The Challenge For Dean
by Patrick C. Doherty
Published by TomPaine.com on February 24, 2005
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_ch ... r_dean.php (http://www.tompaine.com/articles/the_challenge_for_dean.php)
[Howard Dean has a lot on his plate. Patrick Doherty says the governor has to add something else: Democratic ideology. Liberal economists and historians agree that the conditions that enabled the New Deal, the Great Society and even Rubinomics have changed so drastically that they are undermining the foundation of the Democratic program. If Dems are to have a fighting chance in 2008, we need the debate to begin now.
[Patrick C. Doherty is senior editor at TomPaine.com. Previously, he spent a decade working on conflict and economic development in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus. His column, Quo Vadis, focuses on America's big picture: where we are, where we're going and how to get there.]
In his speech accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean said he wants to stand up for what Democrats believe. That may be a good slogan for becoming chairman, but now it’s time to get down to business.
Clearly, Mr. Dean has enough to do to rebuild the party's morale, organization, fundraising and discipline. Unfortunately, that's still not enough to win. Outrage, institutions, money and message are all important, but they are an empty shell without a clear and credible plan for governing America.
Mr. Dean has to make big ideas a key priority now because the party can't wait for the 2008 presidential primaries for real debate. A positive Democratic agendaâ€"one that really addresses our problemsâ€"needs more time to take root in the minds of Americans. That said, as chairman, Mr. Dean cannot force policy down the throat of the party. Rather, Mr. Dean's most urgent and important job as the new chairman of the DNC will be to create the space for honest, transparent debate within his party on the direction of the country.
What will that debate look like? Some Democrats, like John Kerry, think the party has the right ideas already and "doesn't need some massive shift." Other Democrats, like The New Republic's  Peter Beinart, think the party needs to rally against 'totalitarian Islam' the same way Democrats coalesced around anti-communism in the early days of the Cold War. At the grassroots, the state Democratic chairmen who threw their weight behind Mr. Dean believe that Democrats will find salvation at the statehouses, rather than inside the Beltway.
Others are beginning to see that the challenge before the Democratic Party is more fundamental. Liberal and progressive ideology, rooted in the economic reforms of the New Deal, the post-war boom and the Great Society “has been undermined by structural changes in the global economy,†as political columnist John Judis wrote recently in The New Republic . Those changes have hit at the party’s traditional base of support by weakening labor unions as they compete with cheap foreign labor. At the same time, our debt-laden economic system makes the party’s post-1964 focus on social welfare seems out of touch.
Former Clinton adviser and economist Brad DeLong explains the conditions that, from 1948 to 1973, allowed our economy to flourish have simply disappeared. Energy is no longer cheap. America is confronted with three significant economic competitors: Europe, Japan and China. Tax policy is now redistributing wealth up instead of building a middle class. The Baby Boom is entering its dotage. Suburbs, once the main driver of prosperity, are now fraught with increasing commutes, unsustainable consumer debt and increasing crime.
James Galbraith  adds that the Clinton-era solution to fix deficits first won’t work this time. The problems are deeper. “Declining deficit forecasts will not ensure stable, low interest rates. And easy money will not suffice to bring us back to full-employment prosperity. Moreâ€"much moreâ€"is going to be needed.â€
As long as America fails to fully recognize these changed conditions, the post-war economy will continue to work against most Americans' interests. Federal housing and highway subsidies keep expanding the boundaries of suburbia, leading to state deficits, underfunded essential services (Medicaid, Head Start, first responders) and damaged families. Our dependence on fossil fuels is destabilizing the planet politically and environmentally. Faced with overseas competition, corporations cannot affordâ€"and refuse to pay forâ€"adequate health care and pension plans. Income inequality and income insecurity are increasing rapidly. The bond traders on Wall Street are warning of a major stock market crash if our consumer and federal debts are not reined in.
Meanwhile, the conservative movement is throwing fuel on the fire. Their present-day corporate coalition includes industries dependent upon public subsidies for their existence: auto companies depend on highway and fuel subsidies. Oil and gas companies rely on U.S. military protection of producing regions. Homebuilders rely on federal mortgage assistance that bias homeowners towards new subdivisions. Investment houses rely on tax-shielded investment products. Mining, forestry and fishing interests rely on the government not charging for the resources they exploit from public lands and waters. ‘Big box’ retailers like Wal-Mart rely on highway, housing, auto and resource subsidies combined.
As foreign competition increases, conservatives dependent on the old economic order are forced to occupy oil- producing nations, destroy our life-sustaining ecosystem and let corporations dismantle their healthcare and pension plans to cut costs. To add insult to injury, conservatives are financing this perverse economy by indebting our children to totalitarian China.
The implications are dire. Yet the Democratic leadership has so far failed to recognize that behind the economic larceny of the Bush administration lies an economic engine that is simply burned out. As long as Democrats resist implicating the post-war formula of sprawl, fossil fuels and corporate welfare, Democrats will be forced to extend that system in vote after vote. On the one hand Dems are happy to vote for more highway bills, more war supplementals, more mortgage assistance and more corporate welfare. But when they complain about Wal-mart, unemployment, inequality and environmental depletion, they do not seek to change the economic causes of the problem.
That’s why it was so important to get an outsider like Dean into the chairmanship of the DNC. As one of the few leaders with responsibility for the big picture, Dean can lead the party beyond the status quo. As an outsider, he can look beyond the old orthodoxies that maintain powerful constituents but add up to a losing national party.
If he doesn’t at least shape a process for building consensus, the outlook is grim. John Kerry cannot reverse course again and adopt a wholly new agenda without charges of flip-flopping. Peter Beinart’s Bush-lite adoption of the war on terror ignores all of the underlying dysfunction and puts all our energy into fighting one symptom. And devolution to the states risks shattering the party into 50 special-interest groups. Delaying that fight until 2008 is sheer folly.
Welcome aboard, Governor Dean.
QuoteDemocrats coalesced around anti-communism in the early days of the Cold War
The problem in my mind is that a chunk of the Democrat Party of today was the radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) types of the 60s who weren't the ones to coalesce around anti-communism, and later were to see Che Guevara as an emblem of "freedom" from the clutches of the Democrats of the late 40s and early 50s. They've grown up, but only so much. If they wanted to show respect for the principle of their forefathers in the party they would look a little more seriously at the Zell Miller's among the Democrats (if they haven't been chased off yet, which I fear they have).
Ok, I'm out, that's a little to much debate for me. Point made.
~Michael~
yeah, they should show respect for Miller, and Duke, and the Klan, and all the rest of them what made the Southern Democratic Party such a force for good in Amurrikkka :lol:
Ok, remove the last sentence (which quite obviously wasn't the main point). Now what say ye?
~Michael~
"Ok, I'm out, that's a little to much debate for me. Point made. "
Hey dendro, I meant take out the last sentence of the main paragraph of which you offered justified criticism. I wasn't meaning to engaging in debate, only asking what you thought of the real meat of my comments.
Oh well.
~Michael~
the Democratic party in the 60s were never led by SDS people or sentiments...one only has to look at the nomination of hubert humphrey in '68 while the students, progressives, and radicals raged and bled outside on the streets of chicago...at best the Democrats have embraced moderately liberal charismatic figures who for a time swung them at least toward the center from right...JFK, RFK, Carter, Clinton...but for the most part it's like the dude says in the movie "Waking Life": do you want the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right...
i saw a bathroom graffitto in my favorite punked out Seattle coffeeshop last night...to the effect that real progressives need to leave the Democrats behind...i'm wondering if i don't agree with this...Dean will either uproot a lot of bad in the Dems and reinvent them or he will get swallowed up little by little, end up loving Big Brother like the rest of them...
a true multi-party system in the US? break the duopoly logjam keeping us from any real choice in our potential leaders? i'm hopeful it will happen eventually, but i don't think it will be top down change, but the grass roots growing some fangs and forcing the issue...
Hi cenacle, I can't say I disagree with you about the way the Democrat party is today. Progressives got a long way to go that's for sure. And certainly to be honest, rather than simply gain political power, they should loose the Democrat party. I won't hold my breathe though.
But just as an aside, I noted how the "Democrat Party of today was the radical SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) types of the 60s," not that the Democrat leaders of the 60s were part of of the SDS or affiliated groups. Certainly those who were polically active in the 60s in these sorts of groups have melded into the Democrat Party more than any other...except of course David Horowitz.
~Michael~
sorry Mike, I shouldn't have posted on this thread, my comments are too obscure.
What big wig democrat party folks are former SDS members? What's an SDS type? I think folks involved in the civil rights movement have had a lot of activity in the party, but I'd hardly call that movement "radical".
Tom Hayden (Hanoi Janes' ex ole man) was one of the founders and leaders of SDS... He morphed into mainsteam Dem politics decades ago... I think that when the groups involved in the political struggles of the 60's are discussed today, that alot of casual observers tend to link groups like SDS into some vaguely defined idea of some "firebrand-revolutionary-Che Gueverra types".... While that may well be true of some participants involved in The Weather Underground/Symbionese Liberation Army; it just is not very factual to lump the predominantly WASP, upper middle class college activists into the same progressive pie as someone such as Bernadette Dorn, Huey Newton, George Jackson, and others.... It's my belief that even while all the 'progressives' where railing against the government, the man etc, back in tha day; that there was indeed a major disconnect between what was essentially a segment of the moneyed and privileged, and those of lesser economic and educational status... Basically, the "class Struggle" was just as real in "the Movement". as it was in the larger, more powerful ruling class that all the activists in Revolution continually bemoaned............ I figure it's a main reson that the "Movement" did not win over more converts and effect much more change............ senorsal ..........{Viva La Revolution!!!}---------- :wink: