When I become dictator for life, all elections will be abolished. Until then, unruly popularism reigns, leaving those of us on the left side of the political spectrum out in a cold deeper than last year’s ice storm.
More than two months have passed since the natural disaster known as the 2004 election occurred. Democrats, still shell-shocked come inauguration day, are faced with massive hurricane damage and the need to rebuild.
Now is the time for the Democrats to set a New Year’s resolution to strengthen the party. A unique opportunity to do so is in the appointment of a new national chair who can bring a new tone. For this reason, Howard Dean’s election as DNC chairman would be disastrous. I may like Dean personally, and may endorse many of his policies, but the next nail in the Democrat’s coffin is the press slipping the-scream-that-was into every single discussion of liberal politics for the next three years, as will inevitably happen
with a chairman so prominent and
so unsuccessful.
No. Let the face of the Democrats be a smiling one. Public relations is going to be key to future victories. While the party may be swept with Obama fever, I must ask, why can’t Democrats find a decent candidate with both charisma and experience? Part of it has to do with the unnatural emphasis placed on the organ of democracy most distant from the people — the federal government. For Democrats to rebuild, they must never neglect the local races or the state races. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s popularity and influence show just how important it is to have national leaders from all levels of politics.
Democrats should create breeding grounds free of unnatural Vietnam fetishes and bad haircuts. But good state candidates need the boost a national leader can bring; after all, Bush’s popularity was enough to bring candidates into the Senate, even when those candidates were emotionally disturbed or aided via nepotism. It’s an endless, disastrous cycle: Losing at the top means losing at the bottom, but winning at the top becomes impossible without good bottom candidates to draw on.
No two people can completely agree on why the election resulted in so many Democratic casualties, but my theory is not that voters didn’t agree with Democratic policies (CNN exit polls show that people whose primary issue for voting was economics, education, employment or health care voted Kerry by margins of 73 to 80 percent) but that Democrats can’t seem to talk about these kinds of issues clearly
or without shooting themselves in
the foot.
Too often the party has ceded ground that does not need to be ceded. Just putting a soldier in the top spot does not mean the DNC is strong on national security — a public perception of weakness can only be combated by strength. Negating Iraq was not enough. The biggest and most correct criticism of the Kerry campaign was that it did not stand for anything but beating George Bush in an election. Kerry should have been equipped with international arms control provisions, lampooning the underfunding of Nunn-Lugar and screaming about
torture and prison abuse.
Democrats were unable to spin past Republican allegations that Kerry would defend the country with spitballs. When Kerry touted his service in place of detailing a policy to replace preemptive warfare, allowing the accusations of double-talking on troop support to go unanswered, he might as well have shoveled his own grave.
Additionally, Democrats have ceded ground on rhetoric. Why should the word “community” have Republican overtones? Why must “values” always be red? Why is Christianity perceived as so incompatible with the DNC when 40 percent of Protestants voted for Kerry? If anything, Democratic values are values of communities and of charity. Liberalism is known for weak-kneed, watery-eyed compassion. Why can’t a new party agenda shape this inherent perception as an advantage instead of a disadvantage? Caring too much is not a vice. Some of the best programs today are Democratic inventions, and the underfunding and scrapping of aid to the mentally ill, inmate populations and students is downright criminal.
Crime rates dropped under Bill Clinton, and military intervention was always an option. For this reason, the good side of Clinton is the personification of what the Democrats must become in order to succeed: humble, intelligent, certain and courageous.
Images cannot be changed quickly, but if every local candidate, state candidate and person of national prominence turns Democratic rhetoric from opposition to Bush and to policies which illustrate that liberals value people — their safety, their rights, their goods — then, at the very least, Republicans will be dealing with
a unified donkey instead of a
two-headed monstrosity.
So this I pray: When a new chairman comes to power, let him or her be able to step out of Bill Clinton’s shadow without stepping out of his legacy.