What do the Democrats Do?

i vote for 2, only clinton and to a lesser extent gore b/c of clinton could play the centrist game and get away with it. Gebby and co. could never really pull it off. Until you get another master politician like Clinton, its time to get back to basics.

Republicans have been successful with their ideologues at the head of the party, why not try it?

 

I hope Nancy Polosi wins it. I think that if she were to begin advocating her very liberal stances on most issues, the Democratic party would be on the verge of dividing.

 

I think you can do both. You just have to find likeable representatives from both the left and center who can formulate ideas. It's worked for the Republicans and it can work for the Democrats, you just have to have some organization and a very good campaign strategy, something the Democrats were surely lacking this time around and the Republicans had an abundance of.

President Bush won these races. The man is extremely popular and pretty centrist. And unfortunately for the Democrats, at this point, I don't see Dubya losing in 2004, but then again, we all thought that there was no way Clinton would win in 1996 after the 1994 Republican takeover. However, I'd focus on being as bipartisan as possible this time around and focusing on Congress races in 2004 that you believe you can win. It's not like the Republicans have a huge majority in either chamber.

I think the proclamation of the death of the Democratic Party is very premature. If the Republicans get too right wing, Lincoln Chafee may bolt, and that could make the slim majority in the Senate that much slimmer.

 

I'd say Martin Frost. He is more centrist, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's not cowardly to not be radical. Plus, he's from Texas.

I seriously believe if it wasn't for George W. Bush, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. This isn't to dismiss any of the Repulican beliefs that many people in the nation agree with, I just think that when you have such a popular President campaigning like no other before him, it's amazing that not many saw this coming.

Maybe the Democrats will stop underestimating him.

 

What do the Democrats do?
Filibuster all partisan bills in the Senate. There is no way that they can lose with this strategy. At the end of two years, the Republicans will appear to have gotten nothing done, while controlling both houses of Congress.

BTW, this is not what I want to see happen. I would like for the Democrats and Republicans to craft filibuster proof, bi-partisan bills. These types of bills would appeal to most Americans since they would not have the ultra-right look and feel.

Of course, Republicans don't work this way. I also do not see Bush providing the necessary leadership to make this happen.


BTW, shouldn't the title of this thread be: What do Republicans want the Democrats to do?

 

I agree that it might be possible to do both. I think the problem is that so far they have really done neither.

Mainly I think it would help them to go more left. They are losing part of their constituancy to third party candidates especially from the Green party. Moving left for them may bring back some of those they had disenfranchised.

If they can move left, really advocate their own agenda(which they don't even have one right now) and yet be willing to work with moderates from the other party then they will at least appear to have a position. This past election for the most part they didn't do anything to seperate themselves from the Republicans. Since they didn't have their own budget and most of the initiatives brought up were from the Republicans that party looked more ready and able to lead.

If the Democrats had their own agenda, they could have brought back the Reagan's line and asked if people were better off today than they were two years ago. But the Democrats didn't have a vision of their own to offer.

 

You were talking about congressional leadership, so I was referring to DeLay, Armey, Lott, etc. If they are bipartisan moderates then you must have a different definition than me.

Yes,, GWB ran a centrist campaign..(lost)....and then implemented a right wing agenda. Too bad the democrats never bothered to notify anybody about it the past year except for the Times editorial page.

What the hell is an SF liberal? Steve Francis? Small Forward?

Ultimately it doesn't matter all that much who the speaker is rather than the message. Do you really think that the 30% of eligible voters who voted last tuesday consciously voted for the ideology of Dennis Hastert?

 

This op-ed piece in today's the NYTimes about sums it up for me:

Tiptoeing to Defeat
By BOB HERBERT

The Democratic Party is like an army that dutifully goes off to battle but leaves its ammunition and its principles behind. It's bad enough to lack the firepower that you need to win. It's worse to not even know what you're fighting for.

Despite the economic burdens that the middle and working classes are shouldering, despite the two million jobs lost and the scandalous concentration of wealth and income in the precincts of the very rich, the Democrats have yet to offer a compelling alternative to the reverse Robin Hood policies of the G.O.P.

Throughout this year's campaign, the Democrats let the president bang the cynical war drums on Iraq whenever and however he wished. Other important issues — the economy, employment, the administration's appalling environmental record, the threat to abortion rights and civil rights posed by the president's federal court nominees — were largely pushed aside, to the delight of Republicans nationwide.

Republicans didn't win control of the Senate on Tuesday. The clueless Democrats lost it.

There was a time when Democrats had some fire. "I never give them hell," said Harry Truman. "I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." That was then. Now the Democrats proceed on tiptoe, always afraid they might say the wrong thing, vote the wrong way, get burned. The party of Roosevelt, Truman and the Kennedys has morphed into the party of timidity.

Consider the fiasco in Minnesota. Many of the Democrats who loudly lamented the loss of Senator Paul Wellstone in a plane crash had for years considered his fierce commitment to principle to be, at best, a little weird. He had an agenda and there was room in it for working people and the poor. Democrats have come to think of that as dangerous terrain.

But when Senator Wellstone died, the national Democrats, panicked at the prospect of losing their one-vote hold on the Senate, were quick to exploit the sympathy factor in an effort to save his seat. And that backfired.

When a televised memorial for the senator turned into a now-notorious campaign rally (at which Democrats were cheered wildly and some Republicans were booed), voters were turned off in large numbers. It was a fiasco that extended beyond Minnesota. Not only did the Democrats lack a message, they seemed also to lack class.

The bottom line: Paul Wellstone was actually ahead in the polls at the time of his death. Walter Mondale, who was dusted off and sent out to run in his stead, was defeated.

In New York, which should be Democratic heaven given the party's lopsided registration advantage, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Carl McCall, lost to the Republican incumbent, George Pataki, by 16 points. Mr. McCall, a decent, affable man, did little more in the campaign than wave his résumé. He rallied no one and he lost big time.

The leadership void among Democrats is dangerous for both the party and the nation. The courts are being shaped by right-wing Republicans for decades to come. And there is a particular need for elected officials willing to fight for the interests of ordinary families and individuals who are struggling to keep up with such fundamental expenses as mortgages and tuition.

Affordable housing is a huge national issue, and alarms that are increasingly loud are summoning our attention to the problems of hunger and homelessness. These are issues that get incredibly short shrift in a plutocracy. They are Democratic issues. Or at least they were when the Democrats had some fire.

A fresh start is needed. New voices and new strategies must be heard. It's time for Democrats everywhere to look in the mirror and determine who they really are, and what they really stand for. Those who favor what the Republicans favor are not really Democrats.

Lyndon Johnson is not held in very high esteem at the moment, which is too bad. He never ran away from the poor and working people. He brought us Medicare and Medicaid and student loans and Head Start and Upward Bound and consumer protections and housing assistance — just a whole litany of those sorts of things.

But that was another era, when Democrats had energy and ideas and values they believed in and the courage to lead.

 

voter apathy among traditional democratic constituencies helped contribute to their downfall. Hell, if urban areas like St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Atlanta had anywhere near the voter turnout that their republican suburbs had, we might not be having this discussion. CLinton was able to galvanize this area (e.g. african americans loved, and still love clinton) and attract independent voters simultaneously.

I don't see any sign of wholesale centrist or independent desertions of democrats (other than the south which is a lost cause by now); or else the races now and in 2000 would have been even less close than they were. There were very few out and out landslides in contested areas. I do however see signs of a party that lost its way and was criticized by its base.

 

Good for the Democrats. Maybe not so good for America.

BTW I am not a Democrat. I am an nonpartisan Indepedent.

 

1. I completely agree with the NY Times article.

2. I think Pelosi at small forward would be better than Hawkins, Rice, or Boki. She is mean, and I love it!

3. RM95, Bush is not a centrist, IMHO. If being slightly left of Il Duce makes someone centrist, I better get my ass to New Zealand ASAP. (I can just see the one-way ticket from T_J in tomorrow's mail).

4. I have hope for J. Edwards, and I will work in his campaign if he runs.

5. Dems have to reach the middle class again. In reading Refman's comments in another thread, I was blown away again by an intelligent, hard-working, middle class person paying immense taxes but having no problem with the growing largesse in the nation's wealthiest 1%.

 

...and I'm Santa Claus

 

damn, that explains the lousy crap I've been getting.

 

Mr. Paige had the most cogent explanation I've seen on this board (I believe in TJ's thread).

I was VP of the College Dems at BC for 3 years. As such, I worked in a lot of campaigns, and actually got to know some relatively high placed Democratic officials. One congressman in particular seemed pretty contemptuous of current Democratic leadership: he thought that there was a real problem in the Democrats message:

1. We're centrists!
2. Republicans totally suck.

A combination of attempting to appear inoffensive and moderate, while simultaneously bashing the other side is usually going to be ineffective when the leader of the opposition is a Clinton-esque spinner. Bush just isn't frightening. Maybe if Newt were still leading the Republican vanguard, this would have been successful. Newt's gone.

Bashing another party doesn't work very well when you don't look all that different. Hence, you need to either blur the boundaries between parties even more, or separate distinct issues that divide you.

Democrats have issues that resonate very well with the American people, according to polling data. However, Democrats have been hesitant in running issue oriented campaigns that propose realistic responses to problems.

This is true for a variety of reasons. The Democrats are afraid the American people won't understand. It's easier for Republicans to run on issues: people understand "taxes suck" and "abortion's wrong." It's harder to get the populace to buy into a concrete proposal to curb urban air pollution, especially when the causal relationship between the proposal and fixing the problem isn't always immediate. Also, Democrats are afraid of being branded as tax-loving and too liberal.

Democrats need to become issue-oriented, and reclaim the word liberal. This doesn't mean becoming the Green party, but rather, becoming distinct and sincere.