June, 2003
The Nation
by ROBERT L. BOROSAGE
These
are dog days for Democrats. The top-gun President continues to ride high in the
polls, despite the chaos in Iraq. The Rolls-Royce reactionaries
who control Washington lavish tax breaks and no-bid contracts on those who pay
for their party. The Democratic presidential candidates spend energy debating
who is "electable" rather than where they want to take the country. And,
inevitably, the poisonous sectarians of the Democratic Leadership Council have
launched their annual corporate fundraising drive by trashing "elitist,
interest-group liberalism." At least they provide unwitting comic relief by
asserting that the only electable Democrats are Bush-lite politicians like
their own unlikely Joe Lieberman, tireless tribune of the CEO stock option,
censorious scold of the Lynne Cheney-William Bennett school of moral
indignation and hairshirt preacher of fiscal austerity in the face of global
deflation. "Real Democrats," DLC's leaders Al From and Bruce Reed helpfully
inform us in their most recent memo, "are real people." Thanks for that.
Progressives would profit more by studying the way the New Right responded to
life in the political wilderness. In the mid-1970s, Richard Nixon was exiled in
disgrace and Democrats controlled everything--the presidency, both houses of
Congress and the judiciary. The liberal era that conservatives had hoped to end
seemed to have new life. At that moment, New Right strategists made two major
decisions: to build an independent capacity to drive their message, their
values and their movement into the political debate and to take over the
Republican Party from green-eyeshade moderates and make it their vehicle. The
New Right scorned the Republican DLCs of the time and instead built an
independent, cause-based political movement.
New
Right donors--Coors, Mellon Scaife, Richardson and others--didn't pour their
money into places like the American Enterprise Institute, the established voice
of corporate America. Instead they funded the openly right-wing
Heritage Foundation, which redbaited liberal leaders; championed Star Wars,
supply-side economics and school vouchers; and assailed welfare, abortion
rights and affirmative action. Heritage minted not new policy ideas but timely
political ammunition--message, propaganda lines, factoids--to arm New Right
legislators and activists, and it aggressively promoted its advocates on op-ed
pages and talk shows.
Rather
than invest primarily in the Republican Party, the New Right backed the Moral
Majority, galvanizing the emerging right-wing evangelical movement under the
leadership of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others to preach family values
and opposition to abortion. It built its own network of independent PACs, led
by the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Aided by Richard
Viguerie's innovative direct-mail operation, it forged an independent capacity
to recruit and train candidates who shared its values. For the most part, New
Right adherents rejected third-party politics as likely to prolong liberal
dominance and made the GOP their vehicle, with Ronald Reagan as their champion.
The
result not only transformed the Republican Party, it helped produce a sea
change in American politics, driving the debate to the right and creating the
basis for the conservative era that has defined the past twenty years of
American politics. And trimmers like the DLC drifted further and further to the
right in an elusive search for the "center" of American politics.
The rise
of the New Right wasn't solely due to its own organizing. Liberalism failed to
meet the challenges facing the country in the 1970s--stagflation, growing
pressures on families, America held hostage. And the
successes--and excesses--of the triumphant movements of the 1960s generated a
furious reaction that fueled New Right organizing. But it was only by
organizing independently that the right was able to grab the opportunity
created by these dynamics.
Today,
conservatism is failing to meet the challenges facing the country: global
stagnation and instability, inequality, corporate corruption, pressures on
families, America terrorized. And the excesses of the
self-described "movement conservatives" who dominate this Administration are
generating an impassioned response from the besieged--the women's, civil
rights, antiwar, environmental and union movements.
Progressives have only begun to build the independent capacity to drive this
energy into the political debate. Democrats are creating a well-funded center
to promote an aggressive Democratic message against Bush that will be headed by
John Podesta, Bill Clinton's skilled former Chief of Staff. But progressives
should focus on building up independent institutions like the Economic Policy
Institute, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Institute for
America's Future (of which I am co-director) that will challenge
conservative ideology frontally while providing ideas and ammunition for
progressives. Just as Viguerie pioneered direct-mail building and funding the
New Right, MoveOn.org, Working Assets and other groups are pioneering new
web-based communications and fundraising to help build the new progressive
activism. And just as the New Right created the Moral Majority and the
Christian Coalition to mobilize new activists and voters, unions are building
independent vehicles to reach beyond union members, including the Partnership
for America's Families, headed by former AFL-CIO political director Steve
Rosenthal, which will focus on registering and engaging African-Americans,
Latinos and working women in contested presidential states.
Progressive political action groups include, notably, the powerhouse EMILY's
List, which is responding to the threat posed to choice and women's rights by
working with the progressive community to build women's political clout at the
state and federal level. Progressive Majority, headed by Gloria Totten, is
launching a sophisticated plan to recruit, train and support the next
generation of Paul Wellstones while extending its network of web-based small
donors who can provide seed funds for progressive challengers. And the new
Wellstone Action, a new center formed by his family and friends, will train
organizers for grassroots issue campaigns and organizing drives.
In
Congress, progressive leaders, including Dick Durbin and Jon Corzine in the
Senate and Jan Schakowsky and George Miller in the House, have launched
independent efforts to take off the gloves and challenge the extremism and the
corruption of this Administration. Backed by a coordinated message, aggressive
communications strategies and targeted issue campaigns, they will help generate
the "echo effect" so vital to driving an argument through the noise of the
media.
"Real
issues" about "real people" are at stake, as the DLC's memo so helpfully
informs us. But movement conservatives won't be dislodged by the DLC's politics
of pander and positioning. Instead we need to return to a politics of passion
and principle that asserts our values, our ideas and our energy, and develop
the independent capacity to drive our causes into the political debate and the
electoral arena.
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