IF IT'S THE DEMOCRATS, ISN'T IT REALLY MATRICIDE? :

Petty Cash : WILL MCCAIN FEINGOLD BREED DEMOCRATIC FRATRICIDE? (Franklin Foer, 05.29.02, New Republic)

For employees of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), November 6, 2002, will be a scary day. Parties shed excess staff after virtually every election. But November 6 doesn't just mark the end of an election cycle; it marks the beginning of the McCain-Feingold era. And with the party deprived of the $250 million in soft money it raises every two years, this year's DNC cutbacks could reach "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap proportions. According to one top Democrat, the party's specialists in ethnic outreach and constituent relations will be canned, as will its experts in get-out-the-vote and field organization. In all, party chair Terry McAuliffe will likely sack as many as 100 of the party's roughly 400 employees. That's one reason the DNC has canceled long-standing plans to construct a palatial new headquarters. As one Democrat explains, "They don't need the space because they won't have the people."

It's not just that McCain-Feingold will force the DNC to downsize dramatically; it will force it to downsize a lot more than will the GOP--which boasts many more of the hard-money donors who will be able to continue giving once the new law takes effect. So Democrats have begun searching for ways to compete in the post-soft-money era. And the good news is that they have some plans. The bad news is that those plans may vastly increase the political power of trial lawyers, labor unions, and environmental groups--the liberal stalwarts who will replace the party itself once the DNC can no longer raise millions in soft money. In other words, campaign finance reform may unintentionally recreate the pre-Clinton days of bitter infighting between liberals and New Democrats--only this time without a strong party organization to referee.

Folks seem to derive a selfish, almost onanistic, pleasure in running down the two major parties, even the party they favor, and doing things like declaring candidates unacceptable because they disagree with them on one issue [witness the proclamations that "I won't ever vote for George W. Bush again because he (fill in the blank) : (a) raised steel tariffs; (b) hasn't attacked Iraq yet; (c) opposes cloning; (d) signed CFR]. But the two parties offer something all too rare in modern society; they are genuine umbrella organizations that unite people with varied particular concerns but similar general dispositions about politics. They provide a structure within which the two great political impulses--the one toward freedom, the other toward security--can be contained and played out coherently. A specific Democrat may not care all that much about gay rights, but is comfortable in a party that uses the levers of government to benefit such minorities. Similarly, a Republican may not be all that het up about gun rights, but will feel comfortable in a party that generally trusts the citizenry more than the government. Reconciling differences of opinion on certain issues is not always easy, but once achieved, it makes for a strong party with depth and breadth. Thus the two parties have endured and have served us well.

Campaign Finance Reform has the perverse effect of damaging the two parties, by making it more difficult for them to fund their own operations and by giving interest groups so much power that these typically single issue organizations will begin to be more important in some races than the parties they once worked within. This may not only atomize us all into ever smaller political cliques it must also begin to take a toll on democracy itself at some point. We may gradually shift from the current regime where gun activists, born-agains, flat taxers, etc., all have to learn to live together as Republicans and work toward broad common goals, to one in which the only thing you care about is your own issue and the little group of identically-minded zealots who are ideologically pure enough for you to consort with.

When government gets to decide how our money is spent in the political sphere, including how we use that money to determine the make up of the government (who's elected and who isn't), there's something seriously wrong. This is, in the truest sense, an antidemocratic development. Hopefully the Democrats will fare so poorly under this godawful new law that even they will lose their enthusiasm for limiting political speech.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 31, 2002 12:38 PM