In
his opening post on Democratic core values, kos writes:
Republican core values are: smaller government, lower taxes, family values, and a strong national defense. We can argue about the GOP's allegiance to those values, but fact is, that branding has been extremely effective. And those are values that play everywhere. "Family values" doesn't have to mean "I hate gays". It could technically mean "Family Leave Act". Many voters have no clue what particular issues those Republican values actually stand for.
I think this description of the GOP and their "core values" is exactly right.
But this immediately raises a question that kos's long discussion of Democratic core values begs: need core values be anything more than marketing? Is this a conversation about beliefs or about slogans? And do these need to be the same thing in a "reality-based" party?
I should say, as I always do when discussing Democratic Party issues, that I'm a Green, and I'm just kibbitzing. My party starts with
Ten Key Values (often abbreviated among Greens as the 10KVs). These are the very basis of what it means to be a Green. So our core values are set, and discussions tend to be about how we embody these values:
- Grassroots Democracy
- Social Justice and Equal Opportunity
- Ecological Wisdom
- Non-violence
- Decentralization
- Community-Based Economics and Economic Justice
- Feminism and Gender Equity
- Respect for Diversity
- Personal and Global Responsibility
- Future Focus and Sustainability
Now, for Greens the 10KV are what we're about. These are core values in the fullest sense. But that doesn't have to be the case. The Greens are, at their basis, a much more ideological party than either the Democrats or the GOP (though the latter is plenty ideological these days). Both the Dems and the GOP have, over the years, embodied a series of ideological coalitions, some broader than others.
I raise these issues because I notice that Democrats often slip too easily between addressing questions of what the party should stand for, and addressing questions about how it should package itself (or "frame" the issues, in current Lakoffian terminology). I firmly believe that both are important. But I often fear that Democrats -- particularly progressive Democrats -- talk about framing as a way of avoiding dealing with the very realand significant differences of belief within the Democratic Party. Framing is important, but it's not a substitute for truly addressing what the party stands for. And needless to say, the two issues, though separate, are related. While kos is entirely correct that the (very successful) GOP "core values" are not actually embodied in what the party does, they do have a very carefully callibrated relationship to what the party does. Or, to put it another way, the GOP can always explain their actions in terms of their core values, even if the explanation itself is designed to divert attention rather than to actually, well, explain.
At any rate, I think progressive Democrats ought to think more carefully about what the relationship is between their party's beliefs and its "frames." And which of these you're really talking about when you discuss your "core values."
Final takehome thought: one of the many differences between the GOP and the Democratic Party today is that the former is much more ideologically unified than the latter (this has actually tended to be the case over the course of the parties' histories). That GOP ideological unity has certainly helped in message discipline and core-value branding (even if those core values don't actually match the ideology). If the Democrats are going to continue to be an ideological big tent, can you achieve similar message discipline and branding? If you are, instead, going to become a more ideologically unified party, are progressives willing to fight for their ideology, or will they be rolled by the party centrists who still control your party's Washington establishment?
I don't think that the ideological model is the only successful one, despite the fact that my party is built on an ideological model. But if you don't take an ideological approach to party unity, the meaning of "core values," and your party's allegiance to them, can become fairly elusive.