It seems that today’s and yesterday’s news cycle has been all about the gulf in the Democratic party: between middle American and coastal Democrats, between Generic Democrats and Real Democrats, and between working-class Machine Democrats and yuppie Reformist Democrats. The New Republic piece on the latter does a particularly good job at boiling down the trends of the last couple of decades and, if correct in its analysis, suggests that a major realignment of the political parties is in process.
What makes the situation difficult (and exciting) to assess is the crossing of several variables: the intersection of class politics and star image, the filtering of broad issues to the general public , the alignment of smaller interests in politcal party strategies, and the relation of organized political interest and money. It’s daunting and gives me respect for the political scientists who are able to sift through it all. It’s seems especially important for Democrats to keep their eyes on multiple balls when strategizing for the larger election: it’s wrong to simply point out that Clinton won because of his turn to the right (ignoring other things going for him) or that Clinton won simply because Ross Perot was in the race full stop (ignoring his ability to attract centrist voters). The upshot is that I still don’t have a sense who of the Democratic presidential candidates has the best chance to win in 2004, much less the one I want to support.
While I’m trying to decide, let me offer a few observations:
1) Kerry has shot himself in the foot. A couple months back, commentators, at least in Boston, kept wondering what went wrong and if the local press was too hard on him. Hardly. Kerry has committed one fatal mistake: when he decided to run for president, the conventional wisdom was that he’d have a hard time winning the South with his New England liberal image, so he decided to play moderate in the Senate and on the national stage. The Iraq vote was the most vexing result of that, but it extended into a general moderation at the expence of political coherence and moral authority. I do think he has some good things going for him (he still has a knack for understanding and formulating policy), but I feel he’s doomed in this primary.
2) Dean’s popularity isn’t simply about his anti-Iraq-war stance (though that is important) nor all springing from internet savvy (though that helps). Instead, those maligned coastal urban and suburban bourgeois folks - the ones solidly liberal-left, in between Nader Democrats and New Democrats - finally got fed up. They (we) kept quiet and let the New Democrats run the show, because Clinton’s reign had shown that there were advantages for moderating political stances for strategic wins. So they and the consultants ran Gore’s campaign into the ground. Fine, we said, a lot of it had to do with Gore’s personality. Then we watched as the Democrats caved time and again, particularly on the tax cuts and on foreign policy, because they didn’t have the backbone to take unpopular, “immoderate” stances. The 2002 congressional and gubernatorial elections proved to us that moderation alone had won us nothing and lost us a lot. Until the machine/middle-American/centrist/DLC Democrats admit there’s a problem besides McGovernik lefties, they can go on and on about electability until they’re blue in the face and we’re still not going to vote for them.
3) Just on a star-image level, something’s missing from Gephardt, and I’m not sure what it is. The man is nearly as wooden and lifeless as Gore.
4) Clark seems to be an appealing candidate on some counts (knowledge of policy, genuinely smart take on foreign policy) and he may even be able to unite the continental divide the New Republic speaks of: he’s an outsider critical of the war, but one with DLC credentials and some appeal for centrists. But his campaigns so far seems to be tripping on itself. Maybe he’s too green at running for elected office.
OK, enough rant for the day.
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