Stephen Green asks why the Democrats just can’t seem to win:
Look at me. I’m pro-choice. I support gay marriage. I think porn is OK and that drugs (which aren’t OK) ought to be legal. My taste in music and movies and entertainers are a lot more New York and LA than they are Nashville or Branson.
But with the exceptions of maybe Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, there’s not a Democrat today I’d vote for without first chewing through my own forehead.
Democrats: I’m your target voter! Appeal to me! I’m sick of the Republicans already! Don’t make me perform impossible physical acts! Please!
But they won’t listen and, come November, I’ll vote for a bunch of Republicans again. (Although I’ll probably leave a bunch of choices blank.) I’ll feel bad about it, of course, but I’d feel even worse if I voted for a Democrat.
And I’m their target voter. Sheesh.
In other words, the Democratic Party is doomed.
I don’t think the Democrats are doomed – you can’t keep losing elections forever without someone like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan coming along to shake up the status quo. Our two-party equilibrium exists because both parties must compete for the middle. We don’t have a parliamentary system in which a small party can act as a kingmaker – the US’ political system has long followed Duverger’s Law – essentially since the beginning with the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.
The reason why the Democrats keep losing is simple: George W. Bush.
I’m not saying that Bush is some kind of political genius. Yes, Karl Rove is a brilliant strategist, but there’s nothing that Rove is doing that’s magic, and his success has far more to do with identifying Republican voters and getting them to the polls than to somehow duping the public.
No, the essential problem is that the Democratic Party is obsessed with George W. Bush. We’re talking full-out Ahab mode. Every issue is seen strictly through the prism of that obsession. It’s been that way since 2000, but the war in Iraq has caused even “mainstream” Democrats to come unhinged.
The Democrats have very little appeal to those who don’t already have a raging hatred of George W. Bush. They’re not even trying to preach to anyone else. Which might work if enough people share that hatred, but even those people who may disapprove of Bush’s performance aren’t going to vote for Joe Democrat just because George W. Bush is a big mean poopy-head.
Dick Meyer of CBS News gets it right and puts it simply:
The 2006 GOP/Rove platform can easily be put on an index card, if not a Post-it note. It reads something like this: we are at war against foreign terrorists who want to kill you and your society and we’ll do what it takes to stop it and the Democrats won’t; we will cut your taxes and give you money and Democrats won’t. Every Republican candidate in the country can spit that one out.
The controversy over domestic surveillance without warrants illustrates the efficient, black and white clarity of the Rovian message. Rove said, “Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”
Please draft a two sentence response that will work in a TV ad; my guess is it will sound as convoluted as John Kerry explaining why his vote for war was a vote against war.
Democrats thought the domestic surveillance revelations were a boon; if that were the case, why would the administration be devoting this week to a public campaign to trumpet the issue? Simple: because they think they have the gut punch: we’ll protect you, they won’t.
The Democrats are committing slow political suicide. They’re pushing back against their own moderates like Senator Lieberman and Senator Clinton (although Hillary’s “moderation” may itself be a ruse). They can’t hold an argument without engaging in a spittle-flecked diatribe about the President. They nominated Howard Freakin’ Dean as their party chairman. Influential strategists like Thomas Frank keep telling the Democrats to “frame” the same old arguments with a lot of preachy God-talk, ignoring the fact that it’s the content not the presentation that’s the problem.
The last successful period for the Democratic Party was the Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton, for all his personal flaws, knew how to appeal to the American public. He was committed to free trade, he lowered capital gains taxes in 1996, and his initiatives tended to be more of the “midnight basketball” type than his (and by “his” I mean “his wife’s”) attempts to socialize American healthcare. He drove Republicans crazy – almost as crazy as Bush makes Democrats – because he could so convincingly ingratiate himself to everyone. In 1994 the Republicans won on a broad program to reform government – they won in a landslide. In 1996 and 1998 they ran on the “we hate Bill Clinton and so should you” and they lost ground. There is a lesson here.
So long as the Democrats remain hyper-fixated on George W. Bush, they won’t win. So long as the anger of their party keeps boiling over, they won’t appeal to people like Stephen Green. So long as The Daily Kos represents the heart of the Democratic Party, they’ll be consigned to the political fringes.
Instead of wisely shifting the ground to subjects where they actually have some political advantages, they keep shifting the debate back to Bush’s strongest talking point – it’s like moths being attracted to the flame of a plasma welding torch. In 2002, the Democrats looked week on homeland security. In 2004, Kerry’s “global test” rhetoric and constant doubletalk showed he was utterly rudderless on the war. In 2006, the Democrats are positioning themselves once again as the party of vacillation and weakness in this war. If the Democrats were smart, they would have chided the President and immediately drafted a bill that would have reformed FISA – but then they couldn’t get their preening indignation pressed into the lens of every willing camera.
The truth is that while the GOP seems to be dropping the ball, the Democrats keep scoring points on the other side. Never in recent history has a party gone completely off the rails in such a dramatically self-destructive manner – and their hatred of Bush has them blinded to the realities of their situation.
Now, as a partisan, I take great amusement in all of this. However, I’m an American first and a partisan second. A vibrant democracy is incompatible with single-party rule. However, as Green notes, the Democrats are not providing an acceptable alternative for America. As bad as the Republican leadership has become on spending and as many ethical lapses and scandals as the GOP has had, when it comes right down to it, even a terrifically flawed GOP is better than the alternatives.
No wonder the Democrats are so angry – when you’ve convinced yourself that your political adversary is the epitome of ignorance and stupidity, the fact that he keeps outsmarting you at every turn has to be infuriating. However, if the Democrats don’t realize that unless they can preach to someone who isn’t already in the choir, hatred is all they’ll have when President Rice, McCain, Guiliani, Romney, Allen, or someone else is sworn in. You can’t win an election in this country on acrimony alone.
“Bill Clinton, for all his personal flaws, knew how to appeal to the American public. He was committed to free trade, he lowered capital gains taxes in 1996,”
Show me ANY poll numbers from the last 20 years indicating majority public approval for free trade agreements and lowered capital gains taxes. You continually saying these policy platforms, particularly free trade, are wildly popular among voters. It’s way past time for you to back those claims up with some hard data.
What’s that Jay? Nothing?
Bush will be gone in ’08, and the Dems already have a few potentially very strong presidential contenders in Mark Warner and Wes Clark (that is, if Hillary doesn’t run- and even now I’m beginning to wonder if she hasn’t triangulated herself out of the nomination).
’06 will probably be another bad year for the Dems, though I bet they’ll pick up at least a small handful of congressional seats. They won’t win either house of congress though…
“No wonder the Democrats are so angry – when you’ve convinced yourself that your political adversary is the epitome of ignorance and stupidity, the fact that he keeps outsmarting you at every turn has to be infuriating.”
That is it in a nut shell. The arrogance of the left is the destruction of the left.
Your thought on “a vibrant democracy” is also an excellent point. As entertaining as all this may be, it is also disturbing. I whole-heartedly agree.
Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. July 8-18, 2004. N=1,003 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.5.
“Thinking about trade for a moment: In general, do you think that free trade agreements, like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, have been a good thing or a bad thing for the United States?” Upon request, respondents were read full name of NAFTA: “The North American Free Trade Agreement.”
Good Thing Bad Thing Unsure
% % %
7/8-18/04 47 34 19
3/04 44 37 19
And of course, the polling on these issues don’t matter – most people don’t care about NAFTA since it was passed over a decade ago. What they do care about is the fact that 60 million Americans are directly employed in industries related to international trade. Over half of the nation is invested in the stock market in some ways.
The days when regressive economic isolationism made a difference have long since passed – the dramatic claims that NAFTA would destroy the American economy proved utterly and completely false. This isn’t the 1930s, and the same old tired cliches are increasingly out of step with reality.
How long did it take you to find that poll? I’m impressed you were even able to find one poll indicating public approval of free trade policy. The very first result of my Google search on the topic contradicts your poll though. Let’s have a look.
“The survey by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes is one of the most comprehensive U.S. polls on trade issues. It found that support for free trade fell in most income groups from 1999 to 2004, but dropped most rapidly among high-income respondents — the very group that registered the strongest support for free trade in the past.”
Ouch! Even Bush’s upper-income base is abandoning his party’s position on the issue. Read on:
“The PIPA poll shows that among Americans making more than $100,000 a year, support for actively promoting more free trade collapsed from 57% to less than half that, 28%. There were smaller drops, averaging less than 7 percentage points, in income brackets below $70,000, where support for free trade was already weaker.”
Bad news for the free trade ideologues. Very bad news. Remind me again why this is a position the Democrats should embrace to win over swing voters?
As for the poll you cited, I betcha didn’t think I’d check it out myself and rain on your manipulative parade. The same survey questioned respondents over 14 different intervals throughout 2004. Of those 14 poll intervals, only two of them registered public support for NAFTA as higher than 50%. The median score was 45.4% support for NAFTA, which is well below a majority.
And another poll question further down in that survery indicated 28% support for NAFTA and WTO, 35% disapproval and 11% mixed feelings.
Yet, day after day, you post here that the reason the Democrats of 2006 have lost so much of the white working class is that, unlike Bill Clinton, today’s Dems are more likely to oppose the trade agreements deindustrializing America from Detroit down to Houston, New York to L.A. C’mon now, Jay. I expected better political analysis out of you.
Actually, that’s probably the smallest reason. The biggest is that the Democrats are hostile to family values, utterly clueless on national security, and have absolutely no agenda other than a scathing hatred of the current occupant of the White House.
“The last successful period for the Democratic Party was the Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton, for all his personal flaws, knew how to appeal to the American public. He was committed to free trade, he lowered capital gains taxes in 1996,”
“most people don’t care about NAFTA since it was passed over a decade ago.”
Swing your partner ’round and ’round, let’s two-step across this town. That’s quite a little dance, Jay. “Commitment to free trade” went from being the very first thing on your list of reasons why Bill Clinton appealed to the age person to “something most people don’t care about” in your reply when you realized your original statement was the purest form of folly.
“The biggest is that the Democrats are hostile to family values”
How?