Was the Republican wipe-out in the 2006 mid-term elections a victory of “the mighty middle?” New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks so — and says Rove-style “mobilization” (polarized elections) may be dead:
For decades, moderates have been the cowardly lions of American politics. You’d see them quivering in the corner as the anti-establishment left exchanged culture war mortar fire with the anti-establishment right. You’d see them passed over and dissed as the parties mobilized their bases and played to their primary voters.
(How did he know TMV didn’t get an invitation to the CNN’s bloggers party?)
Well, somebody’s been on steroids, because on Tuesday the muscular middle took control of America. Say goodbye to the era of Rovian base mobilization. Say goodbye to the era of conservative dominance that began in 1980. On Tuesday, 47 percent of the voters were self-described moderates, according to exit polls, and they asserted their power by voting for the Democrats in landslide proportions.
About a year ago, these angry moderates lost confidence in Republican rule. The tens of millions of dollars spent since then — the ads, the robocalls, the microtargeting — did nothing to change that basic decision.
Their disaffection with the G.O.P. was not philosophical. It was about competence and accountability. It was about the accumulation of Rumsfeld, Katrina, Abramoff, the bridge to nowhere and the failure to quarantine Mark Foley. Bill Clinton captured the electorate’s central complaint about the G.O.P.: “They can’t run anything right.�
This has been a theme of this site since it was started nearly three years ago. There is indeed a segment of America that may not be totally left or totally right — and doesn’t necessarily disparage those who are.
But this segment (a) doesn’t want to be totally ignored or written off (b) can be HIGHLY passionate (because you are a centrist or a moderate doesn’t mean you don’t take a strong stand on key issues or feel deeply) and (c) DOES vote. American history proves that there is a passionate center. If you don’t believe it, just read THIS BOOK.required reading for moderates, centrists and independents)
The GOP under Rove basically wrote this segment of the United States completely off. Rove & Co seemingly forgot that the Republican Party did not win past elections merely on the basis of getting votes from only the most loyal segment (the Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity segment) of its base but by peeling off Democrats uneasy about their party’s McGovernite-descended progressive wing and by reeling in a healthy chunk of independent and moderate voters that tend to vote for the less “extreme” choice.
Look at recent American history and you can see how the pendulum swung. Bill Clinton was elected because he persuaded Americans he was a more centrist kind of Democrat. But when he first got in, he scared some voters by taking positions more to the left. The result: defeat in the mid-terms. Enter Dick Morris and his (in)famous “triangulation” that put Clinton back on track (that plus a bunch of clumsy Republican missteps).
In 2000 Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” but 911 shoved everything off the plate until the Katrina fiasco. Until then, Bush and the GOP were then wrapped in the terrorism-created cocoon of heightened national security concerns, which trumped most political concerns.
Over the past two years, with near total control of the government, the Bush administration and GOP Congress veered increasingly more to the right in trying to please its base — even though on other key issues it alarmed classic conservatives.
Brooks also makes this assertion that some progressives will dispute:
So voters kicked out Republicans but did not swing to the left. For the most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative Democrats. It was a great day for the centrist Joe Lieberman, who defeated the scion of the Daily Kos net roots, Ned Lamont. It was a great day for anti-abortion Democrats like Bob Casey and probably for pro-gun Democrats like Jim Webb. It was a great day for conservative Democrats like Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana.
It was even a good day for some moderate Republicans, like Chris Shays in Connecticut, Deborah Pryce in Ohio and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, who held on because they are independent.
It was a terrible day for anti-immigration restrictionists on the right of the G.O.P., like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf in Arizona.
His key paragraph is this:
In some ways, this election reminds me of the 1974 Democratic sweep. The Republicans have screwed up. Democrats have surged in. But the result leads not to a liberal tide but to Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 ran as a conservative anti-political reformer who won on fiscal discipline and with the support of Pat Robertson.
This election didn’t define a new era, but it marks the end of an old one. If Democrats are going to take advantage of their victory, they will have to do two things. They will have to show they have not been taken over by their bloggers or their economic nationalists, who will alienate them from the suburban office park moms. Second, they’ll have to come up with ideas as big as the problems we face. Their current platform consists of small-bore tax credits and foreign policy vagaries about, say, “redoubling� our efforts to get Osama bin Laden. (Why not retripling or requadrupling?)
Realignments are achieved by parties that define big new approaches to problems (see F.D.R.’s Commonwealth Club speech), and neither party has done that yet. In the meantime, if I were a Democrat I’d be like Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman and serial commission member. The country is hungering for leaders like him: open-minded, unassuming centrists who are interested in government more than politics. If the Democrats are smart, this could be the beginning of a new Hamiltonian age.
But let’s be realistic: over the next few months (and years) just as we will see an internal struggle for the soul of the Republican Party waged by those who feel Bushism has watered down Republicanism, we’re likely to see some kind of struggle within the Democratic Party waged by those who feel moderates and DLC influence sell out what the Democratic Party really stands for. Many conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats feel a centrist stance by their party would be betrayal.
Bull Moose (who is himself controversial) writes:
Both parties are on probation with the electorate. Republicans were fired and Democrats were hired. But, unless they deliver for the vital center, their tenure could be brief.
…Perhaps the President’s greatest mistake was to fail to forge a new politics after 9/11 and unite the country for the long haul in the war against terror. Instead, in the 2002 midterms, he chose the Rovian politics of the base – and in 2006 that polarizing model cost Republicans control over Congress.
Democrats should not make the same mistake. That means actually working with the White House to achieve big things such as comprehensive immigration reform and expansion of the military.
Democrats are no longer just an opposition party. Soon they will control the Executive Branch. That means that they, unlike the Bush Administration, must have a occupation plan. Progress must be stressed over partisanship. Democrats must make alliances with Republicans to pass legislation to send to the President.
But you can already SEE a shift after this landmark election:
A few weeks ago few (except TMV repeatedly) hammered home at the idea that politics can be highly effective when it involves coalition building, aggregating (versus aggravating) interests because it can achieve and strengthen NATIONAL UNITY en route to durable political dominance.
Today, just divide and rule no longer seems cool.
But let’s see how long this new/old idea lasts in the political marketplace…
UPDATE: One of TMV’s favorite columnists, E.J. Dionne Jr. weighs in and he also sees American voters as having written “FIN” on a political era aimed at pitting groups of Americans against groups of Americans:
It’s over.
American voters, in their wisdom, ended an era on Tuesday. They rejected a poorly conceived war policy in Iraq that has weakened the United States. They rejected a harshly ideological approach to politics that cast opponents as enemies of the country’s survival. They rejected a president so determined to win an election that he was willing to slander his opponents by saying: “The Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses.” The voters decided there was no decency in that.
No longer will the national tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, be used to undermine the opposition party. It was only after he was forced to do so by an electoral defeat that President Bush called for genuine bipartisanship yesterday. Imagine what the world would look like if he had done that a year or two ago.
And no longer will we pay attention to political strategists who assert that swing voters aren’t important and that independents and moderates don’t matter. If Democrats are to make good use of the power they have been granted, they need to remember that last point. This election was the revenge of the center no less than it was the revenge of the left. The decisive votes cast on Tuesday came from moderates and independents, whom the exit polls showed favoring Democratic House candidates by about 3 to 2.
Read the rest.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.