January 18, 2005
UNTEACHABLE:
The Gingrich Democrats (DAVID BROOKS, 1/18/05, NY Times)
The Social Security debate has exposed interesting differences within the Democratic Party between those who are inspired by Bill Clinton and those who are inspired by - wait for it - Newt Gingrich. [...]They feel that Social Security is to Bush what health care reform was to Clinton - the big overreach that will allow the opposing party to deliver a devastating blow to the president, and maybe even regain control of Congress. [...]
The problem with the neo-Gingrichians is that they have their history backward. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with only 43 percent of the vote. When Gingrich began his assault, there already was a potential conservative majority in the country; it's just that many of these conservatives, for historical reasons, tended to vote Democratic in Congressional races.
What the Republicans achieved in the first two years of the Clinton term was simply this: By exploiting issues like health care, gays in the military, midnight basketball and so on, they persuaded conservatives to vote Republican. The 1994 election was the culmination of a long process in which voters' ideology finally got in line with their partisanship. Gingrich, Armey and company only had to appeal to conservatives to win big.
The Democrats today are in a very different position. They already have all the liberals. What they lack is support from middle-class white families in fast-growing suburbs. But by copying the Gingrich tactics - or what they think of as the Gingrich tactics - of hyperpartisanship and ruthless oppositionalism, they will only alienate those voters even more.
They won't turn themselves into the 1990's Republicans. They will turn themselves into the 1930's Republicans or the current British Tory Party. They will become a party caught in a cycle of negativity and oppositionalism. They will score occasional victories against the majority party, which will yield no lasting benefits to themselves. They may delay Social Security reform, but that doesn't mean voters will trust them with power any time soon.
There is an essential asymmetry in American politics today. There are three conservatives in this country for every two liberals. A Republican can be quite conservative - like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush - and still win the White House. But only one Democratic presidential candidate has won over 50 percent of the vote in the past 40 years (Jimmy Carter got 50.1 percent in 1976).
That means Republicans can rely on their core instincts and still win, while Democrats cannot.
Their ideology is as backwards as their history: Newt Gingrich, at least for rhetorical purposes, stopped Bill and Hillary Clinton from taking over the private health care system and making it a government run bureaucracy; now Democrats want to try and stop George Bush from transforming Social Security from a government run bureaucracy into a private system. Nothing's changed except the reins of power.. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 18, 2005 12:00 AM
"[A]nd so on," means "it's the guns, stupid." Go back to the time of the Gingrich revolution. Clinton had it rightly: it was the guns. If the DemocRATS lost the queers and the gun-grabbers, especially the gun-grabbers, they'd be the strong majority party today. Conversely, if the preppy plutocrats want to throw it all away, all they have to do is waffle on the gun issue.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 18, 2005 5:11 AMI note how the Times article deftly elides the gun question into "and so on." Doesn't anybody remember what Clinton has repeatedly said, "it was the guns, stupid."
If the DemocRATS were to just lose--really lose, not just hide behind spin--the gun-grabbers, they would be the strong majortity party today. Conversely, if the preppy plutocrats want to throw it all away, all the have to do is to waffle on the guns.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 18, 2005 5:27 AMI note how the Times article deftly elides the gun question into "and so on." Doesn't anybody remember what Clinton has repeatedly said, "it was the guns, stupid."
If the DemocRATS were to just lose--really lose, not just hide behind spin--the gun-grabbers, they would be the strong majortity party today. Conversely, if the preppy plutocrats want to throw it all away, all the have to do is to waffle on the guns.
Posted by: Lou Gots at January 18, 2005 5:28 AMWithout the gun-grabbers and the gays, where would the Democrats get their money from? They steadfastly refuse to discuss economic issues, other than to reflexively oppose any change to the existing structure on the basis that 'anything else would be worse.' This however has no appeal to Americans unhappy with the existing structure.
The Democrats still maintain a vestigial support from working and middle class people. Many times this past election cycle, people would say they were for Kerry because he was 'for the working man.' I would ask them to name me one substantive position Kerry took which could be defined as pro-working man. They never could. At some point this vestigial support will go the way of the human tail.
The Democrats abandoned working class Americans in the 70s preferring to pimp themselves out for campaign contributions from Big Business just like Republicans while pandering to gays,anti-Americans, Blacks, angry women and the MSM. And then they wonder why middle America rejects them wholeheartedly.
The Democrats are in big trouble today. They used to be able to strong-arm Big Business into contributing to their campaigns by threatening regulations which would disrupt business and by letting Big Business essentially draft its own legislation. The current Bankruptcy revision is a good example. As the Democrats appear more and more distant from power, they become less attractive to business, which needs amicable relationships with the people in power, and more like the $2 whores who led the GOP in the 60s like Bob Dole. In a few years, the only rich people who contribute to the Dems will be weirdos wishing to push a few oddball pet causes like gay marriage, legal pot and perhaps saving the whales.
Posted by: Bart at January 18, 2005 7:12 AMLou: At some point, the Democrats could have extended their hold on power by really being strongly pro-gun, but that day has passed. Even if they joined the NRA, people have come to distrust them on too many other issues. Just for starters, they won't get anywhere until they convince people that they can be trusted to defend the country, by which I mean, of course, attacking other people in their homes before they can attack us in ours.
Posted by: David Cohen at January 18, 2005 8:02 AM