THE PARTY'S OVER - Sam Smith on the Demise of the Democrats

What happened on November 5, 2002 was the culmination of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party that began more than a decade ago under the leadership of a group of conservatives, corporadoes, and con men who convinced their political colleagues that the salvation of the party lay in destroying its purpose.

Called "moving to the center," the recipe had certain similarities to a Saturday Night Live sketch in which an actor pretends to be George Bush or Trent Lott, but unlike the sketch, it was neither funny nor convincing. It was conceived by the "Democratic Leadership Council," a group whose underlying message was not leadership but abandon ship and which chose as its agent a conservative governor of Arkansas of salesman-like charm and conviction.

Clinton had been the beneficiary of what one journalist called the Great Mentioner. He had been noted, remarked upon and welcomed in the smokeless salons where national politics are created. How one comes to matter in Washington politics is guided by few precise rules, although in comparison to fifty years ago the views of lobbyists and fundraisers are far more significant than the opinion, say, of the mayor of Chicago or the governor of Pennsylvania. This is a big difference; somewhere behind the old bosses in their smoke-filled rooms were live constituents; behind the political cash lords of today there is mostly just more money and the few who control it.

Thus coming to matter has much less to do with traditional politics, especially local politics, than it once did. Today, other things count: the patronage of those who already matter, a blessing bestowed casually by one right person to another right person over lunch at the Metropolitan Club, a columnist's praise, a well-received speech before a well-placed organization, the assessment of a lobbyist as sure-eyed as a fight manager checking out new fists at the local gym. There are still machines in American politics; they just dress and talk better.

There is another rule. The public plays no part. The public is the audience; the audience does not write or cast the play. In 1988, the 1992 play was already being cast. Conservative Democrats were holding strategy meetings at the home of party fund-raiser Pamela Harriman. The meetings -- eventually nearly a hundred of them -- were aimed at ending years of populist insurrection within the party. They were regularly moderated by Clark Clifford and Robert Strauss, the Mr. Fixits of the Democratic mainstream. Democratic donors paid $1,000 to take part in the sessions and by the time it was all over, Mrs. Harriman had raised about $12 million for her kind of Democrats.

The play was also being cast by the Democratic Leadership Council. Although lacking any official role in the Democratic Party, the DLC claimed it was the voice of mainstream party thought. In fact, it was primarily a lobby for the views of southern and other conservative Democrats, yet so successful was its media manipulation that it even got away with calling its think tank the Progressive Policy Institute.

By the late 1980s there was a wide-spread consensus among both the press and the Democratic leadership that the party's problems could be traced to several factors:

- The loss of control by party bosses due to excessive democratization of nomination and convention procedures.

- Undue pandering to such traditional constituencies as blacks, liberals, and women.

By the 1988 convention, this consensus had taken root. US News & World Report reported: "That the Democrats went beyond all bounds to appear bland and 'normal' is incontrovertible. The brief, boring and bulletproof platform gave 'platitudinous' new meaning. 'Notice,' complained New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, offering only one example, 'that the word city does not appear in our platform. We talk about suburban hometown American and I figure that doesn't mean the South Bronx.'"

With the rise of this orthodoxy, the media's language changed. What was once a civil rights cause now became "demands of special interest groups." The conservative Democrats' self-definition as "moderates" or "mainstream" was uncritically adopted. And "liberal" began to be used, even in purportedly objective articles, as a pejorative. It made someone like Clinton look very good.

What followed is presumed to be well known, but isn't. The same journalists who overwhelmingly supported Clinton's candidacy began writing what amounted to an eight year mythology that created a personal legend even as the party he led collapsed. Missing from the legend were some key facts about the Clinton administration:

- the discrediting in the public mind of such fundamental liberal programs as social security, economic policy, and public education. In such ways Clinton served as a warm-up band for the Republicans.

- a replacement of traditional Democratic programs with a smarmy and disingenuous agitprop, most noticeable in Clinton's handling of his black constituency. The same man who was brought to tears in black churches sent young black males to prison in unprecedented numbers and escalated a drug war that became more deadly to these blacks than Vietnam had been to black fighting men.

Of course, you can argue about such things, but there was something else - also unreported - that you couldn't argue about: the disintegration of the Democratic Party itself. An analysis I did in 1998 found that during Clinton's administration, the Democrats had lost:

- 48 seats in the House
- 8 seats in the Senate
- 11 governorships
- 1,254 state legislative seats
- Control of 9 legislatures

In addition 439 elected Democrats had joined the Republican Party while only three Republican officeholders had gone the other way.

While Democrats had been losing state legislative seats on the state level for 25 years, the loss during the Clinton years was striking. In 1992, the Democrats controlled 17 more state legislatures than the Republicans. After November 2000, the Republicans controlled one more than the Democrats. It was the first time since 1954 that the GOP had controlled more state legislatures than the Democrats (they tied in 1968). Among other things, this gave the Republican more control over redistricting.

In fact, no Democratic president since the 19th century suffered such an electoral disintegration of his party as did Clinton.

This unreported truth helps to explain why the Democrats didn't do better in 2002. The Republicans merely continued their successful assault on a party that had become hopelessly weakened by an exploitive, ungrounded, self-indulgent elite that had swept through Democratic politics much like the Enron cavaliers treated the energy industry, not to mention their own shareholders and employees. They were, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, careless people: "They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

There are few signs the party has figured this out. It still clings to Clinton like a abused spouse in denial and accepts other leadership that runs the gamut from the unappealing to the indefensible.

For the party to recover, it must divorce itself from the con men who have done it so much damage. It must find its way back to the gutbucket, pragmatic populism that gave this country Social Security, a minimum wage, veterans' programs, the FHA, civil rights, and the war on poverty. It must jettison its self-defeating snobbism towards Americans who go to church or own a gun. It needs to be as useful to the voter in the cubicle as it once was to the voter on the assembly line. It must find a soul, a passion, and a sense of itself. Most of all, it must get rid of those false prophets and phony friends who have not only done it so much damage but have left the country fully in the hands of the cruel, the selfish, the violent, the dumb, and the anti-democratic. -- SAM SMITH

I admit I'm basing my opinion only on that one interview since I never heard of the guy before then but he was pro tax cuts and pro free trade.

He's been on Hannity & Colmes many times. Don't take me wrong - Ford is one of the more moderate Dem's especially on economics. He is, however, pro-union, pro-immigration, pro-choice, etc. (Note that he did vote for ending PBA).

BTW you notice there are all kind of Dem's now talking about tax cuts. No doubt the result of W's use of them in this campaign.

Smith offers a fascinating insight into the woes of his party. He correctly points out that Clinton won by essentially disguising himself as a conservative on certain key issues. But Clinton's success did not translate into broader and lasting success by his party.

Where Smith gets off track, I think, is when he suggests that if the Democrats would only return to their roots they would again be successful. What does it mean to return to their roots? Apparently it means to create new social welfare and entitlement programs along the lines of social security and medicare. But entitlement programs are expensive and require tax increases. Democrats are getting beat bloody on the tax issue and many of them wince when the suggestion is made. Oh, they would love to raise taxes. Unfortunately for them, the people who pay taxes are the people who are most motivated to vote.

On the civil rights front the "noble" causes are all gone. Democrats have been reduced to defending marginal professional victim groups that define themselves by personal sexual behavior most Americans find immoral or sick. Many Americans may fancy themselves tolerant of homosexual behavior, but precious few find anything praiseworthy or laudatory about men rollerskating down Main Street wearing nothing but osterich feathers, leather jockstraps, rouge, shocking pink lipstick, and buggering each other within the loosey-goosey convention of "gay marriage."

Sucks to be them.

Yeah Sam, it's the Republicans with the big money donors, not the Democrats

The dirty little secret of Campaign Finance Reform is that the money used to operate, never mind startup, a journalistic enterprise is no cleaner than campaign donations to the Republican Party.
The First Amendment says I can print something on my computer on the day before the election, and I can give it away free. It doesn't say I can only use money I made by entertaining folks with the conceit that I am giving them the whole, unvarnished truth about "what's going on."

Whatever you think about Sam Smith's political views as an old-school liberal, this is the best post-mortem on the Clinton Dems that I have seen yet.

Yes, it is a good "eulogy," but there's an elephant in the room (no pun intended) that the author refuses to acknowledge.

Clinton's handlers were not stupid. They played the political game as if they wrote the book, their media sycophants notwithstanding.

The one fatal misstep they made was "Hillary-Care." Trying to force one-eighth of the nation's economy into the public sector is the card that they now wish they didn't play. This was the catalyst for the taking of the Congress in '94.

The author is correct in noting that Clinton is the face to blame for the Democrats' demise, but not the reason why. "Why?" is always the most important question to have answered if it can be answered.

Policy is the reason. The author can't bring himself to admit that his precious Leftism has been shown the door. There is a small but noticeable swing to the Right in our nation today. For example, look at Oregon. Granted, Oregon is not California, but it gives California a run for its money for being the most Leftist state. Oregon's voters rejected a similar "Hillary-Care" bill. If it won't pass there, it most certainly won't pass in Nebraska or Kansas.

He won't admit it, but his precious Leftism has been seriously wounded. Now it is up to us to give it its final push into oblivion.

Shine on you crazy diamond.
Coming soon: Tha SYNDICATE.
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.

Oh, maybe it's the individual donors?.

Guess not.

Nice. Be interesting to see the running total of the contributions to the two major parties coming from this sorted list, going down in contribution level and upward in total contributions.
The Democrats would start out with the advantage among the fearsome "rich", and be overtaken when the large number of middle class contributors to the Republicans came into play.
Wouldn't that make a pretty picture?!

OH MY....I go to church AND own guns!

I don't go to church and I don't own a gun.(yet)

But I won't vote for the socialists who have taken over the democrat party. Socialism is the problem. Since the mid 60s the socialists have slowly but surely taken over that party and socialism is un- American, and it shows more and more as the socialists become more powerful.

The unending barage of right wing propaganda eminating from talk radio and Fox News has pointed this out to the people and the voters are reacting to it. - Tom

I saw Ford on C-Span, and my take was that you had to read between the lines. Ford was inconsistent on taxes, tho I can't now cite chapter and verse.

You can't admit that the sovereign remedy for the economy is reduced taxes, and still complain that Bush hasn't cured the economy.

Not when you're leading the party of no compassion for the taxpayer.

The author's premise is that Clinton was too conservative. And THAT'S why Democrats lost. My questions are these: Does this mean that if Clinton would have pushed harder and farther for gays in the military, Democrats would have been better off? And if Clinton would have raised taxes HIGHER than what he did in 1993, then the Republicans would not have taken Congress in 1994. Right? And if Hillary's health care plan had been adopted, a Democratic majority would have been secured?

Personally, I like the way this guy thinks. If we could get him to replace McAuliffe as the head of the DNC, we could get a fillibuster proof majority in the Senate and a veto proof majority in the House.

It must jettison its self-defeating snobbism towards Americans who go to church or own a gun.

He hit the nail on the head with this one.

That line struck me as well - as being particularly insightful, and probably the best advice the Dem Party has had in some time - there are lots of blue-collar union guys here in Pennsylvania who would be be inclined to vote for a Dem for president but don't like the gun-control agenda of the left. I may disagree with what Sam thinks will help the left, but his diagnosis of the impact of the Clintons on the Democratic Party, along with the pathologies of those who spent over eight years defending them, is as spot-on as it comes.

Thanks for the post and the ping. As you put it, Sam Smith is "old school liberal".

Which means a.) there are immense areas of disagreement between him and conservatives on virtually every political issue, but b.) he's honest and c.) he's a patriot. He recognized Clinton's corruption before any other liberal and called it what it was.

If you're thinking "loyal opposition", Sam would be a good model. He's wrong on just about everything, but he is an honest American -- something a lot of the libs can't say.

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