The Elephant in the Room

In comments over at michele's official "coming out" post, Ilyka Damen offered this sentiment:

I've been telling my Democrat brother for over a year now, "We're here--Bush voters who aren't social conservatives--and you could have had us for a song. We're on special, we're on markdown, we come cheap. But instead of wooing us, you sat around and complained that Kerry wasn't left enough. You put Howard Dean on the DNC. You defended people who said and did indefensible things, out of a much stronger sense of party loyalty than I've ever seen displayed on the right. You could have guaranteed your party would run this country for the next 16 years if you'd only moved to the middle, if you'd only been willing to concede that the noninterventionist policies America pursued in the decade leading up to 2001 did not work in her interests."

Now before I go on, I have to state unequivocally that I disagree with some of the particulars in Ilyka's comment. But, that's a whole other discussion for another time.

As for the rest, I think progressives who are seriously interested in working to change things, need to listen up. The last election was very close. Unless you've got some magic beans that'll grow brand new Democrats (who will show up and vote) next time around, we may need to do something to bring people like Ilyka around. Or not.

Comments

[BenA]

It's always good to attract new voters (that's how you win elections, after all). But anyone who thinks that Howard Dean or John Kerry is "left" has been drinking _way_ too much of the GOP Koolaid. Vague accusations that the Dems are too far left, or that Dems "defended people who said indefensible things" (Michael Moore, perhaps?) really don't advance the discussion. What makes you think you'd want the kind of government that Ilyka is looking for?

The GOP didn't become the plurality party by finding a middle ground between it and the Dems. They didn't look at Democratic majorities in Congress and say "gee, how can we become more like the Dems so we can win their voters." They became a plurality party by finding a way to sell their core message to (much of) the American people. Two things to note here: 1) they had a core message; 2) they insisted on selling it.

You don't win in politics by scrounging around for a few votes by, say, being just a little wingnutty on a few issues. The Dems have been trying that trick for decades. They've abandoned (what I would consider the moral and rational) high ground on the death penalty, drugs, and (to a great extent) war and peace issues in a desperate attempt to look tough enough to win at the Republicans game. In 2004, the idea was to nominate a war hero to innoculate yourselves against accusations that you're weak on defense. We all know how well that worked. The fact that the emerging buyer's-remorse crowd _still_ can't stand Kerry is a good reminder of how successful this kind of thing has been and will continue to be.

The better answer is to change the game itself. As tired as we all are of the frame meme, that's really where it's at. But to do that you first need to stand for something. I happen to think the country needs something substantially to the left of where the Democrats are. This is not the same thing as saying that the Democrats need to move left to win elections. You can win elections from all sorts of different places on the political spectrum. What I'm saying is that this country needs a truly progressive party to provide us with healthcare, repair the social safety net, and build a peaceful and sustainable world. But then again, I'm a Green.

[tas]

I don't get it. How much further to the right do we have to move? Kerry wasn't enough? Kerry's pandering to McCain wasn't enough? Gore/Lieberman wasn't enough of a conservative combo? Installing Reid as the Senate Minority Leader isn't enough? Exactly how far to the middle do we have to go? What do these people want?

[Chad Robinson]

This whole rube goldberg construction about wavering Republicans is just another manifestation of vapid knucklehead Republicans trying to express their ennui with the fact that they got exactly the same Dubya after the election that they had somehow managed to ignore BEFORE it. The reason the GOP keeps winning is that people like to feel like they are following leaders, and the DNC has been totally incapable of presenting anything remotely resembling leadership to the American people. I am, unfortunately, related to conservatives. Real jackass Fox News watching, muslim hating, midwestern yokels who were born with a silver head up their asses. And you know what? Whenever I have sat down and talked them quietly and calmly through my belief in any one of a number of airy, high-falutin' liberal policies, they have walked away agreeing with me wholeheartedly... they have even gone so far as to say that things like universal health care was something they stood for the entire time after 3 hours of telling me why it was going to destroy the country and release Satan and rains of frogs. My point is: the mass of the people here dont have a real political ideology, they have an affinity for personalities inhabitting office. You can sell them on good policies like, say, the New Deal at LEAST as quickly as Dubya sold us on invading Iraq to avenge New York for the attacks launched by Afghani-trained Saudi's. You don't have to knuckle under to sorry-ass bleating crybabies like Ilkya, you just have to show LEADERSHIP.

And quite frankly, my dearly held beliefs about social equality and the necessity that SOME political party be willing to punish corporate malfeasance are not negotiable. If the Democrats abandon whatever tattered shreds of post New Deal egalitarianism they have left, then I'll walk. It's only worth voting for the lesser of two evils if one of the evils is actually lesser.

[Chad Robinson]

Bah. My former comment was overly emotional and unfair towards this Ilkya person who I have never met. The comment about our interventionalist policies is kind of a hot button for me since it seems to get used in place of actual discussion. Anyhow, my point above (about leadership being the motivator for most people, not policy) stands, only without the juvenile ad hominem attacks (for which I once again apologize. I shoud learn to put the keyboard down and walk away for a few minutes before hitting "post").

[KathyF]

I don't know, Chad, I kinda agreed with you, in a fairly unemotional way. I think it's a matter of learning to talk WITH (not to) others, and learning that beyond the satan-laced rhetoric are some common beliefs.

[B.D.]

Bill Clinton won some of those voters - the swing voters - over and he beat his opponents pretty badly. He beat Dole even without Perot's help. Why? Beause Bill was A) charismatic and B) a smart person who knew how to frame the arguments on his terms.

Gore and Kerry have all of the charisma of a gnat between them. In fact, what's very surprising is how well both candidates did against Bush. For all of the pats on the back in Washington right now and the talk of Rove's genius, the fact that Bush did so poorly against these candidates (he's much more charismatic and he framed the arguments well) shows that there are a lot of people who really wanted to vote against these idiots, but couldn't quite bring themselves to vote Democrat.

Why is that? Well, for one thing, as I said neither Gore nor Kerry is particularly charismatic. Democrats made what they consider to be safe, relatively conservative choices in those candidates. Both men did worm their way through discussions of issues, looking for the correct voice and message to convey, which made them appear less decisive and trust worthy.

I'm not sure that Dean could have defeated Bush either. Edwards had what it took, but he would have needed a high powered VP candidate to compete with Cheney. Policy wonks tend to think that the swing voters everyone covets really care about policy in the same ways that they do. Swing voters care about image. They want to feel good about the country. They want to like their candidate. Reagan and Clinton won many of these same voters because both men filled those needs.

[Thad]

Fuckin' A, Chad. The Dems' problems cannot be solved by playing a shell game with policy positions, and while Ilyka may be sincere -- I have no idea -- her promise of a windfall of "moderate" Republican voters if we just act a little bit more like the radical wingnuts is illusory. That's just chasing rainbows.

As Chad said, we will win by leading -- and that means fighting the Republicans tooth and claw, shamelessly working the refs, establishing an alternative liberal media universe, playing hardball with Vichy Dems like Holy Joe, message discipline including unrelenting and savage mockery of anyone we can get a piece of (Tom DeLay would be a good start). Go on the attack, take chances, demonize your opponents as dangerous lunatics (which they are). Stand on fucking principle for a change, and people will come to you.

I don't know why this is so mysterious, and I don't know why so many people seem to think that policy has fuck all to do with winning. The Republicans don't win because a majority of Americans agree with their policies. The people are overwhelmingly aligned with the Democrats (or, in some cases, to the left of the Democrats) on the actual issues. But the Republicans win time and again because they put on a terrific dog-and-pony show. And as long as most Democrats believe that kind of crass showmanship to be beneath them, they will continue to get pummeled on Election Day.

[eRobin]

I think before we start becoming Nixon Republicans, which, as far as I can figure out, is still too far to the left for Ilyka, I would hope we'd look more closely at the election that actually happened instead of the one we were sold by the corporate media.

Bush squeaked by with the lowest margin of victory since Wilson in 1916 - if you throw out 2000, which was lower - and he managed to screw up that badly during a war, with the corporate press completely in the tank for him. And - I'm not even going to make the obligatory tinfoil joke here - I believe we won the fucker. In Ohio, in New Mexico and probably in Florida where recounts of eVoting machines are against the law.

Now is exactly the wrong time for Dems to move right. Primarily because there's no room left for us to move as it is. Also because the GOP is making no attempt to hide their fascist ways. Now is the time to remember that most of America agrees with us on nearly every issue. The biggest mistake the Dems made so far is letting that damned Barriers to Bankruptcy Bill come for a vote. That vote was part of their craven refusal to expose the ongoing class war for the unrelenting attack on poor and middle class America that it is. But, luckily or unluckily, that bill isn't the only example of the - and there's no other word for it - evil the GOP has in store. We can win on SocSec going into '06 and we can win big if we tie "saving it" to raising the minimum wage. Do the Dems have the courage and vision? Probably not. But blame their addiction to corporate corruption and greed. Blame their cowardly, whorish behavior. Don't blame the party's forgotten values - values that Americans overwhelmingly share.

[Roxanne]

The reason the GOP keeps winning is that people like to feel like they are following leaders, and the DNC has been totally incapable of presenting anything remotely resembling leadership to the American people.

Can I posit that the candidate, mixed messages, off-target messages, etc. were what lost the election? Is THAT what happened?

As for a Nixon Republican back in the White House, I have to say that I prefer that over what we've got now. No, that's a bit of an overstatement. But, I'd take Teddy Roosevelt or Ike. Of course, that Republican party is long, long gone. '

08 aint' gonna pretty for the Republican Party.

[NTodd]

We sat around and complained that Kerry wasn't left enough? Dean heads the DNC? That's why she voted Bush? Sorry, that dog won't hunt.

PS--there's at least one open bold tag floating around up there somewhere...

[Thad]

Uh, yeah, that was me, sorry. I should never oughta have posted pre-coffee. Somehow, though, Typepad seems to have taken care of it.

[grover]

Where has it ever been written that the center and the left could not peaceably coexist inside one party? It would seem to me that we are all very much on the same side in that we still have the common enemy of the far right. The GOP is moving further and further to the right and that is the true danger to both center and left.

While cruising through the various blogs, I can see the anger of both sides posting smack about one another. I am as guilty of this as anybody, so really I am not holding myself up as a paradigm of virtue or anything. It is just that I know that if the left and center cannot find some way of working together in unity to stop the dominance of the far right, then the right will continue to run things. And that is not good for anybody.

The country is trending (oooh, I hate that word) to the right. Which is both good and bad. Bad because that means that the Republicans are running things. It is good because it represents a chance for the democratic party to prove that their tent is bigger, better and more politically diverse than the laughable "big tent" of the GOP. We just have to figure out how to do that which appears not to be an easy thing to do because both sides have their hangups about the correct way of doing things.

All I know is that if we cannot figure out how we can move together to fight the far right, we all lose. I am not even the guy to ask how to do that. There is, however, a very big need for some sort of truce.

[B.D.]

If I read this correctly, many of us are saying essentially the same thing. Hm, do you think Dean and the others are listening?

I am not a Democrat. I tend to vote for them because they are closer to being in line with my more liberals views. During the past 8 years the establishment in the Democratic party has been practicing the same tactics that the Republicans did in the 90s. Namely, rather than promoting promising new voices and candidates, they's spent a lot of time and effort on the tired old voices of success from years gone past. Gephardt and Daschle were poor voices of opposition for the Congress. Reid and Pelosi aren't much, if any better. Find new blood, new voices, and better, more tightly focused messages and the so-called swing voters might come their way.

[Thad]

Can I posit that the candidate, mixed messages, off-target messages, etc. were what lost the election? Is THAT what happened?

Pretty much. Too-Many-Cooks syndrome at the Kerry campaign (fuckin' Bob Shrum, gah), an ineptly plotted convention, and too few Dems who had Kerry's back when he came under fire -- forget about actually going on point for him. The GOP have the nastiest attack dogs in the world, and they aren't afraid to let 'em off the leash. What do we have?

As far as I'm concerned, after the Swift Boat thing, some 527 with about as much of a patina of "idependence" as the Swifities had ought to have saturated the media with the (obvious) Pet Goat commercial -- split screen with a digital clock, Bush sits there stunned as the second plane hits and the towers burn. We could have used "Mission Accomplished" and "Dead or Alive" ads as well.

But nobody in the Kerry campaign wanted to get their hands dirty with this stuff, even going through surrogates. Well gee, that's great -- give yourselves a pat on the back for taking the high road to Loserville.

[Thad]

Oh, yeah, "Bring It On," too -- another obvious ad that was never used.

[ktheintz]

There are a lot of people like Peter Beinart or Bull Moose who essentially want the Dems to be a sane version of the GOP. And they are good people, unlike the knuckle-draggers that actually run the GOP. But the right way for them to bring that wish into being is for them to commit to the GOP and try to pull it leftward.

As for us, we need to force people to choose. You want "preventive war", fine, but you get creationism and a war on the poor as part of the package.

The Dems need to work harder to engage the public on the questions of national security. But to endorse the doctrine of preventive war, which Beinart et al seem to want us to do, is to cease to be an alternative. And we fail everyone, posterity included, when we cease to be an alternative.

[Chris Clarke]

Issues of left or right aside... since when is politics something you expect to buy off the rack?

I myself can remember - and I'm not that old - when a common reaction to wanting a political party to be different was to roll up one's sleeves and start doing some of the work. This person doesn't like the way the GOP is, and the Dems are so far to the "left" (heh) for her that she'd vote for a war criminal instead. Fair enough. So the answer for her is to whine and accuse 49 million people of not doing enough to change their politics so that she can cast a vote the way she wants?

She ought to be working to reform the GOP, if that's where her affinities lie. Americans like her seem to think they can be passive consumers of politics.

I agree with Roxanne - if I read her correctly - that we need to be thinking of ways to reach people like this. That doesn't mean we sell out our politics, not to mention reality: it just means we do more talking with our neighbors, more creativee message-spreading, more organizing. But if Damen wants to be a political couch potato, I'm reasonably certain that the only person that can propel her toward our "side" is Bush.

[Tony Iovino]

It's not a matter of moving right or not. Many of us "reds" are uncomfrotable with the religeous right. I'm embarrassed that we have to go through this nonsense with the 10 Commandments, or with the moralistic opposition to gay unions.

That said, there is no other option available to us. Dems haven't offered a single solution to ANY domestic problem that doesn't involve more government & more taxes, and you refuse to acknowledge that some systems don't work--see public education-- and that pouring more money in is like pouring water on sand.

Internationally, we are offered a series of wrong answers, going back decades--appeasement, unilateral diarmament, relying on the UN, etc etc.

So, yes, many of us are not happy that Pat Robertson is in our tent. But what are our alternatives?

[doghouse riley]

I've been reading those "I'm a Republican and I'd vote Democratic if only..." posts for as long as blogs have had comments. None of 'em comes with a signed and notarized contract.jpg.

Republicans gained political control by moving rightward and latching on to general dissatisfactions old and new. Opposition to taxes, opposition to civil rights, anti-communism, shame and anger at the loss of the Vietnam war, modernity, increasing complexity and diversity. Democrats aided them at every turn. Kennedy and Johnson ran scared from what the right had done to Truman. Sizable Democratic majorities kneecapped Jimmy Carter almost from election day. DINO Congresses smoothed Reagan's pillow before the Royal Ass hit it. Nobody fought the rightward tilt in news that began in the late 70s (we would have looked like Nixon!), the end of the fairness doctrine, or the deeding of great chunks of the landscape to corporations.

If there's Buyer's Remorse it's twofold. Republicans can win elections, but the radicals that control the party cannot govern except by fiat and shady dealing. And there's still a Roosevelt coalition out there--better off than it was in the Great Depression, but still unwilling to hand everything over to the Super Rich and help keep those poorer than themselves down. If you wanna win, find me a plain-speaking Democrat, Harry S or even a Ross Perot will do. One who is not so beholden to monied interests that he's afraid to speak simple truths.

[Chris Clarke]

, and you refuse to acknowledge that some systems don't work--see public education-- and that pouring more money in is like pouring water on sand

My wife teaches in a public school. I subsidize that school to the tune of several thousand dollars a year, paying for school supplies. My wife works twenty to forty hours of unpaid overtime in a typical week. Her case is not by any stretch of the imagination unusual.

I hear lines like the above fairly often. I wonder if people like Tony ever use that line when it comes to paying for a meal. "You can't fix hunger with money!"

Out of respect for our hostess I will not speculate about the location of anyone's head, and will limit myself to saying that 1) I'm pretty sure anyone who says something like that wouldn't last a week trying to do the job my wife does, and 2) people who say things like the above-quoted are more or less perfectly mated with Pat Robertson if you ask me.

[Dianne]

The US pursued non-interventionist policies prior to 2001? Unless we're talking about the 18th century US, I don't see it. Clinton bombed Iraq, a medication factory in the Sudan, and Afghanistan. He also continued sanctions against the Hussein regime. The Bush invasion of Afghanistan was essentially a plan that Clinton had drawn up but decided not to start just before leaving office--didn't want to start Bush off in the middle of a crisis, I suppose. This is non-interventionist? What would he have to do to be "interventionist"? Somehow, I have the feeling that Republicans, socially conservative or otherwise, wouldn't consider a Democratic president "interventionist" even if he invaded France and started ranting about manifest destiny...

I suppose the "non-social conservative" Republicans are looking for a Kennedy Democrat: someone who will use the US's military power to keep the rest of the world down so that US-Americans can get cheap gas and consumer goods, but will allow a certain amount of freedom within the US itself. In some senses the Bush administration is fairer: it oppresses everyone. US-Americans get some of the same effects as the rest of the world: the Patriot Act at home, torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Restriction of reproductive rights at home, no funding for programs to improve reproductive rights and fight AIDS abroad. Concrete barriers around the White House, shooting anyone who gets within 100 feet of a US military vehicle in Iraq.

[doghouse riley]

I'm married to a teacher too, Chris, and it's the same story. Nine, ten hour days, two hours of meetings a week, parent nights, parent conferences, phone calls to parents, at least one weekend a month given to grades, fund raisers, organizing local merchants, ordering supplies, hanging and dismantling student shows. And she's in a magnet program, so her class sizes are relatively small. But at least we're gettin' rich.

And if you think money doesn't do anything, come on over to Indiana and see what budget cuts are about to accomplish.

I clinked the link to Michelle. Too many comments to try to engage in some straight talk, but y'know, if what she was met by here was clenched-fist-shaking I envy the placidity of her life. There's simply no possibility for dialogue if we reject the notion that one can can disagree, or if we characterize any such disagreement as coming from, and surgically attached to, some amorphous, monolithic Left. There's a long road to travel with someone who didn't recognize the radical right's stranglehold on the Republican party until last Thursday. I'm with Chris; the best thing Michelle can do is work to reform her own party, while working to refine her own sources of information. I'd hand her some, but my fists seem to be permanently clenched.

[Kathy]

"That said, there is no other option available to us. Dems haven't offered a single solution to ANY domestic problem that doesn't involve more government & more taxes, and you refuse to acknowledge that some systems don't work--see public education-- and that pouring more money in is like pouring water on sand."

Let's see, you're saying we should get rid of public education. Yeah, try that one out next election.

"More government"? The only government I see expanding is Bush's.

"More taxes." I see you must be one of the few Americans making over 200k. Congratulations. When we're all serfs, can we camp out at your place? Raise a few crops, wash your car...?

[eRobin]

Arrgh - I am so sick of hearing that public education doesn't work. Get a new tune.

[Lauren]

Quickly, I'd like to stick up for Ilyka. She is firmly in the middle on most issues and tends to err on the side of caution and reasonability. She is a social liberal and fiscal conservative - something not many people have a problem with, least of all this leftist commie.