January 29, 2004
100% PROCESS:
The Dead Center (ROBERT B. REICH, 1/29/04, NY Times)
Democrats have seen what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: it's your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare).It has a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote accordingly. And it has a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and West, and big business — an ideology in which foreign enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.
In contrast, the Democratic Party has had no analogous movement to animate it. Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising conservative tide. After the election, they go back to whatever they were doing before. Other Democrats have involved themselves in single-issue politics — the environment, campaign finance, the war in Iraq and so on — but these battles have failed to build a political movement. Issues rise and fall, depending on which interests are threatened and when. They can even divide Democrats, as each advocacy group scrambles after the same set of liberal donors and competes for the limited attention of the news media.
Folks like Mr. Reich and the various Democratic candidates--Howard Dean, John Kerry, John Edwards--seem to believe that you build a political movement by building a political movement. They are focused exclusively on process, to the exclusion of ideas. It's instructional that Mr. Reich offers no vision whatsoever of what ideas a new movement of the Left would be built around. Of course, the dirty secret behind this silence is that those ideas would be profoundly unpopular with the American people--at least until the next Depression. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 29, 2004 9:48 AM
Let's hope those inspired to anti-capitalism and Marxist Socialism during the last depression "moveon" before the next one occurs.
Posted by: Genecis at January 29, 2004 10:42 AMAs far as I can tell, his criticism seems to come down to -- "the GOP and the Dems have swapped places and I don't like it."
It's time for people like Reich to "moveon" to the realization that he's part of a minority that's not going to be able to do much even if it does manage to grab power for a while, because there's nothing people like him want to accomplish other than being in power.
The dirty little secret is that they are the same ideas as the last Depression.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 29, 2004 11:15 AMHow much can we infer from what is, after all, a pretty delusional summary of the state of play.
Reich is farthest from reality in how he describes what leftists and rightists do between elections. The press, the permanent government and academia have all been captured by the left and spend all day every day, plus much of their free time, spreading leftism. The right has much of the commentariat and, for the last ten years, Congress. We're not out of it, by any means, but to suggest that the left just pays attention every four years is nuts.
And the mainstream Republican approach to homosexuality is the far left approach from ten years ago.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 29, 2004 11:56 AMI have to agree with Raoul. The Democratic Party does truly be devoid of any new ideas. They truly just seem to want power at almost any cost. If there was a man or woman in that party with the caliber of say a Dick Cheney or Condoleeza Rice, I could vote for them over Bush. But I don't see anyone with even the slightest bit of that kind of integrity in the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Bartman at January 29, 2004 12:31 PMThe Dems have an ideology, frames of reference and plenty of ideas on foreign enemies(defer US national security decisions to the UN and France), domestic poverty(more handouts) and crime(John Ashcroft's a Nazi!), and homosexuality (pro-gay agenda), they are just tremendously unpopular when plainly expressed.
Posted by: at January 29, 2004 12:31 PMthe totally anonymous post above was mine..
Posted by: Chris B at January 29, 2004 12:33 PMIt is entirely possible that the Democrat party as a party of liberals will have its last hurah in this election. But it will not be the end of history. The Republican big tent has been held together by their disdain for liberals. In the next phase new fissures will arise and take center stage. I think that the next set of splits maybe libertarian/globalismists/neocon versus moralist/isolationist/nativist. who gets the Donkey and who gets the Elephant are irrelevant.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 29, 2004 1:01 PMIt is indicative of his leftist worldview that Mr Reich would attribute the success of the Republican movement to organizational and process factors. It is the nature of leftism to see people as fungible entities that can be easily shaped and molded by social and political pressures, hence their love of social engineering schemes.
His statement "Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising conservative tide." is a classic sign of a reactionary movement.
Posted by: Robert D at January 29, 2004 3:06 PM