Dems experiment with “ideas”
Washington Post - June 21, 2006
The Democrats Reassess Effort to Win Battle of Ideas Includes New Web Site and Journal By Dan Balz
This is idea week for the Democratic Party.
On Monday, three veteran party strategists — William Galston, Stan
Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira — launched a Web site ( http://
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org ) with the goal of generating fact-
based, empirically tested theories that might help Democrats resolve
their policy differences and win more elections.
Yesterday saw another launch party, this time for Democracy, a
quarterly journal that also will be available online ( http://
www.democracyjournal.org ). The magazine will be edited by Andrei
Cherny and Kenneth Baer, two younger veterans of recent party wars.
Their goal is do for the Democrats what journals such as Public
Interest did for conservatives and Republicans decades ago, which is
to bring forward big ideas to challenge what they regard as the tired
thinking that grips Democratic politicians.
On Thursday, NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network) will convene its
annual conference. NDN, founded by Simon Rosenberg, has recently been
in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists,
liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists, all with
an eye toward tipping the political balance back in a Democratic
direction.
Those in the middle of these events share a similar conviction, which
is that for too long Republicans have been winning the battle of
ideas (and often campaign strategy) in American politics, in part
because conservatives invested in what is now a well-funded
infrastructure of organizations that have produced ideas, thinkers,
publications, strategists, and politicians who now control the White
House, Congress and increasingly the federal judiciary.
There is also a belief shared at least by some of the participants
that Democrats have ridden for too long on what are the fumes of the
New Deal and the Great Society, which sustained Democrats for half a
century. The first issue of Democracy offers articles on rethinking
how to finance the health-care system, the economic and security
challenges posed by differing birthrates around the world, and
alternatives to redistribution to reduce inequality. The Democratic
Strategist provides essays on competence as a campaign theme,
protecting voting rights and demography’s impact on politics.
Doug Hattaway, a Democratic communications consultant who worked for
Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000, recalled a moment of
epiphany during a focus group of Democratic operatives and marketing
professionals he attended last year. The participants were asked to
say what Democratic accomplishments they were most proud of. Their
responses filled several pages on a flip chart set up in the focus
group facility. “We all realized there was nothing there within the
past 30 years,” Hattaway said.
Many Democratic politicians are still tied to past glory and what
worries some of the progressives trying to generate new ideas is that
elected officials are divorced from what is a lively debate-in-the-
making on national security and domestic challenges. “Somehow or
another this conversation does not really make its way to Democratic
politicians very much,” said Michael Tomasky, editor of the liberal
American Prospect.
The lone exception he cited was Bill Clinton and his presidency.
Baer offered a sharper critique of the politicians, criticizing as
poll-driven and uninspired the 2006 campaign agenda issued by
congressional Democrats. “You could go through it line by line and
write the poll questions that generated each line,” he said.
The people in the middle of the Democrats’ idea week seem to agree on
another point, which is that the two-decade-old battle between party
centrists and liberals may have run its course. “I think the old
centrist-liberal debate in the party is to some extent dead,”
Teixeira said. “I think people have lost interest in that.”
Galston noted that, while he is a charter member of the centrist
movement, he split with many of his friends at the Democratic
Leadership Council by opposing the war in Iraq. Rosenberg has been
looking for fusion between center and left, between old strategist
and new bloggers. On everything from fighting terrorism to assuring
economic security in a time of globalization, many of these activists
believe, the party will have to put aside left-right battles of the
past and come up with fresh ideas.
It was left to some conservatives to offer Democrats comfort.
Historian Francis Fukuyama, who has broken with other neo
conservatives over Iraq, said the conservative era may be ending. “It
does seem to me that the country is way overdue for one of those big
pendulum swings back,” he said.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, also
reminded the progressives that internecine battles can be
constructive, recalling vicious fights over the years that he said
resulted in stronger conservative movement. “It’s a big mistake when
people lament that, gee, there’s too much infighting on our side,” he
said.