The Battle for the Democrats
The question now is whither the Democrats? (Or is it, wither the Democrats?). There are two possible responses to any defeat:
1. What did we do wrong, and how can we change to avoid making those mistakes again.
2. We didn't do anything wrong, we got beat by lying and cheating.
Here's a pretty good article from the standpoint of
the first response.
In Ohio, union leaders met Wednesday morning to assess their loss and discuss how to plan for the future, said Burga. It was a repeat of meetings they had after Al Gore lost in 2000, but with a big difference. This time, the answer will be not just better organizing, Burga said, but an effort to find out who the religious conservatives are and how to connect with them, a question the unions had never confronted before.
I suspect they'll find that they cannot connect with them without losing the liberal elites. The fact of the matter is that you cannot finesse the issue of abortion with the pro-life crowd. "Let's keep abortion safe, legal and rare," is a slogan that is not going to tempt Christian conservatives.
Slate's
Tim Noah looks at the options:
1. Democrats need to move right.
2. Democrats need to move left.
3. Democrats should sit tight and await the inevitable demographic shift that will put them on top again.
and concludes they're all bad. However, his argument is weakest on the first option:
Reason 1: The DLC is a victim of its own success. Having already moved the Democratic Party rightward—these days, there isn't much point in distinguishing between a "new Democrat" and a plain old "Democrat"—it now risks taking the party too far rightward. If the Democrats continue down this path, then pretty soon it will be impossible to distinguish the Democrats from today's Republicans. (Some folks on the left, including Ralph Nader, think that's already happened.)
Yes, but those folks are the kooks like Michael Moore, et.al., who are dragging the party down to defeat time and again.
Reason 2: The process of moving the Democrats rightward has no end point, because every time the Democrats shift rightward the Republicans respond by shifting a little further rightward so they can continue to denounce the Democratic position as radical leftism. That explains why the GOP of today is so much further right than the GOP of the Reagan era, when Republicans were still willing to support expansion of the earned income tax credit for low-income workers; more progressive taxation of Social Security benefits; arms control; and promotion of human rights abroad. (This rightward shift was documented compellingly by Joshua Green in "Reagan's Liberal Legacy" in the January/February 2001 Washington Monthly.) In theory, there ought to be a point where the GOP has moved so far to the right that nobody will vote for its candidates. But in practice, I'm not confident that such a point exists.
That's just plain stupid. Take an issue, literally any issue, but let's say abortion. Suppose the Democrats move to the right on that and take the stance that abortion should be outlawed except in the case of rape or incest. Where could the Republicans get to the right of them on that issue? By holding out for the death penalty for women who get abortions? Would the public follow them that far?
No, so this argument doesn't hold any water. In fact, it really goes back to his first point, which is that if that's how far the Democrats have to go to win, they'd rather lose. As Zell Miller put it in an article the other day, they'd rather be a majority in a minority party, than a minority in a majority party.
Sometimes the need to move rightward is portrayed as more a matter of style than of policy. But John Kerry didn't get anywhere with his hunting-trip photo op, or with frequent affirmations of his Catholic faith. Democrats, I fear, are doomed to be thought phonies whenever they play this game, even when they aren't. (Kerry is a phony in some ways, but I believe him to be sincere in his faith and in his enthusiasm for hunting.
That means you're easily duped, Tim. Kerry got an "F" rating from the NRA. And his sincere belief in his faith stops when it comes to actually using that faith to decide moral issues.
The Democrats do have to move rightward, especially on moral issues, if they want to win. Whether they want to win that badly is another question.
