>The Left and the Democrats
>By Ronald Radosh
>
>FrontPageMagazine.com | August 23, 2000
>
> HISTORY, IT SEEMS, keeps repeating itself. In my look back at the
>Democratic Party since the 1960's, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the
>Democratic Party 1964-1996, (The Free Press, 1996) which I wrote before
>the 1996 Democratic convention, I argued that the Democrats ceased being a
>majority party when they moved far to the Left, precisely when the
>electorate, including traditional Democratic constituencies, were moving
>towards the center and the right. Democrats had already seen the mass
>defection of so-called Reagan Democrats away from their party in the
>1980s, and a debate was taking place over how to deal with this. The
>problem, I argued, was that the party's "base has eroded," and its basic
>"constituency groups are permanently at odds with each other."
>
>Democrats worked hard to address this problem. What they did was described
>in great detail in an important but little noticed book by Kenneth S.
>Baer, Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to
>Clinton (Univ. of Kansas Press,2000.) What the historian Baer argues is
>that the creation of the Democratic Leadership Council created what he
>calls a rejection of "the interest-group foundation of postwar
>liberalism," and in its place, a different kind of party. The question he
>asks at the end of his book, however, is the one that now comes to center
>stage: "Have the New Democrats really taken over the Democratic Party?"
>And here, the answer historian Baer gives is mixed. Although the
>relatively conservative position of the DLC and its think tank, the
>Progressive Policy Institute has made amazing inroads, Baer writes, "on
>another level, however, it appears that the national party has not changed
>at all. Environmental, civil rights, and labor groups -- who oppose the
>New Democratic public philosophy -- are still the heart of the Democratic
>base, providing candidates with funding, volunteers, and endorsements
>crucial at the grassroots."
>
>The Democratic convention is over, and it is clearer than ever that in the
>coming campaign, the circle to which Baer alludes cannot really be
>squared. As he writes, "the DLC and the New Democrats are vulnerable to
>such a [Presidential race electoral] defeat, since they are attempting to
>change a public philosophy without the benefit of a realigning event and
>without a mass or activist base." The problem, as in the past, is their
>ever-present and dominant left-wing base, which is less likely than before
>to swallow their pride and accept with ease the pull of the party towards
>the political center. The evidence is that Al Gore's handlers are more
>than worried about these party stalwarts and activists. While scores of
>commentators have noted that the convention program and the party's top of
>the line candidates reflect the moderate centrism of the Democratic
>Leadership Council, the convention -- the first public face of the
>Democratic Party after the Joe Lieberman nomination to the second spot on
>the ticket -- had a solid left-wing face.
>
>Not only Tuesday's so-called "liberal night," in which delegates heard an
>array of speakers from the American Federation of Teacher's leader Sandra
>Feldman, to Jesse Jackson, Sr., and the leader of the party's liberal
>wing, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, but Al Gore's nomination
>speech reflected not the moderate DLC Al Gore, the man of the hi-tech
>economy and "reinventing government," but the Al Gore who pledged to
>support affirmative action, creation of a national health-care plan, a
>federal universal pre-school system, opposition to all school voucher
>plans and a traditional old-Democrat "class warfare" or populist
>approach---presenting the Democrats as the "party of the people" against
>the Republicans who are portrayed as the party of the rich, big oil and
>big tobacco.
>
>In fact, numerous commentators have noted that what is unique about the
>current Democratic Party is that the mechanism that controls it is firmly
>in the hands of the New Democrats. Two weeks ago, The New Republic,
>currently the most adamant Gore supporter among opinion journals, devoted
>a whole issue to the theme that the Left in the party had finally been
>defeated. This week's issue features an article by senior editor Franklin
>Foer who writes about how "the action in the Democratic Party is well to
>their right, with the Democratic Leadership Council
and other hard-core
>centrists." According to Foer, the absence in the platform of "old liberal
>hobbyhorses," such as no call to reduce defense spending, increase taxes
>or abolish the death penalty, reflects this reality. Moreover, Foer writes
>that organized labor and left-wing interest groups gained only "miniscule
>concessions," such as replacing the term "free trade" with "open trade."
>
>All of this may be true, but then how explain the convention, put together
>by these same in-charge DLC forces? The Republican Party put its hard-line
>conservatives out of sight, and presented a public face of moderation and
>restraint, featuring a Colin Powell who spent most of his time criticizing
>his own party for some of its own past positions. The theme of the
>Republican campaign was inclusiveness, reaching out to minorities, and
>equal opportunity for all. The theme of the Democratic convention was the
>old left-liberal bromides, with nary a New Democratic theme presented to
>the gathering and the television audience. Foer in his TNR article misses
>the point. He writes, "no one here is much worried about the old-time
>liberals on the speaking schedule," since there was little danger that
>they would use their time on stage to "recommend raising taxes or to
>denounce welfare reform."
>
>The problem is not what they say on stage. Rather, it is the problem of
>what would happen if Al Gore were to win the Presidency. Recently, two
>shrewd political analysts made the same point, David Broder, the chief
>political commentator for The Washington Post and Donald Lambro, chief
>political correspondent for The Washington Times. Broder argues that if
>the Democrats gain a majority in the House, the chairmanships of key
>committees will all be in the hands of traditional left-wing old style
>liberals. These people, and not Al From's New Democrats, "will have more
>leverage on Capitol Hill than the members of From's New Democratic
>Coalition." Which means that Al Gore would have won the Presidency, but
>would have a hard time governing, and getting his own New Democratic
>agenda (if that really is his agenda) adopted. Indeed, he might have an
>easier time getting some DLC proposals -- such as those favoring vouchers
>and partial privatization of Social Security -- passed with a Republican
>Congress, as Clinton did with the passage of NAFTA.
>
>In his analysis, Lambro accurately writes that as the convention ended,
>the candidates left "with portions of their party's base divided, doubtful
>or simply unenthused about the ticket." Lambro hits it on the button.
>Nothing done at the convention, he writes, "could overcome the uninspired
>feeling in the party's liberal base among unions, blacks and other party
>activists." Not that the New Democrats didn't try. Indeed, Joe Lieberman
>was forced into the humiliation of having to kowtow before the detestable
>Rep. Maxine Waters of California, and assure her that he had been
>misunderstood; he always favored affirmative action, and of course,
>strongly opposed vouchers for public schools. All of this led Washington
>Post columnist Colbert I. King to ask that they "let Lieberman be
>Lieberman." In his column written after Lieberman's strained mea culpas,
>King -- who does not favor Lieberman's true positions -- snickered about
>the brazen hypocrisy of demanding these apologies from the Connecticut
>Senator. After all, King wrote, it was Lieberman who always stood "with
>conservative Republicans on such key issues as privatization of Social
>Security, school vouchers and opposition to 'racial preferences.'" And
>King went on to detail just how much this was the case. For those who
>think that Lieberman's positions were thrown out casually, King showed how
>in fact Lieberman always knew what he was doing, and that his campaign
>"handlers make matters worse when they try to sell him as a long-time
>liberal who has occasionally lost his bearings and strayed into
>conservative territory by mistake." Not only did Lieberman vote four
>different times for vouchers, he worked with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and
>Trent Lott to sponsor a school voucher bill for Washington, D.C. The bill
>was stopped only by a veto from DLC supporter Bill Clinton! And a few
>years before, Lieberman endorsed President George Bush's proposal to use
>public money for low-income families who choose private schools.
>
>Which gets us back to the Left and the Democrats. First, we have the
>comments of major liberal Democrats. Sen. Paul Wellstone complains to
>journalists that his party is making too many concessions to corporate
>interests. Maxine Waters says that the party's vice-presidential candidate
>"is different from us on many
issues," and she hinted that she might not
>support the ticket, which produced the now famous Lieberman backsliding.
>Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. added that their only option was to support Gore,
>"but if there was another campaign that was speaking to our issues that
>had the possibility and plausibility of winning, we should support that
>campaign."
>
>Of course there is such a campaign, and the danger that even a Jesse
>Jackson Jr. might offer his support to Ralph Nader rather than to Al Gore
>indicates the dangers beneath the surface of unity. For further evidence,
>one can go no further than to read the special Democratic Convention issue
>of The Nation, our country's most influential left-liberal organ of
>opinion. If the young protesters on the streets in Philadelphia and Los
>Angeles could think and argue, (as distinct from shouting slogans and
>listening to "Rage Against the Machine") the views herein are what they
>would be sounding. The magazine's lead editorial chastises the choice of
>Lieberman, which the editors say, "insults much of the activist and
>liberal base of the party." How, they ask, can the Los Angeles delegates
>"leap to their feet to applaud a man who is on record supporting vouchers
>and uninhibited free trade?" The DLC managers had an easy answer: get
>Lieberman to say what the delegates wanted to hear, even if he doesn't
>believe it himself. But of course, to these editors, Lieberman's new
>positions are evidence of how "when New Democrats get into a campaign
>mode, they move left
and away from their fundraising positions."
>
>To The Nation leftists, the Democratic Party is an institution hi-jacked
>by corporate interests. Some of us, to the contrary, remember how this
>very left actually did a hi-jacking of their own, destroying a once
>majority party when they McGovernized it in 1972. It has taken the DLC
>types decades to move away from that disaster, and the left-wing activists
>clearly realize now is the time to stop another momentum towards potential
>sanity. Their editorial follows with the observations of Washington, D.C.
>editor David Corn, who writes that instead of fighting back with issues,
>Gore responded to the Bush convention by handcuffing himself "to a probity
>stand-in, a socially conservative Orthodox Jew who prominently scolded
>Bill Clinton for his pseudo-sex scandal." Corn fears that Lieberman's
>candidacy will only help Bush, since with Lieberman at his side, Gore
>cannot "slam" Bush on crucial fronts. Indeed, from his perspective, the
>Gore campaign -- via Lieberman's position on the ticket -- favors a
>"corporate friendly trade position;" opposition to affirmative action, a
>capital gains tax cut and a hawkish foreign policy position, indicated by
>both Gore and Lieberman's support of the US in the Gulf War. What a
>scandal! Mr. Corn fears that some Democrats actually might be concerned
>with the American national interest. Even worse is that Joe Lieberman is
>exposed by Corn to be a chair of the Center for Jewish and Christian
>Values, a group which includes Elliot Abrams, Gary Bauer, William Bennet,
>Jack Kemp, Bill Kristol and Ralph Reed, among many others. As for Gore's
>new populism, witnessed at his speech and in the first days of the
>campaign, this is just phony pandering, which Corn does not trust.
>
>The magazine's resident Stalinist, Alexander Cockburn, of course can
>always be counted on. Cockburn asks "how much more can the
>liberals-for-Gore take?" To Cockburn, the Democratic ticket "represents
>pretty much everything the Christian right has been calling for down the
>years." I wonder where that leaves the Bush ticket; perhaps the lesser
>evil for liberals? Don't laugh. A group of 65 environmentalists including
>David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth, have formed a group called
>"Environmentalists Against Gore," whom they accuse of selling out their
>cause to corporate interests. And they stress that while some of their
>body favor Nader, others support Bush! For Cockburn, the issue is a fight
>to the finish against the DLC "corporate bigwigs" who oppose the true
>Democratic Party, the party made up of "unionists, blacks, Hispanics,
>Greens and so on." And, we should add, the few defenders of Stalin left in
>America, like Alex Cockburn.
>
>Of course, Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the left-wing pressure group
>in the Democratic Party, the Campaign for America's Future, puts in his
>reluctant endorsement of the Gore-Lieberman ticket, on the grounds that
>although Nader is correct in everything he says, he can't win.
>Gore-Lieberman, he argues, will have to campaign on a left-wing agenda,
>and, validating David Broder's point, he stresses that the "progressive's"
>control of Congressional committees will "challenge Gore's timidity -- and
>fight to stiffen his backbone." In other words, their left-wing agenda
>will be on the timetable; not that of the centrist DLC forces. But, he
>warns, Green candidates endanger just such a victory, and actually work as
>a force for the Republicans. Instead, Borosage argues for aping the
>Christian Coalition's tactics in the 80's -- take control of the
>Democratic Party at the state level and then exercise national influence.
>Borosage, of course, is correct. It's a good thing most of the activists
>don't read. And even if they did, they would more than likely agree with
>Barbara Ehrenreich's retort to Borosage, on the opposite page of The
>Nation. Once the National Chair of Democratic Socialists of America,
>Ehrenreich notes that all the lefties agree that Gore is a sell-out. But
>not only is he that, she writes, he stands with Bush in favor of
>"militarization, incarceration and the necessary immiseration of working
>people everywhere in the service of global capital." Ehrenreich observes
>the contemporary election from the vantage point of Marx and Engel's
>writings on the working class in 19th Century England, and thinks they
>were talking about 21st Century America. She thinks that if Gore wins, the
>entire protest movement will accept all the horrors he stands for, on the
>grounds that his Supreme Court will put into office a pro-choice Supreme
>Court justice. A vote for Gore, she says, "is a vote
for the DLC-dominated
>Democratic Party."
>
>Like the editors of The New Republic, who also believe that Ehrenreich's
>last point is correct, she assumes that a Gore victory means the final
>defeat of the left wing in the Democratic Party. And like TNR's editors,
>she does not seem to realize what a Democratic Congress means for her own
>agenda- that of the political Left. The politically savvy Borosage knows
>the score; a Gore victory means a left-wing Congressional Democratic
>victory, and a defeat for the very DLC centrists who wrote the platform
>and from whose ranks Gore and Lieberman emerged. The problem they both
>have is that the activists are impatient. They can't seem to become
>energized for a real campaign. Gore turns them off and they despise Joe
>Lieberman. Meanwhile, Gore is trying hard to woo them by making the
>campaign one of "populist" themes, forgetting completely the agenda of the
>DLC. Whether it works will be determined next Election Day. At this
>moment, the polls are too close and taken too early in the game to mean
>much. After the first two debates, and soon after Labor Day, we will have
>a better idea of which candidate is ahead. And we will also know, if Gore
>maintains his "populist" crusade and takes the advice of serious liberal
>journalists like John B. Judis, whether this tilt towards the left has
>helped or hurt the Democratic Party's chances.
>
>
>
>Ronald Radosh is a regular columnist and book reviewer for
>FrontPageMagazine.com. A former leftist and currently Professor Emeritus
>of History at City University of New York, Radosh has written many books,
>including The Rosenberg File (with Joyce Milton). His soon-to-be-published
>memoir is entitled Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left
>and the Leftover Left.
>
>http://www.frontpagemag.com/archives/radosh/2000/rr08-23-00.htm