies and appease them.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think our system of justice is inherently unfair and racist/discriminatory, they believe that law enforcement needs to favor certain racial/ethnic/religious groups.
- Since the left-wing Democrats think the U.S. culture/society is archaic and bigoted, they believe that government should try to change these archaic and bigoted cultural/societal attitudes.
Importantly, the Blame America First Democrats frequently riot when they don’t get what they want. This makes their radicalism very, very apparent to the general population.
This all began in the 1960s. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the presidency. Kennedy himself was generally a conservative Democrat on economics, but many of his advisors were far more left-wing, and Lyndon Johnson, his vice president, eventually gave them free rein. New government programs were created to spread the wealth from the “rich” to the “poor.” When it came to foreign policy, Kennedy was also generally pro-America, as was Johnson. The two committed the U.S. to a war in Vietnam (no, there is no evidence that JFK was planning to deescalate). However, unlike World War II, the Vietnam War was not particularly popular with Americans, and the young men of the rising middle class, especially those of draft age, began to protest/riot. This put pressure on Johnson and eventually drove him out of office. Kennedy and Johnson were also more sympathetic to African Americans than had been earlier Democrats, and as a result, they passed civil rights legislation (also thanks to large margins from Republicans in Congress). Eventually, however, Democrats began to push for other policies to assist minorities, which were less popular.
Positive things did come from these changes in the 60s. However, as the decade went on, the policies got more and more radical, and they depressed the popularity of those Democrats promoting them. But the ideology continued to be promoted because the Blame America Firsters took control over our educational system, where, to this day, they continue to crank out indoctrinated new adherents, year after year.
Here are some of the results of the Blame America First ideology. Blame America Firsters want to dramatically increase government spending, often to levels that the U.S. really can’t afford, leading to a rise in taxes. This also leads to much waste and fraud. If the Blame America Firsters are in control of the White House, the U.S. promotes appeasement abroad, which inevitably creates world chaos, and often chaos at home (i.e., rioting). Blame America Firsters implement a softer approach to crime, thus incentivizing it, resulting in an explosion of crime rates. And Blame America Firsters install government quotas and related policies that cause different groups of Americans to nurse grievances towards each other and cause industries to become less efficient and/or safe (e.g., see the air traffic controllers situation).
Even the current border situation is a result of the Blame America First ideology. Because the U.S. is inherently racist, Blame America Firsters believe that the U.S. must allow minorities to flood into the country to put an end to this racist society. The fact that this also helps the Democrat Party in elections – new immigrants tend to vote two to one for Democrats – is an added benefit. And this, too, leads to increases in crime levels and terror attacks and a general disdain for the law.
Over time, the Blame America First ideology inevitably weakens the Democrats who promote it in government. This is something we have seen, repeatedly.
It takes a strong Democrat to stand up to the Blame America First ideology. Or it takes a Democrat who accurately sees its faults, and is more concerned with maintaining his political popularity, perhaps his popularity with the female gender, over promoting the Blame America First ideology.
Like this guy.
