The Democratic Party NEEDS to be reborn... and it is

[IrateCitizen]

Admittedly, I'm a leftist Democrat. I make no bones about it. I don't even call myself "liberal", but rather "progressive" -- not because of the RW demonization of the word "liberal", but because I just think that, historically, progressives have fought harder for real reforms than liberals have. But, this is all beside the point.

The party on the national level is adrift and diminishing. It lacks a compelling message, it has capitulated to many of the political shifts of the Reagan years, becoming another party of big business and deregulation, and many of its leaders are compromised by allegiances to big business interests. However, I would argue that this is not necessarily a BAD thing.

Why would I say this? Because this last election demonstrated not only that the Democrats are maintaining solid holds on the Northeast, Upper Midwest and West Coast -- but perhaps more because we are making serious gains in the Mountain West, outside of the influence of the inept pollsters and clueless advisors that run Democratic campaigns on the national level.

Montana elected a Democratic Governor this year, Mark Schweitzer. And Schweitzer won not by "moving to the center" or "triangulation" -- but by actively listening to and addressing the concerns of many of Montana's core constituencies. He won the votes of large numbers of hunters and fishermen, and won over the small business lobby from the GOP. He did this all by taking the concerns of these groups, and offering up real, common sense solutions to them, and pointing out the other side as being the one that was really against them. Furthermore, he was able to do this in a way that showed him as the candidate of conviction, unafraid to stand up for what he believed.

In Colorado, outside of the Presidential race, Democrats absolutely bludgeoned the Republicans. Colorado's open Senate seat was won by Ken Salazar, Colorado's State AG. His brother, a rancher, won election to the House Seat vacated by Republican Scott McInnis on the slogan, "Send a farmer to Congress!" Once again, these candidates won not by moderating republican positions, but by producing a compelling narrative about hard work and fair play, and contrasting that narrative with the corruption of the GOP. Democrats also won control of the CO state legislature, and many of their candidates were picked from among the people most "plugged in" to their communities and regions, the "go-to" people when citizens want to get things done.

Personally, I believe that in order to have a true rebirth, you need some of the older parts to die off. That's how it happens in nature, after all. All the reports of the Democratic Party's demise are premature, IMHO -- but there ARE parts of the party that are dying off, and I think that's a good thing, because they give room for the blooming parts to really come to life and take over.

[ElectroPrincess]

1. I'm with ya but I call myself a "Liberal Democrat" ... check one :-)

[eaprez]

2. Great Analysis........I would also add

that we spend too much time "reacting" to the other side. We need to STOP reacting and make them react to us!

[crispini]

3. Nice analysis, thank you! n/t

[OneBlueSky]

4. the party needs to be reborn, but neither to the left nor the right . . .

rather, it needs to reconstitute itself as a new populist movement . . . the people vs. the oligarchy that is BushCo . . . rather than abortion and gay marriage, the issues need to be jobs, health care, the war, progressive taxation, ending corporate governance, education, environmental protection, and America's role in the world (among others) . . . again, the real dichotomy is not left/right, it's up/down, i.e. restoring citizen authority over corporations and over our government . . .

[papau]

5. well said - class warfare by the rich on the middle class must end!

:toast:

:-)

[IrateCitizen]

6. Exactly! And if you look at how Dems won in the Mtn. West...

... it is apparent that they won due to their willingness to address this simple reality. The people who won out West did so as populists, not as corporatists.

In fact, that's my biggest gripe with the DLC -- not that they're centrist, but that they're corporatist, and most of their policy recommendations are too much about accomodating the "haves" at the expense of everyone else.

[jobycom]

9. Beautiful, except a minor semantic quibble

In the truest, original sense of the terminology, that's exactly what "left" means. It's the old French dichotomy between labor and the elite, or in French context, the Proles and Peasants versus the aristotcracy. So what you're talking about, I think, is returning to that basic dichotomy, and choosing the side of labor.

The term "liberal" specifically refers to someone who wants to change quickly, whereas the term progressive refers to someone who wants to move "forward," whatever that means at the time-- usually towards a future that relies on scientific advances, education and a more left-wing view of society.

Not that it matters much: the three terms usually apply to the same group, so they wind up being used interchangeably. Someone like Reagan, though, who wanted to undo the changes that were made a generation before he took office could have been labeled a right-wing, reactionary liberal, since he wanted things to change, but he wanted those changes to go backwards.

Great post, OBS. Same to you, IC, well said, and very optimistic. I've seen too much eagerness on DU since the election to celebrate the economic collapse of our nation, and the impending unemployment of so many of the people we should be supporting. I'm glad to see someone remembers where the root of the party is. Corporations need to be reigned in, but we shouldn't celebrate the suffering of the non-elite just to bring that about.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Were you impressed by

the policies Kerry and Edwards promised at the Convention. I was, and also astonished, moved and wonderfully enthused. It will mean a new start for the whole world, because it must have a knock-on effect.

[kentuck]

8. I'm not sure how to read the Colorado election....

Supposedly, 87% of voters participated in the election. But it was not really a surprise that Salazar defeated Coors. Coors had turned off many right-wingers with his comments about lowering the drinking age so he could sell more beer. I think his brother, who won the seat over on the Western Slope, probably rode his brother Ken's coattails to some extent. The Democrats were able to take back the State House also.

However, Kerry was not able to defeat Bush in Colorado? The base stayed loyal to the top even though they deserted at the Gubernatorial and Congressional levels. I do not yet know how to interpret that.

[jobycom]

10. I think that's because

the Republicans sell a lie.

I mean, the reason Dems seem to be making gains at the local but not the national level is because at the national level the Republicans claim to be about the people. They claim their tax cuts help labor and small business, they claim their environmental policies reduce government interference, they want to improve education, etc. They sell their whole program as basically a left-wing agenda.

The Democrats, therefore, sound less leftist than they are. If you read the Democratic Platform each year, it's very left-wing, very liberal. But the Republican presidential candidates move so close to the center, even trying to sound leftist, that the Dems either have to wind up with the same message, or have to move farther to the left to create any distance. The Dems choose to campaign in the middle, so people, on both sides, don't see the difference. The difference is there, but the Republicans have closed that difference, and still manage to keep their right-wing base.

On the local level that's harder to maintain. Bush spent some time campaigning in Colorado, but Coors and Salazar spent all their time in the state, so people got to know them better. I think the Democrats need to do a better job of exposing the Democrats-- not just the personal failings of the individuals, but the hypocrisy behind the party's message. We have to defeat the media to do it, but that's what we have to do. Otherwise, the Republicans will continue to look like the party of the people, and we'll keep losing.

That's my take, anyway. It's probably wrong, I usually am.

[Lexingtonian]

11. yeah, agree for the most part

The party on the national level is adrift and diminishing. It lacks a compelling message, it has capitulated to many of the political shifts of the Reagan years, becoming another party of big business and deregulation, and many of its leaders are compromised by allegiances to big business interests. However, I would argue that this is not necessarily a BAD thing.

I'm always surprised that people don't remember that during their domination Democrats were certainly not opposed to big business itself, but demanded simply that it take care of its workers in return for getting their share of government largess (dough) and generous treatment by regulators.

I'd say the idea that the Party is 'adrift and diminishing' is a bit superficial. It is losing the Old Democrats who have hung on and hung on ever since their regions either stopped electing Democrats (~1980) or since the newer, Modern, kinds of Democrat have been the increasingly important voters and are driving the leadership, their kind getting elected since the mid-'90s. The revival via the Modern Democrats, and the vanishing of the Old Democrats, creates the room for the smart pragmatic/centrist Democrats to (re)emerge in the more moderate conservative parts of the country- like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. The national Republican Party runs their conformity-bound crowd off to the extreme Right to counter the upper tiers of the national Democratic Party, leaving an opportunity in mid and lower level offices in parts of the country where extremism is considered a problem rather than a solution. (Not everyone will agree with this p.o.v. at first glance, but give it a fair chance.)

Contrary to the 'adrift' bit, the Democratic Party is (unwillingly, of course) doing piecemeal what it has to do, undergo a systematic/comprehensive change that removes the basis of the conservative and pragmatic critiques of it. It is proving ever broader competence and willingness to provide answers to the various problems bequeathed by the Past and by Modernity, chunk by chunk. Kerry, for example, wiped out the idea of Cold War incompetence and inability to lead in such a conflict. Gore wiped out some other stuff. Clinton proved the economic competence part. Most prominent Democratic politicians have either added to the cumulative proof, several- Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, for example- are perceived to sabotage it. But when each discrete part of the critique has been made baseless there is not much left for Republicans to run on. A great deal depends on the progress made now. The next one is a comprehensive and competent idea of how to resolve the ~60 years of American conflict involvement in the Middle East and the dilemmas around oil dependence: what the serious alternative to robber baron and oligarchy-propping approaches is, and to champion it. An analysis of our domestic problems as one created by a particular reading of the law by a particular kind of inJustices and bad verdicts, that would be another piece in a future not far off.

But in the process, as the Party convinces new groups in the electorate, to some extent it has had to demonstratively break a degree of its fealty to ones that were convinced earlier. Some of it is ugly- the Sista Soulja thing, notably, among several. There's all this talk now by people about their sort of voter "being taken for granted", which is legitimate in its way but ignores what the Party must do to get and integrate the next group of voters- diminish the amount of effort toward the last few groups of voters integrated. This aggressive effort is what it takes to achieve a true, active, majority without which the whole can't get much of anything it wants, but it comes at a cost of groups of people realing the Party is no longer making their interests the priority or emphasis they were given before.

[IrateCitizen]

14. Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful response, Lexingtonian

Although I don't always agree with you, I often find your posts to be a pleasure to read, because they are usually very well thought out and spur me to think about my own stances.

I must say, however, that I disagree with you on a few things. I agree wholeheartedly that the Democrats, during the great liberal hour of the late 1940's through the 1960's were never against big business, but rather just demanded that business treat its workers fairly. But I also think that the wholesale adoption of Keynesian economics with its emphasis on increasing production in the PRIVATE sector was doomed for failure. I don't know if you've ever read John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society, but in it the author (a protege of Keynes) goes about explaining how the overwhelming emphasis on private sector production and the emerging demonization of the public sector as bad and inefficient would cause big, big problems in the future. And he wrote about this in the late 1950's.

I do find the Democratic leaders on the national stage as rather ineffective and doomed for extinction. The reason is that most of them have adopted as truth the concepts of lasseiz-faire capitalism promoted during the Reagan years. Deregulation. Market is the ultimate arbiter. Government regulation is bad. And so on. In fact, I would argue that the Clinton economic policies -- with regards to deregulation, "free" trade and allowing industry free reign -- had much more in common with the Reagan era than anything advanced by the New Deal. As much as many here like to deny it, Reagan was, by far, the most influential politician this country has had since FDR. And like FDR, the country is still operating in Reagan's shadow, embracing many of his assumptions and policy directions, many years after his term in office. The emergence of "centrist" (I prefer the term corporatist in this case) groups like the Democratic Leadership Council within the Democratic Party is, I believe, proof of this endeavor. Most of the economic policies promoted by the DLC are wholesale Reaganist policies, just without quite so hard of an edge to them.

I'd also argue that the Clinton years, in this sense, could best be described as a strategic retreat. A brilliant strategic retreat, but a retreat nonetheless. I still just shake my head when people advance the Clinton years -- the years of NAFTA, telecom deregulation, anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act, evisceration of welfare, increasing incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders, and so on -- as some kind of great Democratic victory. I really don't think it was, and I think that presenting it as such does us all much more harm than good, because it makes our expectations of the possible so much lower than they need to be.

Democrats will not be able to succeed on a national stage until they develop the narrative -- and find the person to deliver it -- that debunks the assumptions still with us from the Reagan years. Until that happens, Democrats will still be just taking largely Republican ideas and trying to put a somewhat "softer" face on them, which will subconsciously signal to significant sections of the electorate that the OTHER side is where all the ideas REALLY are, which will continue to hurt Democrats.

I think a good example of turning this notion on its head is evident from the Schweitzer campaign for Governor in MT. Schweitzer got the small business lobby on board with him -- peeling away a typically Republican constituency. How did he do this? By pounding home over and over again the policies that Republicans had implemented that had allowed corporations to come in under favorable terms and undermine small businesses -- and showing that he had a good plan to empower and protect these small businesses from predatory corporate interests.

According to Reaganist policies, this kind of interference in the market would be viewed as a bad thing. However, Schweitzer correctly recognized that government is supposed to be an advocate of the little guy against the big guy. If the big guy is treating the little guy well, then there's no reason for government to get involved. However, if the big guy is taking advantage of the little guy, then it's government's role to do something about it. The big guy doesn't need an advocate, because he's powerful enough to be his own advocate.

Sadly, many leading Democrats on the national stage don't seem to advance this idea enough. They cower from this kind of narrative, because it flies in the face of what has been accepted as conventional wisdom in the Beltway circles -- the gospel of St. Ronnie. But this gospel needs to be challenged and refuted, if we ever really want to achieve the Great Society we dreamed of not so long ago. Perhaps the best thing is for these dinosaurs to gradually die off, so they can be replaced by those who come up through the "farm system" on campaigns that emphasize the kind of narrative that DOES provide a compelling alternative to free market fundamentalism, and they are then able to sell that narrative to the American people.

[UpsideDownFlag]

12. "The party on the national level is adrift and diminishing"

the proverbial nail has hit the head. And who is to blame? our 'leadership' thinks it's michael moore...i look a little higher up on the chain.

[fnottr]

13. What I think we need

Is a candidate that comes across as strong, resolute, and unflinching, while also remaining a progressive. I'm thinking along the lines of a 21st century Teddy Roosevelt (minus the jingoistic foreign policy). I think the actual positions of a politician aren't as important a we'd like to think there are. Certainly there are ideologues on both sides of the spectrum who will vote with their side unflinchingly every time. However, the vast majority of the electorate simply don't follow the issues that closely. They have a shallow understanding of what each candidate is for, but a lot of their vote is based on their personal impression of the candidate. A good debater and orator can make any position seem attractive to a large number of people, and a good smear campaign can make any person, no matter how worthy, seem weak and uncaring.

In a time of war, the public wants a candidate they see as strong. While I believe Kerry IS a strong and resolute person, the Repubs smear campaign did a good job of convincing many that he wasn't strong. He needed to throw the glove down, and go after every accusation, and make some of his own.

Media coverage also has a lot to do with this, but that's a whole other rant....