This is a claim worth pursuing, for it is easily verifiable with the Clinton years so close at hand.
The argument seems to be that left movements can grow organizationally, have greater freedom of action, face less repression and in certain case can even effect policy. This could either be because some liberal Democrats may be sympathetic, or simply because the election of Democrats signals a leftward tilt in the populace or political weakness on the right.
When it comes to the Clinton years, we can let this argument off the hook with respect to policy effects and liberal Democrats, as the Democrats often did not control the Congress.
But it is not sufficient to point to the quality of the political process. It is also necessary to point to the results at the "end" of the process. I think we should insist on this as a criterion: was the left able under the Democrats to move the overall political climate and their own degree of organization permanently in their favor? Do their actions endure _beyond_ the Democrats? This does not mean the Democrats were voted out of office by Republicans, but that the left is in a permanent way able to act beyond the bounds set by the Democrats.
I think that if we apply this criteron - and we should insist on it, for reasons that I hope are obvious - the answer has to be a resounding NO.
The question must be asked: How, after all the "favorable" time with Clinton, did we end up with Bush? In fact, the same could be said of every other Democratic-Republican alternation since Eisenhower-Kennedy.
Johnson-Nixon(Ford), Carter-Reagan(Bush I) and Clinton-Bush II; over the last 40 years, not only has each successive Democratic Administration represented _worse_ conditions for the left, but each successor Republican Administration has been _worse_ than its predecessor (as John Dean has so cleverly pointed out).
Therefore, Doug's proposition ignores the overall result in the longer term. Dougs' proposition cannot be a basis for a strategy.
In fact, the proposition is deliberately predicated upon ignoring strategy. A typically American attitude, I must add: "ignore" and "long term" are Siamese twins in the American mind. It is not surprising that this is in fact the real strategy of the American left.
-Brad Mayer