New Democrat Update - January 2006
SOLVING PROBLEMS, NOT POLARIZING POLITICS
Coloradans are looking for leadership, sound judgment and some plain, old common sense. It is no wonder - the list of our challenges is quite long.
Radical extremists here and abroad are doing everything they can to destroy our way of life. We have competitors in China and India that, if we fail to act, have the potential to eclipse our economic might. Workers can no longer count on the bedrock promise that by working hard and taking responsibility, they can rise as high as their full potential. Parents are determined as ever to give their children lives of meaning and purpose, and to teach them right from wrong, but they face more obstacles than ever.
At a time when we should be coming together across party lines to take on these big challenges, our politics is hyper-polarized and too many of our leaders are divisive. Both sides think the other side is crazy, corrupt, immoral, or evil. “Winning” has been simplified to mean beating down the opposition rather than moving forward together. America cannot continue being a polarized country with a gridlocked government.
As Douglas MacKinnon, press secretary to former Senator Bob Dole, recently wrote in the Washington Post:
“The voters have little patience for inside-the-Beltway antics, the politics of destruction or the shirking of responsibility. How angry will they be when they learn that each party seems to believe that its greatest strength going into the midterm elections is the complete ineptitude of the other?”
The sad thing is that our politics is much more polarized than the public is. The far left and hard right do not provide a natural home for the plurality of Americans who define themselves as moderates. Indeed, today’s public dialogue only leaves them feeling frustrated, unrepresented, and alienated from political life.
We simply cannot afford to go through endless partisan conflict where winning is always an empty victory because half of the electorate, people who are our fellow citizens, have lost. If we do not check this growing divide soon enough, the very foundation of our democracy - and way of life - could be threatened.
Today’s politics must catch up to the people. Their values, principles and aspirations are neither liberal nor conservative, but progressive. They want a new and different course beyond any narrow-minded ideology.
Democrats (and, for that matter, open-minded Republicans) seeking a role model do not have to look far. U.S. Senator and Colorado DLC Co-Chair Ken Salazar represents the kind of hopeful leadership that our country and Colorado so desperately need now.
As Colorado Attorney General and now as a U.S. Senator, Salazar has a special, refreshing appeal that transcends partisanship. Everyday, he is countering Washington’s polarization with something more compelling than just more polarization. His politics is one of common national purpose, rooted in hope for the future, that rises above the petty politics of Washington, takes on our country’s big challenges and offers pragmatic solutions.
The Senator is working hard to stop bipartisanship from sounding like a dirty word. For example, he, along with 13 other senators (seven Democrats and seven Republicans), stopped the Senate leadership from changing the rules on the confirmation process for federal judicial nominees. Just recently, he joined hands with Sen. John McCain to tackle the country’s growing health care crisis and has worked across the aisle to strike a better balance between national security and civil liberties.
Some mistakenly believe the solution to right-wing polarization is just more polarization from the left. Salazar’s fellow freshman, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, has argued on the blog, Daily Kos, that such a reaction is precisely what Democrats should avoid:
“According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in ‘appeasing’ the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.
I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.”
Later on in the piece, he posed some questions and made another insightful point:
“How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation's fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist's threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy?..To the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, ‘true’ progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive ‘checklist,’ then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted.
Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won't be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won't go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice.”
In the end, it is quite simple. Prospering at the polls requires two basic ingredients. First and foremost, our party must be about putting the "country first," not focusing on short-term, shortsighted partisan gain. Second, we should not let Republicans trick us into playing the politics of false choices. We do not have to choose between a vigorous economy and a strong safety net, between individual liberty and national security, between social tolerance and moral tradition, between military strength and international cooperation, and so on.
Just ask two of the national Democratic Party’s rising stars.