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Mon 22 Sep, 2003 07:13 pm
DLC | New Dem Daily | September 22, 2003
The Bush-Hate Debate
Earlier this month we commented on a dumb debate within the Democratic Party that posed a false choice between political strategies aimed at "energizing the party base" and those aimed at pursuing the swing voters who typically decide close elections. You have to do both, we argued. But there's a parallel, and equally dumb, debate now underway among Democrats about whether to make exhibitions of anger and personal disdain towards George W. Bush a litmus test of presidential candidates and the main theme of the 2004 effort to send the president back to Crawford.
The New York Times' Robin Toner made this debate one of the main focuses of her summary of the presidential contest yesterday. And the cover package of the current issue of The New Republic is devoted to the same topic.
The debate is dumb because there is more than enough evidence about Bush's actual, objective record to build a case for his retirement that will both energize Democrats and persuade swing voters. Making white-hot anger towards Bush and his minions the central thrust of the 2004 campaign threatens to keep Democrats from making a positive presentation of their own principles and agenda for governing. It's especially ironic that many activists who consider themselves the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" are trying to define themselves not by Democratic values or policy goals, but simply as the polar opposite of whatever position George W. Bush takes.
The idea that Democrats must choose between Bush-hatred and "Bush Lite" is simply wrong. The DLC, for example, has excoriated the circumstances under which Bush gained office; the false promises he made throughout the 2000 elections; and his domestic and foreign policies since then -- as often, as thoroughly, and even as angrily as anyone in the Democratic Party. Our indictment of the Bush record, as laid out in the current issue of Blueprint magazine, is more comprehensive than you can find in any other Democratic periodical. When he took office, we accused him of wanting to replace the successful policies of the 1990s with unsuccessful policies from the 1980s. Now we are convinced he wants to pursue the policies of the 1890s.
But unlike some Democrats, we don't want to indict the American people for their failure to dislike George W. Bush, and we don't want to let Bush control the national political agenda while Democrats simply react negatively to everything he says and does. To succeed in 2004, Democrats will have to win the votes of at least one-fourth of those Americans who now give the president a positive personal assessment. That will require rational persuasion and a positive Democratic agenda for the country. (Our cut at that agenda is also included in the current issue of Blueprint.)
As President Bill Clinton wisely said in remarks to a DLC gathering in May, you beat an incumbent President by "giving people what they like about him, telling them something about him they don't know but wouldn't like if they did, and telling them what you'd do differently."
That's a fairly simple formula, but it can only be successfully applied by Democrats who are not blinded by rage or intoxicated by self-righteousness. A Democratic strategy based on Bush-hatred is likely to reward its object with another four years in office.
You've stated some important points on what not to do with the next presidential election. I'm one of those "swing voters" that doesn't vote by party affiliation. That means I vote for the candidate that presents issues in a way that is realistic and doable whether the candidate is a democrate, republican, or green party. I can spew all kinds of hate about GWBush, because he has gotten us mired into a war on false information which is now costing us American lives and billions that should be spent at home for our own children and citizens. Show me a candidate that knows what must be done for the future of this country and the world, and he/she will get my vote. I really don't want promises, but some realistic goals that we might head towards solutions rather than creating more problems at home and all across this globe. A good start will be to stop the bleeding of our economy of jobs while the government continues to claim we are having economic growth. I want to see economic growth where jobs are created. With the growth in jobs will also come more tax dollars to rebuild our country to a time when we had hope.
The hate card should not be played. Making fun of the ridiculous bastid should also be discouraged. After all, he is the president, and many are turned off by rude behavior to the man in office. Beat him on issues or lose.
Anti-Bush Moderates
Anti-Bush Moderates
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003; Page A27
You can't understand an election without understanding the dynamic that underlies it. The dynamic for the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries is, at best, only half understood, and many on the right don't understand it at all.
A number of conservatives have been writing that Democrats, out of hatred for President Bush, are veering far to the left and that this rendezvous with the wild side will inevitably lead them to electoral catastrophe.
Put aside that this seems an odd critique coming from a movement so consumed by hatred of Bill Clinton that it tried to drive him from office through impeachment. The analytical mistake is to assume that the anti-Bush feeling, which is there, leads straight to the fever swamps of radicalism. In fact, the dislike of Bush among Democrats is more personal and partisan than it is ideological. Democrats are not, in fact, moving to the far left.
This explains why retired Gen. Wesley Clark could jump so quickly in the polls -- witness his top billing in this week's Newsweek survey of Democrats. Clark has won support from figures as diverse as Michael Moore, the angry, irreverent anti-corporate filmmaker, and Mickey Kantor, the smooth, resolutely pro-business Democratic insider. To beat Bush, they are willing to back a general whose views on many issues are unknown -- and who appears to have voted for Ronald Reagan. Whether they are right or wrong about Clark, pure ideologues don't do stuff like that. They back Dennis Kucinich.
Nor can former Vermont governor Howard Dean be seen as some kind of leftist. Yes, he won many left-wing hearts by opposing Bush on Iraq. But Dean has been a moderate, even conservative, Democrat on many issues, including Medicare and Social Security. Rep. Dick Gephardt is going at Dean hard on these questions.
If the rebellion in the Democratic Party were primarily ideological, closet centrist Dean would be going nowhere. What Dean understood earlier than his rivals is that Democrats wanted someone who did not seem intimidated by Bush. Iraq became both a substantive issue and a symbol. If Dean was willing to fight Bush on Iraq, many Democrats reasoned that he'd be tough enough to take him on across the board.
Sen. John Kerry's vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution hurt him relative to Dean, though not because the Massachusetts Democrat's position was unreasonable. As Clark briefly acknowledged, even a critic of the war might vote "yes" to strengthen the president's hand in negotiations at the U.N. over what to do about Saddam Hussein.
But Kerry made the wrong political calculation. He assumed that a Democrat would be in a stronger position to criticize Bush in the general election having first given the president a chance to rally the world against Hussein. It turned out that he was looking past the primaries too early. Many Democrats were seeking a stronger voice against Bush -- and all the more so after the bitterness that followed the 2002 electoral campaign.
The critical fact is that the roots of the anti-Bush feeling among Democrats were planted before the war. Democrats are still incensed that even though they strongly backed the president after 9/11, Bush turned around and used issues of national and homeland security (1) to club them in the 2002 elections, and (2) to push through his ideological program, especially more big tax cuts.
Ask a Democrat about 2002 and it won't take long before the name Max Cleland comes up. Cleland is the former Georgia senator who lost three limbs in Vietnam. Because he favored some union and civil service protections in the homeland security bill, Cleland was attacked in a vicious campaign ad showing pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland lost, and Democrats are still furious over the treatment of this war hero and political moderate. This is personal, not ideological.
Nor can the Democrats' opposition to Bush's tax cuts be seen as far-left adventurism. On the contrary, many of the most fervent foes of Bush's tax policy are resolutely moderate deficit hawks, including the centrists at the Democratic Leadership Council. Last I checked, favoring smaller deficits does not constitute wild-eyed radicalism.
The toughening of the Democrats' stand against Bush has coincided with events to bring down Bush's popularity. You can't blame the president's loyalists for being unhappy, for wishing that Democrats would just shut up and fall in line. But the Democrats' refusal to heed the advice doesn't make them left wing. It makes them a mainstream opposition party. Bush may well win next year, but it won't be because he faces a band of Trotskyists, Leninists -- or even McGovernites.
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