Which branch of the Democrat party is more to blame for its failures?

[dazzleman]

Beet, I'll go back to something I said earlier -- that the party that best controls its extremist elements usually wins the election, all other things being equal.

In 1992 and 1996, Democrats controlled their extremists better, while Republicans either offered only stale and negative reasons to vote for them, and had extremists who were motivated by hatred for Clinton (more 1996 than 1992).  Clinton used his "Sister Souljah" moment to control the radioactive left wing of his party, and it worked, largely because the Democrats were sick of being locked out of the White House, and the extremists agreed to shut up.

The whole Lewinsky issue had certain subtle effects on the political scene that may not have been apparent at the time.  First, they reignited the hard left, who rallied to the defense of Clinton.  This is when moveon.org was founded.  In the short run, this was a good thing for the Democrats, or at least for Clinton.  But once the hard left was re-mobilized, they became difficult to control.  Second, Clinton's behavior in the Lewinsky matter caused a deep cleavage in the American populace that I believe made a large contribution to the red state-blue state divisions today.  I believe that the Lewinsky matter, and Gore's strong defense of Clinton in that matter, is largely what caused him to lose all the southern states.  Voters in those states were further repelled by the resurgence of the left wing of the party.  It wasn't so much Gore's position on the issues, but his strong defense of Clinton's Lewinsky behavior, that alienated him from southern voters.  I think that many secular Democrats and liberals who argue that the Lewinsky affair was nothing fail to understand how offensive it is to religious voters that a president was having sex with a woman his daughter's age on the floor of the oval office.  Association with, and defense of, this behavior definitely cost Gore in the south.  Gore in effect inherited Clinton's liabilities, without his assets.  Not fair, but often happens in politics.

That's why I have never agreed with the argument that Gore should have embraced Clinton and not distanced himself from him.  Either way, quite honestly, he was screwed.  As a VP running for the top job, it is a very risky strategy to embrace your predecessor even if he is not controversial.  And while voters thought highly of Clinton's performance as president, their opinion of his personal behavior was quite low as Clinton's term wound down.  So there were significant risks to embracing Clinton, as well as keeping him at arm's length.  Also, with Clinton being the egomaniac that he is, the fear was that Clinton would turn his campaign appearances for Gore into a defense of the Clinton record rather than support for Gore.  In sum, I think more active involvement by Clinton would have helped Gore largely in places that he won, and hurt him in places that he lost.  That doesn't sound like a net gain to me.

In the 2002 mid-term elections, the Democrats would have lost either way.  It was too soon after Sept. 11th, with the nation rallying around Bush, for the Democrats to be able to craft an effective opposition strategy.  This happens sometimes to both parties, and the best thing to do is ride it out.  I don't think you can draw conclusions about a strategy based on the outcome of the 2002 election.  As far as the WMD intelligence goes, the Democrats believed it just as strongly as Bush, and had been talking about the issue long before Bush was president.  It wasn't something that Bush cooked up and foisted onto gullible and unsuspecting Democrats, as many on the left suggest.  Clinton and Kerry were making very strong statements about the need to rid Iraq of WMDs back in 1998; in fact, the whole Desert Fox operation of late 1998 was based upon the belief that Iraq was moving forward with WMD development, and needed to be set back in that pursuit.  Kerry strongly supported the Desert Fox operation.  So the initial Democratic support of the Iraq war was not a result of their being duped by Bush, as some have suggested.

In 2004, the Democrats were hobbled by having a candidate who was a liberal, and who had very confused positions on the Iraq war, which was one of the more important issues.  Couple that with his having joined the anti-war movement after he got back from Vietnam, and you have a very confused situation.

One thing to say in Kerry's defense -- nuance just doesn't sell well in politics.  That is why it is so hard to discuss and solve complex issues.  If you look at the affirmative action thread, you can see that in action.  My position there is "nuanced," and therefore subject to attack from both sides.  It is also difficult to satisfactorily explain in a couple of sentences.  In a world in which the sound byte is king, a nuanced position will often lose out to a simple hard-line position.

But if the Democrats had gone with Dean, do you think they would have done better?  Clearly, they would have done worse.

Sometimes, parties have to await changes in political conditions to be able to win elections.  Generally, Democrats are at a big disadvantage in any election where national security is an issue.  Where it is not, Republicans are at a disadvantage.  That is how Democrats won easily in 1992 and 1996, and essentially tied the 2000 election.  In those years, national security was not deemed an important issue.  In 1992 and 1996, Republicans floundered without this issue in their arsenal.  They further floundered when the welfare issue was removed by the signing of welfare reform in 1996, another example of Clinton keeping the left wing of the party under control.  Just as Nixon initiated detente, unilaterally withdrew from Vietnam and visited "Red" China, and kept conservative support, Clinton signed a law getting rid of one of the liberals' most cherished policies, and still kept their support.  And he won the election.  In 2000, I believe the Democrats would have clearly won were it not for the Lewinsky matter.

[continued in next post]

[dazzleman]

But after the Sept. 11th attacks, national security reasserted itself as an issue.  Without a "Sister Souljah" moment on national security, it will be quite difficult for the Democrats to cobble together a majority when national security is an issue.  Even when Bush screws up, he is perceived as stronger on the issue than the Democrats.  I don't think a lot of Democrats recognize or really understand how strongly some voters are repelled by their perceived attitude on national security.  Like with the religion issue, it's not a matter of adjusting policy prescriptions here and there; many voters just believe deep in their bones that Democrats are hostile to national security, just as they believe deep in their bones that Democrats are hostile to religious values.

Of course, there are countervailing issues for the Republicans too.  The party's identification with the religious right costs it many votes in certain sections of the country.  But the Democrats' problem right now is that their coalition falls just short of 50% of the electorate, no matter how they slice it.  It's kind of like a business that is still attracting a good number of loyal customers, but falls just short of having enough business to make a profit.  The business has maximized the potential business with this base, and faces the difficult choice of (a) possibly alienating the base by changing its product in an attempt to draw in new customers (which is always more difficult than holding onto the ones you have) or (b) redoubling efforts to attract more business with the existing base, which has the risk of producing diminishing returns.  Businesses face this choice all the time, and so do political parties.

In terms of what is best for the Democrats, I fall on the side of emphasizing moderate positions on issues that can appeal to people who are now reluctantly voting Republican out of disgust for the Democratic party.  There are many of them, and the Republicans are quite vulnerable to this approach, in my opinion.  Many people vote Republican simply because they hate the Democrats, not because they really like the Republicans that much.  I think it's quite possible that the extreme positions of the Democratic base repel more voters than they add to the party, which is why the extremists need to be kept under control, not made the centerpiece of the party's strategy.  Do you think the Republicans would win if Pat Robertson were their standard bearer?  By putting people like George Soros, Michael Moore and the whole kooky Hollywood crowd at center stage, that is effectively what the Democrats are doing.

I also think the racial divide could be the ultimate undoing of the Democratic party.  Right now, the Democrats require 90% of the black vote to win a presidential election.  This means they must pay lip service to certain ideas and people that are deeply unpopular with many Americans.  The black vote is also largely a "top down" vote, meaning that unlike most whites, blacks tend to take their cues on how to vote from certain community leaders such as ministers, civil rights leaders, etc.  The danger to the Democrats is that black leaders will escalate their demands for what they should receive in return for delivering such a large percentage of the black vote.  This issue is starting to really hurt Democrats at the local level in certain places, with New York as an example.  This is the issue that has caused the Democrats to lose the mayoral election in a heavily Democratic city three straight times, and probably a fourth.  Essentially, politics in New York has reached a point where a white Democrat who challenges and beats a black/minority candidate in the party's nominating process will not receive sufficient support from minority voters to win the general election.  And Democratic candidates must adopt such extreme positions to placate minority voters that it repels in large numbers working class white voters who are otherwise Democrats, but who switch to the Republican candidate in these elections.  Racial animus is surely part of this in New York, but it is not the whole story.  And the danger (or potential, depending on how you look at it) of this happening on the national level is a great one for the Democrats.

Ultimately, I think there has to be a political realignment of sorts.  Democrats are going to have to take a gamble of giving up some of a certain constituency in order to attract more voters from another constituency.  This is what the party did in the post-World War II period, when it effectively expelled the communists and the "fellow travelers" from its ranks.  The communists had been ordered by their masters in Moscow to support the New Deal, and while they turned against Roosevelt during the period of the Nazi-Soviet pact, they came back into his camp once the Nazis turned and attacked the Soviet Union.  But after the war, when the Soviets became an enemy rather than ally, the communists and the fellow travelers became a major political liability.  The Democrats effectively expelled them from the party, and Truman in 1948 won the election despite being challenged by Henry Wallace, who represented the element of the Democratic party that had been effectively expelled.  Had Truman tailored his policies toward keeping this wing in the party, he might have prevented a Wallace challenge, but he would have lost more votes than Wallace got due to the unpopularity in the general population of a weak position vis-a-vis the Soviets.  A latter day version of the fellow travelers -- those who are vaguely or explicitly hostile to the assertion by the US of its national interests -- came back into the party in the wake of Vietnam, and the Democrats need to recognize that holding onto certain constituencies is costing them more votes than it is gaining them.

I guess I have written enough, Beet.  I hope you have the fortitude to read it all.

[dazzleman]

Over the long term, if liberals dither and equivocate while conservatives come out strongly, the public will become increasingly conservative.

The problem here is that a significantly higher percentage of Americans support conservative views than support liberal views, as currently defined.  I agree that dithering and equivocating is not the answer, but changing certain positions, and redefining the ESSENCE of what it means to be a liberal, could be the answer.

Liberals have effectively been painted, in the eyes of many Americans, as being soft on defense, hostile, even to national security, favoring never-ending tax increases, being apologists for the criminal element, being hostile to traditional values, and gearing their policies solely to "oppressed" minority groups (and gender groups) at the expense of the general population.

You can argue whether these assessments are correct, but the fact is that large numbers of Americans believe this, and act upon those beliefs in the voting booth.

Either change the perception, or change the reality.  But I don't see how reinforcing these views will win more elections, given the current political alignment.

[dazzleman]

A long reply by me got eaten up by my computor

Mine almost got eaten, so I know how you feel.

[dazzleman]

Personally I think one little talked about problem the national Democrats have (and I'll write a longer piece on this soon) is the fact that they've sort of managed to lose the Party's soul; it's almost as if Party has sold it to various special interest groups (both hard left and centrist), doesn't care, hasn't noticed or can't be bothered to buy it back.

You make a good point.  A political party is more than just the sum of a number of disparite and unconnected positions on separate issues.  There has to be an overarching theme.  The Democrats may have one, but they are not articulating it.  Or maybe they are afraid that it will be unpopular with voters, so they're attempting to suppress it.

[dazzleman]

Hmmm, wow. . I did have the fortitude to read it all, but I'm not sure I can respond to it all.

I'll just say one brief thing, that no doubt a lot of the perception that Democrats are "weak" on national security is

1- A myth created by by the right. One of their biggest issues which they repeat all the time is how Clinton "gutted" the military. They never mention how military spending kept falling throughout all of George Bush Sr.'s term, and that the end of the Cold War combined with an even worse budget situation thatn we have today more than anything else contributed to the closing of a lot of bases. Another charge they keep repeating is how Clinton did "nothing" against terrorists. This is both untrue and reflects an unfair projection of post-9/11 mentality onto pre-9/11 situations. Clinton responded to every single terrorist attack that happened on his watch and gave far more money and attention to terrorism than any previous president. The Egyptian mastermind of the 1993 WTC attack which Clinton supposedly "ignored" was arrested within two years. You never hear Reagan getting chewed out for pulling out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombings.

2- An almost unavoidable aspect to opposition of the war in Iraq. "Opposing the war yet supporting the troops" is one of those difficult nuanced positions you're talking about.

Dude, once again, you have to look further back.

The attitude that Democrats are weak on national security goes back to the Vietnam era.  Anti-war forces took over the Democratic party, and along with the anti-Vietnam attitude was the attitude that it was somehow wrong to defend the interests of the United States (not that I'm equating that with the Vietnam War).  There was an element in the Democratic party that, while maybe not anti-American, was somehow embarrassed by the projection of American power for any reason, and that believed, essentially, in moral equivalence between the US and Soviet Union.

These elements still have a great deal of power in the Democratic party, and have a lot to do with the perception that the party is untrustworthy on national security.  I personally have always considered the Democrats untrustworthy on national security, and that is a big factor in my declining to support Democratic candidates for federal positions.

So I don't think that the perception of the Democrats being weak on national security is a myth that has been created by the Republicans in the last 4 years.  It's been around for more like 35 years, and if it's a myth, the Democrats need only prove it wrong in order to lay it to rest.

[dazzleman]

I want to clarify one thing, Beet.  When I say "people and ideas deeply unpopular..." I don't mean black people in general.  I mean certain black leaders, who more likely than not, do not necessarily reflect the thinking of many or most black people.  But because of monolithic black voting, these "leaders" are the face of black America.  I think that is strong factor in reenforcing racism.

The race situation is very dicey, and not as simple as many make it appear.  I don't believe there is this uncompromising, unremitting hostility toward blacks that many talk about.  That is overly simplistic.  What there is is a general anger toward many aspects of black behavior (i.e., prevalence of out-of-wedlock births) and a sorrowful belief that the black position will never really improve until many aspects of black behavior change.  There is also a resentment of being forced to deal with the negative consequences of this behavior, such as high taxes, crime, urban decay, bad schools, etc., and a resolve to remain as separated from it as possible.

This doesn't mean that whites are irredeemably hostile toward blacks.  I think most whites would be thrilled to hear some good news about blacks; that the family structure is strengthening, out of wedlock births dropping, etc.  I think there is only a small minority that actually WANT blacks to do poorly and be miserable, if only because enough whites have finally woken up and realized that a policy of keeping blacks down hurts the overall society as well as blacks. 

So I have to take exception to the implication in your post.  It is a typical Democratic implication, to ignore causation and simply say that refusal to pander to destructive black "leaders" is prima facie evidence of racism.  The issue is much more complex than that.

[dazzleman]

Beet, I think you also oversimplify the whole Clinton issue.  It is more complex than you suggest.

The hard left were Clinton's staunchest defenders in the impeachment case.  That is why moveon.org was originally formed.  Just as rock-hard conservatives were Nixon's strongest defenders in Watergate, hard-left liberals were Clinton's staunchest defenders.

On the day Clinton was impeached, Gore called him the greatest president ever.  I think this went overboard, and came back to haunt him.

It is true that voters approved of Clinton's performance as president.  From an immediate perspective, why wouldn't they?  There was peace and prosperity, and the fact that he wasn't really addressing developing problems wouldn't become obvious until later.

But here again, you have to look below the surface.  Many voters were deeply offended by Clinton's personal behavior, even if they liked the way the economy was going then.  This is much more true in the south than in other parts of the country.

It is also a fact of human nature that less personable people get punished for things that more personable people get away with.  Clinton skated on all his transgressions largely because of his personality, which Gore lacked.  Because Gore had strongly defended Clinton at the time (his more critical stance came later, when he was running in 2000), some voters, especially southern voters, punished him by voting for Bush.

At least that is my take.

[dazzleman]

As long as race remains such a salient fact of life, blacks will continue to vote homogenously. As long as that is true then there will always be your Jesse Jackson or your Al Sharpton. Diversification of the black vote--and of the southern white vote-- will be one critical measure in this century of success in moving beyond identity politics. And that is not done by ignoring the issue of race and racism.

True, but who imposed political correctness?  Who made honest discussion of why the races remain separated something that must be avoided at all costs?  Mounting anger at political correctness -- a feeling among whites that their legitimate concerns are simply denied and swept under the rug -- will not ultimately help to end racism or identity politics.  And I agree with you that identity politics is a cancer.