The Haunting Of The Democrats - Salon

[WillyT]

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April 21, 2008 | History, in Marx's famous dictum, tends to repeat itself: the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what do you call it the third time around? A bad sitcom? A bad marriage? A bad dream? All three of those seem like viable ways of describing the Democratic Party's current predicament, locked in an endless and self-destructive struggle with itself, like a would-be Buddhist penitent unable to atone for eons' worth of bad karma.

Even in the annals of Democratic ritual suicide, the 2008 campaign is something special: It's not just that the protracted and painful nomination struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeats all the classic themes of intra-Democratic conflict -- left vs. center, reformer vs. the Establishment, pragmatist vs. idealist, call it what you will -- up to and including the fact that the differences between the candidates are mainly semiotic rather than substantive.

In his recent Salon article, Michael Lind identifies the split between dueling Democratic wings of the 1950s, specifically between hard-headed pragmatist (and Cold War hawk) Harry Truman on one side and liberal idealist (and Cold War dove) Adlai Stevenson on the other. Like almost any comment anybody makes about this split, that's an invidious comparison, and Lind is clearly advocating one side of the equation. Truman won an election as the nominee of a divided party (against the odds) and Stevenson lost two of them (against even greater odds). But let's let that stand, since Lind's dating of the emergence of this division is clearly correct: The last president to command enthusiastic support from all sides of the Democratic coalition was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Before this year's historic campaign, poisoned at the root by overt and ugly sexism and covert and coded racism, Democrats have never been asked to choose quite so nakedly which absolutely necessary demographic they would like to do without. Here is the question, a cynic might suggest, that the Democratic Party must answer this summer: Do we want to lose because we drove away blacks or because we drove away white women? (Recent polling data suggests another cynical question: Do we prefer the candidate Americans believe is a liar or the one they believe is a Muslim?)

We've all seen this movie before, whether we realize it or not. If we're not quite sure how it's going to end, the characters and situations all seem strangely familiar. Beginning with the debacle of 1968, every Democratic campaign for four decades has followed pretty much the same template, even if the labels have shifted with the tide. The quadrennial conflict between liberals and moderates, outsiders and insiders, let's-win-an-election realists and let's-save-our-party dreamers -- supply your own dichotomy here -- reflects the fatal uncertainty of a political party that lacks any clear constituency or ideological focus. Even as the Democratic Party encompasses the views of a plausible majority of the population, its unresolved internal struggles have time and again undermined its ability to win elections or (when it happens to stumble to victory) to govern effectively.

To get specific, the 2008 Obama-Clinton contest offers eerie echoes of two of the most traumatic -- and defining -- campaigns of recent Democratic history. Neither of them is likely to give party faithful the nostalgic warm fuzzies. First, and most explosive, there's the comparison increasingly drawn on the right (and lately among a handful of Democrats) between Obama and Sen. George McGovern, who played the paradigm-shaping role of reformist outsider in 1972. Of course it's meant to be a toxic metaphor, suggesting that Obama is a dewy-eyed Pied Piper leading his followers into a November electoral catastrophe. Let's set that silliness aside right now. Whoever the Democrats nominate will not be facing a popular incumbent but an awkward Republican nominee who has embraced an unpopular war and remains unloved by his own party's base. One should never underestimate the Democratic ability to lose elections, but ain't nobody carrying 49 states this fall.

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Much more: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/21/mcgovern_hart/

:shrug:

[peacebird]

1. "lose white women" - that phrase seems to state that white women will OF COURSE be for HRC

What a crock of horse-poopy! I know TWO women who support HRC. The rest support Obama. It is extremely irritating that the press keeps trying to define all women as 'for HRC' based on gender, and if it happens we are NOT for her then it must be because we are anti-woman.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The civil war in the Democratic Party has been going on for decades.

The irony is that this struggle is essentially between two moderates.

[WillyT]

3. Well... Moderate-Left vs. Moderate-Right...

We'll see...

:shrug:

[nsd]

4. 2008 is neither 1972 nor 1984.

In 1984, the Democratic candidate had to go up against a very popular incumbent, one who had transformed the electoral landscape, as Obama himself noted in his comments about Reagan earlier this year. America was at peace and the economy was good ("Morning in America"). No matter what he did Mondale had no chance of winning -- and neither did Hart. It had nothing to do with establishment versus reformer.

In 1972 (before the Watergate scandal broke), Nixon was also well regarded. The economy was fairly good -- though it would tank shortly thanks to the oil crisis and inflation -- and the war in Vietnam was winding down. Remember that Kissinger's "peace is at hand" comment came BEFORE the election. In such a climate, anti-war sentiment was not enough to carry McGovern through. There was not enough dissatisfaction for voters to overthrow an incumbent and roll the dice on a challenger. Humphrey probably would have done better than McGovern, but he wouldn't have won.

This year is different. People are really unhappy. You can pick whatever reason you'd like: the economy, the crisis in the housing market, the war in Iraq, the jobless rate, outsourcing, America's declining reputation in the world, the Katrina response, 20 years of partisan bickering. The fundamentals favor the Democratic candidate this year. In fact, I would assert that people are not only prepared but ANXIOUS to roll the dice. They realize that incremental change isn't going to get us out of the hole we're in.

While it does seem reasonable to study the past to understand what we're going through -- and in most cases it's a valuable exercise -- this year I think it's the wrong thing to do. 2008 is different. We're at a different moment and those old elections are not good guides.



Edited for grammar.

[GoldieAZ49]

5. Had one of them been able to win the nomination by the end of February

I think the party would have rallied behind the nominee. However the party has split, that too could have been dealt with over time but the divisiveness of the words and actions of the candidate and their surrogates have created hard feelings that will be far more difficult to overcome, be they real or imagined.

I say real or imagined because those offend feel it is real, and the candidate and their supporters think they are imagined.

The divide is real, if it can be patched over only time will tell.