New Democrat Update - December 2008
CHANCE OF A LIFETIME
Here in Colorado and across the country, President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats experienced a historic victory last month. The question now before our party is why the results were so decisive.
The election returns and exit polls clearly reveal that the current debate over whether the country is center-right or center-left misses the point. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page put it best last month, "We're a pendulum nation. History shows that we swing right, then left, then right again. We swung to the right when Democrats lost touch with Middle America. We swung to the left when too many Republicans got too full of themselves." If Democrats internalize that basic premise and practice a new kind of postpartisan politics, this era of rapid party-changing turnover could be ended.
New York Times Magazine writer Matt Bai and author of a must-read book for Democrats, "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics," recently provided an apt description of American politics for the last sixteen years. Democrats would be wise to remember "The real trend line in our politics - from Ross Perot and Bill Clinton in 1992 to Obama this year - speaks not to any change in governing philosophy but to a growing frustration with incumbency and dogma, a sense that both parties are more concerned with perpetuating their own power than they are with adapting government to a fast-changing world. Voters aren't really identifying more closely with one party or another when they periodically revolt; they are simply defining themselves against whoever happens to be in charge at the moment."
The pattern of the last four electoral cycles has been almost like clockwork. The incumbent party overreaches and/or performs poorly, the opposition campaigns on those major themes and the party in power is thrown out. In the fast-paced world of the Information Age, so-called political realignments can have a short shelf life.
Primarily, this election was a wholesale rejection of the policies of George W. Bush and the Republican brand. The standard GOP playbook to attack Democratic opponents - too liberal, increased taxes, income redistribution - easily trumped the concerns of voters who were much more worried about Sen. John McCain continuing Bush's disastrous policies.
Importantly, the decisiveness of Obama's victory did not result from the country shifting in a new ideological direction. One survey taken at the start of October concluded that "76 percent of respondents believe that lower taxes and smaller government are preferable to higher taxes and larger government," demonstrating little demand for a return to traditional Democratic policies.
The attitudes of voters about the role of the public sector has remained very stable for decades, wanting a little more government in tough times and a little less when voters are feeling more optimistic. For example, in 2008, the liberal-moderate-conservative split was 22 percent, 44 percent and 34 percent. Four years earlier, it was 21, 45, and 34.
Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut, arguably America's top pollster, emphasized in the Washington Post, "There's no indication that ideology drove this election. It was driven by discontent with the status quo." On PBS' Newshour, he continued, "This was an election where the middle asserted itself. There was ‘no sign’ of a ‘movement to the left.’ " As Bai indicates in the article mentioned above, "Obama's entire campaign was based on the rather amorphous idea of ‘change' and postpartisan ideals, on an indictment of the two-party status quo, more than on any ideological argument about the role of government."
That meta-message, combined with Bush's abysmal failures, is why moderates proved to be a decisive factor between 2004 and 2008. Obama won them by nearly 2 to 1, a 21-point advantage; Senator John Kerry's edge was 9 points. That shift, in and of itself, accounts for almost all of the difference between Obama's and Kerry's overall margins.
For years, the number of moderate voters has proven to be large enough to make the difference in elections, regardless of how hyper-partisan some Democrats and Republicans may be at a given point. Having no "brand loyalty," these independent voters seek unifying and issue-oriented candidates who advocate pragmatic solutions to the problems that matter to them. They despise gridlock and are very suspicious of ideologically-driven elected officials who overreach either left or right. Swing voters also hate it when the majority party comes across as power-hungry and poised to take undue advantage of the other side.
Voter volatility among moderates - as well as with many "weak" Democrats and Republicans - is very real. Despite Obama's relatively stable lead for a sizable part of the campaign, much of the electorate was continually shifting its support between the two candidates. According to a series of 10 Associated Press-Yahoo polls taken between November 2007 and Election Day, 17 percent of Obama voters expressed support for McCain at least once. Eleven percent of those who voted for McCain preferred Obama at least one time.
Just under 30 percent of those who ultimately voted for both Obama and McCain stuck with the final candidate all 10 times. Political party loyalty was even more fickle. Only 46 percent of Democrats - and the same percentage for Republicans - stayed with their parties in each of the 10 polls. In other words, a mere 40 percent of McCain voters - again roughly the same number for Obama supporters - self-identified with the party of their candidate every time.
LESSONS FROM THE WEST
President-elect Obama's current challenges are strikingly similar to those here in Colorado the last few years. Just as Washington is experiencing now, a fresh face in 2006 took over as the chief executive of Colorado, with a legislative branch that had been controlled by his own party for the prior two years.
Essential to successful governing is understanding why one was victorious in the first place. The coalition that elected Obama is very much like the one that elected Governor Bill Ritter - a more metropolitan, a more racially diverse and better educated electorate that has rejected Bush Republicanism and is now seeking political leadership focused on solving big problems without an undue allegiance to either the hard right or left.
With that kind of coalition, Democrats should not make our version of the mistake Karl Rove did in 2005, falsely believing that President Bush's razor-thin victory was the beginning of a long-term enduring Republican majority. If our style of governing and solutions looks like more of the same and results in the old, tired polarized battles, Democrats could soon find themselves where Bush and Republicans were in 2005 and 2006 - clearly the ones in power and intensely out of favor with the American people.
Thus, the right governing strategy is pushing and implementing bold solutions without the polarizing politics. Democrats should not fall into the trap that being bold translates into "going left." In fact, the focus of our messages and proposals must not be on whether they are left, right or center. Rather, voters, especially swing and independent ones, will judge us on what worked and what did not work.
Just as important, many of our supporters may be of a moderate persuasion but it would be a serious mistake to conclude that means they are looking for leaders who embrace slow incrementalism with small-bore initiatives and endless “blue ribbon” commissions. Quite to the contrary, the exit polls strongly indicate that voters want big, bold and innovative 21st century solutions to some of our toughest challenges - for example, the economic crisis, health care and education.
The way forward is to take the lead of many Western Democrats, along the lines of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, U.S. Senator Ken Salazar and State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, to name three. They push reformist ideas, rooted in mainstream values, embrace an entrepreneurial, business-friendly agenda and reach across the political spectrum.
The American people and Coloradans are giving Democrats a historic chance to govern. Our party will be judged by the results of our choices.
If Democrats take this historic opportunity, implement solutions that work, and motivate Americans to rally around a common purpose, a long-term progressive majority coalition could well dominate our politics for the next generation in Colorado, as well as the nation.