Where’s the Tuna?

Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee and regular commentator on the Fox show, The Five, said to his colleagues on a recent episode, “The party needs to focus on substance.”

As a democrat, he was speaking about his party’s lack of direction; an implication being that unless there is a reset of some kind within his party ranks, the forecast is gloomy for gaining any edge in coming elections. 

My wife and I were watching the show, as our nightly routine dictates, eating Tuna Fish sandwiches and chips with our salad.        

Having a great need to expound on messages sent via streaming, I asked my wife what ingredients go into a tuna fish sandwich. 

“Well, it depends on what kind of tuna fish sandwich you want,” she said, aware of both my deficiency in the basics of culinary arts, and anticipating I had some profound analogy to make about what we’d just heard Harold Ford say. “But you need the tuna, relish, mayonnaise and of course bread of some kind. I suppose that would do for most sandwiches. ” 

“The question then to ask democrats like Harold Ford is what is meant by substance,” I said. “A tuna sandwich can’t be substantive without tuna. Relish, mayonnaise and a type of bread also make up the substantive sandwich.” 

“Well, I suppose you could get disagreements about what else goes into the sandwich other than the tuna,” my wife said, waiting for my analogy.  

“What constitutes substantive is constant,” I said. “You can’t make a tuna sandwich without tuna and most people would say, relish, mayonnaise and bread.” 

My wife nodded appeasingly. “This is very interesting,” she said, calling our dog, Bella, for a walk.

I listened to the rest of the Five Show waiting for more talk about substance for the democrats, then, hot on the trail of my tuna analogy, retired to my thinking chair. 

James Carville, Clinton’s campaign manager in the 90’s harangued, “It’s the economy stupid.” An ardent democrat and Trump hater, he still espouses the economy as a chief ingredient which wins elections.

In fact, voters listened to Carville back then. The economy was good under Clinton, a four percent annual growth, with jobs created and defense and welfare spending cut. Revenues consequently rose, history shows.

The analogy I was making to myself was that Harold’s contention ‘getting to the substance’ had already been gotten to, just not by his party. The democrats’ line to the substantive is redistribution of wealth, boys in girl’s gyms and DEI. All their issues play to a victimhood. Those stances don't win elections.

Harold likely classifies himself as a moderate on his party’s continuum, possibly even a conservative, or what was once called a Blue Dog democrat. 

If Harold wants his party to compete in the coming years, his brethren will have to reconfigure what their substantive issues mean. They will need to prioritize. 

An AI overview definition, says substantive is an explanation based on facts and logic, therefore that which is real and meaningful. 

AI as the marker can be debated when it comes to facts, logic and meaningfulness. But Carville’s harangue and Clinton’s record back in the 90s’ suggested they were onto something. That something was simple classic liberalism. 

Found in the writings of John Locke, classic liberalism touts free markets, adherence to civil liberties, and to laws, along with limited federal interventions. Freedom of speech is at the forefront of this philosophy which was the cry of our Revolution. Throwing in a streamlined military and a robust infrastructure, these principles are nothing short of what Trump is espousing.

The progressives of the democratic party, Bernie, the Squad, and a number of other clingers will have to shift their allegiance from social liberalism which pushes for federal interventions, to the genre of classical liberalism. The balanced, tempered Harold Ford can likely adopt this genre. But it will call for an exorcism of the Bernies and the spinning heads of the Rachel Maddows.