Thanks to the man they love to hate -- George W.
Bush -- 2006 could be a very good year for
Democrats.
The reason: Voters have concluded that the Bush
presidency has failed. Name the issue -- Iraq, gas
prices, the economy, Katrina, Social Security, health care costs,
global warming, corruption -- and Bush gets failing grades.
Just three in 10 Americans in the Gallup poll are satisfied
with the direction of the country. The president's approval ratings
still hover in the 30s among all voters and in the 70s
among Republicans -- nearly 20 percentage points below his
normal rating among members of his own party. If those
numbers don't change, Democrats should make significant
gains.
But let's not confuse gains that result from Republican
failure with a mandate for the Democrats. Most voters still
aren't sure what Democrats stand for.
Of course, it's not too late for the Democrats to rally
around an agenda that gives voters a positive reason to pull
the Democratic lever this fall. At the Democratic
Leadership Council, we're working to shape that agenda.
We've long believed that there's nothing wrong with the
Democratic Party that a positive agenda won't fix.
Even if we get by this year without a clear agenda, we'll
need one to win the presidency in 2008. Without a compelling
argument for why voters should support us in 2008,
Democrats won't be able to broaden their appeal enough to
win.
A recent study by the DLC showed that, in the 2004 election,
nearly all fast-growing counties (often exurban counties)
voted Republican, while declining, stagnant, or slow-growing
counties voted Democratic. Only a spectacular Democratic
get-out-the-vote effort kept the Bush victory margin down.
Even so, adjusting for the Ralph Nader vote in 2000, the
Republican advantage grew by 4 million votes in 2004. If we
don't broaden our appeal in those fast-growing areas, the GOP
margin is likely to rise by another 1 million votes in 2008.
That's why this summer's nasty campaign by anti-war
activists and liberal bloggers to drive Connecticut Sen. Joe
Lieberman from the Democratic Party has been so harmful.
In the tradition of John Kennedy, Lieberman believes in a
strong national defense, that a growing private economy is
crucial to increasing opportunity, that you can't be pro-jobs
and anti-business, and that citizens have an obligation to
give something back to their country. Those are views most
Democrats and most Americans share. You don't have to
agree with Lieberman on the Iraq
War to understand that if he is
purged from the Democratic Party,
the party will pay a huge price in
national elections for decades to
come.
The loudest voices of the so-called
"netroots" say they want to help
Democrats win. If that's true, they'll
stop trying to purify our party with
venomous attacks on pro-defense
Democrats like Lieberman and California Rep. Jane Harman,
who survived their attacks in her primary this spring.
The challenge to Democrats in 2006 and 2008 is to
broaden their appeal, not narrow it.
The bottom line is this: Because conservatives outnumber
liberals in the electorate by 3-to-2, Democrats need to
put together a broad coalition that includes not just liberals,
but most moderates and some conservatives, as well.
One simply needs to recall the history of the last four
decades to understand that point.
When I first went to work on Capitol Hill in 1969,
Democrats controlled the Senate by 14 seats and the House
by 73. Today, Republicans control the Senate by 10 seats
and the House by 29.
Why the difference? In 1969, Democrats had a 19-3
margin among Senate seats from the 11 states of the Old
Confederacy and an 81-25 margin among House seats from
those states. Today, Republicans hold an 18-4 margin in the
Senate and a 78-48 margin in the House from those same
states.
Think about this: If Democrats had maintained the same
margins in the South as they held in 1969, we would have
controlled both Houses every single year since then. Or this:
If Al Gore and John Kerry had each won just one Southern
state, George W. Bush would not have moved into the
White House.
To be sure, we lost many Southern voters over civil rights,
but we lost many others when George McGovern and the
anti-war Democrats took control of the party between 1968
and 1972. As President Clinton and Democratic governors in
Southern states have shown, we can win back some of them.
Purging pro-defense Democrats won't help. A party already in
the minority can't afford to repel the very voters it needs to
regain the majority.
We need more Democratic voters, not fewer. And we'll
only get them by welcoming voters of all ideological stripes,
not by purifying our ranks.
