Posted on 07/28/2005 2:52:20 PM PDT by kristinn
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Against Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them.
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The name of this panel is "Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives."
I was given the privilege of coming before you today, I suppose, because of my expertise on the history of the conservative idea infrastructure.
So it may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.
Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.
As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are un****withable.
It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."
Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.
Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."
They have reason to fear.
There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.
Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."
I won't belabor the point that I believe that the Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.
The Christian right is a political machine. Very little is asked of its cogs: just that they consult the call board on election day, and vote the way it says. It takes enormous effort to get them to do just that, as any of their leaders will freely tell you. Any of Richard J. Daley's precinct captains would have told you the same thing.
It doesn't take much to demobilize a machine voter: Just install some doubt that people who claim to be their champions are not really their champions. If the Democrats had been united against the bankruptcy bill, we could even have demobilized some of these Freepers.
That's the way they did it with us. The stuff about the Democrats being "cultural elitists" spread a nagging doubt. People stopped looking to the call board. Even some of the activists.
The time is ripe to do it to them. A Pentecostal friend of mine just returned from a mission to El Salvador with his childhood church from rural Louisiana. He used to regale me with tales of annual July 4 Pentecostal retreats that were like Nuremberg rallies in praise of the Great Leader. That's over now. The straw that broke the camel's back, he tells me, was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist. They also have vanishingly low faith in Bush's foreign policy, and in the Iraq war.
They're getting demobilized.
That's great. But here's the catch. They have to have somewhere to go. That's where the simple stuff comes in.
Let's talk about Social Security.
The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.
Now think about this: They are drawing on the capital of an entitlement passed 70 years ago.
They'll be drawing on the capital from Medicare 35 years from now. Congressional Democrats won't let them kill it. Because they understand: These programs make life in America fundamentally better. And because these gooses, Social Security, Medicare, lay golden eggs. They manufacture Democrats.
It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.
Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?
It makes a virtuous circle. The most important exit poll finding from last year's election was not about moral values. It was all the people who said they disagreed with Bush on the issues, but they were voting for him anyway because they knew what he stood for.
What I call "superjumbos"—grand policy commitments that span generations—add value by the very credibility of the commitment.
It isn't any accident that not raising taxes is a pledge every Republican makes, on pain of political death. It has not hurt them even though, according to Stanley Greenberg's polls, only 30 percent of Americans call high taxes a very serious problem.
To complete the circle—in the same poll 77 percent called "the state of health care in America" a serious problem.
Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."
Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All. Not, as I found it formulated on the website of even one of the most liberal senators, "access to affordable health insurance."
Simple.
Not easy.
So Democrats, let's get to work.
.....Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives......
But compare the complex multiple syllabic sophistication above with "A chicken in every pot"
The have moved so very far away from the core.
If they keep on laying these golden eggs, they will kill the goose (America). You can only keep a Ponzi scheme going for so long. Once people start seeing their benfits cut and taxes increased, they will realize they have been had.
Hint to Democrats: We've seen your iron-pyrite electroplated coprolites, and we know that they aren't real golden eggs...
A somewhat left-wing Democrat would have a chance of winning, if he ran on this:
1. Our social programs were created 35-70 years ago, for an economy based on manufacturing. We are now an information-based society. We can help people, but we need new structures and governmental programs to do it.
2. FDR led us in our defense against fascism. We must likewise defend ourselves against radical Islam, not for the corporations; not for any apocalyptic religious beliefs; but because we are a society in which women can pursue their own interests, with or without the involvement of men; because we live in a society where we are free to believe in a god, many gods, or no god at all. Our free society is not something that radical Islam can face and maintain its integrity. Therefore, they are attempting to destroy us.
Those two would go a long way to put a Democratic President and party back in power. Note: I do not entirely the first statement -- though the second pretty much reflects my views.
Point is, at present, the Democrats are stuck in reactionary socialism -- trying to turn back to the welfare state and foreign policies of 1980. They can politically succeed in the short run (if not economically in the long run) with socialism if they recognize that times have changed and are willing to defend the country, as strongly as FDR did.
I would be highly unlikely to vote for it.... But a lot of people would.
YELP!
Democrats will just never get it. Too bad Republicans turned into Democrats.
So well said it bears repeating;"Well, a large part of that stems from the core philosophical differences between the hard left and the hard right. For all the talk of freedom and individuality from the left, they are actually intensely conformist with a strong belief in government. So they are by nature pre-selected towards a top-down system of politics.
Wheras most of the conservatives on this board are ornery, individualist cusses who don't like being told what to do and what to think. We believe in government as a last resort instead of the desired outcome. We're more inclined to a forum such as FR where thousands of folks have as much standing as their respective arguments merit.
But since the left doesn't have that mindset, they simply cannot fathom FR and instead try to shoehorn their understanding of it into their worldview. That's what's happening here."103 posted on 07/28/2005 3:26:16 PM PDT by dirtboy (Drool overflowed my buffer...)
I wonder what our friends at Free Dominion have to say about it. I know there are several Canadians that hang around here too.
"Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live."
I guess economic illiterates will believe this. The rest of us understand that we will have to pay for the medical costs... PLUS 'handling charges' for the govt agency that oversees the bureaucracy. Not to mention the loss of time (and perhaps even LIFE) that comes with the govt being in charge of rationing health care. As someone in England just said, after the govt there lost a lawsuit on the subject, "Guarantee to health care should not be just a guarantee to wait in line."
You don't have to look as far as England, or even Canada, to see what a wreck 'free' health care is. Just ask, "Do you REALLY want your doctor's office to look like the DMV?" That usually brings anyone around to a true understanding of the true costs of 'free' health care.
FReepers fame is growing.
The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.
If it's been enormously politically effective, why did Tony Snow have poll numbers on his show late last week (or earlier this week, I'm not sure exactly) that showed support for privatizing SocSec up from when President Bush first started pushing it.
I like Dave Ramsey's take on SocSec privatization: Why can't we have a choice about opting some of our SocSec contributions into private accounts? I thought that Demos were all about "choice"?
I think little Ricky boy has an unhealthy obsession with Bill Kristol
Do you have something against being vigilant regarding our borders?
The ageing of the Boomers has much to do with the present Conservative successes. We will be successeful for another 15-30 years and if the Democrats are still around after that, look-out.
But these RATS are all the same. No one wants to stand up and admit the Emperor has no clothes. Now granted Lieberman took one issue and got his head handed to him, but I'm talking about young influential who realizes he has to kick Hitlery's ass out of the way (a large flabby task).
Call your own party dead. Out of step with mainstream America. Demand Howard Dean commit suicide. Start a 3rd party movement. Just imagine all those REP's who are salivating for a President to close the borders. They'd all be his!
Rick isn't wrong about the "ideas" topic, but he hasn't really talked about any new ones. The truth is that the Dems can't hold fast on Social Security, Medicare, old internationalist pablums for foreign policy, etc, and still claim to be a "progressive" party. And everything he talked about made reference to policies that are 70 years old. That isn't progressive, it's paleoconservative, and we already cornered that market.
He's right. FR is way more important than the Heritage Foundation.
And the wimmen are cuter too!
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