Calls to “turn left!” or “turn right!” lead to blind alleys. Democrats don’t need a new “message.” Tactics are overrated. The candidates were just fine. No, Democrats lacked something far more fundamental–a compelling policy agenda. The party charged into battle without a set of proposals that addressed big issues. Sure, Democrats should get tough, and a spell in the minority will give them no choice. But bold opposition requires strong policies. As Adlai Stevenson said at another time of GOP dominance: “What counts is not so much what you’re against as what you’re for.”
Lock 10 prominent (or not so prominent) Democrats in a room and give them each a piece of paper. Ask them to write down what they would do if they had power–great goals, not constrained by political reality. Very likely, the answers would vary wildly from sheet to sheet, with no consensus. Worse, the sheets would have a lot of white space. Right now there simply are no big ideas–and not really many medium-sized ones–that unite and propel the party.
It’s not that candidates didn’t talk about “issues.” But when Democrats reached for substance, they tended to brandish shopworn proposals targeted at narrow and increasingly elderly groups of voters. The electorate rightly assumes none of these plans will pass anyway. (Remember the endless debates over the Patients’ Bill of Rights?) It’s easy, too, for the Republicans to blur party lines by saying they, too, back similar initiatives. There were no memorable and sensible Democratic proposals for the war on terrorism, the lingering recession or even corporate malfeasance.
The party was not always an idea-free-zone. In the 1930s, Democrats united behind issues that had been consensus party causes for a decade or more, from repealing Prohibition to expanding public electric power, to increased regulation of business and the stock market. In the 1950s and 1960s, national Democrats united around civil rights, health care for the elderly, military strength and–later–opposition to the war in Vietnam. The Democrats were the party of ideas, and the Republicans were the party of resistance to those ideas.
Even in 1991 and 1992, the candidates facing George H. W. Bush had a clear explanation for what was happening in the economy and in the Democratic party. The best candidates, from Bill Clinton to the ones who didn’t run, Mario Cuomo and Richard Gephardt, differed on critical social issues and the right tone. But they all argued that the U.S. economy was suffering in global competition, facing underinvestment in education and skills and hobbled by the Reagan presidency’s legacy of budget deficits. Each one of them could talk for hours about the direction of the country, its past and its future.
Today this field of ideas is one in which the Republicans have a marked advantage. Since the mid 1970s, conservative funders and foundations have recognized that ideas matter most. The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the libertarian Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute focused on developing policy proposals–from the supply-side tax cuts of the 1980s to Social Security privatization today–that were the core of Republican policy proposals. In Washington and around the country, Democratic-oriented groups proliferated, too, but nearly all were cause or constituency based, ranging from women’s rights to environmental protection. In the late 1980s, the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute developed strong proposals to reform government, such as the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and welfare reform, but most of their best plans have been enacted. More-liberal Democrats never matched even these idea factories. When Clinton was in office, the executive branch was the prime source of progressive policy. Now Democrats will not even have the committee staff offices that come with majority control of one house of Congress. Some party strategists have argued that demographic trends, such as the growing Hispanic population and swelling ranks of socially liberal professionals, augur well in the long run. But as John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”
So the party’s first goal must be to close the idea gap. Democrats should start with the economy–producing a plan that would blend fairness with fiscal discipline by canceling the long-term tax cut tilted toward the wealthy and taking a look at how to make the tax code fairer and simpler overall. They should look squarely at welfare reform and crime, and instead of kvetching about Republican plans, offer some of their own, proposals that do not undo the social progress made under a Democratic administration. They should press for the next phase in campaign-finance reform, once again embracing full public financing for elections. Critically, they must make a coherent case for their view of foreign and defense policy, arguing that a unilateral approach to the world will set back the fight on terror. Recall that it was the Democrats, after all, who proposed the Department of Homeland Security; lawmakers let President Bush seize the initiative so that in the end, it looked as if they opposed the measure. Party leaders need to set up an overarching policy coordination team, just as Democrats did in the 1950s. The goal should be as much to craft a plausible, responsible agenda as to try to pass piecemeal legislation.
In recent months, the party has too often seemed obsessed with its own past–from Al Gore’s 2000 race to the legacy of Bill Clinton. At least that excuse is over. Now party leaders and loyalists will have no one to blame but themselves. It’s time to update the famous adage of Mother Jones. “Don’t mourn, organize–but first, think.”
