Support for the president is near its lowest levels. Support for the Republican Congress is declining below even the Republican base level. And yet there is no lift in this for Democrats. Faced with the epic catastrophe wrought by this administration and this Congress, Democrats have yet to lay out any compelling alternative.
The president’s tax cuts have racked up record deficits, contributed to unparalleled inequality, but have failed to generate jobs. The president’s trade and corporate policies have racked up trade deficits beyond any recorded in the annals of time. The president’s abject failures in homeland security were laid bare in the suffering of Katrina’s survivors and the utter failure to help Americans in peril.
But Democrats have been too timid or too divided to do much about it. With America in desperate need of bold leadership and a new direction, their slogan for the 2006 election is, hilariously, “We can do better.” Even after conservative Rep. Jack Murtha, the Pentagon’s favorite ex-Marine, spoke up, they dance around raindrops on Iraq. They seem unable to offer a coherent alternative to the president’s ruinous tax-cut policies. They say nothing collectively about the hole that we’re in from the catastrophic trade polices. Even on Katrina, they have failed to provide a clear alternative to the administration’s utter failure of its survivors.
They have railed against the “culture of corruption,” but failed to put out a comprehensive reform agenda, blocked by their own money-driven incumbents. They have railed against the big-oil policies of the administration, but failed to embrace the Apollo Alliance for generating good jobs by investing in new energy and energy efficiency, tongue-tied by their unwillingness to invest any significant resources.
They accuse the president of playing on the politics of race, of gender, of sexual preference – but they have failed to put the assault on basic rights at the center of their campaigns. Even on the president’s imitation of Richard Nixon’s radical view of imperial presidential powers, they have been easily rolled by the president’s defenders.
Now some of this is the fate of a party that is completely locked out of power. With the right wing in control of every branch of government, Democrats are naturally easily divided – and should be having a big debate about what they believe and where they want to take the country.
But a lot of this is simple cowardice – the belief that Bush and the Republican Congress have fallen so low and failed so completely, that Democrats can inherit power without ever committing to anything. That is bad politics and bad policy. And those Democrats who want to run for president are about to learn from the core supporters that dancing between raindrops on issues of vital national importance won’t get them there.