A few words about the DLC meeting Kos (and the rest of the blogging planet, and the entire press, and the entire GOP machine) referenced yesterday.
I come neither to bury the DLC, nor to praise them. And in truth, I am utterly opinionless on who should get the nomination for the next presidential election -- it's not that I'm uninformed; it's just that I really don't, six months into the current presidential term, give a tinker's damn, and I don't particularly think anyone else should either. In the next few years, I will personally come to support whoever accomplishes the most -- or, given the current climate, anything -- towards actual Democratic objectives. You want to be a leader? Then show me you can lead. It's that simple.
But the DLC has become really quite detested among many Democratic circles -- and by that I mean, by most Democrats not already aligned with the DLC. And I don't think the reasons are terribly complicated, and I know the reasons are nothing that can be solved by a call for cease-fire, rally 'round the flag, etc. The problems are these:
- The more corporate-tailored elements of the DLC agenda are frequently at odds with Democratic "heartland" interests.
- The DLC "framing" of candidates and issues is so forcefully homogenized as to render those candidates and issues politically and morally translucent.
- The DLC has a remarkable track record of losing.
To help make my point, here is, for example, the
WaPo article about the DLC meeting:
COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 25 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) called Monday for a cease-fire among warring factions of the Democratic Party, arguing that a united front is needed to reverse the party's recent electoral defeats and halt the advance of conservative Republican ideology. [...]
All the prospective candidates emphasized that opposition to President Bush's policies alone will not put the Democrats back in the White House, but it was Clinton who forcefully argued that the Democrats no longer can afford internal strife and must bridge long-standing divisions to regain power.
Being a dedicated and loyal fan of irony, let me note that most of the big articles were written according to the standard script. Democratic call for unity; warning that anti-Republicanism alone wasn't enough; to wit, a host of quotes from the most prominent '08 contenders; towards the end of the article, call up some GOP figure to get the standard talking points "reacting" to the meeting in order to give the article "balance". Fine, whatever. I read four nearly identical stories from the big news outlets before retiring to watch some paint dry. It was probably Democratic paint, if that makes a difference.
Naturally, the calls for being more than anti-Republicanism were reported alongside, primarily, arguments against Republicanism. The calls for new frames and new ideas were lofty, and completely devoid of any actual new frames or ideas. There was a lot about the assurances that next election was going to be different -- that next election, the Democrats were going to have bold new policies in sparkly new frames. What wasn't in any of those articles, to my eyes, was Democratic leaders describing those new policies themselves.
If you both noticed that and know the obvious reasons for it -- both from the media that writes the stories, and the Democratic leadership that craves them -- congratulations. You know politics, as practiced by the DLC. All frame; no picture.
My grievances with the DLC wing of the Democratic party have little to do with policy (aside from their infuriatingly self-serving corporatist-lite preenings, of course), and more to do with the fundamental fact that everything they've touched, since the Chosen One from Arkansas, has turned to crap. They've gone through the last three election cycles dispensing advice that has been poisonous to those who accept it. That, in a nutshell, isn't a record that inspires loyalty. (At this point, I'd like to say that in any other industry, you'd have been fired long ago for such spectacular failure, but I think anyone familiar with corporate America would guffaw loudly at that. So let's just say it's time for a "reorganization".)
Name an issue in which the Democratic leadership -- any of it -- has currently made a significant impact in moving the story forward or even denting Republican efforts. Any story. Downing Street? Rove, and PlameGate? DeLay-Abramoff-Reed corruption links? Have any significant stories been propelled into the media with DLC-style Democratic leadership assistance, or have they happened in a media largely unencumbered with these remarkably shy and hard-to-pin-down "centrist" Democratic voices?
All right, you may be saying -- they are incapable of putting any meaningful pressure on the growing, shocking levels of GOP corruption and abuse. So are they getting important Democratic policies, if not enacted, at least publicly discussed? Are they providing clear, viable alternatives to the GOP, through "new ideas" and "reform"? What about the recent firestorm raging in some of the unions most friendly to the Democratic cause -- unions that have been essential in providing the kind of worker advocacy that partners well with Democratic values. What did the Democratic leadership do to involve themselves in a working-class issue with such obvious possible ramifications for the party?
OK then, let's talk about new advocacy. The advancement of these "new themes" we keep hearing about. How is the Democratic leadership and the DLC doing in promoting that broad new agenda?
Well, take a look at the 350+ or so articles on the DLC conference currently on Google, and you tell me. But I don't see a damn thing there.
Merely being historically ineffective is one thing, however. Of more concern is the apparent lesson that DLC figures have learned from modern, GOP-dominated politics. The lesson they have (perhaps rightly) learned is that style trumps substance. Their error is in presuming that style can be genericized down to a least-common-denominator, least-possible-information approach. It can, so long as new issues never come up, new candidates never emerge, and new counterattacks are never mounted. But real-world campaigns don't happen like that, and so their advice results in promising but ponderous campaigns continually sunk by even piddlingly effective countermeasures.
What we see, in both the DLC and among other Democratic pundits and strategists, is a modern Democratic leadership so focused on triangulation and exposition, so obsessed with precise and intentionally puddle-shallow framing, that it is categorically unable to react to the changing circumstances of actual campaigns, much less of leadership. Whether it be the presidential bids of Kerry or Gore, the stream of scandals coming from the GOP, the Iraq War, the blistering legislative and polemical Republican attacks on the seventy percent of America that does not represent their hardcore base, or the seemingly unstoppable mudslide of corporatist giveaways and right-wing sops flowing in an unbroken stream down the steps of Capitol Hill, what is remarkable about "centrist" Democratic leadership in the last dozen years is that it is so precisely tuned not to offend, not to divide, and not to enlighten that it lacks any compelling message whatsoever. The goal of the DLC is nearly uniformly defensive, never offensive. It is geared towards the politics of framing, not to the politics of issues, and to avoid any possible circumstance in which someone might take offense. And, for that reason, it is newsless, valueless, imageless, and ultimately ignorable by the voters.
It would be hilarious, if the damage was not so overwhelming. In the middle of one of the most ferocious political naval battles in memory, the DLC is driving a veritable oil tanker of triangulation and framing through our political landscape, and lo and behold, they can't turn the damn thing to save their lives. And so we have Vietnam-era heros like Kerry being sunk by Swift Boats; one of possibly the most intellectual presidential candidates in some time, Gore, taken down by fabricated quotes about "inventing" the Internet; Max Cleland being mocked as an appeaser of America's enemies.
If the Republican attack that Democrats "don't stand for anything" sticks among voters -- and I think, empirically, it does -- it is precisely because of this constant, micromanaged triangulation that the DLC encourages, tutors, and worships. Show me a DLC-fostered candidate, and I'll show you someone who, four times out of five, is awkwardly stumbling away from the very speeches, ideology, and policies that made them successful figures in the first place in a stagecrafted attempt to find a midpoint of American politics defined not by a right-left, liberal-conservative axis, but upon a milquetoast blandness carefully calibrated to neither offend, nor inform, the voters.
Style may triumph over substance, but an empty frame doesn't count as style. Bend the conversation to meet the strengths of your candidate -- don't bend your candidate to be opaque in the face of all possible conversations. The DLC considers campaigning to have a one-size-fits-all, generic "winning" approach, based on giving the same words and values to a stream of individual candidates. They're wrong, and it's costing Democrats elections.
Update [2005-7-27 20:11:22 by Hunter]: Also see here.