IN WHICH I CONTINUE TO BEAT MY NEW HOBBY HORSE

Democrats can't win until their politics are born again: Soul-searching on the left ... and a softening of the right? (Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, 11/6/04)

Question: which leading Democratic senator was the big loser in Tuesday's American election? Answer: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

No one predicted that result. On the contrary, conventional wisdom held that if John Kerry lost the 2004 contest, it could only be good for Ms Clinton. With no Democrat in the White House destined to seek re-election, the path would be clear for a bid of her own in 2008. And yet, far from igniting the Clinton '08 campaign, Tuesday's result may have snuffed it out at birth. For the post-election analysis has revealed that a key factor in Kerry's defeat was a problem for which Hillary Clinton could never be the solution.

Asked what single factor played the chief role in determining their choice, some voters cited terrorism, Iraq or the economy - but the greatest number picked "moral values".

Translation: faith, flag and family. Cruder translation: God, guns and gays. These are the social, cultural questions that mattered to millions of Americans more than jobs, healthcare or an ongoing war. And this group simply felt George Bush shared their core values while John Kerry did not.

This is a exceptionally perceptive analysis, by the exact definition of perceptive, that also gives me a chance to ride my new hobby horse. In the middle of a war, more voters said that they voted on social issues than on the war. Can the Democrats win that battle, and can they win it with a northeastern liberal? They answer is they can, but they won't.

Now, I'm somewhat skeptical of these polls. There are obvious signs that the exit polls this year were not entirely reliable. More importantly, our culture has become so po-mo, so meta, that we can't know whether issues drove voters to candidates, or a candidate's supporters felt themselves part of the campaign and thus gave the campaign's talking points. But let's assume, as seems to be the case, that social issues are important to voters and that the parties' stand on those issues tends to drive more voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party than the opposite.

The Democrats are losing on abortion; school prayer and its corollary, the Pledge of Allegiance; gun control; school vouchers; and now gay marriage. It is simply not possible for the Democrats to quickly compromise their substantive position on these issues. First, they would lose their most vocal (and richest) supporters. Second, simply matching the Republicans on these issues would not, by itself, attract enough voters to make up for the supporters they would lose. Third, they would still lose voters on other, important issues. For example, they simply not trusted on issues of national security, which is a problem that cannot be solved by rhetoric alone.

This situation is not by any means hopeless. The Democrats are still a powerful regional party on the west coast, the northeast and in the upper midwest. Over time, though, those regions are becoming less influential nationally, as population shifts south and west. Moderate Republicans can still be successful in Democratic areas, as shown by the governorships of Massachusetts, New York and California. At the same time, their national party platform and their lack of control of any branch of the federal government, makes it difficult for them to recruit and elect Democrats in the Republican section of the country or who could run for national office and attract those Republican voters.

There is an obvious solution for the Democrats that might neutralize the Republican advantage with heartland conservatives without alienating the liberal Democratic base. If these issues were left to the states, they would necessarily become less powerful at the national level. If those states that wished to ban abortions could; if those states that want to allow school prayer could; if gun control was largely entrusted to the state government in such a way that the populace was confident that the national government could not easily intrude; and if the teachers' unions became less powerful, than the parties' substantive position on these issues becomes much less important. Once the red states are confident that they can set their own agendas, most (though not all) voters will care less about these issues nationally and other issues will assume relatively more importance.

As important for the Democrats, they can achieve this new federalism without taking responsibility for changing direction. The President will be appointing many judges, including two to four Supreme Court justices, over the next four years. He says he likes judges similar to Justices Scalia and Thomas. Those judges will take a limiting approach to the powers of the federal government and will not second guess the policies adopted by the states, even those with which they disagree. If the Democrats simply leave the President alone to appoint his kind of judge, allowing floor votes and letting the Republicans put these judges on the bench, most of the social issues that defeat them nationally will soon no longer be national issues. Although some of their fringe supporters will blame them for not going to the barricades, most Democratic voters will stay with the party. Once this new federalism is in place, though, the Democrats will have to act to reassure red America that they accept that these social issues can never again be nationalized.

The Democrats will not do this. In part, this is a matter of principle. They sincerely believe that it is important that women in Texas have the right to kill their unborn child, so long as they don't use a gun. It is also in part that Democrat and liberals distrust the state governments, and see them as subsidiary to the national government.

But it is also partly inexplicable, at least to me. During the last campaign, the Democrats were clearly trying to avoid saying anything about gun control. This was a lesson they seemed to have learned from Bill Clinton, who mostly avoided the issue, and from Al Gore, who probably lost the presidency because of gun control (and most other issues, given how close the election was). Governor Dean, of all people, had emphasized in the primaries that he believed that gun control was an issue for the states and, in the general election, Senator Kerry spoke about his joy in hunting deer (albeit while crawling on his belly). Then the assault weapons ban expired. The ban was completely meaningless in terms of public safety and reducing crime, and yet Senator Kerry could not stop himself from "blaming" the President for allowing the ban to lapse. Even more ridiculously, he claimed that making assault weapons legal would help promote terrorism. In other words, for no substantive advantage at all, he risked turning-off those red state voters who cared about the issue.

It is this type of decision that causes conservatives to say that liberalism is more an aesthetic than a ideology. For the time being, the Democrats would rather look good than win.

Posted by David Cohen at November 6, 2004 2:05 PM