Good friends of mine, Allan and Sheri Rivlin, have penned a piece on their new website about how to start the healing process within the Democratic Party. Check out their website: CenteredPolitics.com
"Even in a heated primary campaign, candidates know they can gain points by showing their ability to pivot to the general election, as both candidates do when they take on John McCain on an issue. But in this special circumstance, the first priority for the eventual nominee will be to re-unify the divided Democratic Party by showing compassion and respect for the supporters of the other side. The candidate who is most successful at this challenge, right now, would be demonstrating the skill that would actually qualify them as the candidate that has the best chance of winning the general election."
Vote For This Article At RealClearPolitics Full text after the jump.
Peace Within the Party
By Sheri Rivlin and Allan Rivlin, Co-Editors CenteredPolitics.com
March 20, 2008, 12:01 am
It has been a remarkable contest between two talented and qualified, potentially historic presidential candidates with remarkably few differences in policy or political philosophy, but it has become a source of division within the Democratic Party, the left leaning blogosphere, as well as many families, dividing genders and generations, and at the same time delighting the news media, and especially, Republicans. While we know it must end with some resolution either by primary, caucus, or convention floor fight, the big question now is how can the party find the peace that is needed in its own right and also is necessary for victory in November.
Peace must become a higher priority than victory for the simple reason that peace is necessary for victory in November. Intra-party partisans must remember that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama has been working day and night for the last two years in order to become the Democratic nominee. All of this is for nothing unless one of them is elected president in November.
"Change," is the first word in the poster slogans of both finalists, and both candidates have filled their websites, stump speeches, and town hall meetings with detailed proposals for change, but little will change if John McCain is allowed to continue 4 more years of Republican mismanagement of the economy and misdirected foreign policy, and 100 more years of war in Iraq. Peace within the party and victory in November must be a higher priority than winning the nomination.
So how do we get to peace? The answer starts with simple respect for the candidates and their supporters. Both sides have fallen short of this standard in ways both subtle and overt, trivial and consequential. This is natural in a political campaign, but it has to end and "day one" might as well be today.
In part this is a campaign to decide which leader would be best to heal this divided nation, and it would be good if both campaigns were competing to heal the divided party as proof of their qualifications. If Obama believes change comes from bringing people together to solve problems, bring Democrats together to solve this problem. If Clinton believes change comes from hard work then she should start working now to change the tone of this campaign.
The first rule should be to stop suggesting that the other candidate is unqualified for the office. If either candidate believes their rival would not be as good a president as John McCain, they should say so right now. If neither feels that way, they should start viewing their rival as a likely Democratic nominee, and not say anything now that they would not like to see in a Swift Boat television commercial in September.
But beyond avoiding the negative, there is a positive campaign that is available to either or both candidates, and that is the campaign to show enough compassion and understanding for all sides in order to heal the divisions in our party, our nation, and dare we say, the world.
For an example take Barack Obama’s March 18 speech on race in America. The speech has received a great deal of praise and deservedly so, but we saw it as a colossal missed opportunity. In its own terms, it was an excellent compassionate and personal speech about racism, but it could have been, and should have been a compassionate speech about racism (beyond just black and white), sexism, and ageism.
In the speech, Obama helped us all understand how the statements of his Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, must be understood in the context of America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow laws. But in invoking Geraldine Ferraro’s name in passing, he missed the opportunity to explore the context from which her speech flows; how Ferraro grew up in an America where the idea of a woman congressman was an oddity and a woman vice presidential candidate was an impossibility – all reasons Ferraro continues to deserve respect as an iconic figure in Democratic politics.
A speech designed to heal wounds in America would have been all the more powerful if he had addressed himself to the wounds that bind many supporters to his opponent, a continuing sexism that Clinton supporters see in the daily news coverage and commentary on this political contest right now in 2008.
And taking one step further, he could have expressed just a little more awareness of the dangers involved in playing generational politics to the degree it has become the central theme in his campaign. (Obama used the word generation 15 times in this speech alone). His claim to represent a new generation, and implicit and sometimes overt relegation of Clinton and her supporters as representing the politics of the past – no less than her claims that he lacks the experience to lead the nation "on day one," create a division that also must be addressed if the party is to become unified heading into the general election.
Without in any way diminishing the greatness of the speech Obama did deliver, it could have been much, much more. And now the common ground Obama left unclaimed is available to either candidate. Obama could continue on, or Clinton could add her voice.
Following his address on race she would have every right to give a speech about the continuing struggle for gender equality in America. She could start by taking up the widely reported cases of divisions between her feminist supporters and their daughters, making the case that real and lasting change always requires the harmonious blending of the wisdom of the aged with the energy of youth. She could honor the names of Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, and Geraldine Ferraro explaining how the civil rights and gender equality movements have intertwined throughout this nation’s young history, always rooted in the same injustice, suffering, and insecurity.
Both candidates are qualified to give this speech. Indeed, in a sense it would seem that neither candidate is qualified to unite the party and lead the nation if they are not able to give this speech.
Even in a heated primary campaign, candidates know they can gain points by showing their ability to pivot to the general election, as both candidates do when they take on John McCain on an issue. But in this special circumstance, the first priority for the eventual nominee will be to re-unify the divided Democratic Party by showing compassion and respect for the supporters of the other side. The candidate who is most successful at this challenge, right now, would be demonstrating the skill that would actually qualify them as the candidate that has the best chance of winning the general election.
The authors are co-editors of CenteredPolitics.com and have been struggling over the past year in a Clinton vs. Obama marriage. Allan Rivlin is a Partner with Peter D. Hart Research a Public Opinion Research firm in Washington, DC.
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