The Democrats need to get more partisan. I know that runs counter to the conventional wisdom, especially as espoused by Democratic consultants and pundits. The conventional wisdom says that the counter to Republican extremism is for Democrats to move to the middle and co-opt the "moderate" vote. The conventional wisdom is full of shit.
Politics is a tug of war between competing philosophies. Usually one is backwards looking and interesting in preserving what is good about a society, the other is forward looking and interested in changing what is bad. This is true of any political system, except for absolutist systems like Stalin's Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Even in the latter day Soviet Union there were "reformers" in the Politburo, headed by Gorbachev, who were opposed by "hardliners" headed by the heirs to Brezhnev. In a democracy this struggle is all the more open and obvious than in a closed system like the USSR.
When this tug of war works well, there is a controlled change, a gradual movement into the future to adapt to a changing world. When it does not, the political system becomes unbalanced, society becomes maladapted to the world, and an electoral backlash occurs. This backlash happened to Democrats in the early 50s and again in the mid-late 60s. It happened to Republicans in the Hoover administration.
Like our adversarial system of justice, the political system works best when both sides are partisan. Can you imagine what our criminal justice system would be like if the defense attorney adopted a stance midway between the defendant's position and the prosecutor's position? Trying to be non-partisan only works if both sides agree to be non-partisan.
This is an important point. In politics, there must be reciprocity between the sides. If both sides are being non-partisan, that's fine. If both sides are being partisan, that's fine too. The problem comes when one side is partisan and the other side is not.
That is the problem we have our political system today. The Republicans are highly partisan. The Democrats are trying to be non-partisan and to stake out the middle ground. And they honestly don't seem to understand why Democrats keep losing elections as the political landscape keeps shifting to the right. Well, that's what happens in a tug of war when one side pulls and the other side does not.
Now, Democrats aren't stupid. They are looking back to Clinton's success with "triangulation" in the mid-90s and repeatedly trying to recapture that success.
The attempt is doomed to failure. Triangulation works only when the two sides have a healthy struggle going, and there is an impasse. Then there is the chance for a leader to step into the middle ground and break the impasse. Clinton was able to do this, but only after there was a shutdown of government.
There is no impasse now, and yet the Democrats continue to try to triangulate to the middle. In a tug of war this just gets you face down in the mud. It also means that over time, the center moves constantly in your opponents' direction. In politics it also means you are constantly running away from the ideals of your party, demotivating your base, and ultimately coming to look like feckless opportunists.
So this is what we've come to. The Democrats have been chasing the Republicans ever farther to the right across the political landscape. They have been running away from Democratic ideals until most people, including most Democrats, don't think they stand for anything except to put themselves in the best position to get re-elected. This triangulation requires a straw man on the political left to run away from, Joe Klein's "left wing of the Democratic party." The straw man doesn't exist, of course, but you have to have something on the left in opposition to the right, so you can have a center to move to.
What caused this situation is a misunderstanding of what Clinton did. Triangulation worked for Clinton because of a variety of special circumstances. Those circumstances do not exist today.
This misunderstanding has had dire consequences, both for the Democratic Party and for the nation. It has twice cost the Democrats the presidency. It has cost them seats in both houses of congress, and probably control of one or both houses. It has allowed Bush and the Republicans to run amok with the country, turning unprecedented budget surpluses into record deficits, eroding our constitution rights, starting two (and soon to be three) questionable wars, and corrupting the very core of government (and that only scratches the surface).
What Democrats have to do now is to restore the balance between the parties. This starts, not by praying for some future change in the party makeup of Congress, but by Democrats starting to behave like an opposition party.
This will not be easy. The Democrats have allowed themselves to be marginalized and have ceded a lot of ground to the Republicans. The Republicans no longer even take them seriously.
The first thing the Democrats should do is to get partisan, to shut down the government if they have to. Only when they do that will the Republicans begin to take them seriously. Now, Democrats can't just petulantly filibuster everything in sight, and they can't only fight the battles they are sure to win. The former would make them look petty. The latter will neither cause the Republicans to take them seriously nor counter the image that Democrats don't stand for anything.
Democrats need to stake out positions and fight for them, even if they are going to lose. You aren't going to get a bully to stop bullying you if you only fight back against bullies you are sure you can beat. Standing their ground on principles will demonstrate that Democrats stand for something. It will also provide the needed balance against Republican extremism.
For this to work, Democrats will need to hang together as a party. Currently they don't. The Republicans are very good at splitting off enough Democrats on nearly every issue to override a filibuster. "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately," said Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Democrats in Congress are assuredly hanging separately, and the result is government gone mad.
So, come on Democrats. Get rid of the "left wing" straw man. Get rid of the loser consultants. Ignore the Wormtongue pundits. Dig in your heals and get partisan! Our country desperately needs a vigorous opposition party. Our democracy is dying for lack of one.