Taking the Liberal Out of the Democrat

DEMOCRATS KNEW it was coming, and they braced themselves for the storm. But when the political monsoon finally blew over, the damage appeared unprecedented. No modern presidental candidate has ever received fewer electoral votes than Walter Mondale did last Tuesday. The number--525 to 13--spoke loudly. 1

"All they [The Democrats] have to do now is sort through the rubble," one political analyst says.

And as the President's returns streamed in, the network commentators sounded a Democratic death-knell. NBC's Tom Brokaw confidently reported that Tuesday's impressive results confirmed a realignment of the political parties.

* * * * *

"In every victory, there are seeds of defeat," Walter Mondale said in his concession speech. "In every defeat, there are seeds of victory," Amidst the grandeur of Ronald Reagan's stunning triumph, these words sounded a hollow clang.

But as objectivity begins to replace the drama of a landslide, the defeated candidate's statement gains greater legitimacy. The Democratic Party is not doomed. In fact, this year's election may actually pave the way for an eventual Democratic resurgence. But with certain costs. For in order to become competitive at the presidential level again, it must reform its role as the party that sets out to cure social ills.

The limits of the President's coattail effect proved that the concept of Republican supremacy in Congress was merely an illusion. Overall, Democrats won 62 percent of the Congressional races, and they picked up two seats in the Senate. Only once before in modern politics when the Republicans lost two seats in 1972--has a party lost ground in the upper chamber while its presidential candidate won the general election.

More significant, however, are the Republican gains in the House of Representatives, a marginal 14 seats. In the 1932 elections--the year of the last "realignment"--Roosevelt and the Democrats gobbled up 97 seats. In 1964, the year in which the liberal agenda gained widespread acceptance in the U.S., Lyndon Johnson led the Democrats with a 37 seat surge. More so than the Senate, the House tends to mirror partisan trends on a national level. And this year, the nation stated that it loves its president but holds no allegiance to his party.

"It's far too early to say that a political realignment has occurred or is about to occur," Professor of History Bradford A. Lee states, "Realignments take place over a period of years."

Indeed, the election of 1932 was not the only Democratic coup during that realignment. From 1930 to 1936, the number of Democrats in the House increased steadily from 163 to 333. Nothing of that nature has occured in the 1980s. Rather, during the last three election cycles the nation has suffered a mild case of political schizophrenia, veering from one partisan orientation to another.

"We're ecstatic," says a political analyst from Peter D. Hart Research Associates, a Washington-based Democratic polling firm. "It could have been much worse. The small coattails indicate that the Republican party is not what the voters went for, but rather, the election was only an endorsement of the President as a leader. Reagan is unbelievably well-liked."

Each election cycle gives more weight to the claim that we are retrospective voters without a cemented ideological basis. In 1974, we punished the Republicans for Watergate and stripped them of more than 40 House seats. In 1980, we rejected President Carter and the Democratic malaise to give the GOP 34 seats. Two years ago, in the midst of the worst recession since pre-World War 11 days, we doled out 26 seats to the President's opposition party. And this year, we rewarded the Republicans with a 14-seat gift for the economic recovery.

What is clear is that the Republicans depend too heavily on Ronald Reagan for their popular support. What will they do without him? Not since 1932 has an outgoing President been succeeded by a member of his own party. Reagan's charm and charisma will not translate into votes for the boring George Bush, Jack Kemp, Howard Baker or Bob Dole. None of these men possesses the spark that Reagan has.

And while the President remains extremely popular, there are no indications that America has, by and large, identified itself with the Administration's policies. Polling data demonstrates that many of those voting for the President do not agree with him ideologically. According to a late summer survey conducted by Market Opinion Research, a Detroit-based polling firm, Democrats still outnumber Republicans, 33 percent to 23 percent, with a full 33 percent of the electorate identified as independent. Eighteen to 24-year-old voters supported the President most enthusiastically, yet polling shows that younger voters remain the most liberal age group. Much of the Republican's current support can be characterized as limp, perhaps easily swayed.

IRONICALLY, the very enormity of the Republicans' victory could prove the most beneficial aspect of the election for the Democrats: the bludgeoning defeat will rid the party of its stifling ideological stagnation. The Democratic Party finally realizes that it must modify its image and policies if it is to recapture the center at the presidential level.

"The Democratic Party has suffered two through defeats in a row--three out of the last four." Alan Brinkley, professor of History, says. "Such a series of [presidential frustrations] might force the party to reexamine its positions and how it presents itself to the public... The party is going to have to change."

In short, liberals must let go of the dreams and the vigorous policies of reform that have guided the party since the Great Depression.

The progressive and lavish agenda that emerged in the 1960s--to which many contemporary Democrats still cling--resulted from an unsophisticated naivete which dominated America at the time. We believed that it was possible to solve all of our problems, purity our still imperfect society, with little or no cost to the people. After all, the economic pie had consistently been growing at mercurial rates since World War II. No redistribution of wealth would be necessary to clean up the environment and eradicate poverty. Nor would civil strife arise as the liberals attempted to erase sexual and racial discrimination. Gripped by this smug self-delusion, the nation accepted the Democratic agenda and agreed to achieve these seemingly facile goals.

But the country soon recognized that reducing the 22 percent poverty rate would require more than the billion dollars we originally devoted to the problem during the Great Society's first year. As Europe and Japan finally rebuilt their own wartorn economies, and as Vietnam drained some of the United States' own resources, the economic pie didn't expand nearly as rapidly as before. Allowing Blacks to eat at the same lunch counter in Kresge's just wasn't enough. The summer riots told us that social equality was too difficult to achieve, so we refused to bus our children. Ecology and a healthy economy are hopelessly opposed. America awoke from its ethereal trance, and recognized that there are no painless panaceas.

"The preconditions which helped to produce the liberalism of the 60s are gone," Brinkley says. "The prosperity that made it possible to believe change and progress does not hurt blinded us... Liberal goals do cost, and that's why so many of them are now being repudiated."

AMERICA, INCLUDING the moderates, long ago abandoned the ideals of the 1960s and 1970s. But while America has changed, the Democratic Party's stalwart leaders have not. The voters have abandoned the party at the presidential level to such an extent that Mondale received majority support from only the Blacks, Jews and Hispanics.

Some historians, most notably Arthur Schlesinger, claim that reform and liberal activism are cyclical. Every 20 to 30 years, they say, there is a flurry of liberal activity, followed by its exhaustion, a regrouping and then another flurry. They maintain that the Reagan administration is simply presiding over a national rest period, like that of Eisenhower, in which the country can regain its national jubilance. The liberals must wait it out until we possess enough confidence to resume our battle with the social diseases.

Brinkley, however, disagrees. Instead, he believes the nation's complacency will persist, thwarting the reemergence of an active liberalism. "You would have a hard time convincing me that the 1980s are just a repeat of the fifties," he says. "In the 1950s and sixties issues emerged autonomously with a moral force that just could not be ignored... Today the moral issues of which the Democrats speak have no clear resolutions."

In order to attract the moderate voter once again, the Democratic party must deemphasize its goal of creating a better world; Americans are unwilling to sacrifice their own fortunes to solve national problems. Mondale was thrashed after his campaign of "decency." Words of pragmatism and responsibility serve only to alienate. The people want to hear more optimism and good cheer.

The voters' reaction to the looming deficit dilemma identifies a national ambivalence threatening to thwart any effort to cure society's ills. The public is not shielding itself from reality; polling information reveals that the electorate is well aware of the deficit's adverse affects on inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Consistently, surveys indicate that the public considers the deficit the nation's most pressing crisis. Yet further polling information suggests that the people are not willing to accept tax hikes, a reduction of loopholes or decreased social services in order to whittle away the $180 billion figure. The electorate is willing to acquiesce to the President's fanciful claim that a healthy economy will take care of the deficit; it's clearly looking for the easy answer.

The solution seems clear for the Democratic party: it must take a bold swing to the center, abandoning its liberal identification.

DESPITE THE TALK of a new liberalism--scrapping the old ideals but presenting new and provocative ones--the question remains, what ideals? What will an American public, which dislikes struggle and won't sacrifice its property, cling to in the name of liberalism?

The proposed nuclear freeze would only prevent the exacerbation of the atomic threat instead of actually alleviating the problem. Where do the Democrats propose to put the toxic waste? Decrease military spending and put it into education? Surveys show that the public is overwhelmingly opposed to significant military budget cuts, and it still believes that social spending should be deposed. There are no quick-fix solutions to America's problems, regardless of the public's desire to believe in them. Issues are not created by desperate political parties; they arise out of crisis.

Liberal democrats offer only an empty basket of ideas to a frugal, hesitant populace. Barring a severe crisis, the liberal Democratic party has got no arsenal with which to fight the Republicans. The party must choose between a losing idealism at the national level and realism with increased political power.

A Democratic Party without an advancing, vigorous liberal identification? It's happened before From 1870 to 1896 both major political parties opposed each other without any key issues distinguishing them. Today, a candidate's personality is capable of so thoroughly dominating a campaign that one can easily imagine two parties defined only by their respective packaging of smiles and false optimism.

And certainly, this election swing demonstrated that the voters will honor such an issueless campaign.

Then why shouldn't the political parties?