The Post did
an outstanding piece Sunday on the implications of the new finacial position of the Democratic Party. This is something that I think we have reason to be very optimistic about.
Those sentiments square neatly with Dean's call for "bottom-up reform" of the Democratic Party and the further empowerment of grass-roots activists who flexed their political muscle in his unsuccessful presidential campaign. They later became the backbone of organizing and fundraising efforts by John F. Kerry's campaign and the DNC's election-year efforts.
But the rising of this grass-roots force also signals a shift in the balance of power within the party, one that raises questions about its ultimate impact on a Democratic Party searching for direction and identity after losses in 2002 and 2004.
At a minimum, say party strategists, the shift will mean a more confrontational Democratic Party in battles with President Bush and the Republicans. But some strategists worry that the influence of grass-roots activists could push the party even further to the left, particularly on national security, reinforcing a weakness that Bush exploited in his reelection campaign.
Ok. Let me just say it now: they're wrong. For some reason, these "party strategists" have it in their head that in order to be strong on national defense, we have to become like the Republicans in the issues we champion and in the approaches we take. We don't. There's no reason why we can't enact an ambitious progressive agenda and be strong on security.
It was Dean during the presidential primaries who argued that it was time for the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" to reassert itself, an implicit criticism of strategies that guided President Bill Clinton in his battles with Republicans in the 1990s. Clinton recently warned Democrats not to assume that the policies he pursued are incompatible with a vibrant, progressive wing of the party.
As Dean takes the helm as party chairman, Democrats now face a competition between what might be called the Dean model and the Clinton model, between confrontation and triangulation. This amounts to a contest between a bold reassertion of the party's traditional philosophy that fits the polarized environment of the Bush presidency vs. a less provocative effort to balance core values with centrist ideas that proved successful in the 1990s but has since produced a backlash within the party.
Perhaps the most important thing happening right now in the Democratic Party is this new attempt to synthesize what Balz calls the "Dean Model" and the "Clinton Model". There have been two recent pieces that bring to light some interesting thoughts on how to go about this.
John Judis has written an important piece in the most recent issue of TNR called "Structural Flaw: How Liberalism Came to the US". Judis believes that Democrats must offer a strongly Liberal/Progressive approach to governing to America, but he also believes we must offer an essentially more up to date version of the policies. He believes that many of the imparatives that provided the original rationale for the types of policies we used has passed away, and that much of the intransience Democrats exhibit about any sort of compromise at all derives from a failure to understand this. It is important that our approach to Liberalism be in keeping with the times. He writes,
It is convenient to blame these failures on incompetence, but the truth is that structural factors were more important. Liberalism's success from the '30s through the 1960s was based primarily upon certain special economic and political conditions: popular pressure from below, business' acquiescence in reform, and the conviction of the nation's opinion-makers that reform was good for America. Since then, dramatic changes in the international economy have turned business against reform and weakened the other forces supporting reform. Liberalism is by no means defunct, but it has been put on the defensive--most particularly, in this second Bush term. If Democrats want to revive liberalism, and not merely win office for themselves, they will have to address--and, where possible, rectify--the conditions that have undermined it....
To revive liberalism fully--to enjoy a period not only of liberal agitation, but of substantial reform--would probably require a national upheaval similar to what happened in the '30s and '60s. That could happen, but it doesn't appear imminent. What is more probable is a gradual move back toward the center, where older programs would be protected from assault (although not from refinement), where incremental change could be made, and where the stage could be set for a fuller revival if circumstances warranted. This could result, ironically, from the same causes that initially turned the United States away from liberalism.
In the past, the world has overcome industrial overcapacity through world wars and depressions, but with neither likely (one hopes!), the world economy is unlikely to recover its earlier brisk postwar pace. The extended U.S. boom of the late '90s, it is now clear, was a momentary spike brought about by speculation in information technology. If the economy does continue to grow sluggishly--creating greater insecurity even among the so-called investor class--it is likely that public discontent with business will rise again, as it did in the early '90s, and provide an opening for Democrats, and, through them, for liberal reform. But liberals will have to take advantage of this opening in a way that they failed to during the '90s.
Taking advantage would mean devising new approaches to domestic and international policy that are fair and efficient--and that don't allow the opposition to raise the specter of big government. A bloated national health insurance system could eventually be worse than none at all, but, designed properly, a national health system could widen access and keep costs under control, benefiting many businesses as well as workers. The perils of globalization can't be effectively addressed through trade protection, as some industrial unions still insist, but, by improving education, by encouraging foreign manufacturing firms to locate here, and, as economists like Rodrik have begun to argue, by international reforms that will protect workers from the vicissitudes of monetary instability.
Now, I know that a lot of people think that this implies selling out. Personally, I don't think it does. As the Post piece mentions, Clinton seems to believe that its possible to abopt broadly appealing progressive policies. Micheal Tomasky, editor of The American Prospect, provides an important defense of this thinking.
...Self-examination does not mean inevitably moving to the middle. Adopting a centrist pose can be every bit as knee-jerk and shallow as insisting that nothing's changed since 1974, and it can be even more debilitating politically than going (or staying) left...But having such a conversation -- a conversation that really tries to figure out the difference between liberalism's first principles, on which there can be no compromise, and its secondary assertions, which may need a rethink -- is of vital importance.
..These are hard conversations to have. Keeping abortion a legal and, therefore, safe option for women is, for me, is a first principle, because the option gives women moral autonomy over an extremely personal decision that the state should not make in their behalf. But the rhetoric used to support that option is not a first principle. It's a tactic, and it's right to talk about that...Gay marriage is a first principle, and someday the country will accept it. But it's reasonable to have a conversation about how to deal with the question politically until that someday arrives.
These conversations are necessary to strengthen liberalism. If abortion-rights activists find a better way to defend abortion rhetorically, thus appealing to more Americans and speaking to feelings of conflict some people may have about the practice, isn't that a good thing? Doesn't that do more to protect abortion in the long run? No one's talking about reaching out to the religious right. They're completely unreachable. There are, however, millions of Americans who aren't religious extremists who have mixed feelings about abortion. A political movement that doesn't try to persuade the conflicted isn't much of a movement.
What Tomasky and Judis are essentially arguing here is that in many ways Liberals are still trying to campaign to a 1930's America in the 21st century. We need to start thinking about how to connect our ideology with the present historical situation we live in, not a past one. Balz goes on the write:
Dean recognizes the difficult job ahead as he tries to welcome a cadre of political outsiders, many of them turned off by the party's recent leadership, into the institutional party he now heads. His first steps have sought to bridge the ideological divisions with a call for a party that is fiscally responsible and socially progressive.
Tom Ochs, a top Dean adviser, said the challenge is less about ideology than the political culture of the audiences to whom Dean is speaking. "It's clearly an insider-outsider thing that I think crosses ideological terrain, where there are people who haven't been involved who want to be involved and see in Governor Dean someone who wasn't part of an existing enterprise," he said. "I'm very optimistic about our ability to do what a lot of people think will be hard to do, which is to get a lot of people involved, regardless of their ideology, to get Democrats elected."
This speaks to exactly why it was so important to give Dean the DNC slot. There is a real cynicism about the leadership of the Democratic Party among its grassroots activists. Getting them to compromise is often a problem because they tend to believe--with some justification--that the party leadership are more interested in getting back in power than in holding fast to progressive principles.
Dean provides a bridge between the grassroots and the leadership. I've never believed that Dean was seeking the "Dean Model" of a hard shift to the left. What he seemed to be pushing was the very synthesis we are talking about. And if anyone has a chance of pulling it off, only Dean currently has the essentially limitless supply of political capital with the grassroots required to pull it off. This, however, would probably require the Congressional leadership to cede some of their control over policy in the Party.
It is no surprise that Democratic leaders are paying much closer attention to grass-roots activists. In 2003 and 2004, those activists became prodigious contributors to the Democratic Party, to Kerry and to Dean, who first tapped into their potential through the Internet during his campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that in 2003 and 2004, the DNC raised $171 million in contributions of less than $250. That represented 42 percent of the $404.5 million raised from all sources by the committee. Four years ago, before large soft-money contributions were banned by the new campaign finance reform law, the DNC raised a total of $260 million from all sources. Kerry's campaign raised an additional $84 million in contributions under $250.
In the 1980s, Democrats courted corporate interests for political contributions, and that marriage helped influence party policy on economic and tax issues. But it also produced complaints by liberal Democrats that the party was selling out its principles for campaign cash. Gauging the ideological complexion of the small donors who opened their wallets in 2004 is much harder, but their participation in the process has diminished the power of business interests within the party and likely will produce some shift in the party's ideology as well.
What all of this means is that the Democrats are now much freer to pursue more progressive liberal policies, having been freed of much of their dependence on corporate contributions. Robert Borosage writes,
But the reality is that very little of this matters. What will drive the debate and the party is the remarkable mobilization of citizen activism, and growth of progressive organization--represented by Moveon.org, by a roused union movement extending its reach with Working America, by Americans Coming Together, US Action and Acorn and the Sierra Club and hundreds of other groups that drove the extraordinary voter registration and mobilization effort.
Progressives come out of this election emboldened, not defeated. In this election, progressives--led by Moveon.org and the Howard Dean campaign--broke the money primary. They showed that candidates of conviction could be competitive financially by raising small donations over the web. They then raised over $300 million in small donations for John Kerry and the DNC, allowing the latter for the first time to be competitive with Republicans in fundraising. This has removed the grip of corporate money on the political debate, with profound implications for who controls the Democratic Party and who will be its candidates.
Progressives also gave the party candidates their voice, demanding that a challenge Bush's wrong-headed policies at home and abroad, spurning the beltway conventional wisdom that opposed taking the president on. Howard Dean set the pace in the Democratic primaries forcing every candidate to scramble to catch up...
And progressives started building an infrastructure to compete with the right-wing message machine in developing ideas, communicating them, arming its activists with argument and facts, and reaching out to persuade Americans. Moveon.org, Working Assets, Working America, the Center for American Progress, Media Matters, Air America, the expanded capacity of US Action, Acorn, our own Campaign for America's Future, Progressive Majority. For the first time, progressives are building the independent capacity to drive the debate, to educate activists, and reach out to citizens generally.
Balz writes that Kerry and Clinton adviser Stanley Greenberg agrees.
"If the choice is between the grass roots and the big soft contributors of the prior period, I prefer the grass roots," said Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who did considerable polling for MoveOn.org before shifting to the Kerry campaign last year. "What McCain-Feingold [campaign finance legislation] did was produce a shift away from soft money to grass-roots support. The great fear was it wouldn't happen, that Democrats would be left without resources. But starting with Dean and extending to outside groups like MoveOn, but also John Kerry and the DNC, there was a surge of giving and engagement that I can't believe isn't healthy."
Eli Pariser, who runs the MoveOn political action committee, said the rising power of the grass roots will make establishment Democrats uncomfortable and has helped reinvigorate the progressive wing of the party. But he said more than that, it has brought about a rethinking of how Democrats should organize themselves against Republicans...
Many Democrats see the choice between nurturing the base and reaching out to expand the party's coalition as a false choice. "I find the 'base versus swing ' conversation not only to be a false choice but to be a deadly choice," said Mark Mellman, a pollster and adviser to Kerry's campaign. "If somebody is forcing that choice on us, they are forcing us to lose elections."
Clinton recently told Democrats not to succumb to the idea that they must choose between a vibrant progressive wing and the strategies he followed as president. Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster in 1996 and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said he sees a greater desire on the part of Democrats to reach a consensus around that model. But he said Democrats have to view the grass roots more expansively.
"I think [Clinton's] remarks represented the view that there is a synthesis here for Democrats that is not left or right, but the right kind of grass-roots movement will take that into account," he said. "I think the Republicans organized a wide diversity of people [in 2004]. It wasn't just religious people but a wide diversity of people they coaxed to the polls."
Simon Rosenberg, founder of the centrist New Democrat Network and a challenger to Dean in the race for DNC chairmanship, said he did not know the ideological implications of an energized grass roots but urged centrists not to fear such a development. "Who can be scared at having millions of people giving money and fighting?" he said. "But it's not enough for us to win."