By most accounts, things aren’t going well for the GOP. Some of the things that most agree aren’t going well for them are:
1- The president’s approval rating has dropped significantly.
2- The administration’s response to Katrina is deemed at best indaequate.
3- One of the two leaders in congress is indicted and the other is under investigation.
4- Valerie Plame issue is making headlines again.
5- And the war in Iraq isn’t going well.
Considering how ground they’ve lost during the last three elections, that the Democrats would have been all over these issues to not only set themselves up better for the mid-term elections, but to slow the GOP’s agenda.
One could only imagine what the likes of Newt Gingrich would have done with the Dems if their roles were reversed.
But the Dems not only are not putting up any opposition, most of them are going along with Bush’s choices, such as John Roberts.
So my question is two folds:
1- Why isn’t the Democratic Party engaging the GOP more vigorously?
2- What would you do if you were advising the dems?
My own views are that the dems are lacking a credible, charismatic leader to take on the GOP directly. The likes of Kerry and Pelosi are easily dismissed as flip floppers or too liberal to mount a serious challenge. Hillary Clinton seems uncharacteristically quiet. And considering that she’s extremely polarizing, it’s perhaps in their best interest for her to remain quiet.
In my opinion, the dems’ chances of getting back the White House in '08 is very slim. However, they may be able to reduce GOP’s majority in the congress in '06. And if things in Iraq continue to slide, they might even get back the majority in the Senate.
One possibility is the idea that if your opponent is killing himself, it doesn’t pay to hasten his death by sticking the knife in. Let it be, and rise out of the mist to offer solutions after the fact.
Another possibility is that the Democrats are not that far removed from the causes of the GOP’s current problems, and can’t afford to speak out.
A (democratic-minded?) political optimist would put more weight on the first possibility.
I suppose I am a political pessimist in that regard - although I would be very happy to be surprised, or proven wrong.
Who says they haven’t? What happened to Bush’s social security ideas? I don’t think they’ve made an inch of progress.
Even if you don’t think, as I do, that Roberts was a really good choice, they did the smart thing. They could not have stopped his approval, only filibustered and hurt themselves in the process.
As zeeny and many wise politicos have said, when your opponent is in trouble, do nothing to help him. It’s better to let them struggle. So I’d say they should do the same thing in that regard.
I disagree. But given that we don’t know either candidate, it’s pretty hard to judge.
I think the Democrats have some far-ranging problems, but I don’t think they’re doing badly at this moment in terms of dealing with what’s out there. The nomination of the next Supreme Court Justice will be a much more interesting and telling challenge, in my opinion. It was hard for them to do anything but bluster feebly about Roberts, but we’ll see what happens next.
I would suggest it is because the things you list largely are transitory events and most people don’t view them as being that significant in the overall, long-term big-picture sense. What is really going on here in the U.S. is a culture war between the right and the left. Skirmishes have been going on for the last fifty or sixty years and things have now come pretty much to a head. Events don’t hold sway in elections these days; political philosophy does.
My own opinion is that a large part of the country, having grown fed up with liberal influence upon society the last fifty or sixty years, is fighting back with a vengance (thanks in large part to the rallying points provided by talk radio and cable television, which took societal influence out of the hands of the liberal media and gave conservatism a national voice), hence the election results you speak of. Dems know this and they really have nothing to offer to counteract it. In other words, their game doesn’t play anymore and they have nothing to replace it with.
I think the problem is that Democrats have no “fun” solutions to our problems. For instance, to balance the budget, we probably need to go back to the Clinton-era tax rates. But they cant come out say they’ll raise taxes. They also don’t lie very well.
The Republicans want to cut your taxes. Everyone wants a tax cut, right? Then they make up a load of crap about trickle-down economics to justify them.
Another ridiculous premise - kicking Saddam’s ass will help win the “war on terror”. Maybe the Dems need to think up thier own Bizzaro world of “reality”.
The Democrats aren’t nearly as well organized as the Republicans. I think the Democrats try to embrace such a wide ideology that they end up trying to please everyone in the party and the result is a party that lacks a strong ideological agenda. The Republicans on the other hand seem to be able to get behind an idea and just push it through and to hell if everyone doesn’t like it.
A lack of focus might be a trait of the left these days. Even before the war in Iraq started there were protest against the possiblity of war and the topics at these rallies were all over the map. I remember one speaker at a rally saying the same thing at a recent rally “We’re here because a war in Iraq is wrong. We’re here to end racism. We’re here to save the environment. Etc…” Not a very focused protest.
“Not fun” or “not easy” is a hard sell. And the Democrats aren’t very good at selling to begin with.
The current-day GOP has mined political gold by appealing to the baser instincts of humanity. Greed, intolerance, bigotry, scapegoats - there’s a place for you in the GOP if you need a rationale for any of those qualities.
My first possibility (let them hang themselves and do nothing) only goes so far. There is still a vacuum in the interim, and if the Democrats don’t fill it soon enough, or adequately enough, something else will.
What or who that might be is what really worries me.
Well, the extreme Right and the squishy Center. There has not been a serious “Left” movement in national politics in 30 years or more. (There may be some scattered “Left” movements within individual states, but they have not translated to national issues.)
“I do not belong to an organized political party–I’m a Democrat.” Will Rogers
This attitude sums up excactly why the GOP is in trouble. Too much philosophizin’, not enough governing. Now with the consequences of a whole lot of bad ideology-driven decisions becoming apparent, reality-based governance is looking more and more attractive.
Not that the Dem leadership is much better. They’re still stuck in the old ideological morass as well. But as the party out of power they don’t have to get things done. And now there’s a rising progressive wave that has the potential to completely re-orient the party as the party of pragmatism.
I read the tighty-righty blogs – from what I can tell there’s no similar grassroots shift toward pragmatism on the right. Just the repitition of talking points from 25 years ago.
LOL. Yeah, right. We saw how aggressively the country “fought back” against Social Security this spring. :rolleyes:
The Republicans control both Congress and the Presidency. There’s nothing preventing them from rolling everything back to before the New Deal. Except for the fact that it would be political suicide and they know it.
You’ve reached your high water mark. Hope you enjoyed the last 25 years. Because the pendulum has just begun to swing the other way.
Being unable to be realistic about where one stands in relation to the center may be part of the problem.
Moveon.org and its ilk raise enough money that they can credibly say of the party “we bought it.” But they drive pols to make extremist choices that simultaneously please the base and displease the center. Voting against an obvious moderate like Roberts is one. Overplaying their hand about Katrina was another. Embracing someone like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-war movement instead of offering constructive ideas on how to win in Iraq is another.
These could be great times for a Truman democrat; someone like a Lieberman or a Bill Richardson. But it’s going to be hard for that person to win the nomination.
Newt Gingrich didn’t take control of Congress by sitting back and criticizing Democrats. He didn’t take control by saying, “Yeah, well, we won’t be as extreme as them!” He didn’t take control by putting forth a series of complicated, moderate, run-of-the-mill proposals.
He won control by stepping up and shouting out a startling vision for the country. It was an extremist position. It was in your face. It was reducible to soundbites.
And it was inspirational. It took people’s breath away with its boldness.
As long as the Democrats are afraid of boldness, nobody’s going to care enough to vote for them. The Democrats need to study the Contract with America, and they need to put forth their own bold proposals in an easily understandable format.
The Republicans will call us populists. The Republicans will call us extremists. The Republicans will mock us for being out of touch with America.
Fuck em. Let them rant. Don’t give a shit about their quailing in the face of our vision.
Or, the Democrats can continue with their strategy of alternately pointing fingers at the Republican and putting forth vague, conciliatory proposals that nobody can remember five minutes after hearing them. And the party can continue to lose ground.
Yeah, because all those fiery Democrats who are advocating state socialism are…er…wait a minute! There ARE no fiery Democrats advocating state socialism in the US. Not on a national scale, anyway. Compared to Europe, the American Left is decidedly circumscribed in its Leftness.
Even without comparing to Europe, how many Democrats do you see trying to get Marxist philosophy taught alongside and coeval with Adams and Keynes in economics classes, or materialist dialectic in history classes? How many Democrats do you see attempting to make heterosexual marriage illegal? How many Democrats do you see urging the implementation of Constitutional rights for pets?
All of this is fringe. The difference is that the Democrats ignore their fringe. The Republicans embrace theirs. Who leans more toward their extremes?
Compared to Europe, perhaps the center is far-right. Irrelevant.
Can’t say, really; not my discipline. In my discipline (English) Marxism runs waaay ahead of any sort of classicism, and students with conservative views feel quite ill-at-ease.
In any event, the reference to Marx is telling. In 2005, Marxism is not “left”; it is batshit kooky nutbar left. Even bringing it up is indicative of an outdated and unrealistic frame of reference. It’s like someone claiming that they’re not far-right by pointing out that they’ve dropped their opposition to interracial marriage.
Pretty much by definition, I would guess the guys who can’t seem to win majorities.
And on the right we have apocalism and anti-miscegeny nutbars, both of which are far less shunned by the GOP than Marxists are by the Dems.
Trickle-down economics almost qualifies for this as well, at least in the current taxation climate. The Laffer curve isn’t even brought up. I can see hypothesizing in the early 80s that we could raise revenue by lowering taxation, but 25 years of that theory have shown that we aren’t on that side of the Laffer Curve after all.
Same actions, expecting different results = insanity.
Or pointing out that they actually disagreed with Strom Thurmond’s segregationist run for President…hey wait.
This is it. The Democrats haven’t had a platform other than “We oppose the Republicans” since Clinton. They have no positive ideas of their own - or, if they do, they utterly fail to market them probably.
No matter what troubles befall the Republicans, until the Democrats offer a coherent vision for the country, they will never, ever capitalize on those troubles. It’s pretty freaking pathetic how unable the current Democratic leadership is unable to grasp this simple concept.
The marketing thing is key, also. Gingrich was a master marketer. Not only did he have specific, grandiose ideas, but he also figured out how to express them in a tiered fashion, so that people with a FoxNews attention span could read a sentence about them (“Get government off our backs!”) and policy wonks could read ready-made bills, and folks in between could read a fact sheet or a brochure or a book.
Some Democrat in leadership needs to create a massive, visionary idea for America. And then they need to figure out how to market it effectively.
If they ignore either step, I predict failure for the party.
Yeah, the vision thing. Heard a lot about that lately, mostly from guys who says stuff like “well, sure, the Pubbies are full of crap, but the Dems have no vision thingy! Ergo, I am compelled to vote for the guys that are full of crap!”
Hogwash. I propose the following Dem agaenda:
Get these idiots out of power before they kill us all!
In consulatation and compromise with honest conservatives, forge a progressive legislative agenda. We cannot be certain what form that agenda will take without such consultation and compromise, since we pledge not to adhere to a rigid ideological stance.
Get these idiots out of power before they kill us all!
Luc, I’ve started voting for the Democrats instead of the Greens because I want to get these idiots out of power before they kill us all. But it’s a vote with a clothespin on my nose, because the Dems have no vision thingy.
The 2002 and 2004 election had points 1 and 3 on your agenda. It didn’t work.
Clinton had something vaguely similar to your point 2: he did the Triangulation Thing, which was a novel approach to politics. The Dems might manage to win an election with it, if they can phrase it in a way that suggests a significant departure from business as usual. But I think the Gingrich model is the best one. That model resulted in the single biggest shift in American politics since Nixon’s impeachment, IMO.
But when you go to the public and say, “Once we get in power, we’ll come up with an agenda!” It’s just not very inspiring. And if we can’t inspire the fence-sitters, they’re likely to continue with the guys in power, who at least sound like they’ve got a plan (however idiotic that plan may be).
I want the Democrats to win. I’ll vote for their sorry asses as long as they remain marginally less offensive than the Republicans. But I would appreciate it if they’d get a plan together.