GELFAND’S WORLD-A number of years ago, in the heyday of the George W Bush era, I wrote a long essay called Liberalism Restored. It was written, as this, during a moment in our history when reaction was on the upswing, and liberals were feeling downcast. They were so down, in fact, that they threw away the term "liberal" and replaced it with that counterfeit word "progressive." I prefer the word liberal. At least I can say that by liberal, I mean that I am a JFK and LBJ (photo) kind of liberal, with all that that means.
As a registered independent, I might retitle my essay, should I rewrite it, as The Democratic Party Restored. If there is any chance of bringing back liberalism in any usable form, it is going to have to come from a resurgent Democratic Party. For that to happen, the Democratic Party is going to have to pick itself up off the ground and think carefully about its plans.
That means, I think, that the Democratic Party ought to stare into the mirror and figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. Let's think about one election that revealed a party that is a lot less than fully adult.
If you are a Democrat running for the United States Senate and you keep telling your audiences that you should not be confused with the president, then the Party and its long term political health are at risk. In the case of Alison Grimes, running for Senate in Kentucky against Mitch McConnell, it became obvious (and then blatant) that the candidate was running away from the president. Admittedly the Obama administration was taking flak for its perceived hostility toward coal, so Grimes felt that she had to force some distance between her own candidacy and rational science. After all, coal serves a dual role in Kentucky as both a source of greenhouse gases and as a mainstay of the mining economy.
But when you have enough candidates running away from the president and his greatest accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, then you have a party that doesn't really mean much to the voters. It might be this or it might be that, but it is not a defined unity the way the Republicans have become. Better to appeal to the thousands of Kentucky residents who benefitted greatly from getting health insurance through Obamacare, and do outreach to them. But that means that at some level, you as candidate have to embrace the president and embrace Democratic Party policies.
There is, I think, a liberal counterattack that Grimes could have used, once it became obvious that she would be saddled with the argument that Obama opposes coal fired electricity. She could have talked about a future in which modern alternative industries mitigate some of the losses in coal mining. She should have talked about creating "green" energy plants in Kentucky, everything from solar powered photovoltaics to electric car assemblies, and make a few campaign promises of her own that she would bring such industries to Kentucky as mitigation for the loss of coal jobs. Her Democratic colleagues in the U.S. Senate would have been more than happy to buy her a Senate seat by fulfilling those promises.
Yes, that would have been taking a chance. I would contrast the uncertain electoral success of this chance with the near-certain defeat of playing at being half Republican and half Democrat.
If numerous candidates distance themselves this dramatically from the elected president of their own party, then they communicate to voters that the party label doesn't mean much at all. The voter is being invited to vote for somebody who just happens to not be Mitch McConnell. This is rarely enough to beat a moderately popular incumbent.
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Enough of these campaigns, and the voters will generally come to understand that the party doesn't really stand for anything except a bunch of disparate candidates trying to pull enough wool over enough eyes to keep themselves in elected office for another term or two.
And that seems to be what we saw the other night. We had pro-choice Democrats and we had sort of moderate on women's rights Democrats, and Democrats who didn't want to talk about immigration at all. Worse yet, we had Democrats who have bought into the Republican nonsense about fiscal moderation during a time of recession, rather than pointing out the truth, that the original stimulus package was too small, but did some good.
In other words, there ought to be a Democratic Party message, and it ought to be a message that still has some mileage left on it. Whether it is to be called populism, or liberalism, or Democratic progressivism, it has to be defined and coherent.
And at the very least, the Democratic Party and its elected officials ought to be embracing the president's policies and achievements. In other words, the party ought to stand for a few things that are unifying, rather than show that it is breaking into competing positions.
Just for fun, here is a Democratic Party platform that candidates could run on all over the country.
Job creation is number one. Academic studies have looked at presidents of both parties over the period of a full century, and the Democrats have universally done better in terms of job creation and overall economic vitality. All the other stuff about budget deficits and federal spending is irrelevant. Democratic candidates should be making that argument, loudly and proudly. Also, the Democrats have to convince the voters that the Republican approach is exactly wrong for job growth. This much, at least, is easier than it sounds.
What is interesting is that the Democrats had an argument available to them which is simple. The U.S. economy has been doing better than economies in other parts of the world, largely because we didn't fall for the austerity argument at the peak of the recession. Democrats should blame the Republicans for the inadequate level of the stimulus package, and even accept a little of the blame themselves. The critical thing is to get the argument for robust Keynesianism out in front of the people.
Sure, the right wing noise machine will criticize that position, but at least there will be a position to argue about. Instead, we get a dreary succession of arguments about whether Obama is a bad American for having forgotten to put down his coffee cup as he saluted the Marine guard.
By arguing for Keynesian economic remedies in opposition to supply side nonsense, the prevailing debate will move a little towards the middle. To borrow that achy cliche, it will move the goal posts.
Some Democrats may even argue for a little bit of economic protectionism. It will annoy other Democrats, but as long as the accent is on the target of job creation, the tactics are at least debatable. What is not debatable is that the U.S. must not be allowed to give up on being a manufacturing leader. As a nation, we have lots of ideas, some of them innovative, but we shouldn't rely on having them developed and then manufactured in China. And we should limit our best trading practices to those countries that have signed a real, enforceable trade agreement with us.
To start, how about our congressional delegation insisting that major elements of our rapid transit system be manufactured right here in LA? Let's have a General Motors plant that assembles locomotives and passenger cars for our developing light rail system. While we're at it, maybe we can convince that Democratic majority in the L.A. City Council to insist that the MTA follow this rule.
We should make it clear that racial equality remains a pillar of the Democratic philosophy. We may debate on tactics occasionally, but the principle must be held steadfastly. We should encourage the honest debate, uncomfortable as it may be, and we must respond quickly and powerfully to the dog whistle racism that has characterized the Republican Party these past six years. We should never accept the argument that the Civil War was about anything but slavery, and that more modern methods for enforcing racial inequality, such as voter suppression, have to be fought. The failure of the Democratic leadership to complain forcefully about the arguments about the president's birth certificate was a mistake, the kind that we should never tolerate again.
We have to make clear that there are certain moral values and precepts that come with being a Democratic or an independent voter, just as the Republicans claim to represent moral principles. Equality of opportunity is one of those moral principles. Democrats ought to support a certain amount of income redistribution, and bring this argument into the window of acceptable discourse. It's another set of goal posts that need moving.
Finally, liberals of all political affiliations should contest the way that the modern electronic media have divided themselves into a more or less unaffiliated bloc and a hard right bloc. The failure of the newspapers to respond to the right wing noise machine is a national disgrace, but that's for another discussion.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 90
Pub: Nov 7, 2014