Democratic Myths
by Chris Bowers, Wed May 04, 2005 at 01:04:11 PM EDT
The Inoculation Myth. One reason John Kerry got the Democratic nomination was that many Democrats thought his Vietnam service would inoculate him against the charge that Democrats were not sufficiently tough to conduct the war on terror. It didn't work. But many Democrats appear to have concluded in the aftermath of the 2004 election that the solution to the party's problems is to have more and better inoculation. Let's act even tougher on national security! And let's inoculate ourselves on values! And on religion! And on culture!
This seems no more likely to work in 2005 and beyond than it did in 2004. Voters still want to know what Democrats stand for and inoculation, pretty much by definition, cannot provide that.
The Unity Myth. Another approach among Democrats is to insist that little needs to be re-thought--the key is for Democrats to unite around what they already believe. As Mark Schmitt pointed out recently, this approach confuses a desirable kind of unity (partisan unity in action) with an undesirable kind of unity (agreement on program and ideas without vigorous debate and discussion). Democrats need far more debate and discussion about ideas, not far less.
The Mobilization Myth. A hardy perennial in Democratic circles, the mobilization approach insists that Democrats' problems can be overcome by a sufficiently high level of mobilization among Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups. The fact of the matter is, however, that the Democratic coalition was pretty highly-mobilized in the 2004 election, especially in the battleground states. The fatal problem was that they couldn't convert the considerable dissatisfaction with Bush among independents and moderates into large enough margins among these groups to win the election. That's basically the same problem facing Democrats today: how to turn the "Revolt of the Middle" into solid support in the center of the electorate. Mobilization, by definition, can't solve this problem.
Sorry, Democrats, there's just no substitute for good ideas and fresh approaches. It's time to jettison these myths and buckle down to the real work of change--serious change--in what Democrats say to voters.
First, I'd like to say that I'm a little surprised Ruy would post something like this after turning off comments on his blog. I mean, this is the sort of post that begs for a huge comment thread. Secondly, I'd like to agree with one of his main conclusions, that we must present a real agenda of reform to the public in order to improve.Third, I'd like to strongly agree with the inoculation myth. The notion that someone's title and personal history can compensate for broader image problems facing the party has always struck me as hopelessly gimmicky and ineffective. It also seems to assume that the Republican Noise Machine won't go to great lengths to distort the personal history of any major Democrat.
Fourth, sure framing and mobilization will not achieve all of our goals, but surely better framing and better mobilization will help, won't they? I think it is fairly obvious that these are always things we need to try to do better, even if we also need to realize that they are not cure-alls.
Overall, however, I actually do not believe that Ruy's solution, changing what we tell voters, is enough. I believe that our problems are even more fundamental than our message, and in a post-national consensus era are directly tied to the ideological gap between conservatism and liberalism. We can talk about message and framing and mobilization and unity and reform and electability until the cows come home, but quite frankly I believe that Democrats are losing elections before they begin because of the general ideological composition of the electorate and of the nation.
As far as I can tell, the main problem facing Democrats is that conservatives, when compared to liberals, have superior organizational control and power over what Louis Althusser famously called Ideological State Apparatuses and what on this blog I have taken to calling ideological conversion machines. To put this another way, I believe that conservatives are largely in control of those mechanisms that determine an individual's ideological outlook, which these days is largely determinative of how an individual ends up voting. I believe that our problems are growing particuarly severe when it comes to four specific ideological machines:
- Education While education is the most unionized profession / industry in the country, and while voters with a post-graduate degree favor Democrats, outside of actual educators liberals are getting crushed by conservative organizing within the field of education. This is particularly true when it comes to on-campus student organizing in colleges and universities, where conservative student organizing is exponentially more advanced than liberal student organizing. This is also the case among school board seats that largely determine the curriculum of primary and secondary schools. It has been a decades-long priority among the Christian right to capture and dominate school boards, again with little organized liberal opposition outside of teacher unions. Of course, this hasn't stopped some factions of the Democratic party from assisting in the demonizing of teacher's unions which remain pretty much our only bulwark against total conservative domination of the American educational system.
- Labor Speaking of unions, we must increase union density, or we will continue to lose ground in another major area of ideological influence: the workplace. While union members tend to have a pro-Democratic partisan index of over twenty points, union density in the American workplace has steadily declined for the past forty years. If this situation is not reversed, liberalism will be facing a near-total collapse of influence over one of the nation's most powerful ideological conversion machines.
- Media. I expect all of us here know about The Republican Noise Machine by now, so there is no need to explain it in detail. It simply goes without saying that we must match or surpass the Republican Noise Machine or else conservatism will continue to dominate the nation's political discourse, which is an undeniably important ideological conversion machine.
- Religion While I have written in the past that long-term religious demographics clearly favor liberalism, .the fact remains that over the past three decades right-wing religious organizing has far surpassed that seen on left. During that time period, white Christians have become significantly more conservative, and considering the current imbalance of organizing within religious circles that trend will almost certainly continue. If this does happen, any gain Democrats make in this area from demographic trends will be significantly muted, if not entirely wiped out. The religious left absolutely must begin to organize voters of faith on an equal level to conservative efforts or else Democrats will continue to surrender yet another important ideological conservation machine.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on what Ruy wrote. I'm sure you all have some too.
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