If the Democrats select a liberal in 2008 - unless Bush and the GOP mess up big-time - then they're toast and I'll be totally and utterly disillusioned
America, as a whole, is clearly becoming less liberal. It's time for Democratic moderates to become the standard bearers. I'd like to see see the moderate (and liberal) majority setting the agenda. As I've said before an ideologically polarised election favours the GOP
Moderate Democrats can win and that's what we need to hammer home. I'm proud to support the Democratic Party - but I don't want to see it breaking my heart as it did with Zell Miller by moving permanently out of the mainstream and into the periphery....
Dave, I identify with your politics, but offering Zell Miller as representative of what the Democratic mainstream used to be distracts us from what I see as the thrust of your post, that is, imagining what the ideological center of a newly competitive national Democratic party would look like.
Clearly, you and I believe that becoming more purely “liberal” (as in post-Vietnam “liberal”) will only lead the party down the road to further ideological ossification and electoral disaster. If the leadership stubbornly persists in this direction I would not be surprised if, eventually, the resulting growth of divergence in the Republican Party, and complete loss of power by the Democrats in Washington, led to the breakup of the Republicans along one of their many fissure points, perhaps turning the Democrats into a leftist third party.
Really the only way that the Democrats could represent the views of a majority of Americans would be to continue the moderately conservative trend represented by the campaigns of Gary Hart in the 80’s and Bill Clinton in the 90’s (if even one of these politicians had had the good sense not to give in to their personal hubris and sex addiction, we might see a very different Democratic party now).
This moderately conservative trend emerged at that time because some responsible Democratic politicians rightly owned up to the fiscal and social failures of the Great Society and the “Me” generation.
A newly competitive Democratic Party that I would be proud to support would look something like this:
Domestic Policy
One of the fundamental purposes of government is to promote the public good where the marketplace does not work to that end. Therefore, the government will assist lower and middle-class Americans to achieve basic American goals (like higher education, home ownership, investment and retirement) by providing incentives (not entitlements) to those, who (as Clinton said) “work hard and play by the rules”.
- in the areas of land use, suburban and rural development, environmental pollution, urban planning, preservation, and housing, and open public spaces: ballot proposals and legislative consensus at the national, regional and local level should have a larger role in determining policy, and financial incentives (rather than regulations) should be primarily used in implementing it.
Foreign Policy
America is still the best example to the world of what a democratic and diverse society looks like in terms of opportunity, tolerance, and basic inalienable rights. Our foreign interest should be to promote world political stability and opportunity for the poor by opposing tyranny and supporting true democratic political movements that support religious and ethnic tolerance and freedom of markets and the press. We should achieve our foreign policy goals through alliance and diplomacy when possible, but should pursue our goals unilaterally and through military strength when necessary.
- our military must grow, and its members accorded respect in the society at large. It must therefore be invested with the best selection process, training, equipment and discipline.
Really, policies like these are a pre-Vietnam American attitude associated with classic post-industrial liberalism, and articulated by the great 20th century Democratic Presidents: Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy.
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