I’d like to finish my ruminations on this long dark midnight of the liberal soul with my thoughts about what I believe the Democratic Party needs to do in order to regain some influence over our country’s trajectory. Not that my lone voice is going to make any difference, of course. The odds that anyone in a position to actually accomplish anything will ever see this little blog, let alone adopt the ideas expressed herein, are approximately equal to the chances of Ozzy Osbourne being invited to speak at the next LDS General Conference. Nevertheless, there is a whole galaxy of liberal blogs and message boards out there that have been buzzing on this same topic for the last six weeks, so perhaps our collective din will somehow become loud enough for the DNC to hear.
The most important thing, I think, is that all Democrats, from the most liberal whack-job hippies to the “Republican Lite” Clintonian centrists, need to make a major attitude adjustment. Several, in fact, starting with the way we on the left handle defeat. I disagree with Republicans on damn near every matter of policy and a whole lot of philosophical points, too, and I certainly despise their contemptuous attitude toward their defeated opponents. But they’re absolutely correct about one thing: we lost, and we need to get over it. That motto should be printed on giant banners and prominently displayed at every Democratic meeting until we get the point and start acting differently.
A big part of the problem with Democrats is that any little set-back sends us into a paroxysm of doubt. Maybe we should move to the center, some say. Maybe we should swing farther left, others say. Maybe we should just give up and move to Canada, a whole lot say. These are absolutely the wrong ways to respond.
Look, a certain willingness to engage in self-reflection is healthy. It is one of the things that defines liberals, and an utter lack of self-reflection is one of the reasons we so dislike the current administration. But I think Dems have gone too far with the second-guessing and Monday-morning quarterbacking, to the point where we’ve become so afraid of making or repeating a mistake that we are paralyzed and incapable of action, and that loses us votes. A lot of the reason why charges of flip-flopping stick to Democratic candidates is because we are so responsive to criticism. Dems constantly tinker with our message, our approach, and our core ideas, trying the find the “sweet spot” combination that will somehow let us start winning again. It’s obvious that this approach doesn’t work. All it does is make it appear that we lack conviction and will say or do anything required to win.
When Republicans lose an election (which does happen, despite their boasting claim to a permanent majority), they change their strategy, not their message. Dems need to adopt this tactic. The Party needs to lose the overpaid consultants and ignore the focus groups. Forget the polls. Find a core message. Figure out what the Party is going to be about, boil it down into a simple sentence, and stick with it, regardless of how the elections turn out. I’ll speak more on that idea in a moment.
In addition to banking our tendency toward self-reflection, Democrats also need to tone down the condescension. Midwesterners, Southerners, lower-class people, religious people — all of these groups have complained for years that liberals look down upon them. I’ve always tended to discount their claims, figuring that they were just being touchy, or expressing their own insecurities or something. After all, part of the liberal philosophy — at least of my liberal philosophy — is that there is inherent value in all peoples and cultures. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, as the Trekkies would say. But reading the politiblogs in the weeks since the election, I’ve come to realize that a lot of liberals really do despise those who can be described, for lack of a better word, as rednecks. And I’ve realized that I have some prejudices in that direction myself. I’m not proud of it, but I’m honest enough to admit it. The interests and concerns of the NASCAR crowd completely baffle me, and given a choice, I don’t think I’d hang around with “those people.” For me as an individual to say that is no big deal. For a political party that wants to have a say in how the country thinks and operates, it’s a huge problem.
As hypocritical or indefensible as the liberal disdain for “those people” may be, I think it is understandable. There are very real cultural and lifestyle differences between urban liberals and rural or even suburban conservatives. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that liberals tend to be better educated than many of those who make up the Republican base, but it’s a mistake to assume that so-called rednecks are stupid. Not only is it wrong, it’s a tactical error. People aren’t going to vote for a candidate or a party that appears to hate them. But somehow, we’ve got to woo at least some of those people onto our side if we’re to regain the majority. And to do that, we have to stop not liking them.
How, in practical terms, do we do that? I have no idea. But I think it starts with trying to live up to our own ideals, specifically the notion I already mentioned, that all people do have worth, even if they live in trailer parks, drink domestic beer, and couldn’t care less about the writings of Jacques Derrida. The sad truth is that there are more people like them than there are intellectuals like us. We need to make friends with them, even if we can’t immediately see what we might have in common with them.
We also need to stop being so damn mild-mannered about everything. Liberals have a reputation for being weak, and it works against us, especially these days when national security is such a concern. In part, this reputation is a legacy of the late ’60s, when liberalism was synonymous with anti-Vietnam pacifism. A lot of activists from that period are still influencing the party today, and it’s hurting us. I think one of the reasons John Kerry seemed so schizophrenic on the Iraq War is because he was trying to satisfy the pacifist no-war-for-any-reason crowd as well as the war-sometimes-but-this-one-was-wrong group, and there simply was no good way to reconcile those two philosophies. We need to move away from this late-’60s attitude and more toward the early-’60s flavor of liberalism espoused by the Jack and Bobby Kennedy: progressive and compassionate, but strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Kruschev over Cuba and force the Russians to blink. If the Dems need to purge the aging hippies from the party in order to change our perceived weakness on national security, then I say let the pogroms begin. I’m no hawk, but pacifism simply isn’t practical. It never was, not even in the Summer of Love, and it certainly isn’t today. That doesn’t mean that military force is the solution to everything — I believe it should always be the last-resort solution — but you must be willing to use it sometimes, and certain wings of the Democratic Party simply aren’t willing to do that. I say if they can’t accept reality, then let them be gone, off to the Greens or to form their own party, so we can back to winning elections.
However, the Dem reputation for being cowards derives from a lot more than our attitudes about national security. There is also the simple fact that we’re not very self-confident. Republicans win, in part, because they refuse to concede. Ever. It’s isn’t that their message is any better, it’s that they’re so damned confident of their message that people start to believe it, and this effect is amplified because they absolutely will not give up.
Democrats need to adopt this same approach. Kerry’s finest moments came during the debates, when he was on-message and relentless in his criticism of the president. We need to be like that all the time. That’s not to say Dems should become overbearing assholes or lose our capacity to recognize and admit our mistakes. But we should be as unwavering and unwilling to surrender as our opponents. If you lose a close election, you call for an immediate and complete recount, and you be willing to wait as long as it takes or to take it to court, whatever, to ensure that it happens. (Al Gore’s big mistake was playing games with which counties he wanted recounted. He should’ve called for a state-wide recount and let the chips fall where they may.) When the other side says they’re right, you say, “no, you’re wrong, and here’s why…” Don’t compromise, don’t say the other guy has a point, say that he’s wrong. Never give an inch on the correctness of our core beliefs. Policies and details may need to be re-evaluated, but not the core ideas, not ever.
Finally, Dems need to stop being negative all the time. One of our criticisms of the Bush Administration is that they influence the people through their fear of terrorism, but what have we offered as an alternative? Certainly not the opposite of fear. Really, all we’ve done is tried to influence people through a different flavor of fear, the fear of President Bush. Granted, it’s tough to be hopeful when you believe that four more years under our current president is going to bankrupt the country, but from a completely pragmatic perspective, people aren’t going to vote for that sort of honesty. They simply won’t. Jimmy Carter was honest with people. He got pummeled by a guy who promised that everything would be alright.
Again, I think this situation is a holdover from the Vietnam and Watergate eras. The old-school liberals from those days were all about questioning, opposing, and criticizing the policies of the Johnson and Nixon presidencies, and they’ve never broken the habit. They talk about what’s wrong — which is vital, of course — but they never offer any ideas on how to fix it. And we’ve got to change that.
But to offer any sort of coherent — not to mention believable — vision of hope, the Democrats must figure out what their vision is…
[Ed. Note: Because this is getting so long, I’m going to break it in two, so look to the next entry for the conclusion…]
