Analysis: Bush's America: Left Turn for Dems?

United Press International ^ | 11/23/2002 | Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Analysis: Left Turn for Dems?

By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk
Published 11/23/2002 4:18 AM

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- Bush's America: Left Turn for Dems?

UPI presents a series on the changed face of U.S. politics after the Republican victories in the congressional midterm elections

Fifth of five parts

Ever since Vietnam, more than three and a half decades ago, the Democrats have been the party of shooting themselves in the foot. The only two times they have regained the presidency in all those years has been when they flew the flag of "Me-too-ism." But their rout at the hands of George W. Bush on Nov. 5 shows that even this is a busted flush. They have no credible alternatives to the Republicans on economic issues and no alternatives at all on defense ones. Where can they possibly go from here?

Yet all is far from lost for the hapless Dems and the old cliché about it being darkest before the dawn could yet -- just -- be true for them. But for that to be the case, they must turn left rather than right, abandon the accommodation-ist policies they have followed for more than a quarter of a century and -- most difficult of all -- develop real principles and show real political courage in espousing them.

For the Third Way is dead. And the Age of Clinton is finally over. If the highly significant voter shifts of the midterm congressional elections Nov. 5 showed anything they showed that. And the achievement of a left wing, northern California, San Francisco-based and San Francisco-shaped congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, as the new House Minority Leader, may well turn out to be far from the idyllic good news for the GOP that George Will and so many other old conservative commentators complacently imagine.

First, let it be again noted, as we repeatedly have in this series, that over the next two years George W., Bush has a free hand to do what he will in national security and domestic policies. He has the sweeping powers, and the very real mandate, to reshape America, for good or ill, as no president has since his fellow Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson.

For not since the first Congress from 1964 to 1966 of Johnson's fated single elected term of office has there been such a time as this. LBJ pushed through vast achievements in Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. But he also had the free hand to inflict the historic disasters of the Vietnam War and the expanded and abused welfare system upon America. And not since then has any president of either party enjoyed the kind of disciplined, loyal majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that Bush does now.

Therefore, the strategy that propelled two relatively conservative Southern Democrats -- Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 -- into the White House will not work at all against Bush in 2004 whether things go wonderfully well or hideously badly for him.

If things go well for Bush, as he and his colleagues confidently expect, then the Democrats haven't a prayer anyway. Given the radical Islamic terrorist threat, peace is impossible. But if Bush wins his war in Iraq and revives the economy with his policies, voters will give him the biggest landslide since Ronald Reagan creamed Walter Mondale in 1984 -- at the very least. It could even be as big as Richard Nixon's win over George McGovern in 1972.

If that prospect looms, however, the Democrats desperately need to tack leftwards, against the prevailing conservative wind. For they will need to rally their committed core groups who will stick to them through thick and thin.

Then, at least they can regain the honorable old losers' chalice they cherished in the days of Adlai Stevenson and even McGovern and Mondale that they might be eternal losers, but at least they were principled losers. If they continue to stand for something -- or a whole lot of little things -- at least they will retain their place as the second party in the venerable American political system.

But if the Dems instead retain the "all politics is local" stupid, losing mantra of late House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and if they fail to clean out the crony corruption that rotted them through the Clinton years, then they will be up the creek without a paddle. And when the political pendulum swings again, as inevitably it someday must, they will not be riding it as they still so complacently expect.

Some new right-populist or spin-off third party, inspired by anyone from Ralph Nader through Pat Buchanan to Jesse Ventura, will wrench even that second place chalice from them, just as the Republicans displaced the ancient Whigs almost a century and a half ago.

But suppose the Republican Revolution and the Bush Imperial Presidency go off the rails in their moment of supreme triumph, just as the liberal Democrats and Johnson did back in the 1960s, what do the Democrats need to do then?

First they will need to urgently develop new defense and global strategic policies to replace failed Bush ones. And if the economy tanks seriously, then their old Third Way, free trade, booster-boom-and bubble policies of the '90s will be even deader than the current Republican ones. So they will have to come up with new policies -- and maybe even revive some old principles -- there too.

Therefore, even if those prospects appear no more than wishful thinking to current Democratic leaders -- just as they seem vague, never-to-be-really-experienced distant imaginings to most of the rest of the American people now -- tilting left and going combative makes sense for this eventuality too.

This is a radical analysis and it is likely to be as unpopular with the still dominant moderate Democrats as with the reigning conservative Republicans. For it would require the revered old party of Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan and Franklin Roosevelt to actually go back and dust off their principles, and even their fiery, grassroots style of campaigning.

This would be a necessary reversion to tradition and venerable political practice too. On Nov. 5, let it be noted, it was the Republicans who proved to be the good-old-fashioned, grassroots-organized, roll-out-the regulars party who mobilized their traditional voter core and shepherded them to the voting booths. The Dems, still lost in their Georgetown soiree, soft money dreams of the Clinton years, put their trust in slick TV ad campaigns that cost a fortune and developed and delivered nothing at all. Only four of the 16 most contested congressional races went Democrat on polling day.

The road back to power is never automatic for any political party in the modern democratic world. And that road always starts with a painful re-evaluation, whether it is the Democrats tilting to the left with Franklin Roosevelt in the early 1930s or the Republicans to the right under Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan in the 1960s and '70s. Even Clinton's Third Way came as the result of a Democratic Party forced to confront the bankruptcy of its repeated policy failures and electoral rejections over the previous quarter of a century.

Politics is not only the art of the possible, it is also the history of the unanticipated. Therefore for the Democrats even to dream of a comeback, they must do the unexpected, otherwise they will experience the unprecedented.

They must tack to the left, and reevaluate the present in the light of their own past. Or else they will crown their relentless, humiliating, sustained eclipse of the past 36 years with a total extinction as complete as that of the 1850s Whigs -- or the Jurassic dinosaurs.

[1rudeboy]

Don't get too complacent...Dubya is on the verge of making an historic mistake with respect to issues that resonate with the "Borders, Language, Culture" crowd.

I know, I know. We've been hearing that Bush is on the verge of making a mistake for, what, three years now? What would we do without you guys?

[CIB-173RDABN]

Don't get too complacent...Dubya is on the verge of making an historic mistake with respect to issues that resonate with the "Borders, Language, Culture" crowd.

---

There are many, including some on this forum, just waiting for President Bush to do something, anything they can point at and say, "see, he is not (my brand of) conservative.

Well you know what, I don't care.

President Bush is not as conservative as I would like, nor has he done everything I would like see done, and he has done some things I wish he would not have done. So what!

I am not responsible for running the Federal Government, or procecute a war under difficult circumstances, or balances the needs and wants of 250 million citizens.

President Bush appears to have some core beliefs and he is basing his decisions on those beliefs.

I would be more worried about President Bush if he was basing his decisions on poll results.

[sinkspur]

A tissue of lies.

Are you on drugs? You've been all over FR today, posting non-sequiturs and analogies that make no sense.

You also don't back up anything you say.

It is a FACT that Bush has the support of NATO and the Baltic countries for his campaign against Iraq.

It's also a fact that the world is coming to know that the Bush Doctrine is being implemented and that Bush is serious about it.

Now, if you want to argue a point, argue it. "A tissue of lies" just as well be toilet tissue, for all the sense it makes.

[Dan from Michigan]

But if the Dems instead retain the "all politics is local" stupid, losing mantra of late House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and if they fail to clean out the crony corruption that rotted them through the Clinton years, then they will be up the creek without a paddle

No, that's not a stupid mantra. It's true to this day. Politics IS local.

his would be a necessary reversion to tradition and venerable political practice too. On Nov. 5, let it be noted, it was the Republicans who proved to be the good-old-fashioned, grassroots-organized, roll-out-the regulars party who mobilized their traditional voter core and shepherded them to the voting booths. The Dems, still lost in their Georgetown soiree, soft money dreams of the Clinton years, put their trust in slick TV ad campaigns that cost a fortune and developed and delivered nothing at all. Only four of the 16 most contested congressional races went Democrat on polling day.
This just contridicted what that he just said a minute ago.

[sphinx]

For not since the first Congress from 1964 to 1966 of Johnson's fated single elected term of office has there been such a time as this. LBJ pushed through vast achievements in Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. But he also had the free hand to inflict the historic disasters of the Vietnam War and the expanded and abused welfare system upon America. And not since then has any president of either party enjoyed the kind of disciplined, loyal majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate that Bush does now.

What an idiot. The LBJ landslide elected 295 Democrats vs. 140 Republicans in the House, and 68 Democrats vs. 32 Republicans in the Senate. That is a commanding majority, and it produced the Great Society. The dems had similar numbers in the New Deal Congresses of 1933-36 and the post-Watergate Congresses of 1975-78. Big 'rat majorities produced big moves left, but we're hardly in the same situation now.

I am as happy as anyone that we've finally got a unified Republican government. It's a start. But let's be realistic about the implications of a vanishingly small majority. We're far from having the votes to do everything we'd like. It's still going to be trench warfare with a cloture fight on every Senate vote, with the RINOs holding the balance of power.

[Ole Okie]

We've been hearing that Bush is on the verge of making a mistake for, what, three years now? What would we do without you guys?

Yeah, it seems to me that every action Bush has taken results in dire threats from the one percenters that he's abandoned his base and is a "one term president".

But what would we do without those guys? Probably have less fun.

[prognostigaator]

just a bttt

[jdege]

Conservatives never seem to fully appreciate the fact that the issues are never the issue where liberals are concerned. For liberals the issue is power. Whatever serves their need for power is right; whatever frustrates it is wrong.
        - David Horowitz

Seems that he was right.

[jdege]

You mean the group of Americans who mistakenly believes that the US is founded on an ethnicity, instead of a philosophy?

They need to study our history.

Anyone, of any origin, who comes here and pledges to support our ideals is welcome.

My family stepped off the boat onto the Rock, and if you think that makes me more of an American than some Guatamalan who swore the oath last week, you don't have a clue what this country is all about.

[jocon307]

"...two relatively conservative Southern Democrats -- Jimmy Carter ... and Bill Clinton..."

Carter came across as conservative because he was a Christian. Even my sainted Roman Catholic, Jesuit educated Republican father crossed party lines to vote for him the first time. And Clinton made no bones (sorry! no pun intended, but there it was, so I left it in)about being economically conservative, for a democrat that is. He did campaign to "end welfare as we know it" and with sufficient Republican prodding (no pun! no pun!) he did.

As to what the original author wrote, I don't think LBJ foresaw what welfare would become; and as the other poster replied, that wasn't what did him in as Pres.

The only dems elected pres. since FDR have been from the South. As the South moves solidly Republican they are looking pretty toasted as a group. Let them go left and left, until they fall into the Pacific.

Americans had 40 years of dem. hegemony, it's done now. The party's corruption, as exemplified by their failure to fire McAuliffe at 9:15 am Nov. 6th, has now metastized. The dem party is a terminal case. Look out for the Greens!

[dread78645]

The only dems elected pres. since FDR have been from the South.

Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

[Grampa Dave]

As this left wing maggot cheers their hard swing to the left not a tack left, Pelosi, Da$$hole and other left wingers prepare to drive the party off the left side of the road.

As they swerve hard right, they will become the Donner Party 2. They will devour and destroy the moderates and semi conservatives in their diseased and dying party.

We must let them swing as far left as they can while pointing out to middle America that the Donner Party 2 has no room for them except to feed off of them.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

They must tack to the left, and reevaluate the present in the light of their own past. Or else they will crown their relentless, humiliating, sustained eclipse of the past 36 years with a total extinction as complete as that of the 1850s Whigs -- or the Jurassic dinosaurs.

Yes I think I agree with the author!

Hehehehe!

[Nick Danger]

[Democrats] have no credible alternatives to the Republicans on economic issues and no alternatives at all on defense ones.

The author wishes the Democrats would have no alternatives on defense. That's because the one that was just articulated, by Jimmy Carter, is the most bone-headed, wrong-for-the-times idea since George McGovern. Unilateral disarmament? I mean, talk about Demosaurs. I haven't heard that one since "ban the bomb" marches petered out in the 1960's.

Yes, the Democrats do have an alternative on defense, and most people have a pretty good grasp on what it is. Their position is -- and has been for forty years -- that we can tolerate a greater degree of risk with national security than the Republicans say we can; that by doing so we can free up funds that would otherwise go to defense, and so have more domestic entitlement programs.

Thus, instead of spending billions on an "insane" Star Wars anti-missile program to defend against non-existent "rogue states," we'll just send a smart Democrat like Jimmy Carter over to North Korea to make a deal with them. Then they won't build any bombs or missiles, and we can spend the money on other things.

Which we did, under Clinton and Gore, for most of the 1990's. But now we find out that Jimmy was had. They were so working on nulcear weapons and missiles, and now they have both, and we don't have any defense in place.

Clinton and Gore did the same thing with Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda. Islamic terrorists first bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Throughout the decade, they blew up our embassies, attacked our barracks, and shot our soldiers. Following the Democratic recipe of accepting risk in return for higher domestic spending, Clinton and Gore did nothing to improve our defenses against terrorism, and in fact even passed up an opportunity to have bin Laden handed over in chains when Sudan made that offer.

The Democratic position on defense has proven to be short-sighted, misguided, and very, very, dangerous. It will be a long time before they can sell that idea again. And if they think that tacking left -- such as Jimmy Carter's recent proposal that we disarm to show our good will -- will help win them votes, they are living in a dream world.

at least they can regain the honorable old losers' chalice they cherished in the days of Adlai Stevenson and even McGovern and Mondale that they might be eternal losers, but at least they were principled losers.

Here, at least, is a somewhat sane step that Democrats could take today to begin the long task of re-building their party. There is no question that, as things stand now, the Democrats are the party of unprincipled losers. They desperately need to shed that image, and unfortunately for them, spending time in the penalty box as principled losers is something the public is going to insist on before it will once again trust them with power.

• they will need to rally their committed core groups who will stick to them through thick and thin
• they will need to urgently develop new defense and global strategic policies to replace failed Bush ones

Here's where this article falls off the tracks. It is real easy to say this stuff, it is quite another to execute these ideas in the real world. It is not possible for the Democrats to simultaneously tack left toward its most-committed supporters, while developing new "global strategic policies" that will pass muster with Americans. That's because the global strategic policies favored by the Democrats' most-committed supporters are precisely the ones that got the Democrats into trouble with the American people in the first place. Unilateral disarmament, defense spending cuts, appeasement, "peace dividends," and all that Happy Rainbow stuff, needs to get thrown in the trash on account of this disturbing thing called "reality," which refuses to go away no matter how much domestic spending is proposed.

Yes, the Democrats do need to tack left in order to hold onto their base during the coming storm. It is their only hope. However, their base is also the source of their disease, and by clinging to it they will get sicker, and eventually waste away. The Democratic Party is, in a word, hosed.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

good thoughts Nick!

Thanks for dropping by!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The only dems elected pres. since FDR have been from the South.

Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

I'll grant you Massachusetts--but I think you gotta give me Missouri . . .

[junta]

This guy is a fool the Dems rely on fear motivating primarily minorities with the "hate whitey" campaign and he neglects to mention that as their problem. Till the Dems have Zimbabwe style numbers on their side they can expect to be second fiddle.

[BnBlFlag]

Your post #9....AMEN!!

[sinkspur]

What in the hell are you talking about?

You don't make any sense, DC. You're not logical, and you think we can read your fuzzy, befuddled mind.

You can't organize your thoughts sufficiently to stay on subject.