As I see it, there are four main blocs that make up the great Republican Coalition: 1. Religious Conservatives 2: Libertarians 3: The wealthy and the corporations 4: national security hawks.
Obviously there are subgroupings, and there are people who fit into more than one of these. It is clear nonetheless that for the Democrats to regain power, they must pick off one of these blocs. But they must not do it in a coldly calculated way. Framing and suiing over votes is small potatoes. Democrats must seriously consider the IDEAS at stake in each of these blocs and decide which of these IDEAS can be combined honestly and passionately with liberal IDEAS at a root, fundamental level. Let's go through each one briefly, the pros and cons, and then please air your thoughts on which you would feel ideologically closest to, the lesser of four evils so to speak.
1. Religious Conservatives.
Pros: Often are concerned about nefarious influences on our children and families and communities that most liberals also care about. Pornography, drugs, child abuse, violence on tv, the sexualization of young teens. Catholics especially care about social justice, caring for the poor, human rights, genocide, the environment, many are for gun control, ending the death penalty, and are against the Iraq war. Their phony hypocritical leaders aside, many churches, even fundamentalist ones, do more charity work, more social justic work, for the urban and rural poor than your average liberal.
Cons: MOst Kossacks can recite this in their sleep. Theocracy, American Taliban etc. One stands out as particularly worrisome: the rejection of science, or at least its subordination to Biblical teaching, as in creationism etc. Fundamentalism is always dangerous in any form, but at a time when we are drastically falling behind other nations in our math and science education, in our production of top science and technology PhD's, turning away from science is almost tantamount to national suicide. Criminalizing abortion is probably a close second to me.
2. Libertarians
Pros: often stand with liberals on issues like draft, abortion, the deficit, sodomy rulings, PATRIOT act, and often are pro-competitive enterprise and anti-corporation, dedicated to opening up opportunity for the small guy against the K-Street-Wall Street nexus. Plus, we all like liberty, right? And we don't want some moralist blowhard telling us what to watch on TV, etc? We stand for personal responsibility, so if you think there's too much sex or violence on TV, just don't watch it.
Cons: read the whole "Constitution in Exile" cover piece in today's NYTimes mag. In most radical versions, would overturn almost all environmental regulation, the minimum wage, abolish the SEC at a high water mark of corporate scandals, all welfare, public schools, affirmative action and workplace harassment, OSHA, and even the income tax. Government would be out of your bedroom, but also absent when radioactive sludge is dumped in your backyard. The government couldn't snoop into your amazon purchases, but also couldn't do a thing to stop your mutual funds from disappearing. This could be disastrous to us as a nation. They argue the amazing wealth and opportunity that would result, if done right of course, would offset all these nightmarish scenarios.
3. Corporations and the wealthy
pros: I can hardly think of any, other than that much of what we use, buy, consume etc. is affordable because of the low prices that are possible only through the massive wealth that corporations are able to amass, and that corporations donate tremendous amounts to charity and research. None of the software we're using now would be possible without the massive power of corporations, nor would the computer I'm typing on.
cons: again Kossacks know this back and forth. These people are motivated by pure greed. Their need to have 7 mercedes, not 5, 6 trips to the Bahamas not 5 puts us all, as individuals and as a nation at a direct disadvantage. They combine their forces to corrupt politicians, to dumb down the news media, and to prevent free enterprise. When they have massive, unregulated control of industries we count on, the situation is potentially disastrous because they have no responsibility to us. They often are an example of capitalism being its own worst enemy. They also often put their greed ahead of national security, for example, our dependence on Saudi oil when there are alternatives.
4. Defense hawks
Pros: the neo-con ideology, for all its tragicomic intelligence failings and conflicts of interest, does advance a fundamentally decent idea: that democracies usually are more peaceful than dictatorships, and that a broad-based transformation towards transparency, honesty, democracy and oppurtunity is in the end the only long-term solution to terrorism. The yellowcake, the civilian deaths, the idiotic bungling, the hypocrisy (sustaining Pakistan, the Saudis, Egypt, past support for people like Mobutu and Savimbi and Pinochet), the general creepiness of Wolfowitz and Perle, this is all sniping at the finges. The fact that they switched rationales is true, but doesn't diminish their central ideology. Spread freedom, by force if necessary, the world will become more peaceful.
Cons: can you institute democracy and freedom through force of arms, especially in societies that are structured fundamentally differently than the West? Germany and Italy had extensive experience with democracy in the past, both Mussolini and Hitler came to power legally in democratic governments. It was not hard in 1945 to find Germans and Italians who could pick up where they had left off in in 1933 and 1922, respectively. This is not the case in the middle east and elsewhere. The great democratic revolutions of 1989-1991, as well as the developments in the Ukraine, were spontaneous and self-generated, and survived because of their ability to be peaceful and not dependent on the US Marines. Will you end up creating such resentment at the USA that you creae as many enemies as you create friends, making it alot lives and money expended for the zero-sum? Current opinion poles and the state of our alliances point to this.
One of these has to be accomodated. The question is which one? Which idea set can fit, at a fundamental level, best with liberal ideas?
The future of the Democratic Party, and thus the country and thus the world, hangs on this choice I believe. Choose wisely.