The Washington Post again comes through with an excellent Sunday Outlook section this week with its centerpiece a series of articles about the Democrats’ electoral problems. There’s no shortage of them.
The problem with Democrats is that they’re too liberal. Or not liberal enough. They talk too much (or not enough) about abortion or torture or gun control. They’re too condescending, too cosmopolitan, too secular, too wonkish, too weak. They’ve been captured by their interest groups, their contributors, their pollsters, their consultants. They’re on the wrong side of a demographic revolution. Joe Sixpack doesn’t want to have a beer with them. They should think strategically instead of tactically, or they should forget about strategy and speak from the heart. They aren’t catering to values voters, heartland voters, exurban voters. They aren’t motivating their base. They don’t have a unified national message, or they’re too worried about a unified national message. They need to do more than criticize Bush, or stop rolling over for Bush. They’re too disconnected to understand what voters want to hear, or too cowardly to say things voters don’t want to hear. They should imitate the Republican intellectual infrastructure that produces the conservative movement’s big ideas, or imitate the Republican anti-intellectual attitude that doesn’t worry about big ideas. Or they should stop imitating Republicans.
If it weren’t for the fact that our country’s future depends on progressives gaining control of our government, you’ve got to admit that this is funny. Democrats are the embodiment of all that is hapless: a cross between Michael Dukakis and the U.S. men’s soccer team.
The author of the main article, Michael Grunwald of The Post, reflects the conventional wisdom that the battle in the party is between the centrists or moderates, and the liberal or progressive wings of the party. I use labels as much as the next guy, but they’re really not useful in this debate. Perhaps because I was a political science major in college, and though that my reference is now 40+ years ago, the conventional descriptions of conservatives and liberals are my frames of reference. (For the purpose of this discussion, I will reject the American philosopher Elbert Hubbard’s description of a conservative as someone “who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.” Conservatives can take joy in knowing that he had no where to run on the Lusitania.) Conservatives liked things they way they are. They viewed change skeptically. In politics, they tended to shy away from foreign involvements. Obviously, no more. So why should the descriptions of moderates and liberals be any more valid? They’re not, except for the MSM’s need for characterization, indeed caricature. Grunwald reflects that.
Liberals want the party to be more liberal. Centrists want the party to be more centrist. And those biases tend to translate into diagnoses of the party’s ailments, and prescriptions for cures.
For example, liberal analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack left to fire up their base, instead of blindly following the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
…Predictably, centrist analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack right to reach out to swing voters.
But what does right and left mean in this context? The problem is that many well-meaning analysts, party activists and bloggers buy into the left vs. central dichotomy. Some think wanting a “third way” is a DLC excuse for selling out. Others seem to think that challenging social conservatives is political suicide. Until we get past the boxes we draw ourselves in, we can’t decry the MSM or voters from doing the same.
In their book Take It Back, James Carville and Paul Begala urge Democrats to moderate or at least play down their support for abortion, gay rights and gun control; they also tell the party’s liberal interest groups — civil rights advocates, labor unions, environmentalists — to “back off a bit.” Jeffrey Goldberg recently suggested similar strategies in a New Yorker article highlighting moderate red-state Democrats complaining about their tone-deaf, anti-gun, pro-abortion party establishment.
Meanwhile,
…[L]efties argue that Democrats should stop soft-pedaling their opposition to conservative Republicans on issues such as gay marriage, school prayer, immigration and especially the economy.
Some of these issues should be easy to deal with. If we think the GOP is using wedge issues that aren’t really important, why do Dems feel compelled to dwell on them? Gay rights, abortion, gun rights? Not to minimize them, but when compared to war and a decent living, let’s not lead with our chins. Carville and Begala rightly identify the problem: interest groups that demand their issue be front and center and their unwillingness to question the way things have always been done. No less a liberal than Ted Kennedy said it more than 20 years ago.
“We cannot and should not depend on higher tax revenues to roll in and redeem every costly program,” Kennedy said. “Those of us who care about domestic progress must do more with less.” And he added: “The mere existence of a program is no excuse for its perpetuation, whether it is a welfare plan or a weapons system.”
Democrats need new ideas and a willingness to compromise not with the GOP but with themselves. It’s the old firing squad image. (Just read the Virginia blog warfare over the Senate nomination to understand how that is perpetuated.)
There needs to be new ideas, yes, but more important, I think, is a new way of talking about principles. The opposition to the Iraq War shouldn’t be seen as “anti-war.” But instead of making the case, Dems try to have it both ways and wind up flip-flopping. The same is true of civil rights. Because folks oppose affirmative action doesn’t mean they’re racist.
At the end of the day, it’s about acknowledging the concerns of conservatives but proposing better solutions. Gays aren’t the problem with marriage, but the divorce rate and the number of children in one-parent homes suggests there is a problem with marriage. Racism is a problem, but contorted government-mandated affirmative action isn’t the answer. Economic fairness is a challenge, but taxing the rich only masks it. You needn’t be xenophobic to think there are immigration and trade policy problems.
Problem is, these are complicated problems, and when you say that to a guy like Chris Matthews, you are derided by him and his minions in the press who can’t stand complexity.
Still, if Dems underestimate the intelligence of the American voter and offer a cautious, reactive agenda, they’ll lose to someone with the courage of their convictions. But politically, it doesn’t take much courage to call someone a bigot, an elitist or a war monger. And there’s no indication it gets you enough votes, either.