A lack of vision: Writers in the Times offer their thoughts on why the Democrats failed on Tuesday.
By: Hank Kalet
Today’s op-ed section of The New York Times offers a strong array of columns on what happened, why and what has to happen next for the fact-based community to regain its stature.
Bob Herbert says there is no time to sit back and whine about what happened. It’s time for progressives to get back to work.
"Here’s my advice: You had a couple of days to indulge your depression now, get over it. The election’s been lost but there’s still a country to save, and with the current leadership that won’t be easy. Crucial matters that have been taken for granted too long like the Supreme Court and Social Security are at risk. Caving in to depression and a sense of helplessness should not be an option when the country is speeding toward an abyss.
"Roll up your sleeves and do what you can. Talk to your neighbors. Call or write your elected officials. Volunteer to help in political campaigns. Circulate petitions. Attend meetings. Protest. Run for office. Support good candidates who are running for office. Register people to vote. Reach out to the young and the apathetic. Raise money. Stay informed. And vote, vote, vote every chance you get."
Paul Krugman demands that we stand and fight. He points out, rightly, that the Bush win was a narrow one and that much of the analysis really misses the point. Here is a sample:
"What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.
"Democrats shouldn’t cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges – even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will."
Andrei Cherny, who was a speechwriter for both Al Gore and John Kerry, says the Democrats lack a coherent vision of where they want to take the nation, or at least lack the language to explain their vision.
"The overarching problem Democrats have today is the lack of a clear sense of what the party stands for. For years this has been a source of annoyance for bloggers and grass-roots activists. And in my time working for Al Gore and John Kerry, it certainly left me feeling hamstrung.
"Democrats have a collection of policy positions that are sensible and right. John Kerry made this very clear. What we don’t have, and what we sorely need, is what President George H. W. Bush so famously derided as ‘the vision thing’ a worldview that makes a thematic argument about where America is headed and where we want to take it.
"For most of the 20th century, Democrats had a bold vision: we would use government programs to make Americans’ lives more stable and secure. In 1996, President Clinton told us this age had passed, that ‘the era of big government is over.’ He was right the world had changed. But the party has not answered the basic question: What comes next?"
Thomas Frank, author of "What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," talks about the culture war, how it is misused and asks why Democrats have not figured out how to counter it. The Democrats, he says "must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism."
"The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency.
"Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with … what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started.
"Worse: While conservatives were sharpening their sense of class victimization, Democrats had all but abandoned the field. For some time, the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington has been enamored of the notion that, since the industrial age is ending, the party must forget about blue-collar workers and their issues and embrace the ‘professional’ class. During the 2004 campaign these new, business-friendly Democrats received high-profile assistance from idealistic tycoons and openly embraced trendy management theory. They imagined themselves the ‘metro’ party of cool billionaires engaged in some kind of cosmic combat with the square billionaires of the ‘retro’ Republican Party."
I forgot to point readers of Channel Surfing (all three of you) in the direction of this great piece by the historian Garry Wills. It was in Thursday’s edition of The New York Times.
I’ll offer a quote from it as a tease:
"America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed ‘a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of ‘a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.’ Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush’s supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.
"The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies."
On a similar note also in Thursday’s Times is this piece by Thomas Friedman. I generally don’t like him these days, but this column is worth reading.