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By TED VAN DYK, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
If you've seen "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," you'll know how I feel about the state of the current Democratic Party. The film, as you'll recall, depicted the bodies of decent, normal citizens being taken over while they slept by alien entities marching in conformist and destructive lockstep.
In its original 1950s version, the film was meant to portray the McCarthyism of the time. But it strikes all too close to home for Democrats who once fought everything McCarthyism represented but who now are stuck in a reactionary groupthink of their own.
The culminating act of this sad transformation will come today when Howard Dean is elected national party chairman. This is the same Dean whose presidential campaign spent millions of dollars, failed to win a primary, and flamed out in episodes of reckless Bush rage. Mr. Dean pledges that he is interested only in serving his party and has no plan for a 2008 candidacy. Whether he does or does not, he will become the party's principal spokesman for the next three years. Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the party's congressional leaders, will be eclipsed by the more colorful, uninhibited Mr. Dean. Television news channel and network talk show producers will provide the former governor every minute of exposure he craves.
A national party's chairman is particularly important when his party is out of power. Until 30 years ago, the Democrats' official spokesman and titular leader, after a losing presidential campaign, was their defeated candidate in the prior election. Hence Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey took center stage for the party and personally selected the party's chairman (Stevenson chose Paul Butler, Humphrey chose Fred Harris and Larry O'Brien). That tradition ended, however, after the 1972 campaign, when George McGovern was pushed aside after his landslide loss. Subsequent losing candidates, including Al Gore and John Kerry, have similarly been sidetracked to make way for the new.
Mr. Dean's ascendancy to the chairmanship could have parallels with Mr. Harris's. After his 1968 defeat, Humphrey pondered a choice between Mr. Harris and former North Carolina governor Terry Sanford as party chairman. Mr. Harris, along with Sen. Walter Mondale, had co-chaired Humphrey's nominating campaign. Sanford had chaired his general-election campaign. Mr. Harris badly wanted the chairmanship after having been passed over for Sen. Ed Muskie as Humphrey's running mate. A soft-hearted Humphrey gave him the job. Mr. Harris, who had his own presidential ambitions, then cast his lot as chairman with the party's most activist constituencies. In so doing he ruined his own presidential chances, lost his Oklahoma Senate seat, and narrowed the party's base. Sanford would have broadened it.
Republican control of the White House, both houses of Congress, and state houses gives the GOP its strongest national position since at least the Eisenhower period of the 1950s. As Democrats ponder their role in opposition, they might consider how their predecessors conducted themselves during that time.
Democratic congressional leaders Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson pursued a strategy in opposition which, down the road, paid long-term dividends for their party. They supported the Eisenhower administration on national security issues during a dangerous time--intervening with the White House when necessary to stop mistakes such as Vice President Richard Nixon's proposal to use nuclear weapons to bail out French forces at Dienbienphu. They observed the general rule that a president deserved to have the nominees he wanted for key administration and judicial appointments and questioned them only selectively.
Congressional Democrats of that period did, however, use their investigative authority to highlight episodes of public and private corruption. Most importantly, they began preparing the ground for landmark domestic legislation--which ultimately became the Great Society--even though they lacked majorities at the time to pass it. In 1965, after President Johnson's huge victory over Barry Goldwater, Democrats promptly passed the agenda they had nurtured during the Eisenhower years.
The party's visible leaders and voices are pursuing an entirely different strategy today. It generally amounts to angry opposition on all issues all the time. President Bush's Iraq intervention was problematic. But had Mr. Kerry been elected president, he would be following essentially the same path today in Iraq as Mr. Bush--that is, to build an elected Iraqi government's capacity to maintain sufficient security that American forces could leave. Yet most Democrats' reaction to the first essential step in that strategy, the successful completion of elections, has been to dismiss the elections' importance, to charge Mr. Bush with "having no exit strategy," or to demand he set a hard timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.
For many years Democrats, more than Republicans, pointed to the need to reform Social Security for the long term. Social Security, after all, was a Democratic invention and a cornerstone of the party's commitment to economic security. Yet, in the face of the Bush reform initiative, many senior Democrats have chosen simply to deny the need for change. That is not a viable policy or political position. Democrats are quite right to challenge the notion of partial privatization of the system. But they have an equal obligation to offer an alternative reform plan, the components of which are self-evident and which would require little public sacrifice. Why not seize the opportunity the Bush initiative presents and move public opinion toward a Democratic alternative on Social Security?
The Democrats' present disorientation has been in the making for decades. When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he acknowledged that its political downside was the end of the Solid (Democratic) South. In 1968, Humphrey lost to Nixon because traditional blue-collar Democratic voters in New Jersey, Ohio and Illinois cast ballots for George Wallace's third-party candidacy. Postelection surveys indicated they did so because they felt alienated from what they saw as Democrats' values and orientations. The disaffections became wholesale in 1972 when Mr. McGovern's peace candidacy was overwhelmed by the "acid, amnesty and abortion" agenda of some of his supporters. As Mr. McGovern's 1972 platform coordinator, I can attest that most of his national convention delegates had less interest in his candidacy than in their own narrow social-agenda objectives.
Jimmy Carter reclaimed moderate Democratic voters, including some Christian conservatives, in 1976. But the erosion in the party's middle-culture base resumed in 1980 as millions of Democrats, including a high percentage of union members, cast Republican votes. President Clinton, as President Carter before him, reclaimed some of those votes. But when "HillaryCare" imploded in 1994, it not only sank health-care reform indefinitely, but also helped Republicans regain a House majority for the first time in 40 years. They have not relinquished it. Something else happened during the Clinton years. President Clinton's eight-year emphasis on short-term tactical politics--focused on his own political survival--left the party without any coherent intellectual foundation.
With the advent of the Dean chairmanship, the Body Snatchers' takeover will be complete and the party of ideas will have been fully transformed to one of reflexive and strident opposition.
Mr. Dean's passion and partisanship no doubt will deepen Democratic support in enclaves they already dominate. My home city of Seattle will remain a blue stronghold. But it will be only one of a few. If you examine the 2004 electoral map closely, you will see that several states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey, voted for Mr. Kerry but could trend longer-term toward the GOP. President Bush made gains over 2000 nationally among female, black, Latino and Catholic voters. If they cannot break free of Deanism--i.e., strident opposition to all things Bush--Democrats could find themselves by 2008 the party of Hollywood, Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, George Soros and high-culture media--but not of most Americans.
And Ford would have you believe we Conservatives are scared of Howard Dean...
Second-term blunders by President Bush, or international or economic setbacks, could make voters want change and give Democrats a political reprieve. But what if events go Mr. Bush's way? Unremitting, undifferentiated rage is not an appropriate platform for an opposition party. Voters will reject continuing negativism and obstruction.
I tried to tell them...
Memo to Democrats: It is time to return to the old-fashioned way. Ask the questions: What are the needs of our country? What are our constructive proposals to meet them? How can we best push those proposals forward? If Democratic leaders and candidates ask those questions, and try seriously to answer them, voters may once again be prepared to let them govern.
If you've seen "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," you'll know how I feel about the state of the current Democratic Party. The film, as you'll recall, depicted the bodies of decent, normal citizens being taken over while they slept by alien entities marching in conformist and destructive lockstep.
In its original 1950s version, the film was meant to portray the McCarthyism of the time. But it strikes all too close to home for Democrats who once fought everything McCarthyism represented but who now are stuck in a reactionary groupthink of their own.
The culminating act of this sad transformation will come today when Howard Dean is elected national party chairman. This is the same Dean whose presidential campaign spent millions of dollars, failed to win a primary, and flamed out in episodes of reckless Bush rage. Mr. Dean pledges that he is interested only in serving his party and has no plan for a 2008 candidacy. Whether he does or does not, he will become the party's principal spokesman for the next three years. Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the party's congressional leaders, will be eclipsed by the more colorful, uninhibited Mr. Dean. Television news channel and network talk show producers will provide the former governor every minute of exposure he craves.
A national party's chairman is particularly important when his party is out of power. Until 30 years ago, the Democrats' official spokesman and titular leader, after a losing presidential campaign, was their defeated candidate in the prior election. Hence Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey took center stage for the party and personally selected the party's chairman (Stevenson chose Paul Butler, Humphrey chose Fred Harris and Larry O'Brien). That tradition ended, however, after the 1972 campaign, when George McGovern was pushed aside after his landslide loss. Subsequent losing candidates, including Al Gore and John Kerry, have similarly been sidetracked to make way for the new.
Mr. Dean's ascendancy to the chairmanship could have parallels with Mr. Harris's. After his 1968 defeat, Humphrey pondered a choice between Mr. Harris and former North Carolina governor Terry Sanford as party chairman. Mr. Harris, along with Sen. Walter Mondale, had co-chaired Humphrey's nominating campaign. Sanford had chaired his general-election campaign. Mr. Harris badly wanted the chairmanship after having been passed over for Sen. Ed Muskie as Humphrey's running mate. A soft-hearted Humphrey gave him the job. Mr. Harris, who had his own presidential ambitions, then cast his lot as chairman with the party's most activist constituencies. In so doing he ruined his own presidential chances, lost his Oklahoma Senate seat, and narrowed the party's base. Sanford would have broadened it.
Republican control of the White House, both houses of Congress, and state houses gives the GOP its strongest national position since at least the Eisenhower period of the 1950s. As Democrats ponder their role in opposition, they might consider how their predecessors conducted themselves during that time.
Democratic congressional leaders Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson pursued a strategy in opposition which, down the road, paid long-term dividends for their party. They supported the Eisenhower administration on national security issues during a dangerous time--intervening with the White House when necessary to stop mistakes such as Vice President Richard Nixon's proposal to use nuclear weapons to bail out French forces at Dienbienphu. They observed the general rule that a president deserved to have the nominees he wanted for key administration and judicial appointments and questioned them only selectively.
Congressional Democrats of that period did, however, use their investigative authority to highlight episodes of public and private corruption. Most importantly, they began preparing the ground for landmark domestic legislation--which ultimately became the Great Society--even though they lacked majorities at the time to pass it. In 1965, after President Johnson's huge victory over Barry Goldwater, Democrats promptly passed the agenda they had nurtured during the Eisenhower years.
The party's visible leaders and voices are pursuing an entirely different strategy today. It generally amounts to angry opposition on all issues all the time. President Bush's Iraq intervention was problematic. But had Mr. Kerry been elected president, he would be following essentially the same path today in Iraq as Mr. Bush--that is, to build an elected Iraqi government's capacity to maintain sufficient security that American forces could leave. Yet most Democrats' reaction to the first essential step in that strategy, the successful completion of elections, has been to dismiss the elections' importance, to charge Mr. Bush with "having no exit strategy," or to demand he set a hard timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.
For many years Democrats, more than Republicans, pointed to the need to reform Social Security for the long term. Social Security, after all, was a Democratic invention and a cornerstone of the party's commitment to economic security. Yet, in the face of the Bush reform initiative, many senior Democrats have chosen simply to deny the need for change. That is not a viable policy or political position. Democrats are quite right to challenge the notion of partial privatization of the system. But they have an equal obligation to offer an alternative reform plan, the components of which are self-evident and which would require little public sacrifice. Why not seize the opportunity the Bush initiative presents and move public opinion toward a Democratic alternative on Social Security?
The Democrats' present disorientation has been in the making for decades. When President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, he acknowledged that its political downside was the end of the Solid (Democratic) South. In 1968, Humphrey lost to Nixon because traditional blue-collar Democratic voters in New Jersey, Ohio and Illinois cast ballots for George Wallace's third-party candidacy. Postelection surveys indicated they did so because they felt alienated from what they saw as Democrats' values and orientations. The disaffections became wholesale in 1972 when Mr. McGovern's peace candidacy was overwhelmed by the "acid, amnesty and abortion" agenda of some of his supporters. As Mr. McGovern's 1972 platform coordinator, I can attest that most of his national convention delegates had less interest in his candidacy than in their own narrow social-agenda objectives.
Jimmy Carter reclaimed moderate Democratic voters, including some Christian conservatives, in 1976. But the erosion in the party's middle-culture base resumed in 1980 as millions of Democrats, including a high percentage of union members, cast Republican votes. President Clinton, as President Carter before him, reclaimed some of those votes. But when "HillaryCare" imploded in 1994, it not only sank health-care reform indefinitely, but also helped Republicans regain a House majority for the first time in 40 years. They have not relinquished it. Something else happened during the Clinton years. President Clinton's eight-year emphasis on short-term tactical politics--focused on his own political survival--left the party without any coherent intellectual foundation.
With the advent of the Dean chairmanship, the Body Snatchers' takeover will be complete and the party of ideas will have been fully transformed to one of reflexive and strident opposition.
Mr. Dean's passion and partisanship no doubt will deepen Democratic support in enclaves they already dominate. My home city of Seattle will remain a blue stronghold. But it will be only one of a few. If you examine the 2004 electoral map closely, you will see that several states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey, voted for Mr. Kerry but could trend longer-term toward the GOP. President Bush made gains over 2000 nationally among female, black, Latino and Catholic voters. If they cannot break free of Deanism--i.e., strident opposition to all things Bush--Democrats could find themselves by 2008 the party of Hollywood, Manhattan, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, George Soros and high-culture media--but not of most Americans.
And Ford would have you believe we Conservatives are scared of Howard Dean...
Second-term blunders by President Bush, or international or economic setbacks, could make voters want change and give Democrats a political reprieve. But what if events go Mr. Bush's way? Unremitting, undifferentiated rage is not an appropriate platform for an opposition party. Voters will reject continuing negativism and obstruction.
I tried to tell them...
Memo to Democrats: It is time to return to the old-fashioned way. Ask the questions: What are the needs of our country? What are our constructive proposals to meet them? How can we best push those proposals forward? If Democratic leaders and candidates ask those questions, and try seriously to answer them, voters may once again be prepared to let them govern.
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