In December 2004, Howard Dean spoke at GWU about the future of the party. There was sort a vacuum after our November loss. He was then only thinking about running for chairman. He had some powerful words on what the party needed to do.
Pushing off the ropes
Here in Washington, it seems that every time we lose an election, there's a consensus reached among decision-makers in the Democratic Party is that the way to win is to be more like Republicans.
I suppose you could call that a philosophy, and this is the name of that philosophy: 'if you don't beat 'em, then join them.'
I'm not gonna make a prediction -- but if we accept that philosophy this time around, in four years from now another Democrat will be standing right here giving this same speech. We cannot win by being "Republican-lite." We've tried it; it does not work.
We got lucky. We had a Democrat win the White House by sounding very much like a Democrat should. And by using the very tactics mentioned in the next part of Dean's 2004 speech.
The question is not whether we move to the left or to the right. The question is not about our direction. We need to start focusing on our destination.
There are some practical elements to the destination.
The destination of the Democratic Party requires that it be financially viable-- we're able to raise money not just from big donors but small contributors, not just through dinners and telephone solicitations and direct mail, but also through the Internet and person-to-person outreach.
The destination of the Democratic Party means making it a party that can communicate with its supporters and with all Americans. Politics is at its best when we create and inspire and sustain a sense of community. The tools that were pioneered in our campaign -- like blogs, and meetups, and most importantly, community-building -- are just a start. We have to use all the power and potential of technology as part of an aggressive outreach to meet and include voters, to work with the state parties, and influence media coverage.
And of course the most practical, and important destination is winning elective office. But we have to do that at every level of government. The way to rebuild the Democratic Party is not from the consultants down, it is from the ground up.
That was an impressive speech. He ran for chair, won, and began to employ those tactics to win. He said then that in 2008 we would have a Democrat back in the White House. We do. A very good man and a good Democrat.
But now it appears that Dean's efforts are not going to be mentioned by party leaders at all. That's disturbing, but he's big boy and can handle it. It does bother me because I see it as a sort of betrayal of efforts that changed the course of the party. I think it needs to be talked about.
There is more that was said in 2005. Change a few words around, add a name or two, and it fits right into the 2008 scenario....except we won. BUT the progressives, the left, the liberals, are now being warned just as we were then.
Heed his words.
Robert Borosage wrote this column in The Nation in January 2005. He was sending a message to progressive groups that we had just begun to organize and fight. We had lost the election, and it was easy to be downhearted about that time in January. He was warning us not to give up, not to be complacent, and to keep working for change.
Borosage, turn up the heat.He says at first after the loss, we were on the same page on what needed to be done to hold Bush's feet to the fire. Centrists and progressives alike...but only for a while.
For a nanosecond after November's election defeat, the Democratic unity forged by the radical provocations of George W. Bush seemed intact. From the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council to Howard Dean's new Democracy for America, Democrats drew similar conclusions from the election about what needed to be done: Challenge the right in the so-called red states and develop a compelling narrative that speaks to working people--don't simply offer a critique of Bush and a passel of "plans." Champion values, not simply policy proposals. Don't compromise with Bush's reactionary agenda. Expose Republican corruption, while pushing electoral reform. Stand firm on long-held social values, from women's rights to gay rights. Confront Bush's disastrous priorities at home and follies abroad.
But this brief interlude of common sense and purpose quickly descended into rancor and division. Peter Beinart of The New Republic and Al From of the DLC rolled out the tumbrels once more, calling on Democrats to purge liberalism of the taint of MoveOn.org, Michael Moore and the antiwar movement. Apparently anyone who worries about the suppression of civil liberties at home, doubts that the reign of drug lords in Afghanistan represents the dawning of democracy, prematurely opposed the debacle in Iraq or isn't prepared to turn the fight against Al Qaeda terrorists into the organizing principle of American politics is to be read out of their Democratic Party. Then, normally staunch Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi floated for chair of the party former Congressman Tim Roemer, a New Democrat distinguished mostly for his opposition to women's right to choose, his vote to repeal the estate tax and his ignorance of grassroots politics. Consolidating its corporate backing, the DLC solemnly warned against "economic populism" or "turning up the volume on anti-business and class welfare schemes"--despite the corporate feeding frenzy that is about to take place in Washington and Bush's slavish catering to the "haves and have-mores," whom he calls "my base."
He said more.
After a year in which progressives drove the debate, roused and registered the voters, raised the dough and knocked on the doors, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is trying to reassert control. Its assault on MoveOn.org and the Dean campaign--the center of new energy in the party--is reminiscent of 1973, when corporate lobbyist Bob Strauss became head of the party and tossed out the McGovern mailing list, insuring that the party would remain dependent on big-donor funding.
This time, however, the entrenched interests aren't likely to succeed, no matter who becomes party chair. That's because progressives have begun building an independent infrastructure to generate ideas, drive campaigns, persuade citizens, nurture movement progressives and challenge the right. It includes a range of new groups such as MoveOn.org, Wellstone Action, Progressive Majority, the Center for American Progress, Air America, Working America and America Coming Together, along with established groups that have displayed new reach and sophistication such as ACORN, the NAACP, the Campaign for America's Future (which I help direct) and the League of Conservation Voters. These groups--and their state and local allies--came out of this election emboldened, not discouraged. Just as the infrastructure that the right built drove the Republican resurgence, these groups and their activists--not the party regulars or the corporate retainers--will stir the Democratic drink.
Borosage ends with these words:
All stripes of Democrats agree on the need to persuade voters, not simply mobilize the base. But persuasion requires committed activists, passionate in their cause, ready to enlist and challenge their neighbors. Progressives haven't yet made up for the decline of union halls, nor matched the right's ubiquitous media clamor. But the pathbreaking house parties organized by MoveOn.org and the Dean campaign, and the extraordinary training provided by Wellstone Action, provide new models for educating activists and encouraging them to organize their neighbors.
So forget about the chattering classes and the corporate wing of the party, now fantasizing about purging the new energies unleashed in the last election. What matters isn't what they say in Washington, but what progressives do on the ground across the country. We have just begun to build. The radical agenda of the Bush Administration--and its abject failure--will continue to set the stage not for a retreat to the center but for a fierce, passionate reform movement.
We have a great president-elect. We are very lucky. But we need to continue speaking out, lest our voices be marginalized by those whom he chose first to be the gatekeepers.
Many of us here at DU are not just liberals, not just "the left", we are intelligent, well-educated people who know when our party just might take a quick turn in the wrong direction. They really don't want to hear from us right now. And that is the very reason why they need to do so.
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