In words immortalized by Janis Joplin, the political philosopher Kris Kristoffersen once acutely observed: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Flip that observation around, and you can see the opportunity Democrats now have to recapture the political momentum.
In Washington, Democrats lost the presidency in 2000 and the Congress in 2002. This week's election confirmed both those losses. But they have given Democrats a new freedom from all the political constraints of Washington incumbency that for so long kept us from speaking clearly about our values and ideas, while reinforcing Republican claims that we are addicted to the power of big government.
It's time to use that freedom. Republicans are now responsible for all the policy failures and special interest dominated procedures of the most powerful central government this side of Beijing. Surveys consistently show that roughly a third of Americans don't know which party controls Congress. How often did you hear Democrats talk about one-party domination of Washington during the last campaign? Not remotely as often, we'd bet, as you heard Republicans, from the president on down, talk about Democrats as the big-government party. That needs to change right away. We need to stop acting like a "shadow government" that's just patiently waiting for the opportunity to get back into power and return to business-as-usual. Washington needs fixing, on a very basic level, and Democrats need to become not an impotent minority party with no agenda other than obstructing the worst excesses of a newly emboldened GOP, but a positive insurgency committed to a whole host of reforms. Here are some of the reforms we will be talking about in much greater detail in the days ahead:
Political Reform. Our political system is bruised and perhaps broken, leading to campaigns that are expensive, negative, intensely partisan, full of dirty tricks, and tilted for no good reason to a handful of "battlegrounds." We need to champion election reform to ensure a reasonably uniform set of rules for how Americans register, vote, and have their votes counted. We need redistricting reform to avoid the growing phenomenon, in both the U.S. House and many state legislatures, of politicians choosing voters rather than voters choosing politicians. We need open primaries to enfranchise independents and break the grip of organized special interests on the nominating process and the parties. And yes, we need another and more effective round of campaign finance reform and ethics reform to break the toxic cycle that lets people like Tom DeLay hustle lobbyists for campaign cash and even jobs for Republicans in exchange for access to the legislative process. While we can disagree on the details, there is no principled reason for Democrats to oppose any of these reforms, since Republicans will always have an advantage in a system that puts a premium on the ruthless exercise of institutional and financial power.
Budget Reform. As nearly every Democrat on the campaign trail said this year, Republicans have deliberately created a fiscal train wreck that threatens economic growth while damaging the ability of the federal government to meet critical national challenges.
It's time for Democrats to aggressively champion budget reforms, including a restoration of budget controls like spending caps and pay-as-you-go. But Democrats should go further and demand an assault on corporate welfare in the tax code and federal programs; a ban on "earmarks" in spending bills that let Members send pork back home; a crackdown on or even an abolition of the power of appropriations committees; and other dramatic steps. This is not just a matter of "good government"; these reforms go to the heart of the fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.
Tax Reform. Americans hate the complexity of the federal tax system, and Republicans are certain to continue their bait-and-switch strategy of exploiting this sentiment to propose an elimination of progressive taxation and a shift in the tax burden from income earned by wealth to income earned by work. Democrats should champion their own tax reform agenda, not only resisting regressive Republican proposals and opposing further efforts to increase the deficit through tax cuts, but also calling for the consolidation of tax breaks for middle-class families into four broad areas: retirement savings, college costs, incentives for homeownership, and support for families.
Social Insurance Reform. With the baby boom retirement on the horizon, the nation is headed toward a jarring collision between generations. Because Social Security and Medicare costs are programmed to grow automatically -- at a time when Bush's fiscal policies have all but bankrupted the government -- the boomers' retirement will put a python-like squeeze on programs for today's working families and children, and indeed everything else government does. Democrats must reject Bush's phony privatization panacea, but they need more than a "Just Say No" approach to Social Security and entitlement reform in general. Democrats need to develop progressive plans to modernize our social insurance system so that they can defend the living standards of today's workers while honoring our commitment to tomorrow's retirees. At stake is not simply the solvency of our retirement system and our federal government, but the interests and political loyalties of millions of younger middle-class voters who increasingly believe their current earnings and their own retirement security will be sacrificed to keep the old system going for a few more decades.
This kind of "reform insurgency" agenda would help decisively recast Democrats as a party of progressive change and national purpose rather than as a status quo party wedded to old programs and listening only to organized special interests and narrowly targeted constituencies. And it would help Democrats recapture the ability to speak to the country in terms of their vision, their values, and their broad goals, instead of the Washington code language of programs.
This last point is especially important because Republicans in Congress can be expected to frame every debate and every vote in a way that casts Democrats as obstructionists with no ideas of their own. Precisely because Democrats, especially in the Senate, may be forced to use the limited prerogatives of the minority to stop right-wing outrages, they need a positive message that reaches beyond the Beltway to the vast majority of Americans who don't understand or care about the partisan maneuvering on Capitol Hill. Moreover, a clear, values-based message would be invaluable in reducing the "culture gap" that reflects the persistent fear that Democrats live in a different moral universe than the middle-class voters whose interests we claim to champion.
It's even possible that a reform agenda could produce unexpected alliances with those Republicans -- including moderates marginalized by the conservative ascendancy in the GOP, and "deficit hawks" who are increasingly alarmed by the abandonment of the age-old Republican commitment to fiscal responsibility -- who no longer believe that party loyalty demands pretending that everything's peachy in Washington.
But whether or not it produces legislative victories in Congress, we believe Democrats need to embrace the "outsider" status to which they have been consigned, and treat it as an opportunity to get on the offensive again as true progressives.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Political Reform
