What's
Wrong with the Democrats?
President Bush won re-election
last month, and did so rather handily in the
popular vote. After losing to Gore in 2000,
he beat Kerry by 3 million votes this time around.
The Electoral College was much closer, and if
Kerry had gotten 80,000 Bush voters in Ohio
to change their minds then he would have been
the President-elect.
How did Kerry lose? He won all three debates,
Bush has presided over an economy which has
not created jobs in his four years, and we are
bogged down in a war in Iraq that was started
on false pretenses and is turning into a bloody
quagmire. This confluence of factors should
have allowed Kerry to win, and yet he lost handily.
Not only did Kerry lose, but the Democratic
party got whipped in Congress too, losing four
Senate seats and a couple of House seats. The
Republicans now have almost unchallenged control
of the Federal government.
We have now completed a transition of power
from the Democrats to the Republicans that began
in 1968. Prior to that the Democrats enjoyed
36 years of almost total control of the White
House and Congress, interrupted only by the
eight years of President Eisenhower in the 50’s.
Nixon recaptured the White House for the Republicans,
and no Democrat has won a majority of the popular
vote in any election since then (Carter in 1976,
and Clinton in both of his elections did not
get 50% of the vote). The Senate went Republican
in 1980, and the House went under Republican
control in 1994. What happened?
The real problem is that the Democrats ran out
of issues. A party that built its power during
the Great Depression has its roots in fighting
for the downtrodden. This is a great strategy
when the majority of the population are downtrodden
and in need of help. The Democratic agenda since
the early 1930’s has been two-fold. First,
eliminating the threat of severe poverty and
destitution by ensuring that all have adequate
food, shelter, and health care. And second,
creating a society of equal opportunity for
all its citizens.
This agenda took four decades to realize. Its
major achievements were Social Security, unemployment
insurance, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid,
Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws, generous
education loans, and affirmative action to remedy
the effects of past discrimination. This entire
edifice was in place by the mid-1970’s,
but the Democrats failed to develop a new agenda.
For the most part they have confined themselves
to defending these elements against Republican
reforms.
While these policies were very popular with
voters in the past, the present America is being
offered nothing compelling by the Democrats.
Bush at least talks about reforming Social Security,
which has long-term fiscal problems. The downtrodden
of the past are the middle-class of today. They
have gone to college, have good jobs, and live
in a society that grants them reasonably equal
opportunity, whether they are male or female,
white or non-white. If it hadn’t been
for 9/11 and his War on Terror, Bush would have
won the majority of Muslim votes again. The
Democrats have lost their electoral base as
a result of the success of their past policies.
Republicans speak to this new America with a
real agenda. Tax cuts, law and order, free trade,
and lighter government regulation are the issues
that middle-class families are interested in.
The only group that Democrats are still fighting
for in terms of rights are the gays, but that
is a losing proposition as the overwhelming
opposition to gay marriage in state votes showed.
Even the health care issue is rather weak. There
are 40 million uninsured, but if you back out
those that are truly between jobs, those that
can afford insurance and choose not to buy it,
the illegal immigrants, and those that qualify
for government programs but have never bothered
to fill out the paperwork, the real number of
uninsured is under 15 million people. The failure
of the Democrats in this last election is not
a fluke, but is part of a decades-long trend
that shows no sign of changing.
