One more ‘One more for the road’

With Bush getting a victory round in the newspapers today, I thought it might be appropriate to launch into one more round of punditry about what the Democrats need to do to rebound from this. A lot of people are talking about this issue of morality -- that Dems haven’t managed to capture ‘moral issues’ or put things in a moral perspective, and that’s true. But right now, a lot of the moral issues are ones Republicans have pushed, and they’ve done a great job of defining ‘mainstream America’ as a bloc of voters who are opposed to gay marriage and abortion and stem cell research, and it’s hard for Democrats to not look at each other and say, “I don’t want to break bread with those people.”

This moral righteousness has been brilliantly conceived by conservatives, because it frames the issue in a heartland-vs-urban dispute. It strokes the values of small-town America, where (I assume) people care deeply about ‘family values,’ while not necessarily capturing -- but more importantly, not really bothering -- urban people who don't so much care about it. The Republicans have been extremely smart in essentially defining what America's morals are, and then being able to claim that they stand for them.

It's kind of the same exercise that MTV or Clear Channel goes through: it plays a select few songs over and over, until it has monopolized what its listeners are familiar with, and then claims to give listeners the songs they want to hear. Their claim might be true, but they conveniently were the ones that defined what their listeners wanted to hear. Very smart.

And in my gut, I don't want to share an agenda with people who vote against gay marriage. I don't want my politicians using religious rhetoric to court voters. I don't want to rally next to people whose primary interest is buying assault weapons. But here's where I think the difference is: while I don't want that, neither did a lot of Bush voters.

Consider the orthodox Jewish voters who sided with Bush because they believe -- wrongly, I think -- that he's better for Israel. And while we could debate the interests of these individual voters, the point is this: not everyone who voted for Bush believes in his full agenda. That's true for any candidate. And that means voters who might be defined by one agenda -- say, the god-n-guns folks -- don't necessarily have to be courted that way. A new idea can grab them. A new agenda can grab them. The Democrats, however, have not offered anything new in eight years.

This, I think, is the real failing of the Democratic party: it is stuck discussing the Republican agenda, instead of creating its own. Just look at the language: Bush had last introduced the word “evil” it to the national vocabulary -- in fact, he was talking that way when he was governor – and suddenly everyone is talking like we’re in a comic book. Same goes with "activist judges," a term Karl Rove popularized, and Democrats now use that phrase as well. It's Foucaultian -- the one who controls the language has all the power -- and I have to assume it's a conscious move from the Republicans. They're getting the votes because they're the only ones offering ideas; the Democrats only offer reaction.

Kerry was as guilty of this as anybody. Did he raise a new campaign issue? No. In fact, he barely spent time during the debates talking about his own agenda on old-hat issues like health care and the national security. Sure, going on the offense can be effective, but he offered no new ideas. There was not a single thing the Democrats showed to voters and said, "This is something you'll only find in our party." And until the Democrats can start producing ideas, and therefore control the dialog, voters see no reason to side with them.

Consider those issues: in discussions about the economy, Kerry hammered Bush on job losses, but Bush did a better job of tying tax cuts into any discussion of jobs -- so much so that Kerry talked about tax cuts every time HE talked about jobs. In fact, tax cuts -- Bush's tax cuts -- were the dominant portion of Kerry's jobs plan. The only difference, it seemed, was that Kerry didn't mind dumping on the rich, and that might have actually hurt him. The gamble, of course, is that there are less rich people than middle class, so it's ok to alienate the wealthy. But look to south Florida, where there are a lot of wealthy liberals, and this suddenly doesn't look so good. My parents live there, and know people that voted for Bush because Kerry wanted to take their tax cuts away.

The other part of Kerry's jobs plan was to stop the exportation of jobs, but he did a poor job of presenting it. "Tax benefits" are so vague and overused that I don't think it convinced anybody. Maybe you could call this issue something Dems raised, but I don't think so. It's a trend they reacted to in the hopes of hurting Bush, but their total lack of legit proposals to stop it -- perhaps because it simply can't be stopped – make it something they couldn't actually claim as their own.

The war in Iraq and the “war on terror” (I put that in quotes because, you might remember, this is also a term Bush introduced) are obviously a bit difficult to avoid, even though they’re technically Republican-introduced issues. And yes, Kerry was clear about his intentions to bring more countries on board, and Bush kept saying "What about Poland? You forgot Poland." But I don't think this is really an idea the Dems came up with. Bush originally attempted to get more countries involved, failed, and then went on with his invasion anyway. All Kerry was really saying is, "I'll do what Bush couldn't do." That's not a new idea; it's a response.

Kerry might have been aggressive on healthcare, but Bush pushed really hard for the Medicare reform just before the election, so that he could use it at his touchstone argument. I think he was well prepared to be proactive about this.

Perhaps the Dems can take some claim to advocating for Canadian drug imports, but again, I'd disagree. That's not something they pulled out of the ether. It was happening, and both parties had to respond. The Dems, because they're not as big-business-friendly as the Republicans, were able to take the more popular side, but I think voters knew there's a big difference between advocating for drug importation and actually convincing Canadian pharmacies and their drug suppliers to go along with it.

Education? Kerry tried to hammer Bush’s No Child Left Behind, but the only thing he really had to add was that it's underfunded. That’s not news to anybody. He had no new idea, and no new direction. Environment? Well, until the Atlantic Ocean starts creeping into Times Square because of global warming, American voters will never base a campaign on the environment, and both parties know it. As much as I wish we could be Europe, we're not.

What the Democrats need is an extremely strong and cogent think tank structure, which creates an agenda and then directs its politicians to come out so strongly with it that Republicans are forced to talk about it so much that it distracts them, and the public, from a conservative agenda. Do that enough times, and you shift the dialog back to the Democrats. Until then, though, the Dems are here just to weakly balance power, not to compete for it.

But there’s a note of optimism here, so that I’m not just wasting space dumping on the losing party. There already is a group of well-funded Democrats putting together this kind of think tank structure, and the New York Times Magazine did a great profile on it this summer. It also offers a modicum of hope: it said that the best thing for the Democratic party might be if Kerry loses, because a Kerry win could have sapped the motivation from these people who are embarking upon a project that could take decades. Don’t forget, the Republicans are so strong because they spent 20 years planning this. The Democrats are still playing the old style of politics, and the Republicans, by their own design, are changing the rules.

Anyway, here’s a quote from the article. After this, I hang up my punditry hat, at least for today.

Millionaire Democrats are being driven to act by a perception of powerlessness and deterioration. If Kerry wins, some of the passion will likely drain away, and a lot of Democrats will tell themselves – like gambling addicts after a hot streak at the blackjack table – that everything is just fine and that, despite the statistics and the polling, the party remains as vibrant as ever. Raising $100 million for a bunch of think tanks might no longer be so easy.

Posted by Jason Feifer at November 4, 2004 10:43 AM