The New Republic

In 1989, political scientists Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck wrote
a paper called "The Politics of Evasion," in which they argued that
Democrats were too far to the left on social and economic issues to
be competitive nationally. The paper's bluntness helped provoke a
nasty fight between the party's moderates and liberals. But that
fight produced the presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton, probably
the best thing to happen to Democrats in a generation.Last week, Galston and Kamarck released another paper shrewdly
assessing the obstacles standing between Democrats and majority
status. It's a self-conscious attempt to reproduce the effects of
their 1989 paper. But the unfortunate truth is that moderate
Democrats face much longer odds than they did 16 years ago.

Galston and Kamarck's basic idea is that each party has become much
more ideologically homogenous over the last few election cycles,
with conservatives voting overwhelmingly Republican and liberals
overwhelmingly Democratic. Whereas Jimmy Carter won 29 percent of
self-identified conservative voters in 1976, John Kerry won only 15
percent last year. Conversely, Carter only won 72 percent of
liberals versus Kerry's 85. Galston and Kamarck aptly refer to this
trend as "the great sorting-out."

The problem is that, since conservatives outnumber liberals among
the voting public by a margin of three to two, the sorted-out
Republican Party has a much bigger base of support than the
sorted-out Democrats. To offset this structural disadvantage in
national races, Democrats must capture a much higher proportion of
moderate voters than they have in the past--upward of 60 percent.
That means they need to be much more concerned with capturing the
political center than Republicans need to be and that Democrats
can't win by embracing the views of their staunchest supporters.

This insight may well be the most important thing you need to know
about contemporary politics. (This magazine has repeatedly made the
point in one form or another over the last few years.) But, while
Galston and Kamarck ably identify this first implication of their
analysis, they are completely blind to the second: The same
ideological "sorting-out" process that has made it more urgent for
Democrats to appeal to the center has simultaneously made it harder
for them to do so--because it has made their liberal base larger,
more vocal, and more powerful than ever before. Galston and Kamarck
argue that "[t]he Democratic Party must be able to articulate a
coherent foreign policy that is based on a belief in America's role
in the world." Then, somewhat amazingly, they conclude, "While this
will cause internal conflict in the Democratic coalition, it will
not be any more severe than the fight Bill Clinton sparked when he
confronted his coalition with proposals for reforming welfare." In
fact, according to their own analysis, it should cause much greater
internal conflict, since there are more liberals around to oppose
this policy and fewer conservatives around to support it. While
liberal opposition perversely made Bill Clinton a more credible
general election candidate in 1992, greater internal conflict could
prevent a Clintonesque candidate--or, say, a Clinton-- from winning
the Democratic nomination in 2008.

So what's a moderate of the Galston-Kamarck mold to do? Rather than
pick a fight with liberals, today the only viable option may be
compromise. Not the weak-kneed, difference-splitting that liberals
are always deriding. But the kind of ideological grand bargain that
lets each faction win outright on certain issues of importance.
Moderates must insist, a la Galston and Kamarck, that Democrats
won't win back the White House unless they convince voters to trust
them on national security, which means making the war on terrorism
not just the party's top priority but its central preoccupation in
2008. We're not just talking about calling for a larger military,
but something dramatic to signify the shift--like a plan to strike
an Iranian or North Korean nuclear facility if need be. Moderates
must also maintain that Democrats can't afford to lose ground among
swing voters by taking hard-line positions on abortion and gay
marriage, though the basic right to an abortion and civil rights
for homosexuals should remain central Democratic positions. In
return, moderates would endorse an ambitious domestic policy
agenda, the centerpiece of which would be universal health
insurance but would also include revisiting nafta and intense
opposition to K Street-sponsored legislation like tort and
bankruptcy reform.

This approach has several advantages beyond its usefulness as a
framework for internal compromise. First, it offers thematic
coherence. A Democratic presidential nominee could argue that he or
she believes in a strong, competent government doing big things
abroad (i.e., defeating Islamofascism and other existential
threats) and big things at home (i.e., providing working people
with economic security in an age of volatility). You can imagine it
all fitting together nicely under a catchphrase like "national
greatness liberalism." Second, the one demographic group that will
be sympathetic to nearly every element of this agenda is
working-class whites, voters the Democrats have been hemorrhaging
since the Clinton administration. Finally, this strategy has been
successfully executed before. Clinton's 1992 campaign, though it
didn't take place against a backdrop of heightened national
security concerns, mixed moderate cultural politics with doses of
economic populism.

What moderates need to recognize is that the party's problem is both
deeper and more solvable than they realize. Deeper because the
hostility of liberals toward moderates now transcends any
particular issue; it has to do with their entire approach to
politics, which liberals believe is craven. But the problem is more
solvable because liberals are more pragmatic than moderates assume:
They may be open to more conservative positions on certain issues,
such as the war on terrorism, as long as they feel like moderates
are standing up for something, not needlessly selling out core
Democratic principles. (For example, Harry Reid is popular among
liberals despite being pro-life, skeptical of gun control, and
having voted for the war.) Striking this balance obviously won't be
painless--I'm personally a die-hard free-trader. But the one way to
ensure that things get a lot worse for Democrats is to pretend that
no balance needs to be struck.

share this article on facebook or twitter print this article