Report Warns Democrats Not to Tilt Too Far Left
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005; A07
The liberals' hope that Democrats can win back the presidency by drawing sharp ideological contrasts and energizing the partisan base is a fantasy that could cripple the party's efforts to return to power, according to a new study by two prominent Democratic analysts.
In the latest shot in a long-running war over the party's direction -- an argument turned more passionate after Democrat John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush last year -- two intellectuals who have been aligned with former president Bill Clinton warn that the only way back to victory is down the center.
Democrats must "admit that they cannot simply grow themselves out of their electoral dilemmas," wrote William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck, in a report released yesterday. "The groups that were supposed to cons ute the new Democratic majority in 2004 simply failed to materialize in sufficient number to overcome the right-center coalition of the Republican Party."
Since Kerry's defeat, some Democrats have urged that the party adopt a political strategy more like one pursued by Bush and his senior adviser, Karl Rove -- which emphasized robust turnout of the party base rather than relentless, Clinton-style tending to "swing voters."
But Galston and Kamarck, both of whom served in the Clinton White House, said there are simply not enough left-leaning voters to make this a workable strategy. In one of their more potentially controversial findings, the authors argue that the rising numbers and influence of well-educated, socially liberal voters in the Democratic Party are pulling the party further from most Americans.
On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now cons ute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill."
Galston and Kamarck -- whose work was sponsored by Third Way, a group working with Senate Democrats on centrist policy ideas -- are critical of three other core liberal arguments:
· They warn against overreliance on a strategy of solving political problems by "reframing" the language by which they present their ideas, as advocated by linguist George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley: "The best rhetoric will fail if the public rejects the substance of a candidate's agenda or entertains doubts about his integrity."
· They say liberals who count on rising numbers of Hispanic voters fail to recognize the growing strength of the GOP among Hispanics, as well as the growing weakness of Democrats with white Catholics and married women.
· They contend that Democrats who hope the party's relative advantages on health care and education can vault them back to power "fail the test of political reality in the post-9/11 world." Security issues have become "threshold" questions for many voters, and cultural issues have become "a prism of candidates' individual character and family life," Galston and Kamarck argue.
Their basic thesis is that the number of solidly conservative Republican voters is substantially larger that the reliably Democratic liberal voter base. To win, the argument goes, Democrats must make much larger inroads among moderates than the GOP.
Galston, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, and Kamarck, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, in 1989 wrote the influential paper, "The Politics of Evasion," which helped set the stage for Clinton's presidential bid and the prominent role of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. In some ways, the report released yesterday showed how difficult the debate is to resolve.
Their recommendations are much less specific than their detailed analysis of the difficulties facing the Democratic Party.
They suggest that Democratic presidential candidates replicate Clinton's tactics in 1992, when he broke with the party's liberal base by approving the execution of a semi-re ed prisoner, by challenging liberal icon Jesse L. Jackson and by calling for an end to welfare "as we know it."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...601645_pf.html
The Dems are pretty ed up, no doubt, and most of them know it.
But for now, the Repubs are are totally ing up the country while stuffing their pockets.
Which is worse? The Dems responsible for being ed up as a party or the Repubs responsible for up- ing the country?
As long as the cultural left alienates the Democratic Party from mainstream America, the Republicans will have no accountability because the Democrats simply will be unable to win.
The left needs a strong dose of pragmatism. Right now, they lie prostrate in the thrall of pie-in-the-sky socialist activism. Meanwhile, the corporatist Republicans show no qualms about extending the middle finger on what now seems like an hourly basis to their core supporters.
I believe that populism is the avenue the Dems will have to take to return to power, but that requires a move away from the hot-button cultural issues and litmus tests, and I'm not sure the party has the leeway to do that.
Allow me to be the first to say "Duh."the only way back to victory is down the center.
I've been saying it for some time now that the democratic party needs to get back to what true democrats believe and we will do it!!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!
Yeah, being a Centrist isn't enough because, well, if even a war hero can be smeared by the right-wing echo chamber, what chance does any other Democratic Senator, or Governor have against such odds, especially if they are from the NE? The ideal Democratic candidate would come from a Southern State, like Clinton be pro-business, and a social liberal or what I like to call a populist to defeat the right-wing noise machine.
Right now, I'm liking the way Wesley Clark is looking.
The brilliance of the Clinton campaigns, aside from their laser-focus in 1992 on George Bush's economic woes, was the ability to at least make people perceive that the candidate was centrist/moderate/populist. Even if you would be inclined to argue that Clinton is/was a far-to-the-left liberal, the perception never got that far. Clinton won not only because he was portrayed as a centrist, but also because he was able to convey a message that included specific goals and methods to achieve those goals. Clinton was likeable because he never really left himself open for ridicule based on hollow, figurative rhetoric.
The Kerry campaign in 2004 and even the Gore campaign in 2000 tried to stay centrist, but in the end got away from the principles that served Clinton so well -- both Kerry and Gore talked in vague terms about ambiguous plans that nobody could really get a handle on. [Kerry's mantra in 2004, seemingly, was "I have a plan, but I'm not going to tell you what it is; suffice to say, it's a good plan." Most people didn't understand Gore's lockbox metaphor, and Gore needed something more solid to overcome the moral backlash for the Clinton persecutions] If the Democrats want to win in 2008, they must run a centrist campaign and they must focus on specific means to accomplish specific goals and do so in a manner that people can understand. Democrats need to spend less time talking down the Republicans and more time talking themselves up.
I would agree with dan, though, that a southern or midwestern Democrat who can stay true to those objectives and campaign in a lucid fashion would have a very good chance to win the White House.
Let's not forget probably the most important difference between the Clinton victories and the Gore/Kerry losses: Ross Perot.
The further the current Republican leadership moves from conservatives, the more likely it is that a strong Independant Conservative candidate could attract votes away from the next Republican candidate.
Here is an excellent article debunking Democratic centrism from The Nation
Debunking 'Centrism'
David Sirota
Looking out over Washington, DC, from his plush office, Al From is once again foaming at the mouth. The CEO of the corporate-sponsored Democratic Leadership Council and his wealthy cronies are in their regular postelection attack mode. Despite wins by economic populists in red states like Colorado and Montana this year, the DLC is claiming like a broken record that progressive policies are hurting the Democratic Party.
From's group is funded by huge contributions from multinationals like Philip Morris, Texaco, Enron and Merck, which have all, at one point or another, slathered the DLC with cash. Those resources have been used to push a nakedly corporate agenda under the guise of "centrism" while allowing the DLC to parrot GOP criticism of populist Democrats as far-left extremists. Worse, the mainstream media follow suit, characterizing progressive positions on everything from trade to healthcare to taxes as ultra-liberal. As the AP recently claimed, "party liberals argue that the party must energize its base by moving to the left" while "the DLC and other centrist groups argue that the party must court moderates and find a way to compete in the Midwest and South."
Holy Crap. If Wes Clark is looking good to you Dan or anyone with half a brain this country deserves to go to .
Wes Clark = The Clinton's General
Wes won't get the nomination. It is Hillary's to accept or reject.
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