New Democrats R.I.P.
CLAUSEN, CHRISTOPHER
Second Thoughts NEW DEMOCRATS R.I.P By Christopher Clausen Let's suppose the Clinton Administration survives the Great Bimbo Eruption of '98. Nothing short of absolute proof that its...
...The New Democrat solution to the problems of the Democratic Party is as dead as the Republican Revolution...
...of Michigan, not to mention the Reverend Jesse Jackson on the airwaves, have been far more conspicuous than white Democratic leaders in speaking up for him...
...Like many Old Democrats, Greenberg has relapsed...
...These moves were political judo and threw Congressional Republicans flat on their backs...
...Some will allege," concedes Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute, "that it is 'old liberal' politics to emphasize economic issues and class identity as a strategy for widening the political space for an activist Federal government...
...The lessons of Clinton's personal survival will not be lost on those who hope to succeed him...
...There are a few specific suggestions about expanding medical and other kinds of public insurance...
...Clinton's attempt in '92 and '96 to expand the base, to bring back the "Reagan Democrats" and other voters who had become alienated, was mostly a failure...
...Bill Clinton's great political accomplishment was supposed to be his moving it to the center, following its quarter-century exile in the mirage-haunted deserts of the Left...
...Clinton in '92 looked like an exception, particularly on the crime issue, but that was before Dixie went down the drain...
...In spite of the President's most recent shift, Democratic pollsters and pundits who thought a few years ago that Clintonism was the future have grown restless again, not so much for a new hero as for a more satisfying version of the old-time religion...
...The sight of a Southern President who was "'moderate" on financial matters but to the Left of the electorate on many social issues, as well as a tepid supporter of the Armed Forces, speeded up the region's long-term political transition by obliging other Southern Democratic politicians to show how unlike Clinton they were...
...On the other hand, nobody seems to have come up with another persuasive identity for the Democratic Party...
...Clearly, the era in which the era of big government was over is over...
...What forms might those initiatives take in an imagined future...
...Greenberg, Skocpol, their coauthors, and other liberal commentators tend to be vague...
...The claim that "progressive" candidates have a future if they can just figure out how to repackage themselves is an old story, but enough people want to believe it that it keeps coming back in slightly different versions...
...The purpose that should animate a new progressive politics," proclaims Michael Sandel, "is the project of reconstructing the infrastructure of civic life—not just for the sake of better public services but primarily for the sake of creating public spaces that draw people out of their identity as consumers and cultivate their identity as citizens...
...Just as Republican Presidential candidates run for nomination as sensitive, caring Reaganites, Democrats run as fiscally responsible McGovernites...
...So many of them switched parties, were defeated, or retired that the most Democratic sectionof the country quickly became the most Republican...
...In the Introduction to The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics (Yale, 321 pp., S30.00), he and his coeditor Theda Skocpol lament that Clinton "pronounced an end to 'the era of big government,' and immediately after the [1996] election...
...Ira Katznelson of Columbia maintains that Democrats can recapture the South if they practice a "bold strategy," building simultaneously on churches and union organizing...
...The country that gave Ronald Reagan big majorities now gives high poll numbers to the current incumbent, Reagan's opposite in everything but charm...
...For all their gaudy excitement, the Clinton years have pointed no clear direction for the Democratic Party...
...Meanwhile the 1998 midterm election will be the first postClinton test, in effect if not in fact...
...He pushed the Initiative on Race as a high-profile defense of preference programs...
...The majority of commentators still give him credit or blame for being what he calls himself, a "New Democrat" who brought his party back from a near-death experience after it lost five out of six Presidential elections starting in 1968...
...To win the nomination, Gore requires the support of those activists who decide primaries...
...In his 1996 book Middle-Class Dreams, Stanley Greenberg sang the praises of "a President who is passionate and engaged, who respects ideas, who enjoys and depends on intellectual combat, who thirsts for understanding, who listens, who has a deep compassion for people, who makes sound judgments, and who has the courage to take on momentous challenges...
...What policies and programs might solve national problems remain as mysterious as what slogans might attract a fickle electorate...
...We must rebuild the infrastructure of progressive politics and join with all of our fellow citizens in the quest to realize a full and vibrant citizenship," the editors announce in a typical formula...
...Most likely, as Hillary Rodham Clinton predicted wistfully in mid-February, the public will never know much more...
...They give him credit for stalling the Republican push for smaller government, but because of his roots in the hated Democratic Leadership Council, "The Clinton legacy does not include many new progressive initiatives...
...Similarly, after long opposing any specific commitment to a balanced budget, he endorsed it in early 1996...
...At the moment its outcome is anybody's guess...
...more important, under his leadership the Democrats lost both houses of Congress and most of the governorships...
...Forget about any legislation that wouldrestrict the widest possible availability of abortion, or, ironically, narrow the legal definition of sexual harassment...
...Government theme parks...
...In that case—short of more problems— the man whose spokespersons refer to him bizarrely as "this President" will limp across the bridge to the 21 st century...
...Such groups are often described as the present base of the Democratic Party...
...To hold their historic base, the South, they would have had to take a much more convincing leap that probably would have lost support among the Northern women and minority-group members who constitute its new base...
...His survival now depends on liberal interest groups— on feminists above all, who (with his Administration's help) spent more than a decade building an expansive doctrine of sexual harassment and then blew much of their credibility by defending him...
...The short-term reason for Clinton's making up with his party's Left is that he needs it in his present crisis...
...Likewise, the Democrats in Congress today are more liberal than the party as a whole was when it held majorities...
...Even in the days when McGovern and Mondale lost 49 states, the Democrats held on to Congress...
...Even before the Lewinsky story broke, the Administration was sliding craftily to the Left...
...seemed to distance himself more than ever from the Democratic Party...
...Nothing short of absolute proof that its leader had sexual relations with Monica S. Lewinsky has any chance of bringing it down...
...The President signed a Republican welfare bill during the 1996 election year after twice vetoing essentially the same bill...
...Clinton, Greenberg approvingly assured his readers, urged "voters to reject the false choice of liberalism and conservatism...
...After all, everything depends on getting "progressive" candidates elected, which might be a tall order...
...The Republicans seem equally divided, demoralized, and inclined to fall back on old gestures...
...The old saw about a week being a lifetime in politics was never more true...
...Under Clinton's leadership, the Democrats narrowly gained the White House, but otherwise the rhetorical move to the center accelerated the party's decline instead of reversing it...
...He promised to water down the welfare bill he had just signed, a promise he kept...
...Contrary to what some conservatives think, it is not that Clinton, having fooled the voters twice, is returning to his true allegiance...
...So have union leaders...
...Forget about mending affirmative action, something the Administration was in no hurry to do anyway...
...Even without evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice, the claim that a sitting President's having an affair with a White House intern and giving her a succession of government jobs constitutes merely "private" wrongdoing probably couldn't prevail for long...
...By the 1996 campaign he was tailoring more and more of his appeal to women and nonwhite men, who constitute 64 per cent of the voters...
...Of course, there was a lot more slogan than substance to the whole act...
...He never cracked 50 per cent in either of his White House races...
...Why sell out your principles if it doesn't win you elections...
...Another impetus for his return to traditional liberal programs and policies is Clinton's desire to see Al Gore elected as his successor...
...But the book's distinguished authors come up against the same problem that has beset the Left since the late 1960s: how to define its goals in a language that won't scare away most of the voters...
...What kind of wake will our 42nd President leave trailing behind him when he finally steams out of view...
...Those days are gone...
...Some cynics suspect he feels an urgent need to keep the Justice Department in friendly hands...
...Sandel's Harvard colleague William Julius Wilson suggests that with a little tinkering, affirmative action can be made popular by rechristening it "affirmative opportunity...
...Forget about any form of fast-track trade authority that the AFLCIO has problems with...
...The traditional Democratic interest groups are alive, well, and in full control of the policies they care about...
...What will happen to the Democratic Party...
...Black Congressmen such as John Lewis of Georgia and John Conyers Jr...
...Although he continues to call himself a New Democrat, the designation has lost most of its meaning...
...Or not only that...
...The State of the Union address, framed earlier, was packed with liberal treats like new spending for education, a Federal daycare plan, "saving" Social Security, expanding Medicare, raising the minimum wage again, smiting the tobacco companies, and more...
...Work hard and play by the rules," "end welfare as we know it," "make abortion safe, legal, and rare," "mend it, don't end it"— the endless campaign always had a catchy phrase to fit the rhetorical needs of the moment...
...It's easy to laugh at this sort of thing as a strategy for winning the 1948 election...
...Why did an administration twice elected on a "centrist" agenda reverse field...
...They made Clinton look like a sure-footed moderate...
...All these groups expect payment...
...Surprisingly, they don't say much about what may be Clinton's most effective tactic, tailoring policy initiatives to appeal to women regardless of social class...
...Their rhetoric leans traditionally on class and citizenship...
Vol. 81 • February 1998 • No. 3
