E.J. Dionne asserts in this op/ed that the Democrats have a self-image problem and will be unable to build a "durable majority" until they find a solution.
I disagree. The problem with the Democrat Party is that it is a coalition of narrow special interest groups with scant overlapping interests. Thankfully for them, Bush-hatred has provided somewhat of a common cause these past six years (of course, they've also had the "it sucks to be out of power" cause for a bit longer). But a party which pieces together a coalition whose members' only common objective is keeping/obtaining power is fragile; and the "coalition" will tend to fade from view in all but Presidential elections or campaigns with rock-star candidates (as Dionne asserts happens to Dems).
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7 years ago
2 comments:
"The problem with the Democrat Party is that it is a coalition of narrow special interest groups with scant overlapping interests."
The exact same thing could be said about the Republican party.
You have the nativist anti-immigration forces led by Tom Tancredo. These people tend to be more populist and less inclined to support Free trade or even the war in Iraq (think Pat Buchanan).
You have the Religious nuts led by Bush himself, who think 5 day old blastocysts are morally equivilant to Jewish holocaust victims.
You have your country club Republicans who will latch onto any popular cause, so long as it doesn't hurt their financial well being and will be a catalyst for more Tax Cuts.
You have a handful of moderate-liberal Republicans in the Northeast who are increasingly becoming endangered because of the takeover of the party by radicals in the Southeast.
The Republicans are now concerned about maintaining their lucrative control over Government. They have abandoned all precepts of smaller gov't or fiscal discipline in pursuit of maintaining power.
Sure, you could say the same thing about the GOP, but it wouldn't be true. We are a consensus party, not monolithic. The only consensus in the Democrat Party is not wanting to be out of the driver's seat.
Homosexuals and Union members of old? Environmentalists and Union members of old? Union members of old and feminists? Homosexuals and African-Americans? African-Americans and the Educrats? BigLabor and the open-borders folks? What is their common ground?
I don't share Bush's penchant for compromise (on gov't programs, in particular) and I believe it is biting him in the political backside (though he has been elected president twice and I haven't), but it can be fairly characterized as giving and taking in the interest of moving in the right direction, policy-wise.
What the Democrats are facing (and Dionne misses this point) is that in the absence of overarching principles of governance, it is harder and harder to organize a party around the principle "what's in it for me."
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