[Mb-civic] The Next DNC Chair: Why You Should Care

Thu Dec 9 22:04:32 PST 2004

The Next DNC Chair: Why You Should Care

By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
 Posted on December 8, 2004, Printed on December 9, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20699/

This Saturday in Orlando, at a meeting of state party chairs, a parade of
potential candidates are going to be making the case for why they should be
the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.

I don't have a candidate. But I do have a litmus test: Anyone raising the
idea that the party needs to "move to the middle" should immediately be
escorted out of the building. Better yet, a trap door should open beneath
them, sending them plummeting down an endless chute into electoral purgatory
 which is exactly where the party will be permanently headquartered if it
continues to adopt such a strategy.

Among those eyeing the position are Howard Dean, former White House aide
Harold Ickes, Texas Rep. Marty Frost, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb,
former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, New Democrat Network founder Simon Rosenberg,
political strategist Donnie Fowler, and telecom exec Leo Hindrey.

Although less than 450 people will ultimately decide who becomes the next
party chair, when the DNC votes on Feb. 12, the outcome will have a profound
effect on shaping the party's future. Will Democrats continue to toe the
strategy line of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that has brought
them to the brink of permanent minority-party status? Or will they finally
return to the party's roots and recapture its lost political soul  and the
White House and Congress with it?

Welcome to the Great Democratic Party Identity Crisis of 2005.

Ever since the election, Democratic leaders have been crawling over each
other in a mad scramble to the middle. Indeed, this is the worst case of
midriff bulge since Kirstie Alley stopped by Sizzler's all-you-can-eat
buffet.

"Things are accomplished in the middle. We have to work toward the middle.
And I think that that's clear." That was new Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid on "Meet the Press" this weekend. He didn't elaborate on what good was
"clearly accomplished" in the middle over the past four years, but perhaps
he was referring to the invasion of Iraq.

Almost makes you long for the spineless bleating of Tom Daschle, doesn't it?

Last week's meeting of the 21-strong Democratic Governors Association was
similarly an orgy of centrist groping, best summed up by Michigan Gov.
Jennifer Granholm, who said, "This, for us, is our moment to push an agenda
. . . that is centrist and that speaks to where most people are."

If Gov. Granholm, a rising star in the party, really thinks the center is
where the majority of people were located this past election, the Democrats
are in even worse trouble than we think. Have these people learned nothing
from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to
give  from "the center"  before they realize it's not a very fruitful
place?

Putting aside for a moment the question of the party's soul and focusing
entirely on hardball politics, running to the middle has been proven to be
the single stupidest strategy the Democrats can pursue.

As cognitive psychologist George Lakoff told me: "Democrats moving to the
middle is a double disaster that alienates the party's progressive base
while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side
is where the good ideas are." It unconsciously locks in the notion that the
other side's positions are worth moving toward, while your side's positions
are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the
right just moves further to the right.

And if middle-of-the-roadism is such a great vote-getter, why don't we see
Republicans moving there? In fact, framing the political debate in
right-left terms is so old, so tired, and so wrong that we need to resist
all temptation to do so. There is nothing left-wing about wanting
corporations to pay their fair share rather than hide their profits in PO
boxes in Bermuda, or in ensuring access to health care now rather than
paying the bill at the emergency room later.

That's why the DNC race is so important. The party needs a chairman able to
drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and
champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the
ballot box in many conservative parts of the country. Just how potent is
revealed in "The Democrats' Da Vinci Code," a brilliant upcoming American
Prospect cover story by David Sirota that shows how a growing number of
Democrats in some of the reddest regions in America have racked up
impressive, against-the-grain wins by framing a progressive economic
platform in terms of values and right vs. wrong. These are not "left" ideas;
they are good ideas. "This," writes Sirota, "is not the traditional (and
often condescending) Democratic pandering about the need for a nanny
government to provide for the masses. It is us-versus-them red meat,
straight talk about how the system is working against ordinary Americans."
These red-state progressives have brought the Democratic Party back to its
true calling and delivered, according to Sirota, "as powerful a statement
about morality and authenticity as any of the GOP's demagoguery on 'guns,
God, and gays.'"

This strategy of economic populism coincides perfectly with what is the most
significant shift in Democratic politics in a generation: the astounding
growth of a grassroots donor base. Thanks in no small part to the Internet,
the Kerry campaign and the DNC raised between them over $300 million from
grassroots donors. Kerry alone raised over $71 million from donors who
contributed $200 or less. What's more, the DNC experienced a sevenfold
increased in donors  skyrocketing from 400,000 in 2000 to the 2.7 million
who contributed in 2004.

This reallocation of power away from lobbyists and big corporate donors will
finally allow Democrats to stop taking policy dictation from their corporate
financiers and start offering up an alternative vision to compete with
George Bush's. But only if the will is there  which means only if the next
DNC chair understands and embraces this tectonic shift.

And only if he promises, at all costs, to stop playing in the middle of the
road.