A tree is best measured when it’s down, so they
say.
In 1972 the Democrats were, by any measure, down.
George McGovern had crippled the party’s power centers in the big cities and
the unions, and rode to the presidential nomination on the shoulders of a
coalition which was undoubtedly well-intentioned, but looked, by turns, funny
and scary to middle Americans watching on TV. Feminists, gays, black-power
activists, lettuce-picking union activists, people with indifferent attitudes
toward hygiene, grooming, and wardrobe. Party regulars complained that McGovern
was “nominated by the cast of Hair”. After McGovern’s historic drubbing by
Nixon, the Democrats scooted back into the White House on the strength of
anti-Watergate agita but lost again when Reagan launched the conservative
revolution. The Democrats spent three election cycles in the wilderness.
And they learned.
They moved away from the redistributionist
tendencies of McGovern and tacked to the right. They compromised with
Republicans: without the support of Democrats in the House, Reagan’s tax cuts and
gigantic deficits never would have happened. The Democrats consciously moved
away from the New Deal and the Great Society, and ultimately proclaimed that
the era of big government and welfare state was over. They took measures to
enable conservative Democrats to step forward, supporting the Democratic
Leadership Council and Super Tuesday primaries down south. They put forward
Fritz Hollings, John Glenn, Klansman David Duke, tinfoil whackadoodle Lyndon Larouche,
pro-business conservative Paul Tsongas, Bill Clinton, and a gal named Ann
Richards who actually won the governor’s job in Texas. And Gary Hart, who
ironically got his start as McGovern’s campaign manager. When Obama won in 2008,
he hired so many pro-business people that the left complained; and the left
fumed as Obama compromised on health care and tax policy and financial
regulations, dragged his feet on gay rights and Guantanamo and Afghanistan and
climate change, and expressed willingness to give ground on the social safety
net.
The Democrats moved to the center.
And now a bit of contrast.
The Republicans have been on a downward spiral for
quite some time. In 24 years they’ve won the popular vote exactly once in
presidential races, and it took a fraudulent war to accomplish that. America
has repudiated their medieval social policies on women and gays, their
neo-Neanderthal foreign policy, and their 30-year effort to transfer trillions
of dollars from the middle class to the rich while destroying Social Security
and Medicare. The Republicans face a demographic catastrophe, unless they
learn, like the Democrats did.
And have they learned? No.
Unlike the Democrats who have successfully tacked
to the center, the Republicans are more extreme than ever. Republicans of even
a decade ago would be purged today. Even George Bush, who said only a few years
ago that he was okay with civil unions, picked two black moderates for the
State job, signed some environmental legislation, tried in his own way to improve
schools, expanded public spending even more than Clinton did, expanded economic
regulation dramatically, expanded Medicare, and supported renewable energy.
Today George Bush would be thrown out of the GOP as too liberal. To say nothing
of Reagan, who would be condemned as a RINO today just for his string of tax
increases, or Nixon and Eisenhower, who would be Democrats today.
The Republicans never seriously considered adjusting
their policies. Instead they have decided to go tactical, and cheat.
Suppressing legal voters, suppressing efforts to register voters, attacking
unions and other groups who try to support Democrats, trying to rig the
electoral college in favor of Republicans, gerrymandering the House so Boehner
can keep his job even when more people voted for Democrats, endless lies,
threatening violence and secession when they lose, using obstructionist tactics
in the Senate, and trying to buy elections outright via Citizens United.
The business with the unions is very telling.
Reagan was no big fan of unions – the air-traffic controllers found that out –
but thirty years ago he still wooed union voters so successfully that he got
the endorsement of the Teamsters. Reagan won them over with his policies,
dubious as they were. Today’s Republicans would never dream of trying such a thing:
they have given up on winning union support so they want to destroy the unions
instead. Likewise, past GOP efforts to woo women, blacks, gays, Latinos: they
still pay lip service to the notion of attracting these voters, but that never
seems to translate into actual policy. Now they just want to keep those groups
from voting at all. Or, at best, they want the votes of these groups, but don’t
want to give them anything in return. They would rather do anything, than move
an inch to the left.
This is what happens, when facts, logic and reality
don’t matter to you. “We conservatives are the only sane people in this
country, and if those damn voters are too stupid to see that, then we’ll just
take them out of the loop! It’s for their own good! Democracy is over-rated,
especially when we lose!”
No comments:
Post a Comment