Thursday, November 04, 2004
The Lesson
Right now, every Democratic strategist in the nation is going over mounds of polling data, trying to figure out how in the hell they lost so badly. Senator Charles Schumer was on the Daily Show tonight, summing up his party's frustration:
As we know, all 11 state proposals banning gay marriage not only passed, but by dramatic margins. I'm not quite sure I agree that those initiatives were completely responsible for Bush's victory, since the bans were mostly in solid pro-Bush territory, and passed overwhelmingly even in states Kerry won handily like Oregon and Michigan. But in Ohio, which voted for the most severe ban of them all (banning not only gay marriage but also gay civil unions and anything intending "to approximate" a marriage benefit), those concerned Christians could have made all the difference. (The irony is that Kerry didn't even support gay marriage -- but remember it's not that voters thought he did, but that the issue itself lured more conservatives to the polls in the first place.)
I also don't agree that Bush supporters are necessarily anti-gay. Of people who support gay civil unions, for example, the public was evenly divided between Bush and Kerry. And, even after supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage this time around, Bush's support among gay Americans stayed the same, at about 25%.
On sensitive issues, you have to take the time to convince people, not just ram new ideas down their throats. It took decades for interracial marriages to become legal and accepted -- you can't just flip an entire country's viewpoint on gay marriage in a couple of years, no matter how high Will and Grace's Nielsens are. We're not ready yet. Bush is in the mainstream on this one -- start with civil unions, let the states decide their own laws, and we'll ease into it. It's not about what's "right" if fighting for it all at once sets you back instead of forward. State after state is now banning not only gay marriage, but even unions like marriage or allowing any benefits of marriage. Imagine if there was a major national push to legalize all illegal drugs, even the hard stuff, and maybe a state or two had actually done it. The anti-drugs majority might get panicked, and respond with a sweeping bill that increased drug possession fines and mandatory jailtime, which would pass overwhelmingly. Rather than helping their cause, the activists hurt it deeply, because they tried to force the extreme of a minority position on people before they were ready. Again, it's not about whether gay marriage should be legal (I strongly support it myself). This is a Democracy -- you don't get to skip over the "winning minds" part.
But it's more than just "the gay thing". Bush won on values because the Democratic party in recent years has moved far to the left, while the American people have stayed relatively the same. For example, according to Gallup, year after year a full 50% of this country is pro-life, and yet the Democratic party now literally refuses to support any pro-life Democrats. They've publicly ridiculed pro-God and pro-gun people as a small, backward portion of the electorate, oblivious to the fact that they're insulting the vast majority of the electorate. This is what Zell Miller warned about in "A National Party No More", and this election might just force the Dems into taking his arguments a little more seriously. (Hey, he might be nuts, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.)
If everyone you surround yourself with believes a certain thing, it becomes self-reinforcing. By kicking out all dissenting opinion in their ranks, the Dems started believing they represented the mainstream. How many times did you hear this election that Bush was "ultra-conservative", or even "the most right-wing President ever"? Think about how ludicrous that is: Bush is demonstrably more moderate than his father, and way more moderate than Reagan or Nixon -- to say nothing of Republicans like Hastert and Delay. Hell, popular conservative commentators such as Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage complain daily and in detail that Bush is far too liberal. But the Democrats didn't see this. They were in their bubble where everyone believes as they do, and so those who disagree must be in the minority. The Republicans had this problem a little after Newt's "Republican Revolution", when they took it as a mandate to shift rightward. But after Dole's defeat, they moved centrist, and now they're the only "big tent" left. Some of the nation's most popular Republicans such as Giuliani, Powell and Schwarzenegger would have stood out as exceptions only a decade ago; now they're the public mainstream face of the party. Think about it -- any of us could easy rattle off 10-20 popular moderate Republicans, but how many moderate Democrats could you name? 1? 2?
And they wonder why they keep losing elections.
Bush won more votes than any candidate in American history on Tuesday, and by a decisive margin of 4 million votes (3.5%) over his opponent. Not a "landslide", of course, but consider that Clinton's "landslide" in 1992 was only by 5.5 million votes (5.5%) over Bush's father. And what's particularly striking about today's polling is that only 38% of Americans say they were upset with Kerry's defeat! Talk about weak support -- more than a quarter of Kerry's own voters are kinda glad it didn't go their way? Wow.
The bottom line: the Democratic Party needs to move back to the center if they want to reconnect with the American voter. They have to stop scaring away conservative Democrats to the Republican side. They have to allow pro-life Democrats again. They have to fund candidates who agree with the majority of Democratic ideals, even if they happen to be pro-Jesus or pro-gun. As crazy old Zell would say, they have to go back to being a "national party"; they can't just keep writing off the South.
I happen to believe the Democrats are right on a hell of a lot of progressive issues. But they'll never get to do anything about them if they keep losing power. Moving back to the center will let them win elections again, and then be in a position to, in time, win over the minds of the public and change the country for the better. Right now, they're setting their own ideals back by decades, and without the ability for balanced dialog and debate, we all lose.
Right now, every Democratic strategist in the nation is going over mounds of polling data, trying to figure out how in the hell they lost so badly. Senator Charles Schumer was on the Daily Show tonight, summing up his party's frustration:
When people say the country's moving in the wrong direction, they think the Iraq war is a mess, the economy isn't good, and we still lose...?He's right -- even in the exit polls, on many of the big topics we've been talking about, voters narrowly agreed with Kerry. But the top "most important issue" was "values" -- and of the voters who listed values as their primary concern, Bush won 80%-18%. (By "values", of course, the voters seem to mean Christian values, since Bush won churchgoers by 61%-39%, and lost non-churchgoers 36%-62%.)
As we know, all 11 state proposals banning gay marriage not only passed, but by dramatic margins. I'm not quite sure I agree that those initiatives were completely responsible for Bush's victory, since the bans were mostly in solid pro-Bush territory, and passed overwhelmingly even in states Kerry won handily like Oregon and Michigan. But in Ohio, which voted for the most severe ban of them all (banning not only gay marriage but also gay civil unions and anything intending "to approximate" a marriage benefit), those concerned Christians could have made all the difference. (The irony is that Kerry didn't even support gay marriage -- but remember it's not that voters thought he did, but that the issue itself lured more conservatives to the polls in the first place.)
I also don't agree that Bush supporters are necessarily anti-gay. Of people who support gay civil unions, for example, the public was evenly divided between Bush and Kerry. And, even after supporting a constitutional ban on gay marriage this time around, Bush's support among gay Americans stayed the same, at about 25%.
On sensitive issues, you have to take the time to convince people, not just ram new ideas down their throats. It took decades for interracial marriages to become legal and accepted -- you can't just flip an entire country's viewpoint on gay marriage in a couple of years, no matter how high Will and Grace's Nielsens are. We're not ready yet. Bush is in the mainstream on this one -- start with civil unions, let the states decide their own laws, and we'll ease into it. It's not about what's "right" if fighting for it all at once sets you back instead of forward. State after state is now banning not only gay marriage, but even unions like marriage or allowing any benefits of marriage. Imagine if there was a major national push to legalize all illegal drugs, even the hard stuff, and maybe a state or two had actually done it. The anti-drugs majority might get panicked, and respond with a sweeping bill that increased drug possession fines and mandatory jailtime, which would pass overwhelmingly. Rather than helping their cause, the activists hurt it deeply, because they tried to force the extreme of a minority position on people before they were ready. Again, it's not about whether gay marriage should be legal (I strongly support it myself). This is a Democracy -- you don't get to skip over the "winning minds" part.
But it's more than just "the gay thing". Bush won on values because the Democratic party in recent years has moved far to the left, while the American people have stayed relatively the same. For example, according to Gallup, year after year a full 50% of this country is pro-life, and yet the Democratic party now literally refuses to support any pro-life Democrats. They've publicly ridiculed pro-God and pro-gun people as a small, backward portion of the electorate, oblivious to the fact that they're insulting the vast majority of the electorate. This is what Zell Miller warned about in "A National Party No More", and this election might just force the Dems into taking his arguments a little more seriously. (Hey, he might be nuts, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.)
If everyone you surround yourself with believes a certain thing, it becomes self-reinforcing. By kicking out all dissenting opinion in their ranks, the Dems started believing they represented the mainstream. How many times did you hear this election that Bush was "ultra-conservative", or even "the most right-wing President ever"? Think about how ludicrous that is: Bush is demonstrably more moderate than his father, and way more moderate than Reagan or Nixon -- to say nothing of Republicans like Hastert and Delay. Hell, popular conservative commentators such as Limbaugh and Hannity and Savage complain daily and in detail that Bush is far too liberal. But the Democrats didn't see this. They were in their bubble where everyone believes as they do, and so those who disagree must be in the minority. The Republicans had this problem a little after Newt's "Republican Revolution", when they took it as a mandate to shift rightward. But after Dole's defeat, they moved centrist, and now they're the only "big tent" left. Some of the nation's most popular Republicans such as Giuliani, Powell and Schwarzenegger would have stood out as exceptions only a decade ago; now they're the public mainstream face of the party. Think about it -- any of us could easy rattle off 10-20 popular moderate Republicans, but how many moderate Democrats could you name? 1? 2?
And they wonder why they keep losing elections.
Bush won more votes than any candidate in American history on Tuesday, and by a decisive margin of 4 million votes (3.5%) over his opponent. Not a "landslide", of course, but consider that Clinton's "landslide" in 1992 was only by 5.5 million votes (5.5%) over Bush's father. And what's particularly striking about today's polling is that only 38% of Americans say they were upset with Kerry's defeat! Talk about weak support -- more than a quarter of Kerry's own voters are kinda glad it didn't go their way? Wow.
The bottom line: the Democratic Party needs to move back to the center if they want to reconnect with the American voter. They have to stop scaring away conservative Democrats to the Republican side. They have to allow pro-life Democrats again. They have to fund candidates who agree with the majority of Democratic ideals, even if they happen to be pro-Jesus or pro-gun. As crazy old Zell would say, they have to go back to being a "national party"; they can't just keep writing off the South.
I happen to believe the Democrats are right on a hell of a lot of progressive issues. But they'll never get to do anything about them if they keep losing power. Moving back to the center will let them win elections again, and then be in a position to, in time, win over the minds of the public and change the country for the better. Right now, they're setting their own ideals back by decades, and without the ability for balanced dialog and debate, we all lose.
