GRASSROOT ROT THE DEMOCRATS' REAL PROBLEM
The election of three GOP governors - one in the largest state and two in the south - are a reminder (albeit one being widely ignored) of the true problem the Democratic Party faces. One of the great disservices of the media is to perpetuate the notion that American politics rises and sets on the presidency. In fact, the election of a president is the end result of many other decisions and choices made throughout the country that often are of little interest to the press. For example, the makeup of state legislatures strongly effects decennial redistricting; governors often serve as the ward leaders of national politics, and so forth.
The charts on this page illustrate what really has happened to the Democratic Party and why, even in the midst of a disastrous foreign policy and bad economic conditions for many Americans, it is doing so poorly.
These charts show a party that has been in general decline over the past four decades. In fact, in the Senate and the House, the peak of Democratic power was way back in 1937. The party has been on a downward trend ever since. More recently, it was the Carter administration - not Reagan's - that accelerated the party's fall followed by the disastrous effect the Clinton years had on the party. The party did worse under Clinton than it had under any incumbent since Grover Cleveland.
None of this is incorporated into the mythology of either the party or the media, both of which persist in blaming party progressives for the Democrats' problems, when in fact it has been those such as Carter and Clinton who so muddled the party's social democratic image that in the end no one quite knew where it stood.
There is a lesson here for the candidates this year, but so far Howard Dean seems the only one who understands that for the party to grow it must reach out to new (or former) constituencies or it will continue to die of grassroot rot.
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