Six weeks after Katrina, rescuers are still reporting no signs of the Democratic Party. Even back in Washington, where mobs of rich, white Republicans are amassing atop the Capitol building frantically awaiting Coast Guard airlifts out of a city awash in a flood of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, Democrats are nowhere to be found.
Recent post-Katrina and post-indictment polls find Republican approval ratings reaching new lows. Surprisingly, Democratic approval ratings are tanking as well. Simply standing by as the other guy falls down is no way to appear taller.
The Democratic Party has spent the last almost five years doing little more than aiming cannon fire at the Republican armada, albeit justifiably. But as those once unsinkable Republicans finally take on water, Democrats, for years having offered no big ideas of their own to set them apart and keep them afloat, are sinking right alongside.
Political parties win elections by winning the battle of ideas. They win by offering a vision, even if that vision is sadly little more than one of safety and security. They don’t win control solely because their rivals seem to be losing it. They don’t win by being the lesser of two evils. History shows that when faced with a choice between evils, voters will always choose the evil they know.
Democrats must move beyond being the anti-Bush, anti-Republican party. If that were all it took to win elections, John Kerry would be in the White House, and Democrats would be in control of the Senate.
However justified, the Democratic Party’s anger-driven, single-minded focus on the person of George Bush, rather than his palpably unjust policies, has been their undoing. An anti-Bush platform cannot hold the weight of all the pressing national needs deserving of center stage. An anti-Bush platform only serves to confirm the negative nature of politics, and harden the assumptions of powerlessness many feel to change what is.
An anti-Bush platform presumes the president as the cause of all our problems rather than representative of them. Democrats must wake up to the fact that George Bush is just a man, and as certain as no man is an island, no man is either a nation.
Democrats must let go of the fallacy that winning the 2006 and 2008 elections will simply be a matter of doing a better job mobilizing their base. Democrats must instead learn to mobilize and persuade, rather than simply mobilizing the persuaded. They must face up to the fact that there is no great, untapped reserve of liberal voters out there. The supply has passed its peak, and Democrats must explore for other sources of energy.
To have any chance of capitalizing on the Republican Party’s self-inflicted wounds, Democrats must lay out a positive agenda beyond just kicking the Republicans while they’re down. Voters, especially the large swath of voters in the moderate middle, are waiting to hear from Democrats about positive, visionary ideas that address multiple problems simultaneously while strengthening progressive and American values. Simply continuing to be the anti-Bush Party will only sink the hapless Democratic Party further into the minority.
Todd Huffman is a pediatrician, writer and a registered Democrat living in Eugene.