Evan Bayh apparently believes that trashing the Democratic Party is a good way to promote his upcoming presidential candidacy. Now after we finally won less than one month ago, you'd think our DLC politicians would be able to take a break from their self-flagellation of the Democratic Party. Guess not.
White House hopeful Sen. Evan Bayh (news, bio, voting record) warned on Monday that Democrats could lose their newfound grip on Congress if the party pursues an ideological course.
An ideological agenda? And what might that be Senator? Lowering prescription drug prices? Maybe implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, raising the minimum wage, or making college tuitition tax deductible?
"My observation was that most of the American people voted against — they voted against the mess in
Iraq, they voted against the president personally, they voted against the dysfunction and gridlock in Washington," he said. "They voted for something different and they wanted to give us a chance."
Yet again, Bayh introduces a straw man. Polls consistently show that the Democrats' domestic agenda is widely popular and people agree with us rather than the Republicans on all of the important issues. But no, Evan Bayh would have us believe that our party is still languishing and that if we move too far away from the Republicans, we'll lose power. I guess the American people were just kidding when they overwhelmingly voted for Democratic candidates. Bayh introduces a Republican talking point that people did not vote for us because they liked a Democratic agenda but only because they did not like the Republican agenda. Even if that's true, we could just as well argue that in 1994 people were not voting for Republicans but against Democrats. And as for people voting "against gridlock," um Evan...what are you talking about? The problem of the last 6 years is that there has been NO GRIDLOCK. Bush asked for something and his rubberstamp Congress gave it to him.
Following the usual DLC line of attack against the Democratic Party, Bayh does not identify any concrete actions as "ideological" or "partisan" nor does he suggest any concrete plan of action that he believes would be a good substitute. Of course, we know why he did this. If he tried to come up with any plans for the incoming Congress that were out of touch with the American public, he could not find any, so instead he has to rail against "partisan" straw men. As always, the media is eager to write about criticism of the Democratic Party by Democrats, so they lap up Bayh's criticisms and repeat them verbatim without bothering to ask him what exactly he is saying the Democrats should avoid. It's rather strange that there has been more self-criticism in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party even though we won. Part of the problem Evan Bayh has is that there is no group in the Democratic Party or nationally that is excited by an Evan Bayh candidacy for president. He is a pretty dull politician with no core base of supporters, so the only way he can hope to win the nomination is to convince people that he is the only Democrat who can win nationally since he is from a "red" state. The best way to do that is to denigrate the rest of the party as "out of touch" with the public and present himself as the only candidate in touch with "middle America" which leaves primary voters desperate for the Democrats to win with no alternative but to vote for him (we know how well the last "electable" candidate did) Now as you can imagine, the Democrats' victory this month complicates this because if people believe that any Democrat can win, there is no reason for them to hold their nose and vote for Bayh. So the only hope he has is to convince Democratic voters that the last election was a fluke and we still need to nominate an "electable" candidate like him. This sort of thing is good for Bayh personally, but bad for the Democratic Party because it hurts our brand.
This kind of rhetoric is not acceptable from a presidential candidate. The President of the United States is also the leader of the party and as such, an important task is to strengthen the party. But if you run like Evan Bayh, you may end up succeeding, but at the same time you'll trash your party label, which is bad in the long term because the party atrophies and is left with nothing when you retire. So from now on, if any candidate wants to criticize the Democratic Party, we need to demand that they offer specific criticisms of the party and at the same time propose concrete solutions to the problems they see. This will not only be good for the candidates politically, but it will also be good for the party as well. Evan Bayh did not cite a single example of a Democrat calling for an agenda that is out of the mainstream, nor did he give any indication of what sort of issues he thinks are out of the mainstream. After two terms as governor and two terms as senator, Evan Bayh should be overflowing with policy prescriptions for how to solve the crisis our nation is in after 6 years of George W. Bush but sadly all he can offer as a rationale for his candidacy is, "The Democrats are out of the mainstream, but unlike them, I'm not because I won 4 times in a red state, so I'm electable nationwide. Vote for me."
Sen. Bayh, please abandon your attacks on the Democratic Party and start discussing concrete policies you want to implement as president. Your candidacy and our party would both benefit.