The Party's Over
Undernews Commentary – By Sam Smith
What happened on November 5, 2002 was the culmination of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party that began more than
a decade ago under the leadership of a group of conservatives, corporadoes, and con men who convinced their political
colleagues that the salvation of the party lay in destroying its purpose.
Called "moving to the center," the recipe had certain similarities to a Saturday Night Live sketch in which an actor
pretends to be George Bush or Trent Lott, but unlike the sketch, it was neither funny nor convincing. It was conceived
by the "Democratic Leadership Council," a group whose underlying message was not leadership but abandon ship and which
chose as its agent a conservative governor of Arkansas of salesman-like charm and conviction.
Clinton had been the beneficiary of what one journalist called the Great Mentioner. He had been noted, remarked upon and
welcomed in the smokeless salons where national politics are created. How one comes to matter in Washington politics is
guided by few precise rules, although in comparison to fifty years ago the views of lobbyists and fundraisers are far
more significant than the opinion, say, of the mayor of Chicago or the governor of Pennsylvania. This is a big
difference; somewhere behind the old bosses in their smoke-filled rooms were live constituents; behind the political
cash lords of today there is mostly just more money and the few who control it.
Thus coming to matter has much less to do with traditional politics, especially local politics, than it once did. Today,
other things count: the patronage of those who already matter, a blessing bestowed casually by one right person to
another right person over lunch at the Metropolitan Club, a columnist's praise, a well-received speech before a
well-placed organization, the assessment of a lobbyist as sure-eyed as a fight manager checking out new fists at the
local gym. There are still machines in American politics; they just dress and talk better.
There is another rule. The public plays no part. The public is the audience; the audience does not write or cast the
play. In 1988, the 1992 play was already being cast. Conservative Democrats were holding strategy meetings at the home
of party fund-raiser Pamela Harriman. The meetings -- eventually nearly a hundred of them -- were aimed at ending years
of populist insurrection within the party. They were regularly moderated by Clark Clifford and Robert Strauss, the Mr.
Fixits of the Democratic mainstream. Democratic donors paid $1,000 to take part in the sessions and by the time it was
all over, Mrs. Harriman had raised about $12 million for her kind of Democrats.
The play was also being cast by the Democratic Leadership Council. Although lacking any official role in the Democratic
Party, the DLC claimed it was the voice of mainstream party thought. In fact, it was primarily a lobby for the views of
southern and other conservative Democrats, yet so successful was its media manipulation that it even got away with
calling its think tank the Progressive Policy Institute.
By the late 1980s there was a wide-spread consensus among both the press and the Democratic leadership that the party's
problems could be traced to several factors:
- The loss of control by party bosses due to excessive democratization of nomination and convention procedures.
- Undue pandering to such traditional constituencies as blacks, liberals, and women.
- The need for a new and far more conservative Democratic platform.
By the 1988 convention, this consensus had taken root. US News & World Report reported: "That the Democrats went beyond all bounds to appear bland and 'normal' is incontrovertible. The
brief, boring and bulletproof platform gave 'platitudinous' new meaning. 'Notice,' complained New York Senator Daniel
Patrick Moynihan, offering only one example, 'that the word city does not appear in our platform. We talk about suburban
hometown American and I figure that doesn't mean the South Bronx.'"
With the rise of this orthodoxy, the media's language changed. What was once a civil rights cause now became "demands of
special interest groups." The conservative Democrats' self-definition as "moderates" or "mainstream" was uncritically
adopted. And "liberal" began to be used, even in purportedly objective articles, as a pejorative. It made someone like
Clinton looked very good.
What followed is presumed to be well known, but isn't. The same journalists who overwhelmingly supported Clinton's
candidacy began writing what amounted to an eight year mythology that created a personal legend even as the party he led
collapsed. Missing from the legend were some key facts about the Clinton administration:
- the unraveling of 60 years of successful Democratic programs
- the discrediting in the public mind of such fundamental liberal programs as social security, economic policy, and
public education. In such ways Clinton served as a warm-up band for the Republicans.
- a replacement of traditional Democratic programs with a smarmy and disingenuous agitprop, most noticeable in Clinton's
handling of his black constituency. The same man who was brought to tears in black churches sent young black males to
prison in unprecedented numbers and escalated a drug war that became more deadly to these blacks than Vietnam had been
to black fighting men.
Of course, you can argue about such things, but there was something else - also unreported - that you couldn't argue
about: the disintegration of the Democratic Party itself. An analysis I did in 1998 found that during Clinton's
administration, the Democrats had lost:
- 48 seats in the House
- 8 seats in the Senate
- 11 governorships
- 1,254 state legislative seats
- Control of 9 legislatures
In addition 439 elected Democrats had joined the Republican Party while only three Republican officeholders had gone the
other way.
While Democrats had been losing state legislative seats on the state level for 25 years, the loss during the Clinton
years was striking. In 1992, the Democrats controlled 17 more state legislatures than the Republicans. After November
2000, the Republicans controlled one more than the Democrats. It was the first time since 1954 that the GOP had
controlled more state legislatures than the Democrats (they tied in 1968).
In fact, no Democratic president since the 19th century suffered such an electoral disintegration of his party as did
Clinton.
This unreported truth helps to explain why the Democrats didn't do better in 2002. The Republicans merely continued
their successful assault on a party that had become hopelessly weakened by an exploitive, ungrounded, self-indulgent
elite that had swept through Democratic politics much like the Enron cavaliers treated the energy industry, not to
mention their own shareholders and employees. They were, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, careless people: "They smashed
up things and creatures and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them
together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
There are few signs the party has figured this out. It still clings to Clinton like a abused spouse in denial and
accepts other leadership that runs the gamut from the unappealing to the indefensible.
For the party to recover, it must divorce itself from the con men who have done it so much damage. It must find its way
back to the gutbucket, pragmatic populism that gave this country Social Security, a minimum wage, veterans' programs,
the FHA, civil rights, and the war on poverty. It must jettison its self-defeating snobbism towards Americans who go to
church or own a gun. It needs to be as useful to the voter in the cubicle as it once was to the voter on the assembly
line. It must find a soul, a passion, and a sense of itself. Most of all, it must get rid of those false prophets and
phony friends who have not only done it so much damage but have left the country fully in the hands of the cruel, the
selfish, the violent, the dumb, and the anti-democratic.
- SAM SMITH
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UNDERNEWS
From the Progressive Review:
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