Democrats seek a winning identity
By Lisa Anderson
Tribune national correspondent
February 29, 2004
COLUMBUS, Ga. -- The intense crucible of caucuses and primaries in the last six weeks forged a Democratic Party that rarely has been more unified, more fired up around the goal of reclaiming the White House--or more coldly calculating in its efforts to achieve it.
But these same contests also underscored a dilemma for Democrats: Because they come in at least as many varieties as the beloved barbecue in this old Chattahoochee River town, the identity of the party sometimes seems as messy as a plate of ribs.
By comparison, the unwavering positions taken by the more homogenous GOP on a variety of issues--particularly the ever-controversial trio of God, guns and gays--provide an identity as crisp and clear as a frosty glass of Southern sweet tea.
Highly diverse, fractured by regional and cultural differences and increasingly defined more by various advocacy groups than cohesive ideology, the Democratic Party in 2004 certainly knows what it wants but appears less certain about how best to clarify and communicate who it is.
"I think their identity is in a muddle these days," said Alek Ansley, 36, the pony-tailed owner of Judy Bug's Books in downtown Columbus. "It's become so reactionary. Reaction is a very, very dangerous thing. It usually slingshots people in the wrong direction."
Robert Reich, professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University and former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, would agree. "Democrats have little or no clear identity except by reference to what conservatives say about them," said Reich in an opinion piece for the New York Times last month.
"Issues rise and fall, depending on which interests are threatened and when," he wrote of the party. "In addition, there is no consistent Democratic world view or ideology."
Cowboy, actor and pundit Will Rogers hardly would raise an eyebrow at that. As he once famously put it: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
The unusually large field of candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination exacerbated this predilection for political perplexity. The candidates--up to 10 at one point-- constantly questioned the quality of their rivals' party pedigrees,
For months, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean loudly declared himself the flag bearer of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party'' and decried the centrist Democratic Leadership Council--and by inference its former leader Bill Clinton--as the party's "Republican wing.''
Former candidate and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a late comer to the race and to the party itself, was accused of being an undercover Republican who, as recently as May 2001, publicly praised the very Bush administration he now sought to topple.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, another former candidate and the running mate of Al Gore in 2000, unapologetically defended his continued support of the Iraq war and found himself labeled "Bush Lite.''
Even Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the current front-runner and putative nominee, had his party bona fides bashed. Asserting that Kerry had taken more special interest money than had any other senator in 15 years, Dean said, "It turns out we got more than one Republican in the Democratic race."
Voters understandably might conclude that even those running for the party's nomination had very different ideas of what it means to be a Democrat today.
Certainly, it does mean different things in different regions.
"People wear the Democratic label in the South who would not be recognized as Democrats in California or New York," said David Lanoue, a political scientist at the University of Alabama, noting many Southern Democrats would be considered Republicans anywhere else.
"Take a Georgia Democrat and a California Democrat--they're different species," agreed Ralph Walker, director of the research center at Augusta State University.
Such confusion can prove costly. In recent years, Republicans gained ground around the country, but nowhere more dramatically than in the South--the region that seceded from the Union after the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation's first Republican president in 1860.
Where Democratic rule long was a given, the GOP has delivered surprise after surprise. It captured the governors' mansions in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina in 2002 and in Mississippi and Kentucky in 2003. Arkansas, Florida, and Texas also have Republican governors, but the GOP lost Louisiana to the Democrats in 2003.
The changing political landscape of Georgia, where generations proudly vowed to vote for a "yellow dog'' if he ran on the Democratic ticket rather than anyone from the reviled party of Lincoln, presents a particularly vivid snapshot of Democratic decline.
The midterm elections of 2002 delivered a chilling message up and down the ticket.
The Peachtree State elected a Republican governor, Sonny Perdue, himself a party-switcher, for the first time in 130 years. In the state Senate, not only did the Democratic majority leader lose his district to a Republican, but the party lost its majority when four Democrats suddenly switched parties after the election.
In the state House, Democrats held onto a majority, but saw longtime Speaker Tom Murphy unseated by a Republican. With Republicans overseeing a court-ordered redistricting by March 1, the GOP may yet take control of the House.
In a particularly rabid U.S. Senate race, Republican Saxby Chambliss defeated Max Cleland, the one-term incumbent Democrat, war hero and triple amputee.
And this year, Sen. Zell Miller, although a life-long Georgia Democrat, enthusiastically backs the re-election of President Bush to the point of campaigning for him.
Miller, who recently published a scalding book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," denies he is betraying his party. Rather, he charges that his party--once the big tent party of tolerance--has betrayed him and abandoned the South in its shift to the left.
"Not only did it change on me, but the tolerance became intolerance," said Miller, 72, adding his fellow Democrats show more tolerance for endangered snail darters than they do for conservative colleagues.
Not so, said former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.
"I believe the Democratic Party is a big tent that has room for people of varying perspectives on specific issues," she said. "For me, Democrats are people who want to help average Americans have better opportunities and better lives."
For Martin O'Malley, the young Democratic mayor of Baltimore, the Democratic Party stands for "security, opportunity and responsibility." However, he said, "We're trying to move it in our city from an old Democratic patronage model of spoils-based politics to a new Democratic model of results-based performance politics."
Miller, who will not seek re-election, defines his party this way: "It's sort of a house that is old, where the plumbing doesn't work too well, where's it's got some strangers living in the basement--I don't know how they got there--but it's my house and I'm not going to be pushed out."
chicagotribune.com |
