|
Press Coverage - 2004 American Democracy Conference
Kansas City Star
Democrats look for message, messenger to win back power and influence policy
By Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Which should come first for Democrats as they retool for the future, message or messenger?
In their first meeting since their dark Election Day, Democrats will gather in Florida this weekend desperate to find a way back to power. Their focus will be on a search for a new messenger in the form of a national party chairman to voice the party's ideals on such issues as national defense, Social Security and tax restructuring.
But some Democratic insiders say the search for a chairman puts too much emphasis on the wrong end of the equation. Instead, they say, the party should settle on a core message, much as Republicans did a generation ago when they became the party of smaller government, lower taxes and strong national defense.
"Who is chair won't make much difference," said Rep. Brad Carson, D-Okla., who last month lost a bid for the Senate. "The problems the Democratic Party has are so profound they require a strategic change."
To many like Carson, the party must look at much more than who will appear on Sunday morning talk shows and how much money the party can raise, though both those jobs are important.
Democrats need to settle bigger questions first: Is their party for a strong national defense or is it deeply antiwar? Is it a party of the two coasts or will it compete for the South and the heartland? Does it stand chiefly for preserving the status quo, such as leaving Social Security unchanged, or does it offer new ideas?
"We had a message problem," said Jim Jordan, a strategist who served briefly as Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign manager. "We are too coastal, too urban and most of all too dovish. ... The public simply didn't trust us to keep them safe."
Though he would never again be welcome at a Democratic gathering - he endorsed President Bush and spoke at the Republican National Convention - retiring Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia recently wrote a book titled "A National Party No More." He argued that Democrats effectively wrote off conservative parts of the country by embracing an ever more liberal agenda on defense and social issues.
Carson echoed that point. He noted, for example, that he had a conservative voting record on issues such as gay marriage, but he still was a Democrat, and that made him suspect in his state.
"People said, 'You'd be a better senator ... but you'd deliver the Senate to Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton,'" Carson said. "We would be wise to turn to less-polarizing people."
That's not to say that many Democrats want their party to echo Republicans.
"We're a pro-choice party. We're a civil rights party. We're proud of that. That's not going to change," said Mark Brewer, the state chairman in Michigan and chair of the Association of State Democratic Chairs, which is hosting the Friday-Saturday meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
But absent a simple, cohesive message, the party is prone to jumping around in search of issues. In the final weeks of the 2004 campaign, for example, Kerry adopted a "ripped from the headlines" approach that sought to use bad news - from setbacks in Iraq to the death of actor and stem-cell activist Christopher Reeve - against Bush.
"We're seen as the party of contrivance," Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman said at a recent conference sponsored by the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "We should stand up for the people who don't normally have a voice" on bread-and-butter issues such as education and health care, "but people don't sit around the kitchen table and talk about stem cells."
Steve Jarding, who ran Democrat Mark Warner's successful 2001 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, noted Warner's success in stifling some of his party's stands as he courted conservative rural voters, a target considered key to future national prospects.
"He maintained distance from the polarizing issues our base wanted us to talk about," Jarding said. "It's not that Mark Warner wasn't pro-choice, he was. He just didn't want to talk about it."
What should Democrats talk about?
Simply opposing the Republican agenda isn't enough, suggested Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.
"In 2002 and 2004, Democrats were the party out of power and by definition should have been the party of change," he said in an essay published Wednesday. "Yet they failed to provide credible alternatives to Republican policies. . . . We, the party of landmark reforms like Social Security, Medicare, Pell Grants and a balanced budget, allowed ourselves to be positioned as the party of the status quo."
He suggested that Democrats offer a pro-family alternative to Bush's expected proposals to overhaul the tax code.
In a speech Wednesday that previewed his possible candidacy for party chairman, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean urged Democrats to fight for change.
"We have to learn to punch our way off the ropes," Dean said. "We have to set the agenda. We should not hesitate to call for reform: reform in elections, reform in health care, reform in education, reforms that promote ethical business practices."
Ultimately, several Democrats think the party needs a simple but sweeping set of principles to guide it.
"Shared responsibility, shared opportunity," suggested Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "We have to return to some set of values."
2004 American Democracy Conference Home
_____________________________________________
Copyright © 2004 U.Va. Center for Politics. All rights reserved.
|
