(Photo by Dustin Ross)

The hopeful optimism of delegates at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston was unmistakable. At the heart of this optimism lies a paradox. Democrats are more impassioned and energized than they have been in some time, yet the various wings of the party are united to an unprecedented degree.

Ordinarily, political passion is associated with an energized party base and squabbles pitting it against party moderates, as Howard Dean’s remarkable primary campaign suggested. But a pervasive anybody-but-Bush sentiment among Democrats — a sentiment that propelled John Kerry to a seemingly unexpected victory in this year’s primaries — has become the dominant feature of the election. Sure, primary voters flirted heavily with Dean and later Edwards.But in the end they voted for the (unsexy) candidate they believed had the best chance of sending Bush packing.

Even though convention delegates tend to be less moderate than other voters, this pragmatic approach to the 2004 election was everywhere you looked among Democrats in Boston. Michigan delegate Cheryl Hadsall, for instance, is concerned with jobs and health care. But her first priority is much more basic: “We need to take back the White House.”  

Similarly, California delegate Judith Katzberg, a nurse who volunteers in a clinic serving the poor and an advocate of universal healthcare coverage and abortion rights, is well aware that the Democratic nominee’s proposal would fall far short of universal coverage. She is also aware that Kerry believes that life begins at conception. Yet she’s willing to make concessions this year, emphasizing that “you have to be pragmatic” first and then “always try to get more.”

Katzberg is hardly alone in this sentiment. Standing in solidarity with the anybody-but-Bush pragmatists, many single-issue interest groups have united under the moniker “America Votes” in an unprecedented campaign to increase voter turnout and boost the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates around the country. Howard Dean, once the beacon of “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” played nice as he stood before delegates at the convention, declaring, “We’re all here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Even hardcore lefties like Michael Moore are urging their supporters not to vote for Ralph Nader to ensure Bush’s defeat.

Biding their time

But because this anti-Bush consensus conceals important rifts within the party, it seems destined to yield to further intra-party battles beyond the election. Should John Kerry and John Edwards triumph in November, progressives who misinterpret the outcome as a mandate for their agenda, rather than a referendum against Bush, run the risk of setting back the party — and the progressive agenda — in the long run.

There are ample signs that party unity will fail to hold after the election.  Despite Representative and former presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich’s proclamation that “Out of many, we Democrats are one,” he waited until the eve of the convention to release his delegates to vote for Kerry. A unanimous nomination eluded Kerry because a number of the delegates voted for Kucinich anyway.      

Andrew Stern, the liberal president of the liberal Service Employees International Union (SEIU), professed his belief early in the week that a Kerry Administration would be bad for the Democratic Party and bad for unions. By his Marxian reasoning, a Kerry victory would delay the progressive change needed to transform the party, while a second Bush term would naturally produce a leftward lurch.

And a group called Progressive Democrats of America was launched at the end of convention week with an eye toward post-November organizing. As Field Director Kevin Spidel explained, “Our goal is to win back the presidency from the Republicans, and also to wrest the Democratic Party from the free-trading-Iraq-invading-Patriot-Act-supporting leadership it has now.” Needless to say, this perspective is notably at odds with the Kerry-Edwards agenda and the party platform.

While the impulse behind these strategies is often noble, they reflect a misunderstanding of the electoral constraints impeding a more progressive agenda. The 2000 election was essentially a tie, with Al Gore winning 48.4 percent of the popular vote and Bush garnering 47.9 percent.

Still a 50-50 nation

Four years later, little has changed. Despite problems in Iraq and a lackluster economy at home, the current presidential race is remarkably close. A Time magazine poll the week before the convention indicated that when registered voters were asked to choose between Kerry, Bush, and Nader, 46 percent said they would vote for Kerry while 44 percent said they’d vote for Bush. Democrats have reason for optimism in that the 5 percent who say they will vote for Nader may yet adopt the pragmatism of other Bush opponents. And conventional wisdom states that voters who are undecided this late in the election vote against the incumbent, so the 4 percent of voters who are undecided may also ultimately vote for Kerry. According to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, one in five voters potentially could vote for either major candidate.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic National Convention — which emphasized military strength and family values — sought to win over these undecided voters. And should the Kerry/Edwards ticket prevail in November, the new administration will need to tend to these voters to ensure that the Democrats’ return to the White House isn’t short-lived and give the Democrats a chance of regaining control of Congress in the future. These are the imperatives of enacting progressive change, and those who profess to be progressives must confront this reality more so than they have done previously.

Why? According to the nationally representative General Social Survey (GSS), 14 percent of voters in the 2000 election considered themselves “liberal” or “extremely liberal.” But 20 percent considered themselves “conservative” or ”extremely conservative.” Not only do progressives constitute a small minority of the voting population, but they are outnumbered on the right. Furthermore, 60 percent of Democrats identified themselves as centrist or right of center, while just 40 percent of Republicans identified as centrist or left of center. So even among party loyalists, Democrats are more moderate than Republicans. When Republican voters and conservative voters are combined, this group outnumbers Democrats who are not conservative by a factor of five. Republicans and conservatives outnumber non-conservative Democrats and Independents three-to-one. Progressives’ idea of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party constitutes a tiny fraction of the electorate.

Progressives like to argue that Democrats should increase voter registration and turnout rather than focusing on winning the swing vote. Moore, in particular, pushed this argument all over town last week, decrying polls’ shortsighted fixation on likely voters. Although such arguments are rarely accompanied by evidence, the available data refutes the idea that non-voters are more progressive than voters.  

According to the GSS, non-voters tend to be more moderate than voting adults. While 38 percent of voters identify as conservative, only 30 percent of non-voters do. But non-voters are also less likely than voters to call themselves liberal (25 percent versus 27 percent). In fact, according to the GSS, even if every eligible adult had voted in 2000, the popular vote would have remained unchanged. Thanks to the Iraq War, the outcome could be different this year. But in the absence of hard data, one can only speculate.

Potentially, Democrats could (and should) out-perform Republicans in registering new partisans to vote and getting disaffected partisan voters to the polling booth. But to the extent that this strategy succeeds, Republicans will presumably follow suit. The end result? Greater extremism on both sides of the aisle and more gridlock. Not exactly a promising strategy for achieving progressive ends.

The 2000 election demonstrates there is a great deal of room for the U.S. President to move beyond the center. Had Al Gore been installed as president instead of Bush, a much smaller tax cut would have likely been signed into law, freeing up money for other priorities. Perhaps there would have been more spending on health care or education. Maybe there would be a stronger safety net for workers who lose their jobs.  

With this in mind, many progressives argue that Democrats need to be as willing as Republicans to move beyond the center. This line of reasoning ignores or dismisses policy advances made by Democrats in recent years that involved real political risk. (Bill Clinton’s education tax credits, for instance, amounted to a larger program in spending terms than the G.I. Bill.) Similarly, the argument also dismisses that Republicans respond to centrist pressure, though Bush felt compelled to campaign on “compassionate conservatism” and has dramatically increased spending on education and health care for the elderly. It also ignores the extent to which voters punished Gingrich Republicans — and may punish Bush for his departure from bipartisanship.  

But perhaps most importantly, the argument ignores the fact that the average voter falls to the right of center. Consequently, Democrats have less freedom to appease their base than Republicans do. Additionally, the aforementioned figures neither account for the disproportionate weight attached to the votes of small-state residents (often Red-Staters), who have a greater voice than other voters in the Electoral College and the Senate, nor consider the gerrymandering that is currently helping the Republicans maintain control over the House.  

Pragmatism beyond 2004

If progressives impede efforts by a Kerry/Edwards administration — or future Democratic administrations — to build a politically sustainable coalition, they’ll end up ceding power to those who are openly hostile to progressive ideals. The 2004 election, though dominated by the Iraq war’s saliency, is really a particular case of the general problem facing progressives. In his memorable formulation, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck declared politics the “art of the possible.” There is a reason Bill Clinton attempted to move the party to the center and why pragmatism in 2004 is necessary. It is the same reason why pragmatism will be necessary beyond 2004. The alternative is unacceptable. Progressives who don’t like Bismarck’s perspective may be more sympathetic to that of the American economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”

At a forum sponsored by the liberal Campaign for America’s Future last week, Dean wrapped up his fiery speech on what was intended as an optimistic note. Insisting that progressives could win over southern voters, he thundered, “There are 105,000 kids without health insurance in South Carolina. I don’t know why they’d ever vote for another Republican.” But they will vote for more Republicans, and progressives must address this reality if they want to advance their agenda in the next four years and beyond.

STORY INDEX

ARTICLES >

Dean, Kucinich quotes from convention
URL: http://www.dems2004.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter3.asp?c=luI2LaPYG&b=131063

Michael Moore on Nader
URL: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503232,

Kucinich and his delegates
URL:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naliberals31jul31,1,4291214.story?coll=la-home-nation

Stern and SEIU
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16387-2004Jul26.html

Progressive Democrats of America
URL: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0720-06.htm

Polls >

2000 popular vote
URL: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm

Time magazine poll
URL: http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

Pew poll
URL: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=217

In The Fray Contributor