Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean got it right. He is telling Democrats that they shouldn’t view the November election victories as a restoration, but as a loan of power — to see what they can do.
Basically, the Democrats are like a brand, new employee who’s hired and is initially on probation. Should independents, centrists and moderates who fled today’s GOP stay with them beyond this one election?
Should the Reagan Democrats who had left their party think about a more permanent return? Should some GOPers still upset about their party’s apparent tin ear to voters wanting change (by retaining an old guard in its Congressional leadership, being clearly still enmeshed in the politics of polarization, and by not visibily shifting to a more effective Iraq policy with more than “we’re going to win and not leave until this mission is over” as a policy formulation gameplan) stick around or revoke their support of the Demmies?
The Democratic National Committee chairman, Howard Dean, warned party leaders on Saturday not to revel too long in the victories from last month’s midterm elections or treat their Congressional majorities as a permanent directive from voters.
“The other party made mistakes in the past claiming that elections are mandates,� Mr. Dean said. “Elections are not mandates. The voters of this country loaned the Democrats the power of the country for two years. Now it’s our job to earn it back again.�
And, indeed, immediately after the hotly-disputed and controversial 2000 Presidential election news stories were peppered with a then-shocking concept: Karl Rove & Co decided to treat the Republicans’ razor-thin victory as an actual mandate and push for big changes, as if they had won a landslide. That’s what they did…and for a while it worked, helping helped expand executive wing political power and win Congressional seats.
In a speech to the party’s executive committee here, Mr. Dean said “governing is more difficult than campaigning,� and declared that Democrats must not squander opportunities to keep building the party. The modest gains winning over evangelical voters, he said, should be strengthened by asserting that “moral values are an important part of foreign policy.�
“If George Bush made any single huge mistake,� Mr. Dean said, “it’s that he thought he could be president by being president for half of America and by treating the rest of us with contempt. That is not a mistake I ever want Democrats to make.�
That’s correct, athough you would not think that was the case if you listed to some progressive talk shows (particularly some of the non-network, local ones). The election is being interpreted as a massive mandate and a chance to undo ASAP a host of things associated with the Bush administration.
To some, it’s take-no-prisoners-time and those mushy moderates and flaccid-believing independents who probably only watch American Idol should be ignored. (Apparently the mushy moderates and ignoramus independents were not so much or as ignorant about issues in 2006 because they voted in huge numbers…)
The Democrats now have a golden opportunity to win back the center and glue it in place as part of a winning or at least more competitive electoral coalition. And that won’t be done by giving the back of the hand to parts of a possible winning coalition or powerful or rich Democrats looking down their snoots at the center.
If there is a lesson of the past six years — one that will be noted in future history accounts and any books that come out analyzing the Bush 43 administration — it will be that George Bush and Karl Rove calculated that independents, centrists and moderates really weren’t independents, centrists and moderates and so they didn’t really matter in campaign and governing calculations.
The idea was that government of the base, by the base and for the base could not only work but consolidate Republican power. That did prove feasible for some of the time — but, due to such narrow support, the GOP had no safety net if some things went wrong. And a few things didn’t turn out too good…
If the Democrats adopt a Rovian view of politics — “Hey, if this is too liberal for those centrists let them go somewhere else because where can they go?” — they’ll be doomed to the same fate as the Republicans.
Perhaps the U.S. would then shift into a new phase in 2008 or beyond, where voters who aren’t 100 percent on the left or 100 percent on the right would then begin hunting for a third way. And third parties — so far at least — have generally thrown an election to one of the major parties…often the party with the ideas that third-party voters favor least.
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.