Don’t give up on the Ds

Posted on by clairellaracnetcom

A young friend recently posted on Facebook, “In fact, most young people are, like myself, pretty fed up with both parties.”

Reading that post instantly created a range of emotions in me from anger to fear to regret and ending up somewhere just above despair.  I am somewhat calmer now, but after some thought, I still think this is a very disturbing trend.

Short response:  On 95 out of 100 issues, there isn’t an inch of space between the policies of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  To abandon the Democratic Party is to deny the many accomplishments of the Obama years, despite a very narrow majority in Congress.  If the Democrats didn’t accomplish more, it’s not because their hearts and minds didn’t want them too; it was simply that there were too few of them in Congress to do so.

Let’s go back away and look at where the party’s been.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s folks convinced everybody that trickle down, getting tough on crime, pursuing the goals of the Christian Coalition, etc. were the best things for the country.

In my mind, this is the start of the trend that has led us to today’s party. The Republicans learned how to build on fear and resentment, on anti-intellectualism, on a desire for simpler times, etc. to grab first the national dialogue and ultimately the government.

Since then, the Democrats have been on the defensive. We have never been able to take charge of the issues and direct the debate, even when the Democrats are in power.  We are always countering powerful Republican imaging – welfare queens, Willie Hortons, aborted fetuses, out of work miners.

Our best ideas don’t lend themselves to frightening photos or cute clichés. They are more complicated. They require some thought and some explanation. And the growing populist movement, ultimately cheer-led by the Limbaughs and the O’Reillys, portrayed thoughtfulness and fact-based thinking as weak.

During the post-Reagan years, the Democrats tried to push big ideas through. . . and perhaps my young friend is too young to know how much abuse Hillary Clinton took for trying to give us universal health care in 1993.  But that’s just one example. There are dozens of others ranging from environmental protection to consumer protections.

So it’s been a fact of life – and it may have contributed to survival of the Ds as well as to their lack of appeal – that Democrats generally don’t sound like the firebrands of their predecessors.  Even during the recession, they couldn’t promote the ideas that FDR ran with so successfully in the 1930s.

That said, the Democrats did some great stuff in the eight years during which Obama was president. None of this would have been started, let alone pursued, by a Republican president or Congress.  Just off the top of my head:

  • The Lily Ledbetter Act. Within months of taking office, President Obama introduced and passed this act, which extended the period for filing an equal pay lawsuit. I have no idea how many people are affected by this act, but as a symbol, I think it’s a doozy.
  • The Affordable Care Act. Even my young friends will know about this one. Suffice it to say that despite holding many hearings and accepting something like 180 amendments from Republicans, the D’s still couldn’t get a single Republican vote on the final bill. If nothing else, the prohibition on excluding pre-existing conditions is a giant win for Americans, as is expanded Medicaid.  And there are many others.
  • Dodd-Frank Act. The financial industry was out of control, and everybody knew it. Wikipedia says Dodd-Frank created the broadest changes to the banking industry since Roosevelt’s post-depression initiatives. This was a big deal – and it needs to be defended continuously, as it’s been a target of the Republicans ever since it was enacted.  This law just makes sense.  (I honestly don’t know why anybody would defend a system that continuously implodes on itself, losing massive amounts of money for both the wealthy and the poor, but then I’ve never understood a lot of things about American industry.)
  • The Clean Power Plan. This is another big deal – and it also makes a lot of sense, as today the U.S. has the capability to replace coal plants with a whole array of low-cost and low-carbon substitutes. The current president has made it known that he’s out to get this one, too, knowing full well that absolutely nothing can be done to bring back coal jobs.

What else? Expanding national monuments? Adding regulations to gas and oil production on public lands? Protecting Dreamers?

And, oh yeah, they brought us back from the worst economic downturn since the depression.  And while they didn’t get us out of the wars, they didn’t start any either.

OK, my friends. You’re probably going to tell me they didn’t do enough. Sure, they didn’t do as much as we would like – remember, we have a Congressional system here, and the problem with executive orders is that they can be so easily overturned, as we’ve seen to our horror.

But I can guarantee that if Obama had come in from the beginning and said he would only go for Medicare for all – we wouldn’t have gotten anything.  Seeing the reactionary nature of industries coupled with the horrors of Fox and Breitbart, the uproar would have been phenomenal, and we might have lost even more Congressional seats than we did.

So I ask:

What could a new Democratic party led by a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren or a third party (Jill Stein? God forbid!) make happen in today’s political world that Obama and his party didn’t do?

Do we really expect to see that somehow Bernie’s charisma (did I really say that?) will shine the light of reason brightly enough that Republicans will stand up and demand free college and free healthcare?

Furthermore, do we have any reason to believe that any of these candidates have the political skills to craft and guide legislation that will succeed?  Because really, what has Bernie Sanders accomplished in his years of office?

And basically, what ideas and skills would you like to see in a different party that you don’t think the Democrats have the ability to create?

Perhaps the party was in disarray . . . maybe people like me weren’t paying enough attention.  I don’t know how much of Donna Brazile’s story to believe, as we have seen that she is somewhat disingenuous about the way she’s telling the story.  But sure, the party could have done better.

They could have gone after the union vote more. They could have gone after minorities and youth more effectively. And we need more Obamas, who can inspire and who can tell the story in a way that more people can relate to.

But when it comes to basic ideas, I don’t think we can do any better than the party we have.  It is a party of great ideas – about health care, about environmental protection, about consumer protection, about human rights and civil rights and housing and education.  We all can learn more, we can become more creative and communicate better, but the party’s values and dedication are in the right place.

And can there really be any comparison?

So, I hear that people are tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.  But, as they say, let’s talk.

First of all, as I’ve tried to point out, I don’t see anything evil about the Democratic Party. I think it’s done well by this country.

But second – can there really be any comparison between the flaws of the Democratic Party and the total lack of ethics, judgment, compassion, wisdom and morality of today’s Republican Party, even if you don’t include the current president?

And are people really ready to sacrifice health care gains, protection of immigrants and minorities, women’s rights, environmental protection and any chance of peace on earth because they think the Democrats took too much money from the wrong lobbyists? Or because they are mad that their guy didn’t get the nomination? Or because they’re trying to prove a point?

Can it be they really they don’t see the difference?

Good grief.

So what is next?

Clinton, for all her flaws, won the popular vote by 3 million and came close to getting as many votes as Obama.  That’s with 30 years of venom having been dumped on her since – yes – since she started talking about universal health care.

So indeed, it is possible for a Democrat in the Clinton tradition to win elections.

But the party never did unify behind her. And it wasn’t only that she was a flawed candidate.  It was that many Democrats and Independents apparently were looking for The Perfect Candidate — that saintly, ethereal untouched-by-money idealist who is both visionary and pragmatic and charismatic and a true leader.

Hmmm. Maybe we have to accept something less than that.

Could it be that we could just agree that agreeing 95 percent of the time on issues is enough?  And that if we worked hard for our state legislators and our representatives in the House and the Senate, as well as the next Democratic candidate for president, that we might have the majority we need to really accomplish something?

Perhaps the perfect candidate is out there.  But until then, we have an awful lot of really smart, really dedicated, really committed and really knowledgeable Democratic incumbents and candidates willing to make the personal sacrifices necessary to lead this country.

I’m not waiting for perfection.