Peak Murc’s law?
By 
I feel like I’ve just got to be missing something here.
Because my impression is that this NYT op-ed from Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn is arguing that the main reason — indeed apparently the only reason — that the USA doesn’t have some sort of robust social democracy 90 years after FDR became president is that “liberals,” most notably Joe Biden and friends, are still stuck in a cold war era mentality:
Since his election in 2020, Mr. Biden has been championed by some pundits — and by his administration itself — as the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. But Roosevelt warned that “too many of those who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they ought to be.”
Mr. Biden, despite an ambitious agenda of so-called supply-side liberalism, doesn’t seem to have internalized the message. And for their part, voters do not yet seem fully convinced. A liberalism that survives must resonate with voters who want something to believe in. And liberalism once had it, revolving not around fear of enemies but hope in institutions that lead to what Mill called “experiments in living.” He meant that people everywhere would get the chance from society to choose something new to try in their short time. If their hands are forced — especially by a coercive and unequal economic system — they will lose what is most important, which is the chance to make themselves and the world more interesting.
If there is any silver lining in the next phase of American politics, which Mr. Trump continues to define, it is that it provides yet another opportunity for liberals to reinvent themselves. If they double down instead on a stale Cold War ideology, as they did after 1989 and 2016, they will miss it. Only a liberalism that finally makes good on some of its promises of freedom and equality is likely to survive and thrive.
The reason the USA doesn’t look like Scandinavia is that the Democratic party still has a cold war mentality! That is the actual argument. Guess which of America’s two actual political parties is mentioned exactly zero times in this piece?
I mean it’s early and I’ve only begun to drink coffee so maybe I’m misreading this somehow. You tell me.