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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, June 02, 2006

Democratic Ailments 

…in the newest issue of Newsweek, Michael Hirsh talks at length about what he feels fundamentally ails the Democrats at the national level. Given that polls consistently show that ‘the war on Terra’ ranks high on the people’s list of concerns, this cowardice of which he speaks is undoubtedly a powerful influence in the inability of Democratic leaders to come up with something resembling a coherent and robust message about national security and foreign relations. There are, however, other ailments besetting the Democratic Party that –while not as specific and obvious as it’s failure to stand up on its own hind legs over security issues and Iraq – are just as pernicious and impediments to the whole organic concept of “getting it’s act together”.

One such ailment is ‘lack of forgiveness’ and springs directly from the runup to Gee Dub’s Grand Iraqi Nation-Building Adventure. People with all sorts of varying progressive credentials came down on both sides of the ‘go/don’t go’ question and, now that it’s becoming painfully apparent that we aren’t very likely to emerge from this nation-building exercise with either a positive reputation in the world or a smoothly functioning Iraqi democracy, recriminations are flying like stray bullets between liberal hawks and liberal doves. Those who opposed the invasion aren’t much in the mood to forgive those who were supporters, and the hawks aren’t ready to let bygones be bygones about the way that they were (and in some cases still are) treated by those war opponents. Forget about the fear of the leadership; this is a tension rumbling in the guts of the grass roots that keeps the party from moving beyond the past and instead coming to terms with what unifying policy is best for getting us out of this mess that we’re in. The lines of this newer debate may not be drawn exactly along the fracture points of the last one, but there is still plenty of heat in the debate over whether we get out now or get out later…

Another ailment is the ongoing battle between the lumpers and the splitters. This conflict can be seen constantly raging through blogtopia (y!sctp!) as those who fiercely advocate specific issues rumble with those who rather prefer to look at collections of issues on balance. The Bob Casey Senate candidacy in Pennsylvania is a good example, where those supporting women’s choice were stridently opposed to the candidate over his pro-life stance while others felt that – on balance – his positions made him a strong candidate to oust Rick Santorum. Abortion is, in fact, one of the sharpest dividing lines between the lumpers and splitters, although it is surely not the only one; Markos at Daily Kos can routinely set the internets on fire with his observations on the utility of abortion as a benchmark or litmus test. At its core, this is a battle between the Democratic tradition of knitting together an assemblage of disparate issue-voters and a competing view looking to construct a simpler, unifying message that has an appeal to a broad set of voters. Name-calling and charges of abandonment and apostasy abound, once again right at the moment when the party should be getting its act all gathered together in one place in order to try to take back the House and the Senate…

Hirsh is exactly on the mark about the Democrat’s message failure over national security and international relations. They fear the Rovian message juggernaut and the perception of not being up to the job. But there are other bone-deep problems, some relating to Iraq and others not, that are still roiling the party and keeping it from coming together at this one perfect moment and galloping headlong in pursuit of a Congressional majority. A little backbone stiffening at the leadership level would certainly be a good thing, but there may not be any majorities to celebrate if these other ailments aren’t addressed…
Posted by: Jack K. / 12:03 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Just Sayin' About That Jesus Stuff 

...the news is hot and sends a shiver up certain Democratic spines (rumor to the contrary, it is a simple biological fact that they have ‘em): Dr. Howard Dean, former darling of the Daily Kos set, master of grass-roots ‘net politicking, and current chairman of the DNC, is supposedly coming to Oregon to work with the party at its convention. One of the notable items on the agenda is to develop and refine techniques for reaching out to moderate Evangelical Christians to attract them to Democratic candidates.

If I could lay my hands on that cool staff that Chuck Heston was waving around in The Ten Commandments, there would be a plague of frogs in a number of Democratic insider underware drawers right now because, verily, they surely do miss the point...

Christians aren’t some mysterious monolithic voting block lurking out there in the dark. They are a widely diverse group of people holding a widely diverse set of views on every subject in the world.
They are all around you and you may not even notice the fact because a great many of them aren’t ready at the most unexpected moment to turn casual chat about Measure 37, the Blazers’ woes, local high school sports, or the price of housing in Bend into a discussion of the peace that the Lord’s offering of salvation has brought to their personal lives. More to the point, they are already “reachable” without having to develop some grand scheme to win them over. There is such a thing as moderate and liberal Christians, and they have concerns that used to be core values of the Democratic party. What Dean advocates is a coalition, and any coalition has points of agreements and points where they can agree to disagree. The world is burdened with a host of ‘morale’ issues, and gay marriage (despite all the spitting and whining by right-wing theocrats to the contrary) and abortion aren’t even the two most important of them, even though these are seen as the point of cleavage between the Democratic party and Christians. Civil rights, human rights, protection of the least amongst us, poverty, racism, proper stewardship of the natural world that God has entrusted to us; these and others are all issues that a whole bunch of Christians feel strongly about and can get behind. Many of them are traditional Democratic themes. Stem cell research is even a subject of which many of us Christians are supportive, because we see God’s hand at work in an effort to relieve suffering amongst his people...

Outreach to ‘evangelical’ Christians is easy for the Democrats; simply go back to the core values that powered the party a generation ago. Don’t make it complicated by obsessing over perceived differences about a couple of hot-button winger issues that insist on sucking all the air out of the room. Don’t think so hard; just do it...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:10 PM 0 comments

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