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"THE DEMOCRATIC Party came out of the election with at least an arguable claim to the moral high ground and, being the nominal party of self-destruction, proceeded to squander it. It had forced the Bush campaign to run on a platform of "compassionate conservatism," which meant suppressing the less popular right-wing extremes of the Bush agenda. It made impressive and unexpected gains in the Senate, bringing that body to a 50-50 tie. The election of Hillary Clinton in New York was wormwood to Republican hopes of banishing the very name of Clinton from politics forever. And, of course, there was a popular vote mandate for Al Gore that no Florida count or recount can ever obliterate. But the charm of being Democrats is that they are incapable of the moralistic self-satisfaction that comes so easily to Republicans. Show them a moral victory and they'll turn it into ashes. We saw this in the stampede of Democratic defectors in Congress who, at the bidding of corporate interests, recently voted to ram through a bankruptcy "reform" bill and to roll back regulations to protect workers from repetitive stress injuries. None of this was lost on George W. Bush. "In the spinelessness of Democratic opposition, he has seen a perfect mandate to install what last week's Washington Post rather boldly called "the most conservative administration in modern times, surpassing even Ronald Reagan in the ideological commitment of his appointments." What we have is an unambiguous result to an ambiguous election, a take-no-prisoners, compassionless victory snatched from the jaws of George W. Bush's defeat in the popular vote. It's a total rewriting of history. The people who dismissed Bush as an inarticulate, middle-aged frat boy stand rebuked. So do the armies of Reagan loyalists who viewed the restoration of the Bush family as a watery and temporizing substitute for the man who defined right-wing thought for all time. There are already those who argue there isn't sufficient space on Mount Rushmore for a head of Reagan. And now along comes this Bush with a better conservative claim to it...." --Robert Reno, 3/30/01
"Democrats are clueless these days. They haven't recovered since George W. Bush stole the election, and Republicans ended up in control of the White House, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Their presidential candidate, who won the most votes, has disappeared. Their former president is hiding in disgrace somewhere between Harlem and Westchester, leaving only for well-paid private gigs for corporate conventions. Senate Democrats rolled over for Bush's Cabinet nominees, and both houses of Congress got rolled by corporations pushing repeal of worker-safety provisions and consumer-bankruptcy protections. No wonder Bill Clinton's former Labor secretary, Robert B. Reich, has proclaimed the Democratic Party dead. Can Democrats get their groove back? It won't be easy. Any party deprived of the presidential bully pulpit has trouble speaking in one voice, and for Democrats, unity violates the party's tradition, if not its rules. With Democrats in minority status in both houses, Bush need not traffic with their leaders. He can pick and choose among more pliable, conservative Blue Dogs or New Democrats who are happy to deal. The loss of the White House also means a devastating loss in research and policy capacity. Moreover, despite the new president's continuing travails with the English language, Democrats shouldn't, as Bush put it, "misunderestimate him." This administration has mastered the ability to play Bill Clinton's music while marching to Ronald Reagan's drummer. The back-alley mugging of labor already underway is only the beginning of what will be a bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred assault designed to weaken the majority coalition. This reality renders the advice Democrats have been hearing from pundits and pollsters virtually worthless. Americans, they've been told, want an end to partisan bickering in Washington, and Democrats should work to find common ground with Bush. "Internal consensus," they're told, is essential for the party to speak with one voice. Democrats, it is argued, can gain by being the responsible party, seeking bipartisan consensus, offering a smaller tax cut, a more reasonable budget and greater fiscal prudence. " The only hope for Democrats is if their progressive base leads the party into fierce opposition. For a play-book, they'd be smart to remember what conservatives did in 1992, when Clinton was elected and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. From day one, movement conservatives outside Congress declared open season on Clinton. They organized aggressive opposition research, scouring the countryside and the past for anything that might discredit him or throw the administration off its game. Inside Congress, the conservative minority ignored Republican leaders who called for bipartisan cooperation. While then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole was endorsing the goal of universal health care, conservatives were joining with health maintenance organizations and insurance companies to plot its demise. Republicans voted unanimously against Clinton's first budget plan, even though it was virtually a rewrite of the bipartisan compromise signed by President George Bush years earlier. Congressional conservatives, led by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), put forth their own agenda. Gingrich rallied the Christian Coalition and other radical-right groups to support tax cuts, deregulation, an end to welfare and term limits, which eventually became provisions of his 1994 "contract with America." Finally, supposedly moderate Republicans were put on notice: If they strayed too often to vote with the administration or Democrats in Congress, they could anticipate a well-funded primary challenge--even if that risked losing a GOP seat in the general election. For the most part, the moderates got the message. Party unity was forged not from the top down in centrist compromise, but from the bottom up by right-wing muscle. "Progressives have every reason to learn from this playbook. Bush has presented himself as more moderate than he is. Now he is running a conservative takeover for which he has no mandate, endorsing policies--like reinstating the "global gag rule" on family planning overseas--that come as a shock even to some of his own supporters. More important, Bush is paddling upstream against the tide of opinion. Voters didn't buy the president's agenda in the election; Al Gore's message and agenda were far more popular. Bush has no mandate for his tax cuts for the wealthy, his stealth cuts in spending, the oil industry's takeover of government, his rollback of women's right to choose or his assault on working people. No one objects to a little tax relief. But if Americans were asked how to spend $555 billion over 10 years, they might choose to provide the fifth child--the one in five children born into poverty--with a healthy start. They might choose smaller classes and better teachers and modern schools for their kids. They might choose to ensure that their parents could afford the medicines that they need. But they would not make Bush's choice and give the money to approximately 1.4 million households (the top 1%) that are already among the wealthiest in the world. For this argument to be joined, progressive groups outside and inside Congress should get in Bush's face. He's allowed right-wing zealots like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife to vet his appointees. They should be investigated, and the outrageous opposed and blocked. No president selected by the gang of five on the Supreme Court has a right to name more activist conservative justices to that court and pad his partisan advantage for the next era. "Progressives need to build the research capacity to expose the Bush administration for what it is, revealing its conflicts of interests, corruption and greed that will stain it. They need to go into campaign mode, to ensure that Americans learn exactly who is getting the gold and who is getting the shaft. Finally, congressional progressives need to put forth a bold agenda for economic growth, fair taxes, investment in our future, political reform--and make Democrats the party that fights for working people once again. At the center of this debate will be the faltering economy and Bush's wrong-headed tax plan. Democrats should stop defending the Clinton economy and start working to fend off the Bush recession. This is an argument about the direction of the country, not accounting. The question is one of unmet needs and national priorities, not simply debt reduction. Progressives must expose the cynical lie that Bush's tax cut, most of which won't even kick in for several years, will stimulate the economy. Instead of arguing for a slower process and a smaller tax cut, progressives should be pushing for a bigger rebate now, one aimed at middle- and low-income families, but one that won't explode in the out years. The best policy would be to contrast Bush's backloaded, top-heavy tax cuts for the rich with a one-year prosperity dividend of $500 for every man, woman and child in America. That puts more money into the hands of middle- and low-income Americans to kick-start the economy in the short term, won't break the bank in the out years and doesn't steal from vital needs to hand the wealthiest Americans an annual $40,000 tax break. The first response of Republicans--and a shameless number of Democrats--to the economic downturn was to pass legislation making it easier for credit-card companies and other creditors to collect from distressed families forced into bankruptcy. Progressives should be pushing legislation to help distressed families avoid bankruptcy, financing a debt-relief mechanism that gives families reeling from layoffs, illness or divorce a chance to get back on their feet. The talking classes decry such advice as poisonous partisanship, certain to undermine civility, turn Americans off and drive good people from public life. But Bush has made it clear he plans, without any mandate, to pursue an audacious far-right makeover of the country. To prevent that, fierce and unrelenting opposition is required. Good manners may suffer, but the country will benefit. And Democrats may just get their blood moving again." --Robert L. Borosage, 3/25/01
"Not long ago, the Democrats were taking comfort from their five-seat gain in the Senate and their 50-50 tie. But the Senate, it's now clear, is far from truly tied. On the John Ashcroft confirmation vote, Republicans held all their troops and eight Democrats defected, four of them northern liberals. On the outrageous vote to scrap new safety standards on ergonomics, six Senate Democrats crossed the aisle. In the House, 16 Democrats joined 207 Republicans. If the Democrats had voted as a bloc, they might have held the line. "These defecting Democrats are a series of concentric circles. At the center are two southern nominal Democrats who might as well be Republicans, John Breaux of Louisiana and Zell Miller of Georgia. Radiating out are Democrats from fairly conservative states who face tight re-elections (Max Baucus of Montana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana), or Democrats not in re-election trouble but with close ties to business (Fritz Hollings of South Carolina). These six worthies voted to repeal the worker safety standard. It gets worse. On the recent change in the bankruptcy laws, lobbied hard by the banking, credit-card, and auto industries, more than a dozen Senate Democrats defected. On one emblematic amendment, giving relief to people bankrupted by medical bills, Democrats voting with Republicans to deny relief were not just the usual suspects but such sometime liberals as Joseph Biden of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Dianne Feinstein of California, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, and even the party's great dark-horse hope, John Edwards of North Carolina. The defectors are a blend of principled moderates, people in swing states, and shills for organized business. In all, 34 brave Democrats voted to hold the line and give a break to people whose illnesses bankrupt them. And as usual, the Republicans had perfect party unity. "This fearful asymmetry between the parties happened in three waves. Twenty years ago, before Ronald Reagan, there were independent souls in both parties. The last generation of Republican senators included liberals like Javits of New York, Case of New Jersey, Mathias of Maryland, Weicker of Connecticut, Brooke of Massachusetts, Cooper of Kentucky, Packwood and Hatfield of Oregon, and honorable mavericks like Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. They broke ranks all the time. They were balanced on the Democratic side by a dozen out-and-out racists like Stennis and Eastland of Mississippi. But with Reagan came greater party unity on the Republican side. After Bill Clinton was first elected president, the Republican minority in Congress felt robbed, angry, and united. Then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole sought to block everything Clinton offered. He managed almost total party unity, often picking up enough faithless Democrats--who were not well treated by Clinton--to prevail. Then in 1994, when Republicans took both houses, Newt Gingrich brilliantly used the Contract with America to turn the House Republican majority into a parliamentary caucus. The Contract was not only a Republican Party manifesto but a party loyalty oath. Moderate Republicans were disciplined both by the threat of losing campaign funding and by facing right-wing primary opponents. "Nothing comparable has been achieved by the Democrats. On the contrary, the House Blue Dog caucus, 33 mostly southern and border state Democrats, are extreme fiscal conservatives. They are currently feeling wounded that Bush, despite their eagerness to work with him, doesn't really need their votes. The Democratic Leadership Council faction splinters off a few dozen more who believe the Democrats need to move in a centrist direction. Some Democrats take (premature) comfort from the expectation that a few Republican senators will oppose the tax bill. A bipartisan proposal backed by moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine and centrist Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana would impose a "trigger" mechanism on the tax cut: If the surplus proves to be smaller than expected because of slower economic growth, the tax cut will be reduced. But this is weak tea as well as perverse economics. If the economy tanks, that's just when we'll need a bigger tax cut. Even if enacted, this trigger doesn't change the fundamental shape of the Bush tax-and-budget policy--huge tax cuts tilted upward, no significant money for social spending (except for modest increases in education). The endgame will be appeasement of the Republican moderates by trimming the overall cut, making it slightly less awful distributively, and preserving a shred of the estate tax. And then every Republican senator will dutifully fall in line, aided by the usual Democratic suspects of Breaux, Miller, et al. "So what's a party to do? During the mid-1980s, before he became a press agent for the Clintons, Sidney Blumenthal proposed what he called a "Northern Strategy." Let the turncoats go, he argued, and rebuild the Democrats as a fighting progressive party largely outside the white South. Face it: If the Dems are going to lose every party-line vote anyway because of defections in their own ranks, the real Democrats might as well behave like a real opposition. Trimming their views to pander to the least loyal of their own troops is a losing game and a spurious unity. Instead, the 35 to 40 Democratic senators who are good liberals, and their 150 counterparts in the House, should fashion a true progressive opposition program and take it to the country in 2002 and 2004. Maybe they should hire Gingrich as a consultant." --Robert Kuttner, 3/27/01
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