The Political Party that Stands for Nothing came close to being embarrassed last week when it needed help from San Francisco Republicans to win a run-off election for mayor.
As it turned out, the Democrats didn't act embarrassed. They should have -- and would have, if they had any principles -- but modern Democrats stand for only one thing: winning.
In San Francisco, the winner and new champion is Gavin Newsom, a 36- year-old who told me about 10 years ago he was going to be mayor of San Francisco someday.
My thought at the time was, "Not if I can help it." (I was a cab driver; he was my fare.)
Newsom's opponent last week was Matt Gonzalez, president of the City's Board of Supervisors. He ran with support from the Green Party, which claims only 3 percent of the City's registered voters. Gonzalez won 47.4 percent of the vote, according to the latest figures I've seen.
About 15 percent of the City's voters are registered as Republicans. It's a fair assumption that nearly all of them voted for Newsom, thus providing him with his margin of victory.
Newsom showed his gratitude almost immediately by meeting with the Chamber of Commerce, the downtown business interests and developers bent on changing the face of the City.
So Newsom will follow in the footsteps of soon-to-depart (but not soon enough) Mayor Willie Brown, a snake-oil salesman par excellence. Brown (called "the real Slick Willie" by Bill Clinton) ran the City like his personal fiefdom, adding to its accumulated debt and its congestion while continuing to live far beyond his known personal income.
The Democrats were scared to death of Matt Gonzalez. They were afraid what a Green Party win might do to their party. So they pulled out all the stops. Democrat star after Democrat star lavished endorsements on Newsom, with the piece de résistance executed by Bill Clinton himself, who jetted in on a private plane to bestow his blessings. One wonders who bought his ticket. (I would have guessed a certain Outer Broadway oil heir, or his affluent hillside neighbor, Walter, but it turns out to have been Ron Burkle, described by columnist Leah Garchik as "a Beverly Hills billionaire who's in supermarkets and other jolly ventures.")
The Democratic Party hates the Greens with a passion usually felt only by women scorned. When Ralph Nader ran for president as a Green in 2000, the Democrats treated him not as America's greatest liberal hero, which he is, but as a cross between Uday and Qusay Hussein, who, of course, most of us had never heard of at the time.
So the nine brave souls hoping to become the Democratic presidential nominee next year are pushed into a narrow box. Suck up too much to America's plutocracy, and they look like Republicans. Suck up to the masses, and they look like Greens. What's a Democrat to do?
When it comes to health care, Howard Dean, the apparent front runner, deals with the dilemma by trying to please both extremes. Health care for all, he says, but funnel it through insurance companies.
Of all the candidates, only Dennis Kucinich has the courage to call for a "single payer" (government-run) health-care system, the kind used successfully by every other industrialized nation in the world.
And this, in my opinion, brings to mind the greatest problem the Democrats face: letting the Republicans define them.
The Fox News spinners, like those on MSNBC, giggle at a candidate like Kucinich and dismiss him as a representative of the lunatic fringe.
But I ask you, how crazy is it to try to drag America into the 21st century when it comes to health care? (To say nothing of the 20th! Germany has had universal health care for more than 100 years.)
And how crazy would it be to finally, finally, relieve employers of the responsibility of providing health care for their employees? Right now, the payment of health-care costs is perhaps the biggest sticking point between unions and employers.
How goofy is it for employees, at all levels, to be relieved of the strain of negotiating health care every time they negotiate a new contract?
I'll tell you what's goofy. What's goofy is for a nation to leave its health care to the tender mercies of insurance companies, who are ruining the practice of medicine, creating mountains of paperwork, raising the cost of medical treatment and providing inadequate care for a substantial portion of the population.
I said "ruining the practice" of medicine. I have a doctor relative who sees patients all day, then does two to three hours of paperwork every night. Doctors are dropping out of the profession left and right, a phenomenon unheard of in the past.
So Kucinich, who offers a tried and proven cure for this problem, is marginalized as a lunatic or, worse, a socialist.
There is no question in my mind that any of the cast of nine Democratic candidates would make a better president than the petty despot holding the office now, but that's not saying much. Who wouldn't? Pick any 35-year-old college graduate off the streets of San Francisco, and it's almost certain he'd be an improvement over George W. Bush.
But the Democrats have to learn who they are if they want to win, if they truly want to serve America. Gavin Newsom is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, and he's about as liberal as . . . as . . . well, as liberal as Dianne Feinstein.
That ain't sayin' much, boys and girls.
The Democrats should tune in to what's going on in America. Bush has his fans, to be sure, but there's a groundswell of support for people like Gonzalez, people who are perceived to represent us all, not just the rich or well positioned.
I've attended a lot of election-night parties in my day, but none ever had as much vibrancy and enthusiasm as the Matt Gonzalez party last week. The place was absolutely packed with enthusiastic young people in their 20s and 30s. I've never seen anything like it.
A few months ago, I was in the Twin Cities, and I decided to listen to Michael Moore speak at the University of Minnesota's Sports Pavilion. Ha! Not in my wildest dreams would I have expected what I saw when I got there. The 7,300-seat auditorium was sold out!
Imagine that. A 7,300-seat auditorium packed with people who paid good money to hear a fat liberal writer and documentary filmmaker speak!
Something's going on in this country, and the Democrats had better pick up on it. Books by Moore, Al Franken and other outspoken liberal writers are selling big. There is a hunger for reform, for the return of decency to our nation's politics and policies.
The Democrats can provide that. But to do so they have to return to their Democratic roots. More important, they have to stop letting the Republicans define them. Good Democrats are good people who are good for our country. Wishy-washy, lukewarm Democrats aren't good for anything.
San Francisco will survive Gavin Newsom. Whether the United States can survive another four years of George W. Bush and a Republican Congress is open to question.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen at yahoo.com.
_________________________________________________________________ Grab our best dial-up Internet access offer: 6 months @$9.95/month. http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup