While Kerry flies under the radar, it's a good time to consider how Democrats should fight in this election and beyond. Democrats have been playing by Republican rules for too long. As the debate stands, social services are government handouts and taxation is a burden. DLC Democrats want to win elections by sneaking candidates in through this rhetoric. What we need to do is explode it.
Americans claim to believe in equality of opportunity and they overwhelmingly support social programs. When reminded, through multi-issue polling, that tax "relief" imposes a serious burden on education, social security, and the slew of other programs Americans support, they reject tax cuts and demand services. It is only when those programs are attached to ficticious contructions of welfare queens in Cadillacs that people begin to feel uneasy. Americans can be pulled to our side. We just need a better pitch.
(x-posted and a little extended at seditious libel.
The Republican's have two advantages: their politics are simple and immediate. Everyone understands a couple hundred dollars in his pocket. It is harder to persuade people of the complex, foward-looking, long-term plans and achievements that comprise the Democratic vision. Republicans need only say "Death Tax," and all the nuance and fact of the estate tax exits the debate. Democrats have the right case, the appealing vision, but it is intricate. It is difficult to pursue. It is easily undone. But it is worth the struggle, and worthy of a better one.
For this election cycle, our candidate has been chosen. In this cycle, we must fight Republicans aggressively by their rules. Thereafter, we must begin to retool the way we view politics. Taxation can no longer be untouchable; people will never view it favorably, but it must be recast as a solemn and patriotic duty. Security can no longer mean only military, but also economic. People are not secure if they can lose health care with their job. They are not secure when their old age will be spent in poverty, poor health, or both. Families are not secure when they cannot send their children to good schools and to college. This will be another moderate race, and this is no time for a revolution. Instead, we will have small revolts on our streets and online. But let's make this a first step. Let's use the canvasses and blogs of this cycle to build the infrastructure of communication through which we ultimately crack Republican rhetoric open, expose its self-interest, and reframe the debate on our own terms.
We must expose:
-The Bush's tax "relief" is a relief to the terminally relieved and a burden on everyone else
-That family values mean nothing if we don't value our local, state, and national communities
-That freedom cannot exist where people suffer from the coercion of dire poverty, poor health, and lack of marketable skills
-That increased incarceration is not the solution for unemployment. It is the solution to that pesky threat of racial equality.
-That high quality universal health care and education help most Americans, not only the poor
-That most of the poor aren't lazy, drugged, overly-fertile welfare queens, and that helping them is a sign of humanity, not depravity.
There were many things wrong with the strategy Dean campaign, and those must be ironed out in a new Democratic vision, but Dean's lessons to the party remain golden: Though a moderate, he proudly stood for social programs. He supported fiscal restraint, but pledged services to all. He dared to say that with the Republicans, people got a few hundred dollars, and they got nowhere. With a Democrat, the rich might pay a little more, but everyone would move forward. And for a brief moment, the nation awoke and listened.
While Republicans try to undo the New Deal, we should be forging another one. Democrats should put forth a vision of a government that ennobles and enables our collective ambitions. It should reflect the fundamental right to basic health care, education, decent housing, adequate food, and social insurance. It should provide an unequivocal right to dignity.
With courage and conviction, Democrats must ultimately craft a new rhetoric reflecting this simple truth: that love of country means love of the people within that country. That patriots provide for their compatriots.
