The Blame Game
Five days into the Bush presidency and the Democratic gloves have come off. No, they aren't attacking Bush. These are Democrats. They're fighting with each other.
Wednesday in Washington, the Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist branch of the Democratic Party, hosted a panel discussion titled Why Gore Lost and What's Next for Democrats. The centerpiece of the panel was a survey done in November by Mark Penn, pollster for the DLC and both Clintons. The poll showed, to nobody's great surprise, that Al Gore lost the election because he abandoned many of the "new Democrat themes of the DLC" and failed to stress and get credit for the economic success of the Clinton years.
The group's chairman Al From made the point in the DLC magazine Blueprint. "The vice president's strategic decision to run at arms length from the Clinton-Gore record was costly. An astonishing 65 percent of voters said the country was on the right track, but Al Gore won just 61 percent of them."
Adding spice to the forum were Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, and Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow of the Century Foundation, who made the populist argument of the Gore campaign, pinning blame for the loss on Clinton fatigue and Gore's poor performance as a candidate.
The argument between groups representing the Democratic "base" (African Americans, union members, feminists, liberals and urban voters) versus the "new Democrats" (more upscale, suburban, white and male) has been central in the party for the last 30 years.
The DLC, once dubbed the Democratic Leisure Class by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was formed in the early '80s to give moderates and Southerners a voice in a party they felt was dominated by the left. Bill Clinton latched onto the group as a way to mask his McGovernite roots, and used the DLC structure and think tank to build his successful campaign in 1992. Ironically, Al Gore and his policy advisors have more authentic DLC credentials than Clinton, which is why the DLC was particularly pained at the way his presidential messages were shaped.
The main thrust of the Penn poll and the DLC argument is that given the economic boom of the Clinton years, Al Gore should have won the election hands down. He lost, the argument goes, because he resorted to the old populist themes used in the '80s by Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
The DLC contends that Democrats need to expand beyond their traditional base to the wired workers of the information age; that populist arguments are read by the public as too liberal and too favorable to big government; and that the themes of progress and prosperity are more powerful than that of class warfare.
The poll also showed the startling differences in voting behavior between upscale men and women. Women were given a clear reason to vote for Gore on the abortion issue. Upscale males were given no similarly powerful argument by Gore and viewed Bush as more favorale on their issues, especially small government and lower taxes.
The AFL-CIO’s Rosenthal began his defense of the Gore campaign by contending that "Al Gore didn't lose the election," and that the combined votes of Gore and Nader represented a progressive majority in the Untied States. He cited data by ex-DLC and Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg (who worked this time for Gore) showing the positive effects of Gore's "fighting for working families" message in driving up the turnout of union voters and African Americans, and he pointed out that prosperity did not hit everyone. Rosenthal also attacked the poll for ignoring the issue of Clinton fatigue, as well as Gore's weakness in the debates and as a candidate.
Ruy Texiera put it more bluntly: "The winning formula for the Democrats is not DLC or barbarism." It is a theme that blends both sets of arguments, that updates and enhances messages that worked in the 1930s (economic security) and the 1960s (social change); not one that trashes those messages and disses the base.
Rosenthal pointed out that the Republicans had dropped the Gingrich agenda as a campaign issue and that, in fact, Bush co-opted a number of Democratic core issues, like social security and education.
Both sides claimed to be happy that a dialogue had begun, but conceded that this fight would probably not be resolved for many elections to come. And beyond themes, both sides know that the candidate's political skills matter. Rosenthal quoted a union member saying, "Next time, we need to ask candidates, 'Can you hang?'" Not on a noose, but on the street corner. Bill Clinton and George Bush knew how. Al Gore, for all his smarts, just couldn't hang.
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