The Center Folds

High noon for the New Democrats

Joel Kotkin from the February 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

In the end, however, the electorate wasn't fooled by what proved to be essentially an exercise in deception. In political terms, the chickens came home to roost in a big way: The southerners in the DLC suffered the most punishing defeats. The 1994 landslide against Clintonism means, among other things, that the South has now shifted, probably for the next generation, into the Republican camp. The old DLC dream of building a truly national party with a strong southern base is now as much a lost cause as the Confederate States of America.

In the rest of country, where the battle for the future of the Democratic Party lies, some DLCers, such as Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, withstood the onslaught (as did centrists such as New York's Pat Moynihan, California's Dianne Feinstein, and Nebraska's Bob Kerrey). But the bulk of the survivors by far were those from the party's ultra-left wing, particularly House members from safe, often heavily minority districts. Because they are relatively insulated from the country's overwhelming rejection of the state, they feel no compulsion to move from their hard and fast neosocialist world view.

The survival of the left suggests that the New Democrats' problems extend well beyond the White House to the very essence of Democratic constituencies and fundamental ideology. Until New Democrats are willing to take on the party itself, even to the point of breaking ranks, the Democratic Party will continue in its great leap leftward.

That's because the party itself, both in Washington and most key states, remains unreformed. As it has for at least a generation, the party draws most of its finances and institutional support from government-dependent corporate interests, union bosses, poverty warlords, feminists, and environmental zealots.

This pattern is particularly clear in the Clinton administration's appointment process. It's true that Supreme Court and other high-profile nominees have had a vaguely New Democrat flavor. But the regional bureaucracies at places such as the Department of Labor, Housing and Urban Develoment, and the Environmental Protection Agency are perhaps at their most left-leaning since the New Deal. Unable to get new policies through an increasingly conservative legislature, these bureaucrats are likely to prove more determined than ever to impose a left-leaning agenda through administrative means.

For New Democrats, those appointments--the last tool for imposing Clinton's own personal political agenda--will make it difficult to show even the slightest "loyalty" to the White House. In California, for example, no political leader interested in economic growth could possibly do anything but fight draconian EPA edicts which threaten the future of everything from the state's ports to the continued prosperity of its huge agribusiness complex. Other administrative policies have sought to block popular measures aimed at curbing panhandlers who have chased away business and commerce from the heart of cities across the country. Even more disastrously, Democratic appointees are likely to continue pursuing their quota-oriented "racial justice" agenda, something that seems to guarantee the party permanent minority status, both in terms of its core constituency and its electoral status.

The leftward cast of Clinton commissars has natural allies in remnants of the Democratic congressional presence. The Congressional Black Caucus--representing largely black and poor welfare-oriented constituencies--now stands as a veritable colossus in the House delegation, comprising roughly one-fifth of the Democratic delegation. At the same time, left-wing senators such as Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Paul Wellstone (Minn.), and Ted Kennedy (Mass.) now face a diminished number of moderate Democrats.

As a result, the internal debate in the party is likely to be dominated by those who explain the 1994 catastrophe as essentially a failure to motivate the party's "base" around expanded social welfare. Electorally, this is nonsense--as evidenced by the three-to-one defeat of a California ballot measure calling for a single-payer health plan--but that hardly means that the left won't continue stumping for its neosocialist policies.

Indeed, new disasters for the party, particularly in California, seem almost inevitable. Democrats generally opposed Proposition 187, which would cut off schooling and non-emergency medical services for illegal immigrants, but the measure passed overwhelmingly. The anti-quota California Civil Rights Initiative, scheduled for the March 1996 ballot, will lead the left even further out on the racialist fringe. The Democrats are likely to be in the unpopular position of defending minority quotas even though Prop. 187's passage shows California's predominately Anglo electorate is far from persuaded by those who wave the "bloody shirt" of racism.

Given a chance to let their fantasies run wild, the left wing of the Democratic Party can only serve to destroy the party as a serious national force. The politics that work in safe districts in Manhattan, Madison, or Marin County cannot possibly work in the edge cities, small towns, and expanding suburbs where most of the electorate now resides.

Ultimately, to survive as a movement, the New Democrats can only hope to combat such party elements by spelling out clearly their own sweeping ideological agenda. Although they can ally with the White House on such things as tough welfare reform and GATT, they must also unveil a muscular, centrist philosophy and platform capable of rallying moderate Republicans, independents, and disaffected Democrats into a powerful political force, perhaps even laying the foundation for a new political party.

This new ideology must go well beyond the kind of ameliorative approaches often associated with New Democrats. It is no longer enough simply to strive to make Washington's bureaucracies more effective. This tendency, notes political scientist Hale, has cast the DLC as little more than advocates for a "reconstruction of liberalism," or to paraphrase an old beer commercial, everything you want from a Democrat--and less.

The rise to power of clever ideologues such as Newt Gingrich necessitates an intellectually radical alternative perspective that goes well beyond soft-selling liberal dogma. More than simply "reinventing government," New Democrats must take up the potent issue of devolution of government services away from Washington toward state and local governments. The natural resistance of some big-government Republicans, who will want to prop up Washington now that they are finally in power, could provide a tremendous opening to outflank the GOP.

At the same time, New Democrats must also begin to fashion an economic program attuned to the needs of the emerging entrepreneurial economy, particularly in California and the Northeast, where the party is still competitive. Breaking with the old class base of union members and government-dependent industries such as construction and aerospace, the New Democrats must develop tax and regulatory strategies critical to entrepreneurial ventures in high-tech industries such as software and multimedia, specialized manufacturing in fields as diverse as medical instruments, computers, textiles, and machine tools, and high-value-added services such as entertainment.

This strategy demands a dramatic shift from the tactics taken by the Democratic Party--and even some DLCers--under the disastrous stewardship of Clinton. While White House (and occasional DLC) pollster Stan Greenberg advises the party to target largely older, lower-middle-class Perotistas, its largest potential constituency actually lies among the mostly affluent baby boomers working in the new information-age economy, particularly in metropolitan urban regions. This new constituency is made up largely of people whose experiences have been shaped in the post-bureaucratic economic environment of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They are natural supporters of a program built around political decentralization, deregulation, free trade, and public secularism.