Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Why can’t we all just get along?

Partisan Politics

Hilary Clinton recently addressed the DLC in Columbus, Ohio (the heart of the heart of it all) calling for party unity in the face of backward time-tunneling Republican trucksuckers.  Predictably, a call for party unity resulted in fratricidal infighting.  Much like the Scots, the Democratic party is locked in mortal combat with its eternal enemy, the Democratic party.

The infamous McQ, over at Q and O, has a thoughful and, uh, infamous post up on that very topic.  After ably and efficiently reviewing the background (go read) he gets to this point:

She walked into an ideological buzzsaw and now is trying to stitch the effort back together. Look, if the Dems are going to have any chance in ‘08, they are going to have to settle their internal dissonance. They are going to have to come up with a unified strategy and a candidate who is capable of carrying it through. The sort of in-fighting being witnessed now is how it will be done. But based on the reaction to Clinton’s speech, she may not be as strong a candidate for that position as many on the left would like to believe.

To be sure, infighting will not help the party gain electoral victory.  We saw infighting on the left last time around, and there is no reason to suppose that it will be better next time.  But look at what the result of that infighting was: the party nominated a Massachusetts liberal.  Sure, they didn’t pick Dean, but Dean removed himself from the running with some ill-considered vocal performances.  It’s as if the Democrats, seeing Bush, thought the Republicans were triple-dog-daring them to prove that, yes, they could pick a worse candidate.  The only sensible Democratic candidate was Lieberman.  But he was as welcome as a red-headed stepchild.  The influence of the DLC and other centrist organizations within the party had never been lower.

Overall, I think McQ’s analysis is spot on.  But he concludes:

I’ll watch with interest how this all lays itself out, but suffice it to say, the more radical left is making its play for the soul of the Democrat party.

And that’s where I’d have to disagree.

The left won the soul of the democratic party back in 1972.  The DLC and similar efforts have been fighting a rear guard action ever since.  They managed to sneak Clinton in, but the left of the left has generally prevailed at all national levels - and the result has been the alienation of the leftish center - the Reagan democrats, the DLC, Blue Dog Democrats or whatever you want to call them. 

Both democratic presidents since that date have been anomalies.  Carter nearly didn’t get elected despite the fact that the incumbent administration was heavily tarred with the watergate scandal.  Clinton would never have won without Perot splitting the center/right vote.  In neither of his victories did he get a majority of the vote.

An incumbent vice president couldn’t quite manage to win, despite the fact that Bush Jr. is arguably one of the weakest candidates the Republicans ever nominated.  And they couldn’t defeat him the second time, despite the quagmire in Iraq and the Bush’s flat-out abysmal job approval ratings.

And, they’ve progressively (sorry) lost ground in both houses of congress, even in off year elections where the opposition usually gains seats.  Even if Hilary wins the nomination singing DLC chops, she won’t have a chance unless the world blows up or the Republicans nominate another W.  She won’t have a sufficiently large base, and she’ll have to do too much to appease the left that is the strongest part of her party.


Posted by Buckethead on 07/27/05 at 03:30 PM
Partisan Politics • Permalink