Civics: A Book & Recent Politics
Whenever Democratic political operatives gather to drink these days, they talk about three things: their chances in the midterms, who will be the nominee in 2028, and if they have read — or are in — “the book.”
The book in question is Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, by Evan Barker, a onetime fundraiser who has written something between a tell-all and a cri de coeur about her time inside the Democratic Party. Barker, who worked mostly for candidates and groups associated with the insurgent left that sprung up in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, writes that Democrats’ priorities have been taken over by elite and highly pedigreed campaign staff who don’t realize how ridiculous they sound to the rest of America. But for many Democrats the book has been candy less because of its call for reshaping politics and more because, while peeling back the curtain on the inner workings of political campaigns, it names (some) names.
A newly elected representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is described as a slightly overwhelmed, slightly paranoid political tactician who is reluctant to support a white progressive over a more moderate female candidate of color for fear of the backlash she will receive online. Senator Bernie Sanders is a gruff diva who flies private to a rally and insists that the labels be peeled off his water bottles and requires a bathroom to be a certain number of feet from the stage.
Others are anonymized. There is the wealthy New York City donor who lives alone in an apartment overlooking Central Park but who scarcely leaves his home except for the only meal he eats each day: a bowl of soup at a nearby café. And there is a first-time congressional candidate in New Jersey, a suburban resistance mom running in 2018, whose husband worked for Lehman Brothers during the financial crash (at times dressing in a cape and top hat) and did not want to discuss healthcare in-depth.
“You want to tell the truth, and you want to tell people what happened, but at the same time my intention was never to just burn people needlessly to be vindictive,” Barker told me from her home north of San Francisco. “At the same time, it’s like, yeah, I knew that some of the stories in there might hurt some people’s feelings, but sometimes people need to get their feelings hurt.”
Well. @NYMag profiled my book today. I think what the article misses is that I left the party and wrote the book not because I wasn’t listened to, or felt slighted, but because democrats and progressives invested in policies that were morally wrong
Until there is a true reckoning inside the party, these past problems will continue to haunt them
