Democratic prospects in 2004
The Columbia Political Review has a subscription-free excerpt from a Salon interview with Paul Berman on what the Democrats have to do to beat Bush in 2004. Any strategy has to address two points: the Naderites have to be crushed politically and the Democrats have to work around Bush’s credibility on the war on terrorism.
The Naderites may draw off five to ten percent of the popular vote, which may be critical in swing states, where the main parties are evenly balanced. The problem is that it’s not clear how the Democrats can effectively stand up to them. Berman notes:
I interpret the Green Party as a movement of the middle and upper-middle class, as actually having a certain satisfaction with the way things are — which is to say, the reason you should vote for the Greens is because you want to feel the excitement of political engagement, the adventure of it, but you don’t really care what it’s going to mean for other people if the Republicans get elected. It’s the sexiness of sheer political fantasy. The advantage of the Green Party is that you can feel good, like you’re playing a role, but your own good feelings about yourself aren’t going to do anybody else one bit of good.
Berman’s suggestion is that the Democrats have to say to the Greens: you cannot sacrifice the interests of the majority of the country for your ideological whims. The problem is that the Greens may be somewhat deluded about, say, the difference between Democrats and Republicans, and may be working under some theory of “heightening the contradictions”, where the country, in the throes of social and economic crisis, will suddenly see the luminous halo around Nader and vote him into power. If the Greens are indeed thinking this way, it’s not clear if any reasoning will penetrate their ideological cocoon, though perhaps Bush, having “heightened the contradictions”, has made the less hardcore Greens realize that there are differences between the GOP and Democrats.
The second part of any Democratic strategy will have to address how Bush is fighting the war on terrorism. The public as a whole (along with me) believes the Administration has done a pretty good job in war fighting thus far. As noted elsewhere, who would have thought on the evening of September 11 that within two years that the Taliban would have been crushed, Saddam swept from power, al Qaeda scattered, and Iran teetering on the edge of revolt against the ayatollahs? And I for one believe that Iraqi liberalization will be the fulcrum on which the rest of the Middle East will be liberalized over the coming decades, and that this liberalization will be our only path to safety; the war was a necessary first step. The Administration’s record here can’t really be attacked without looking like partisan sour grapes and sniping:
To complain about the absence of WMDs at this point would be like having liberated Auschwitz during WWII only to grouse that there wasn’t any cylon-b in the concentration camp, just dead bodies.
The thing the Democrats will have to note, though, is that military victories aren’t nearly enough. What we need is the spread of liberal ideals throughout the Middle East. Berman argues:
Where Bush appears to be satisfied with military measures, the Democrats should be saying it’s not nearly enough: that much more effort should be put into Afghanistan and Iraq; that the U.S. government should be engaging in enormous programs to conduct a war of persuasion and ideas; that much greater resources should be committed to building up a political culture of liberal democracy and institutions in these places — which is ultimately the way to defeat the fanatical movements that present so much danger to us and the rest of the world.
Berman doesn’t say this, but the Democrats should also note that the Administrations “defense” strategy is weak. Insufficient funds are being spent on Homeland Defense. One thing is to connect GOP fiscal policies with the war on terrorism — these fiscal policies may be threatening American lives. The NY Times has an editorial on the recent arrest of the Ohio truckdriver plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge (in case the the article is unavailable for free on the Times site, Roger L. Simon has a comment on it). Basically, GOP fiscal priorties — tax cuts regardless of any reasonable economic rational — undercuts civil defense and local police and emergency agencies, which will be the first in the line to face any domestic disaster. The so-far successful offenses in the war on terrorism may then be undermined by a lack of defense that lets slip through a catastrophic event. The example of Rand Beers may be an interesting one.
It should be noted that Bush has driven the Democratic party troops into a delirium, where the mouth can only repeat simple slogans that resonate only with the party core, the eyes have been blinded to their ineffectiveness, and the brain locked into the “Bush is evil” mantra. It’s not clear if the party can rid itself of this fever in time to contest 2004. But we really do have to contest the GOP next year: the most ideological Republicans are running domestic policy into the ground, and the offense-obsessed foreign policy appears to be neglecting the real fight, which is to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully, this fever will break, and we’ll see a debate that will influence American policy for the better.
June 24th, 2003 at 8:58 am
As far as the Green Party being a middle & upper-middle-class phenomina: How was this determined? Doesn’t everyone in America identify themselves as middle class anyway? To what extent can the other political parties also be identified as middle class movements?
July 7th, 2003 at 5:39 pm
If the Greens couldn’t manage 5% of the popular vote behind Nader in 2000, the idea that they’ll manage that this time around seems pretty far-fetched.
The election was so close that i wonder whether, had Gore edged Bush, we’d have Republicans blaming Buchanan for stealing away needed Republican voters with his “ideological whims”.
Anyway, i find the notion that Bush won because of Nader’s pittance of votes laughable and specious.
[jake pointed me this way]
July 8th, 2003 at 8:57 am
The Greens in 2000 wielded more power than their popular vote results would have indicated: with both major parties more or less evenly balanced, in a winner-take-all election third parties have a great deal of influence. Take a look at this page for an analysis of how the Greens 3% or so gave Bush the electoral college victory. Granted, the difference in Florida between the Dems and GOP can be considered statistical noise, but we don’t have a reasonable legal framework to account for statistical noise in close elections.
I think there’s additional grumpiness by the Dems over the Greens because the Greens played spoiler rather than using their small but important margin to influence major party policy (third parties have the most influence when they get the major parties to adopt parts of their platform). Their glee at playing spoiler is probably the source of Democratic complaints about the Greens prefering ideological purity and pursing a heightening-the-contraditions strategy, and the reason the Democrats are unwilling to work with the Greens.