Democratic Strategist

William Galston's response.

Rebuilding a Democratic Majority by Broadening the Base and Reaching Out

My role in this new venture is to serve as the designated New Democrat. I need not remind readers that the past two decades have witnessed a number of intra-party disagreements between New Democrats and others over policy and strategy. We have not resolved all these disputes and as will become evident in this inaugural issue, we cannot set them all aside. Still, it is necessary and proper to unite wherever we can. Fortunately the areas of potential convergence are extensive.

Short-term: the 2006 election

For 2006, the emphasis on competence (Kamarck) and the basic choice between our current course and a new direction (Borosage's classic "Had enough?" slogan) is likely to work about as well as a more substantive and affirmative message. While I have no objection to working out and advancing a policy agenda around which the party can unite, as Democracy Corps among others has proposed, I believe that 2006 will principally be a referendum on incumbents and the status quo, not a choice between two competing agendas - much as the disastrous 1994 election was more about the public's negative judgment of Clinton's first two years than about the Contract with America. I find it suggestive, and not particularly encouraging, that only one of the seven planks of the proposed Democracy Corps agenda focuses on national security issues at all, and none touches on security issues beyond our borders. Despite the polling data, I'm not sure this agenda sends the right message for 2006, and I'm positive that it's inadequate for 2008 and beyond.

Longer-term: 2008 and beyond

I turn now to a lengthier discussion of the farther future. Before turning to some nettlesome general issues, let me continue the theme of convergence and party unity.

Electoral reform. Of course we should strongly support fair and transparent elections, as Donna Brazile urges, and link it to a broad agenda of political reform along the lines Will Marshall has proposed. The more Democrats can become the party of reform, the easier it will be to paint Republicans into the corner of defending the status quo.

Labor law reform. Of course workers should be able to join unions without fear of losing their jobs, as Harold Meyerson points out, and we should embrace reasonable measures that are likely to promote that goal. At the same time, we should not fool ourselves into believing that legal or procedural changes will set the stage for anything approaching a 1950s-style union movement in 21st-century America.

Energy. If in current circumstances Democrats cannot persuade the American people to support an ambitious package of policies to diversify our energy sources while relieving pressure on the environment, as Borosage recommends, we ought to go into a different line of work and make room for someone else to confront the conservative establishment. While this may be an example of "industrial policy," I'm less confident than Meyerson that this represents a broadly effective economic paradigm for our times.

Hispanics. Although demography isn't destiny, of course it shapes our strategic options in important ways. So it is vital to pay attention, as John Wilhelm observes, to the growing and increasingly mobilized Hispanic community. Having said this, we should not enter this venture with questionable preconceptions. While it is too early to assess the lasting political effects of the current immigration controversy, we already know that the Hispanic community does not simply mirror African Americans or other core Democratic groups. As Hispanics rise into the middle class, they become significantly more likely to vote Republican. When Hispanics leave the Catholic Church, as many are doing, to join evangelical Protestant denominations, they tend to become less supportive of Democratic candidates. And finally, while it is tempting to play the immigration issue for short-term political gain among Hispanics, Democrats would be well advised to shape its stance with not only the real policy problems but also the entire electorate firmly in view. While softening the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants may well make moral and policy sense, for example, we must recognize that many Americans take this distinction very seriously and have defensible reasons for doing so.

Expanding the map. It is easy to agree in principle with the proposition that Democrats should seek to expand the map and force Republicans to defend turf they now take for granted. The real question is the opportunity cost of pursuing that strategy. During the 1790s, when revolutionary France was threatened with foreign invasion, Napoleon summoned his generals and asked each to draw up a plan for defending the country. One general suggested arraying French troops evenly along the entire border, to which Bonaparte responded, "Are you trying to halt smuggling?" I hope that in 2008, we won't be posing a similar question to Howard Dean. The sad fact is that over the past generation, more and more regions, states, and counties as well as congressional districts have come to produce not just majorities but supermajorities for one party or the other. It would be wonderful if Republicans had to divert resources from the Midwest to the South and Great Plains, but it would take a political earthquake to make that happen. In a first-past-the-post system, it's not the percentage of the vote that matters; it's whether you win or lose. So money spent reducing the opposition's margin from 16 points to 8 is money wasted . . . unless you can bluff them into believing that a safe state is actually in play. We have to face the fact that for the foreseeable future, states with high concentrations of white evangelical Protestants are likely to remain beyond reach, while states whose populations are dominated by Catholics and mainline Protestants will be competitive.

I turn now to broader and more contested issues. I begin by strongly endorsing the thrust of Andrei Cherny and Ken Baer's remarks: we must invest in the ideas infrastructure, distinguish between ideas and policies, and focus on the former. "Ideas" in the politically relevant sense of the term combine public purposes, principled public reasons supporting those purposes with a serious, analysis of how the world works. As the world changes, our ideas must change as well.

National security. 9/11 thrust national security back to the center of our nation's challenges and therefore our politics. We cannot pretend this isn't so, nor try to change the subject. As a party, we must ask and answer the following question: what are the essential global purposes of American power today? In doing so, we must avoid a reductio ad Iraqum. This is not a moderate versus liberal nor New Democratic versus traditional Democrat issue. Along with some other New Democrats, I have vociferously opposed the Iraq war, well before it started and ever since. But it is wrong to reason from our misadventures in Iraq to the conclusion that the United States should retreat into a defensive crouch behind its borders.

It is easy to say that most Democrats have no desire to police the world. (Stated baldly, that's probably true for most Americans.) But the fact is that much of the prosperity and tranquility the world now enjoys, and from which the American people also benefit, stems from the fact that the United States is providing transnational public goods - for example, freedom of the seas. Yes, we must reject the unilateralism, incompetence, and ideologically-driven unrealism of the Bush foreign policy, and must remedy the administration's failure to attend to the practical requisites of homeland security. But it would be bad politics and worse policy to embrace a 21st-century version of the "Come home, America" slogan that sent the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a generation and opened the door to our foreign adversaries, with dangerous results in areas such as Africa, Central America, and the Middle East.

And when we are compelled to oppose our government's foreign policies, we must be careful to do so, and to be seen as doing so, in the right way - that is, patriotically. I am of the generation that saw a legitimate critique of the Vietnam War shade over into contempt for our leaders, overt support for our adversaries, and outright rejection of the United States and even of liberal democracy itself, with political consequences from which the Democratic Party suffers to this day. We must not allow the Michael Moores and Cindy Sheehans to lead us down this road again. And if this stance makes a portion of our "base" angry, so be it - just as the Republican party would have been better off resisting its base on the Terry Schiavo affair rather than pandering to it.

Economics. Harold Meyerson helps us get the analysis right by pointing to the ways in which globalization has changed the rules of the game, jeopardizing the Democratic Party's historic pursuit of broadly shared prosperity. Indeed, the challenge is in some respects graver than even Meyerson suggests. As pressure on U.S. corporations has intensified, the post-World War Two social contract has crumbled: health insurance is being slashed, traditional pensions are being frozen or terminated outright, and productivity gains are no longer being translated into fatter paychecks. Not surprisingly, despite healthy improvements in many of the traditional economic indicators, the majority of Americans register anxiety and insecurity as their dominant economic mood.

The real question is what to do about all this. One possible strategy is to use public power to force the private sector to resume its post-World War Two role. There is, for example, no good reason why the minimum wage shouldn't be raised and then indexed so that its purchasing power doesn't undergo extended periods of decline. But prospects of success are limited; there seems little chance that public policy can reverse the flight from defined benefit pensions or low-copayment health insurance. (Imagine trying to force automakers or airlines to do anything of the sort.) The conclusion I draw is that we need an entirely different strategy. We should free up the private sector to promote economic growth while using public instruments to foster economic security and equal opportunity. We will need a rejuvenated public sector to pick up economic security responsibilities that the U.S. private sector assumed almost by accident, as an outgrowth of World War Two-era wage and price controls. The choice for the next generation reduces to this: a significantly larger public sector, or a far meaner and less equal society.

That does not mean that progressive governance should revert to business as usual. Along with many others, I have concluded that the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) offers a better model for expanded health insurance than does a single-payer approach. Retirement security will require not only a sound Social Security system, but also mandatory savings with progressive matches for low and moderate income workers. Income growth and stability will require not only a higher minimum wage, but also an enhanced Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and a contributory program of wage insurance as well.

Culture and religion. While it is true that the U.S. population is somewhat more secular and more likely to be single than it was a generation ago, we remain the most believing and observant of advanced industrial societies, and 63 percent of the electorate is married. In this context, it is hardly reassuring to learn that according to a 2005 Pew Research Center survey, only 29 percent of Americans regard the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, down from 40 percent a year earlier. Nor is it comforting that Al Gore lost the married vote by 9 points and John Kerry by 15. (Bill Clinton just about broke even among these voters in both 1992 and 1996.) And it is astounding to learn that Republicans are winning majorities among voters who are moderates on abortion. We can debate the finer points of Will Marshall's suggestions for addressing these problems. What we cannot debate is the need to do so, as an urgent priority. In part this is a matter of public policy. For example, the "strict separation" between church and state that has hardened into orthodoxy among key Democratic interest groups is questionable as a matter of constitutional interpretation and lethal as a political stance. Another example: as Republicans have shifted from a frontal attack on the core holding of Roe to a focus on smaller questions such as parental notification and the partial birth procedure, Democrats have lost ground on the issue. The 2004 Republican convention featured an array of pro-choice Republicans in prime time speaking slots. Meanwhile, moderate Catholics still remember, and resent, pro-life Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey's exclusion from the 1992 Democratic convention. In the same vein, longtime Democrat and author Caitlin Flanagan reports receiving a torrent of contemptuous abuse from prominent Democratic women for publishing a book describing and defending her choice to be a "traditional" wife. We cannot go on like this and hope to regain lost cultural ground.

I end this memo with American Politics 101. Because there are at least 50 percent more conservatives than liberals, Democrats can win national elections only if they gain supermajorities of voters who are neither liberal nor conservative. John Kerry's 54 percent of the moderate vote was good, but not good enough. And while moderates are a bit more like liberals than conservatives, their outlook and policy preferences are not identical to those of our liberal base, which gave 85 percent of its vote to Kerry. There is no - repeat - no-possibility that a politics of liberal purity that fully satisfies the base can garner a national majority anytime soon. Yes, we can choose to mount our own version of the Goldwater campaign and hope against hope that the politics of purity eventually turns into a majority. But given our country's downward slide, are we really willing to wait another 16 years to regain power? The alternative is a coalition in which the base understands that the majority of our majority can only come from people unlike themselves. And that means paying attention to what people in Columbus and Scranton think, not just California and the Upper West Side.

William Galston is a political philosopher and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under President Bill Clinton.