I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.
After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientist David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.
Do you feel like we are in control of the dialogue today? We’re constantly battling a phantom war on terrorism, which is clearly a proxy for a war for influence and resources. Moreover, look at the media. Bradley continues:
The Democratic Party’s reaction to Ronald Reagan shaped a generation of Democratic politicians, as we sought to differentiate ourselves from both Reagan and FDR- Reagan because he was a Republican and FDR because he was a “big spender.” Instead of creating something new that was true to our origins, we tried to split the difference between the legacy of FDR and the political potency of Reagan. The key to doing this was public relations- managing and targeting the message. We became the party of intentions, not results- intent on proclaiming that one or another initiative would improve people’s lives; whether it actually did or not was never determined. If you couldn’t admit the importance of government, then you couldn’t talk about the big things government could do- just talk about a lot of small things important to different segments of the electorate, but don’t risk talking to the electorate as a whole.
In today’s terms, this means tinkering around the edges of the Global War on Terror, but never questioning the underlying premises. It means not asking for single-payer health care, but trying to just enroll more children in some kind of HMO.
One of the early efforts to distance ourselves from the FDR legacy was the Democratic Leadership Council, formed out of discontent with the Democratic National Committee and the perceived necessity to move to the middle- far away from FDR. It started with only a few people. It’s activities consisted primarily of holding conferences that gave politicians a platform to espouse middle-of-the-road positions and generating research papers that sought to bridge the gap between FDR and Reagan. The DLC solicited Democratic officeholders as members and rich, business-friendly Democrats as contributors.
And not only Democratic contributors. It quickly became a way for business-friendly people to hedge their bets and play both sides of the system.
The organization has been run for some twenty years by the same man, Al From, a bright, aggressive former Democratic staffer in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. From its beginning, he positioned the organization as the anti-DNC and its members as the new Democratic conservatives. Above all, the DLC has sought to move the party to more eclectic policies that embody modest aspirations. That way, Republicans couldn’t attacks us as big spenders. The DLC attempted to ingratiate itself with business by supporting deregulation in areas of the economy, such as utilities, that had been under government regulation since the 1930’s. It advocated welfare reform, along with an assortment of experimental policies that wouldn’t cost very much. These new Democrats took positions on Social Security and Medicare, on pension policy and health care, elementary and secondary education, and tax reform, but most shied away from using government as a tool to make the country stronger and more just. Sometimes the DLC seemed more anti-liberal than anti-Republican. It was a haven for younger politicians who wished to distinguish themselves from the Old Democrats of the DNC, the custodian of what remained of the old coalition.
Bradley’s analysis is spot-on. The Clintons rose to power on the back of this non-ideological ideology. And Hillary Clinton remains their standard bearer. Above all else, it is this timid political philosophy that is responsible for the Democrats inability to stand up to Bush.
