Judging from the columns I have read over the years and his appearances on TV talk shows, David Broder is a decent guy, thoughtful, well-meaning and modest.
His column in today’s Albuquerque Journal reminds me, though, of his limitations. Since he is vaguely liberal, they are limitations that apply, I fear, to many liberals and the Democratic Party.
Broder reports that two political scientists formerly in the Clinton White, House have drawn a road map to power. It is centrist, he reports, and won’t easily be accepted by the organizations that "control the Democratic party at the grassroots and dominate its fundraising, whether they be Hollywood millionaires or Internet Deaniacs."
It seems these folks "yearn for candidates who would reverse Bush’s direction on everything from Iraq to taxes to gay rights and abortion."
How terrible!
Note, please, that Broder has told us the party should be run by neither its rank-and-file members (grassroots) nor its millionaires. This leaves? Elected officials and other professional politicians in Washington and elsewhere. Yes, the same folks who brought us Al Gore and John Kerry!
Also, that Broder is bieng "practical," shunting policy aside or changing it to win.
Thus, Broder goes on to tell us the political scientists say the party must revise "Democratic doctrine on both national security and social/moral issues."
(If there is Democratic doctrine on national security, I don’t know what it is. Sadly, it's clear the party does not oppose the war on its merits.)
Why revise those doctrines? Because, says Broder, the perceptions that Democrats are weak on terrorism and hostile to the religious has cost them a lot of Catholic votes, particularly Catholic women’s votes.
Conclusion: find a Roman Catholic, preferably a Midwesterner because the experts point out that Midwestern states can swing an election. Somebody with a solid marriage, who goes to church and can express sympathy with those who hate abortion and gay rights.
In other words, Kerry was a stiff. Agreed, but recommending a live candidate is hardly political analysis, no less a path to power.
Broder tells us Tom Vilsack of Iowa, who is Roman Catholic, and Evan Bayh of Indiana, Protestant but otherwise qualified, might fit the bill. He’s less enamoured of Hillary Clinton.
And there you have Broder’s recipe for regaining power. No matter that it takes no account of the GOP’s rightward drift under Bush Jr, leaving Democrats to follow Republicans to the right. Or that it positions the Democrats so close to the Republicans that voters may – once again – decide Republicans can do Republicanism better.
It’s the Clinton strategy all over again – triangulate, find a place between your opponents and your party base. Broder knows it worked for Bill Clinton, but it seems to have escaped him that it’s failed twice since.
Further, he never mentions that the Democratic Party became feeble under Clinton. Or that Clinton’s agenda was only nominally Democratic. What’s the point of winning power to push Republican policies?
Nor does Broder mention the virtue of believing in something, an advantage for George W. Bush in two elections.
But here's the crux of the matter - nowhere in his column does Broder mention corporate power. Surely, it’s obvious that the question before our nation is shall we regain our imperfect democracy or give up, accepting the continued domination of Corporate America? If so, that oversight demonstrates the full bankruptcy of Broder’s thinking. Of liberal thinking, maybe, in 2005.
How many elections must Democrats lose before they decide to offer a choice, not an echo.