Democratic Decisions

After the 2000 election, Democrats wasted little time getting down to the business of recriminations. The party’s centrist wing, represented by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), argued that Gore lost because his populist pandering had turned off white-collar suburban voters. Liberal Democrats took the opposite tack, charging that Gore lost because he failed to rouse the party base.

Ever since Kerry’s defeat Democrats have been waiting for a reprise, but so far intra-party fighting has been kept on the backburner. There have been a couple spats over the past week. Michael Tomasky, executive editor of the American Prospect, posted a column on Monday titled “It’s Started,” that points to a pair of Democrats, David Sirota of the Center for American Progress, and Ed Kilgore of the DLC, who have been having a heated exchange over economic populism, free trade and the relationship between Democrats and big business. But last Friday, a televised National Press Club debate on the future of the Democratic Party between longtime liberal DLC critic Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future and DLC founder and professional controversialist Al From ended up as a surprising exercise in civility.

The restraint exhibited by these seasoned party warriors is largely laudable. Obviously, the last thing the Democratic Party needs now is to collapse into internecine fighting. Democrats will need to display considerable unity for the next four years if we are to have any hope of not getting repeatedly rolled on social security and just about everything else. But I can’t say I’m too worried—I have full confidence that our Commander in Chief will continue to inspire solidarity in our ranks. I’m more concerned that Democrats will paper over their differences, and eschew the necessary intellectual heavy lifting.

Indeed, the interesting thing about the past month of post-election soul-searching is that the most salient cleavage is proving to be less left v. right than reform v. status quo. This fissure was of course prefigured by the Dean campaign, which was always less about pushing an ideological critique than about pressing its outsider reformist sensibility. So if you’re looking for a bellwether for the Democrats’ post-election direction, keep your eye on Dean’s bid to be the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair. Not to say that Dean is the only candidate with a mind for reform, but his chairmanship candidacy is quickly taking on the same sort of reformist symbolism as his presidential bid.

MoveOn, for its part, hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate. But in a press release last Friday it called on the Democratic Party to choose a new chair who would “reconnect the party with the grassroots.” MoveOn and the Dean campaign showed that when you start getting enough individuals engaged, and start adding enough small contributions together, you can wind up with something pretty big. But political money comes in all shapes and sizes, and now some bigger donors are also beginning to throw their weight around. Matt Bai had a widely cited cover story in the New York Times Magazine this summer about a growing network of wealthy progressives known as the “Phoenix Group” which has set about constructing a new extra-party infrastructure—potentially everything from think tanks to new media to get-out-the-vote operations—to begin to compete with the formidable array of institutions built by the right over the past few decades. These new progressive donors haven’t dropped their plans since the election. In fact, they’ve institutionalized their efforts into a new organization called the Democracy Alliance.

A key player and lead organizer of the Democracy Alliance is Simon Rosenberg, President of the New Democratic Network (NDN), and another candidate for DNC chair. Rosenberg is a good example of the recent solidaristic turn in Democratic thinking. Although he began as a centrist DLC Democrat, he has shown a strong willingness to transcend traditional ideological divides and his recent rhetoric is full of talk about moving “forward” as opposed to turning “left” or “right.”

At first glance, the big donors affiliated with Rosenberg and the Democracy Alliance might seem to be in tension with the small donor grassroots model touted by MoveOn and Dean. But this is not the case. Rosenberg’s donors may have deep pockets, but they’re hardly party insiders; their giving is motivated by the same sort of personal convictions that fuel MoveOn’s members.

So where does all this activity leave the Democratic Party? In his Times Magazine piece, Bai speculated that the combination of MoveOn’s small donor Internet outreach and the emergence of a big-donor backed progressive extra-party infrastructure could spell curtains for the party as we know it.

But it’s looking as though that prediction might be a little hasty. Rosenberg isn’t trying to retire the Democratic Party and consign it to institutional obsolescence; he’s campaigning to lead the thing. The same goes for MoveOn. They’re not out to supplant the Dems, just to get them to adopt a more grassroots orientation.

These are all encouraging developments for the Democratic Party and for progressive politics in general. But all the reforms in the world won’t be enough to engage the deep substantive policy questions—on defense, trade, gay marriage, taxes and a host of other issues—that continue to divide the Democratic Party. Democrats shouldn’t start purging party factions or trying to enforce any doctrinal orthodoxy—a project as stupid as it would be hopeless—but neither can they afford to spend the coming years just moving “forward.”

Sasha Post ’05 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.