As much of a political junkie as I am, I am keeping my political goals small for now. My goal for the next 18 months is to convert my brother and father from what I consider to be "DLC Democrats" to real progressives. You wouldn't think that it would be all that hard; after all, they are both atheist Unitarians. However, after talking to both of them last week, I'm sensing that they suffer from the same malady that pervades much of the Democratic Party: they are slaves to the all-powerful Electability.
I began thinking about this subject while at a baseball game with my brother last week. We both consider ourselves to be pretty liberal; we are both pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and pro-most other things that would get Rick Santorum's underoos in a twist. However, we found ourselves arguing over how the Democratic Party should position itself. His opinion is that the Democrats should be a center-left party; that Bill Clinton won in '92 and '96 because he won the center, and that Bush won in 2000 for the same reason. It's an argument that you hear all the time from the likes of Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and the rest of the DLC.
The problem with that reasoning shows up in the states of the two parties over the last 40 years. In that time, Democrats have elected all of two presidents versus four for the Republicans, 3 of whom won two terms. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton beat incumbents who had trouble winning their own primaries. Democrats also lost control of Congress for the first time in a generation. This tells me that progressives are not winning the battle of ideas. The "swing" part of the American electorate does not read political blogs and does not follow political races in the summer. It's the reason that primary turnout is generally low and dominated by the more extreme members of each party. Swing voters are by their very nature centrist. They listen to the arguments on each side and choose a spot as close to the middle as possible. Part of the reason that this happens is that the mainstream media, in its attempt to adhere to the Fairness Doctrine, puts up people on each side of each issue, lets them scream at each other for 45 seconds, and then says "We'll have to leave it there", leaving most people between the two screamers. For proof, witness the MSM response to Ann Coulter's book. Coulter is a known plagiarizer and nutjob, but she gets equal time, so people give her arguments equal weight. Unfortunately, the extremely conservative viewpoint is insufficiently balanced with the extremely liberal viewpoint, possibly because too many progressive politicians are afraid to be tarred as a "tax-and-spend liberal", or whatever the Republicans are calling non-Lieberman Democrats.
In contrast, Republicans shifted from running moderate, "electable" candidates like Willkie, Dewey, and Eisenhower to a more conservative, authoritarian set of candidates. Barry Goldwater was the watershed (no pun intended) of this particular movement, which continued to Nixon (not conservative, but authoritarian, and a shoo-in to win in both of his elections), Reagan (at least as conservative as Goldwater, and more authoritarian in retrospect than he once seemed), and now George W. Bush. Since Goldwater's presidential run, we have seen the end of New-Deal-style liberal politics in favor of a return to Gilded Age-style imperialism and conservatism. This dramatic change is not a result of Republicans simply being more successful in elections, but rather a result of Republicans being stronger with their arguments and winning the battle of ideas.
The political center, in this environment, is not going to be controlled by a centrist Democrat because Democrats have been going to that well for 20 years. DLC policies have left the party in a position where many people (including many Democrats) think that party leaders don't stand for anything other than being elected. The Dems need a standard bearer: a progressive version of Barry Goldwater, perhaps, or a 21st-century Teddy Roosevelt. Someone who will articulate the progressive point of view on the campaign trail rather than simply pander to the interests of each individual voter. Someone who will eschew the tired DLC attitude of living according to polls, finding out where Americans are going so that Democrats can lead them. In other words, a true liberal leader. At the moment, I'm hoping that someone like Russ Feingold or John Edwards will turn out to be that leader. Or perhaps Al Gore will return to politics as a de-Shrummed progressive.
As of now, my father is (sort of) backing Joe Biden and my brother is a Hillary fan. I have about 18 months to convince them that the Democratic Party cannot survive as it is now--an organization devoted solely to the election of its members. Political parties are about ideas, not elections, and the Democratic Party will never win back long-term control of government until it runs on its ideas and ideals.