Who Are Dems Listening To?
Posted on Mon Apr 16, 2007 at 09:16:57 AM EST
Tags: Paul Krugman, Iraq, Politcs of Contrast, Reid-Feingold (all tags)
mcjoan highlights Paul Krugman's kudos to the Democratic base for pulling the Democratic Party to majority positions on Iraq and other issues:
Normally, politicians face a difficult tradeoff between taking positions that satisfy their party’s base and appealing to the broader public.... But a funny thing has happened on the Democratic side: the party’s base seems to be more in touch with the mood of the country than many of the party’s leaders. And the result is peculiar: on key issues, reluctant Democratic politicians are being dragged by their base into taking highly popular positions. Iraq is the most dramatic example.... It took an angry base to push the Democrats into taking a tough line in the midterm election. And it took further prodding from that base — which was infuriated when Barack Obama seemed to say that he would support a funding bill without a timeline — to push them into confronting Mr. Bush over war funding. (Mr. Obama says that he didn’t mean to suggest that the president be given "carte blanche.")
Certainly on 2006 that was true. But, is the Party listening to the "base" now on Iraq? What is the base saying? Are the Netroots clamoring for Reid-Feingold? Is the Party flocking to it?
I think Krugman is more accurate in this:
The only risk the party now faces is excessive caution on the part of its politicians. Or, to coin a phrase, the only thing Democrats have to fear is fear itself.
I think the base should think about that and consider whether it is pushing our politicians hard enough on Iraq and Reid-Feingold. I don't think we are
So who are Democratic pols listening to? Too many are listening to William Galston:
William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution, a Clinton administration domestic policy adviser and an early opponent of the Iraq war, said his party should note that voters appear just as worried that Democrats would withdraw from Iraq too quickly as they are concerned that Republicans would stay there too long. "I think it's important to distinguish between the desire to bring this agony to an end and the consequences of bringing it to an end in the wrong way," he said. "I can't prove this, but I believe Democrats will be held responsible if they are seen as advocating a course of action that doesn't take the consequences of failure into account. We cannot afford as a party to be either silent or blithe about the consequences of rapid withdrawal."
I can prove this, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck were dead wrong about the Politics of Contrast in the runup to the 2006 elections. They predicted it could not work:
Texeira and Halpin write:The identity gap in politics has serious direct and indirect ramifications. Directly, voters hold the Democrats' lack of identity against candidates and the party as a whole; indirectly, the lack of identity undermines Democrats' abilities to capitalize on their strengths and enables the GOP to capitalize easily on Democratic weaknesses.This is a critical point in my view. Too many pundits think that being mushy keeps people from lining up against you (think "values" voters) when you try to "soften" the contrast between Dems and the GOP on social issues. Kamarck and Galston were prominent in this group.
Kevin Drum wrote:
In other words, contra Galston and Kamarck, the liberal base is not really the problem a lot of people make it out to be. It's the Republican base that's far outside the mainstream.
Galston still does not get it. And I think too many Democratic pols are still listening to the failed Beltway political insiders despite their long track of being wrong just about every time.
And unfortunately, unlike pre-2006, when the Netroots and the base were firm against Galstonism, today the Netroots and the base have been wobbly on Iraq.
But now there is a proposal to fight for -Reid Feingold. Time for the base to save the Party insiders from themselves.
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