Left-Leaning Losers . . .
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 12, 2002; Page A25
By my count, eight Democratic members of the Senate have either run for president or are being mentioned (sometimes only by themselves) as candidates in 2004. Only one of them -- Edward M. Kennedy -- voted against the congressional resolution authorizing war with Iraq. Yet to hear some people tell it, it is Kennedy's one vote that represents the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.
What party are they talking about? It cannot be the party of politicians who have made it their business to attract voters outside of some small, safe districts -- as with House members.
It cannot be the party that won the popular vote for the presidency in 2000 and that for the previous eight years controlled the White House. It is, instead, a party that has panicked over the recent midterm elections and appears intent on beating a retreat -- all the way back to the comfy days of the New Deal.
What is the justification for such talk? It is this: A more pronounced, unalloyed, leftist message would have turned out the Democratic faithful. Maybe. But there is an even greater chance that such a message would have propelled even more conservatives and centrists to the polls. The results for the Democrats might have been the same, or even worse -- much worse.
The response from the party's left is to be expected -- although it hardly makes any sense. In the first place, it would have been impossible to take a hard antiwar position when, among others, such former and potentially future presidential candidates as Sens. Joe Biden, John Edwards, Tom Harkin, Fritz Hollings, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and -- yes -- Hillary Clinton voted the other way. Over in the House, another potential presidential candidate, Dick Gephardt, took the same position. As for Al Gore, he questioned President Bush's timing, not his reasoning.
What the Democrats should have done was embrace the war on terrorism and make it a non-issue. Then the party should have moved on and raised economic issues -- everything from the sick economy to corporate malfeasance to privatizing Social Security at a time when 401(k) accounts are shrinking before the eyes of the American investor. As for the homeland security bill, Democrats should have forcefully made the case that anti-terrorism has nothing to do with the unionization rights of federal workers.
Those arguments should have been made in a national advertising campaign. If Bush could nationalize the campaign, so could the Democrats -- only they didn't. With about $10 million, the party could have made the argument that it was for both the war on terrorism and the war for the average person -- his shaky economic prospects, his Social Security payments.
The failure of the Democratic Party to nationalize the campaign and to field a spokesman with a taste for battle (Oh, where are the Torricellis of yesteryear?) might have saved one, maybe two, Democratic seats -- Carnahan in Missouri for sure, maybe Shaheen in New Hampshire. As for Texas, it showed once again that the rainbow coalition -- the left's impossible dream -- better have some pink at the top. Having a black Senate candidate and a Hispanic gubernatorial candidate resulted in defeat for both.
The Democrats sorely lacked two things -- their own issues and someone to advance them. That does not add up to an ideological drubbing but rather to missed opportunities. Last week's results do not mean that suddenly the country wants right-wing judges, privatized Social Security, government support of organized religion or, for that matter, a foreign policy with a chip on its shoulder just spoiling for a fight.
For some reason, the media loathe saying, "No big deal." Just as everything at CNN gets hyped as "breaking news," so every election is a "historic" ideological realignment that will change the country forever (or maybe until the next election) and even alter the course of El Niño. This election was nothing of the sort -- and it would be folly for the Democratic Party to think what the voters were really missing was a starker alternative.
Nov. 5 was a triumph for George Bush and Karl Rove and a clear defeat for the Democrats. But the GOP won with money and tactics -- a great get-out-the-vote effort and, yes, the lift provided by Bush's personal popularity. The victory, though, was no knockout -- just a match won on points. For the Democrats, there's no reason to act woozy and stumble to the left. The party has been in that corner before. It's where it usually loses.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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