THE NEW DEMOCRATS : HIGHER TAXES, MORE REGULATION :

Democrats Should Sound Populist Themes This Year (Mort Kondracke, June 10, 2002, Roll Call)

A flood of corporate scandals--from Enron to Andersen to Tyco--plus more GOP tax cuts for the rich suggest that Democrats could profit this year by sounding populist themes.

Demagogic appeals to class warfare probably won't work any better than they have in the past. And Democrats have yet to link the Bush administration to any specific case of corporate malfeasance, even with Enron.

But polls persistently show that the public believes that Bush is too beholden to corporate America, and that Congressional Republicans are even more so. So there's every reason for Democrats to say: We can clean up this mess better than the GOP.

Polling by the Democracy Corps indicates an opportunity for Democrats if they employ populist themes. Eighty-five percent of voters agreed with the statement that "too many people in powerful positions are acting irresponsibly, hurting ordinary people, and they are not being held accountable for their actions."

The Democracy Corps is headed by liberals James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Bob Shrum, who urged Vice President Al Gore to emphasize "the people versus the powerful" theme in the 2000 race against Bush.

That's one option for Democrats in 2002, though it's been criticized recently by journalist Joe Klein as "aggressive, pessimistic and unsubtle."

The alternative I'd favor is being put forward by Lieberman, who identifies himself as "pro-business" but proposes to reform corporate America to
benefit "the new investor middle class" that's been "reeling in the ruins of Enron."

What's gotten into Mort? This column is patently absurd. The Democrats can't run as the party of higher taxes because the voters don't like taxes. They can't run as the anti-business party because they're dependent on political contributions from business. Senator Lieberman in particular would have to be insane to try such a strategy. His constituents are the beneficiaries of a healthy share of the cuts and his campaigns are funded by businesses like Arthur Andersen. Mr. Lieberman is many things, but I see no evidence that he's suicidal. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2002 7:16 PM