The Radical Centrist Fringe

There are many changes that I feel the Democratic Party should adopt - both substantive and stylistic; conceptual and practical; regional and national. I'd like to begin by identifying what strikes me as a conceptual flaw in the way the national party has been thinking lately.

The mentality is perfectly embodied by former President Clinton, whose career was built by poaching the most popular elements of the Republican platform but saw very little advance in any of the domestic issues important to liberals. Apparently, before this election, Clinton's advice to Kerry was to endorse the anti-marriage referendums - a stance which Kerry, massively to his credit, rejected.

The operative logic of this conceit is that somewhere there is a "middle" of the American political spectrum waiting for a politician to sweep in from the skies and capture their hearts with personal charm and a bag full of "moderate" policies.

The problem with this logic is that it distorts the reality of the political process. Most people aren't moderates at all. They have some conservatives beliefs, some liberal beliefs. They endorse some conservative policies, and they endorse some liberal policies. If I could have a dime for every self-described moderate who came out with some outlandishly winger-sounding ideal, I'd be a wealthy man.

Generally speaking, the electorate cleaves into those who are party-ticket voters and those who are not. The moderates are those whose loyalty is ambivalent and can be swung by the right appeal. Average this lump together and ask them about their specific opinions, and you'll probably come up with the perfectly "moderate" agenda. But if one "moderate" is really big on universal health care and really big on free trade while the other "moderate" is opposed to both, the two are as likely to cancel each other out if you endorse both universal health care and protectionism - even if both together form the "moderate mean." What it leads to are victories like Clinton's - cheap and narrow victories of chance against a fractiously divided opponent. If the Democratic Party wants to spend a decade warming the bench during fraticidal Republican spats, then by all means, let us "chase" the moderates...

The alternative, however, is for the Democratic Party to start re-investing in the concept of "leadership" - smart, articulate, convincing proponents of a package of policies (more on what those policies should be) which drive the political debate back in our direction. Even silly stunts like Gingrich's TV-Guide "Contract for America" that get our vision and our plans into the public debate. Republicans have been talking about privatizing Social Security since 1994. Their proposal is certainly still unpopular. But they've reduced the voltage on politic's third-rail, and the more they keep at it, the more they will innoculate themselves against election-based punishment for it. Democrats don't need to expunge every unpopular idea they have. What they need to do is start launching a credible advocacy campaign for their unpopular opinions, and wed that to a "go-slow" approach at the policy level for any policy that is widely reviled - building confidence that our principles are consistent, but that we have no revolutionary intentions to ram them down anyone's throat.

So, going forward into the debate about whither the Democratic Party, I think it important to reject this idea that we have to chase the center. We have to lead it. And leadership begins with the assumption that those who are asked to follow don't necessarily know where they are trying to go, but will follow whoever offers the best vision of a destination and a route to get there.