New Democrat Update - November 2004
The following commentaries are from the November 4 and 5 editions of the New Dem Daily. Next month, the Update will provide a post-election analysis of how and why Democrats bucked the national trend and did so well here in Colorado.
WHAT HAPPENED?
In the aftermath of the 2004 elections, Democrats should be proud of the united effort they and their candidates made. But we have to face facts: We got our clocks cleaned up and down the ballot. This is no time for finger pointing and recriminations, but it is time for some honest discussion about the outcome and its significance.
We have no easy excuses for this defeat. Democrats had a smart, tough candidate at the top of the ticket, and superior candidates all across the country. We had plenty of money, the best organization of our lifetimes, extraordinary enthusiasm, and greater unity than at any time in living memory. Democrats faced a vulnerable incumbent with a bad record who deliberately abandoned the political center, and whose case for a second term was constantly undermined by the consequences of his failures as displayed on the nightly news. And his party produced a do-nothing Congress with no accomplishments worth running on. Ralph Nader was an electoral cipher. It's hard to ignore the basic problem: We didn't effectively make the case for firing the incumbents and replacing them with Democrats.
As a result, Republicans for the second straight cycle won a majority of the popular vote; made gains in both Houses of Congress; and increased their grip on a vast swath of heartland states.
The slow but significant erosion of Democratic support in recent years is a collective responsibility for all Democrats, us included. It will not be reversed by any simple, mechanical move to the "left" or the "right;" by any new infusion of cash or grassroots organizing; by any reshuffling of party institutions or their leadership; or by any magically charismatic candidates. That's why engaging in any "struggle for the soul of the party," or any assignment of blame, is such a waste of time. But that's also why Democrats must take the defeat seriously, and pursue a strategy for revival and reform. The dynamics of this campaign have confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Democrats suffer from three persistent "trust gaps" in our message.
The first "trust gap" was on national security, which became a crucial issue after 9/11, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Kerry tried very hard to close this gap, and refused to accept the advice of those who suggested he simply concede the issue to Bush (which would have expanded the gap to catastrophic dimensions). But while he convinced Americans we would be smarter on national security, he could not overcome the party's reputation for being weaker, and that was a deal-breaker for many voters who didn't want to take any chances with their security. In other words, Bush didn't pay the ultimate price for his foreign policy failures because we couldn't put to rest doubts about Democrats.
The second obvious problem for Democrats was a "reform gap." Having lost control of every nook and cranny of the federal government during the last two elections, Democrats were perfectly positioned to run as bold, outsider, insurgent reformers determined to change Washington, and the public was ready to embrace such a message and agenda. While Democrats did made a strong negative case against Bush, we never conveyed a positive agenda for reform. Indeed, Democrats often reinforced the idea that the GOP was the "reform" party by trying to scare voters about every bad or deceptive Republican idea for changing government programs, instead of offering our own alternatives for reform. In the end, we relied on mobilizing voters who were hostile to Bush instead of persuading voters who were ambivalent about both parties, and about government. Since Republicans did have a simple, understandable message, it was an uneven contest: message plus mobilization will beat mobilization alone every time.
The third "trust gap" that hurt Democrats was another hardy perennial: values and culture. And here the evidence of a Democratic handicap is overwhelming. As every exit poll has shown, "moral values" was the number one concern of voters on November 2 -- more than terrorism, Iraq, the economy, health care, education, or anything else. And among voters citing "moral values" as their top concern, Democrats got clobbered.
Overcoming the cultural trust gap is not just a matter of carefully calibrating positions on specific issues like guns, abortion, or this year's big wedge issue, gay marriage. Indeed, John Kerry did not repeat Al Gore's mistake of leading with his chin on such issues. The problem is that many millions of voters simply do not believe that Democrats take their cultural fears and resentments seriously, and that Republicans do.
As in so many recent elections, some Democrats believed they could trump the cultural concerns of middle-class families through economic appeals, asking voters to look to their pocket-books rather than their hearts when entering the polling place. If there was ever an election where this should have worked, it was this one, and it didn't.
If, as the DLC has long argued, the test for Democrats is to convince voters that they will defend their country, share their values, and champion their economic interests, it's pretty clear Democrats continue to come up short on the first two tests even as they pass the third with flying colors.
As a look at the electoral map and the Congressional results shows, there is a geographical challenge closely associated with the "trust gap" challenge: We need a heartland strategy to go with a positive message that reaches the heart as well as the wallet. In presidential contests, we begin each campaign at a disadvantage because our strength is limited to the Northeast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest, where our candidates must win nearly every winnable state. And more obviously, Democrats will be consigned to a permanent minority in the Senate, in the states, and -- because states control redistricting -- in the House as well, if we cannot find a way to become competitive in some parts of the South and the West. That's why we should not take too much solace in the narrowness of Bush's victory in the national popular and electoral vote. National politics is not just about the presidency.
All of these challenges are manageable if Democrats take them seriously and honestly. They add up to the urgent need for a party strategy and message that's strategic, not tactical; that conveys a comprehensive message, not just targeted appeals to narrow constituencies; that's national, not regional; and that's based on ideas and hope, not just on opposition and anger.
There will be a powerful temptation for Democrats to simply go to the mattresses, fight Republicans tooth and nail, and hope for a big midterm sweep in 2006. That would be a mistake, just as it was a mistake to believe that Bush's weakness would be enough to produce a victory in 2004. It's time for Democrats to clearly stand for values, principles, and ideas that will earn us the opportunity to become the majority party of the future.
A REFORM INSURGENCY
In words immortalized by Janis Joplin, the political philosopher Kris Kristoffersen once acutely observed: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Flip that observation around, and you can see the opportunity Democrats now have to recapture the political momentum.
In Washington, Democrats lost the presidency in 2000 and the Congress in 2002. This week's election confirmed both those losses. But they have given Democrats a new freedom from all the political constraints of Washington incumbency that for so long kept us from speaking clearly about our values and ideas, while reinforcing Republican claims that we are addicted to the power of big government.
It's time to use that freedom. Republicans are now responsible for all the policy failures and special interest dominated procedures of the most powerful central government this side of Beijing. Surveys consistently show that roughly a third of Americans don't know which party controls Congress. How often did you hear Democrats talk about one-party domination of Washington during the last campaign? Not remotely as often, we'd bet, as you heard Republicans, from the president on down, talk about Democrats as the big-government party. That needs to change right away. We need to stop acting like a "shadow government" that's just patiently waiting for the opportunity to get back into power and return to business-as-usual. Washington needs fixing, on a very basic level, and Democrats need to become not an impotent minority party with no agenda other than obstructing the worst excesses of a newly emboldened GOP, but a positive insurgency committed to a whole host of reforms. Here are some of the reforms we will be talking about in much greater detail in the days ahead:
Political Reform. Our political system is bruised and perhaps broken, leading to campaigns that are expensive, negative, intensely partisan, full of dirty tricks, and tilted for no good reason to a handful of "battlegrounds." We need to champion election reform to ensure a reasonably uniform set of rules for how Americans register, vote, and have their votes counted. We need redistricting reform to avoid the growing phenomenon, in both the U.S. House and many state legislatures, of politicians choosing voters rather than voters choosing politicians. We need open primaries to enfranchise independents and break the grip of organized special interests on the nominating process and the parties.
And yes, we need another and more effective round of campaign finance reform and ethics reform to break the toxic cycle that lets people like Tom DeLay hustle lobbyists for campaign cash and even jobs for Republicans in exchange for access to the legislative process. While we can disagree on the details, there is no principled reason for Democrats to oppose any of these reforms, since Republicans will always have an advantage in a system that puts a premium on the ruthless exercise of institutional and financial power.
Budget Reform. As nearly every Democrat on the campaign trail said this year, Republicans have deliberately created a fiscal train wreck that threatens economic growth while damaging the ability of the federal government to meet critical national challenges.
It's time for Democrats to aggressively champion budget reforms, including a restoration of budget controls like spending caps and pay-as-you-go. But Democrats should go further and demand an assault on corporate welfare in the tax code and federal programs; a ban on "earmarks" in spending bills that let Members send pork back home; a crackdown on or even an abolition of the power of appropriations committees; and other dramatic steps. This is not just a matter of "good government"; these reforms go to the heart of the fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.
Tax Reform. Americans hate the complexity of the federal tax system, and Republicans are certain to continue their bait-and-switch strategy of exploiting this sentiment to propose an elimination of progressive taxation and a shift in the tax burden from income earned by wealth to income earned by work. Democrats should champion their own tax reform agenda, not only resisting regressive Republican proposals and opposing further efforts to increase the deficit through tax cuts, but also calling for the consolidation of tax breaks for middle-class families into four broad areas: retirement savings, college costs, incentives for homeownership, and support for families.
Social Insurance Reform. With the baby boom retirement on the horizon, the nation is headed toward a jarring collision between generations. Because Social Security and Medicare costs are programmed to grow automatically -- at a time when Bush's fiscal policies have all but bankrupted the government -- the boomers' retirement will put a python-like squeeze on programs for today's working families and children, and indeed everything else government does. Democrats must reject Bush's phony privatization panacea, but they need more than a "Just Say No" approach to Social Security and entitlement reform in general. Democrats need to develop progressive plans to modernize our social insurance system so that they can defend the living standards of today's workers while honoring our commitment to tomorrow's retirees. At stake is not simply the solvency of our retirement system and our federal government, but the interests and political loyalties of millions of younger middle-class voters who increasingly believe their current earnings and their own retirement security will be sacrificed to keep the old system going for a few more decades.
This kind of "reform insurgency" agenda would help decisively recast Democrats as a party of progressive change and national purpose rather than as a status quo party wedded to old programs and listening only to organized special interests and narrowly targeted constituencies. And it would help Democrats recapture the ability to speak to the country in terms of their vision, their values, and their broad goals, instead of the Washington code language of programs.
This last point is especially important because Republicans in Congress can be expected to frame every debate and every vote in a way that casts Democrats as obstructionists with no ideas of their own. Precisely because Democrats, especially in the Senate, may be forced to use the limited prerogatives of the minority to stop right-wing outrages, they need a positive message that reaches beyond the Beltway to the vast majority of Americans who don't understand or care about the partisan maneuvering on Capitol Hill. Moreover, a clear, values-based message would be invaluable in reducing the "culture gap" that reflects the persistent fear that Democrats live in a different moral universe than the middle-class voters whose interests we claim to champion.
It's even possible that a reform agenda could produce unexpected alliances with those Republicans -- including moderates marginalized by the conservative ascendancy in the GOP, and "deficit hawks" who are increasingly alarmed by the abandonment of the age-old Republican commitment to fiscal responsibility -- who no longer believe that party loyalty demands pretending that everything's peachy in Washington.
But whether or not it produces legislative victories in Congress, we believe Democrats need to embrace the "outsider" status to which they have been consigned, and treat it as an opportunity to get on the offensive again as true progressives.