One of the choicer bits: "The loss of Paul Wellstone's Senate seat represents a hard-to-miss rebuke to the base-mobilization strategy for a Democratic future." Ah yes, who needs that silly organizing-the-masses crap anyway? We can just bash unions, scapegoat black people, and fight wars every few years and we'll be fine!
Of course, what they don't mention is that the DLC strategy has been an absolute failure ever since it was hatched in 1984. Democratic power and influence have been steadily eroding ever since, Clinton's two razor-thin victories (which had more to do with Ross Perot siphoning off the protest vote than any love of Clinton) aside.
DLC | New Dem Daily | November 6, 2002 Election 2002: Time For A New Democratic Message
Yesterday did not turn out to be a good election day for Democrats. The absence of exit poll data means that it will be days if not weeks before anyone can get a real handle on turnout, divisions in the electorate, or issues that played a particularly important role in the results. But the loss of control of the U.S. Senate, and historic GOP gains in the House, speak loudly for themselves.
We do not accept the idea that the results represent some sort of huge policy mandate for the President, even if he had a policy agenda to advance. This is still very much a 50-50 nation. Republicans gained just three seats in the House and (at this moment) two seats in the Senate. Democrats picked up four governorships, which are now split 25- 25. It appears the two parties are almost exactly dead even in total number of state legislators. This election was not like 1994, with a big across-the-board tide; it was more like 1986, when many close races broke in one direction at the last moment.
Having said that, you don't really need exit polls to understand that Democrats, especially at the congressional level, need a new, clear message, that is positive, centrist, but unmistakably distinct from that of the Republican Party or the President.
After four straight election cycles of campaigning on an agenda pretty much limited to promising the moon on prescription drugs and attacking Republicans on Social Security, it's time for the congressional wing of the party, and the political consultants who have relentlessly promoted this message as an electoral silver bullet, to bury it once and for all. It has always conveyed the impression that Democrats had little to say on the entire domestic agenda of the nation beyond pandering to seniors, and it has never succeeded in securing a majority.
We agree with the many Democrats who are saying that the party needs a bigger, bolder, clearer agenda and message. But we disagree with those who are saying the party should achieve that clarity simply by moving to the left, creating partisan differentiation at any cost, and engaging in more negative campaigning against the President and Republicans in order to energize the Democratic base.
A majority of Americans are still moderates; a plurality of Americans are still independents; and as yesterday showed for the umpteenth time, efforts to energize one party's base often energize the other's -- a real problem for Democrats since the hard-core conservative GOP base is significantly larger than the liberal Democratic base. The loss of Paul Wellstone's Senate seat represents a hard-to-miss rebuke to the base- mobilization strategy for a Democratic future: it's hard to imagine a more mobilized base than that of the Minnesota DFL during the last few days of the campaign.
And the idea that Democrats should be more "combative" in opposing the President and the GOP is at most a half-truth. Yes, Democrats should have an aggressive critique of the President's leadership and the Republican agenda, along with progressive alternatives on all the big issues. But an American people thoroughly sick of the excesses of negative campaigning they saw this year are not likely to welcome an even shriller style of politics in the future, especially if it takes the form of the kind of personal abuse of the President that Republicans were guilty of in the 1990s.
Fortunately, Democrats will have an opportunity to debate and test a different kind of message as the presidential campaign of 2004 begins to unfold. And fortunately, they will have some fresh blood around the country in the form of statewide elected officials, many of them self- conscious New Democrats, who understand how to craft a message and an agenda that addresses real issues and appeals both to swing voters and to the Democratic base. In particular, new Governors Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and Bill Richardson of New Mexico are likely to be national political stars in the very near future. Every one of them won a governorship that had been controlled by Republicans for at least eight years.
There's no need for panic or despair among Democrats today, but there is an urgent need for Democrats to return to the task that occupied them during much of the 1990s: creating a message and agenda based on broad values and policy goals rather than government programs that is aimed at building new majorities rather than tending to old coalitions and that promotes reform, growth, international and domestic leadership, and opportunity, responsibility and community. If they do that, Election Day 2002 will be remembered by Democrats as a useful corrective rather than as a defeat.