Posted on: Sunday, November 14, 2004

EDITORIAL
Time for Democrats to reinvent themselves

For the nation's Democratic Party, it's time to admit that its losing streak is not due to the media or campaign contributions or the Electoral College, but because it fails to offer Americans a genuine alternative.

To change that fundamental fact, the Democrats must change fundamentally.

The key lies in this question: Why do millions of bus drivers, factory workers and teachers, once typical Democrats, now end up voting for Republican candidates?

"The Republicans are smarter," suggests Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat. They've focused on social issues like gay rights and abortion "to get the public to stop looking at what's happening to them economically."

Lost faith

But the Democrats must face up to their own responsibility for this situation. People have lost faith in Democrats to represent their economic interests. Too often Democrats have supported measures that clearly hurt working men and women.

Too many Democrats fail to recognize that an adequate minimum wage is no less than an honest worker deserves. Too many Democrats have voted to repeal the estate tax, which helps rich people get richer without risk or effort. Too many Democrats have been content with lax corporate oversight that allows corporations to evade taxes and raid pension funds.

A new New Deal

What Democrats need is a clear economic ideology with roots in the New Deal, updated for the 21st century. The party must commit itself to create good-paying jobs in a globalized world, and to use government programs to make Americans' lives more stable and secure.

Democrats haven't always been confused about what's good for working men and women. In 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said all that needs to be said about the estate tax: "The transmission from generation to generation of vast fortunes by will, inheritance or gift is not consistent with the ideals and sentiments of the American people."

Bill Clinton had the right idea when he committed himself to help people who "work hard and play by the rules."

Part of the reason the word "liberal" has become a pejorative in this country is that too many Democrats have become out of touch with their party's blue-collar roots.

'Fundamentalism'

Americans have found resonance around issues like prayer in schools, protection of the flag, abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage.

Yet these "fundamentalist" appeals actually lead us away from the values of our founders: critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Democrats must find new ways to connect and illustrate the founders' values in a relevant way: giving an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; respecting the beliefs of others, even when they conflict with our own; and favoring peaceful alternatives to war.

Indeed, just days after the election, similar criticism came from within the fold. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had been brought in on the tail end of the campaign as an adviser, said the Kerry camp should have ventured into more traditional corners of Democratic strongholds where working-class and lower-income Americans are struggling, rather than focusing primarily on battleground states.

European model

In a commentary entitled "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out," historian Garry Wills observes that Europeans today have a better standard of living than the average American because they invest their wealth in better schools, housing, mass transit and universal healthcare instead of the unwieldy military-industrial complex American taxpayers must support and, from time to time, send their sons and daughters to bleed for.

"The secular states of modern Europe," wrote Wills, "do not understand" what they're seeing in America today — the kind of "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity" you'd expect "in the Muslim world, in al-Qaida, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists."

Now Democrats must present a relevant and real alternative — an ideology based on the Enlightenment values of our Founding Fathers that fights for the interests of the working men and women.