Tom Tomorrow: Democrats' message is "low risk, low reward"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue
The party's message is low risk, low reward.
By Tom Tomorrow
Updated Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004, at 4:06 PM PT

http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2109180&MSID=949090EB72424A579C581AAD8FBF8057

So, the editors of Slate want to know why Americans hate Democrats? Well, the short answer is, actually, we don't—55,554,114 of us voted for them on Tuesday. Admittedly, as Jane Smiley just pointed out, 58 million voted for the "ignorance inducing machine" instead—but 55,554,114 is still a hell of a lot of people. If you had a party and 55,554,114 people showed up, you would probably have to make several additional trips to the liquor store.

The very phrasing of Slate's question points to one problem for Democrats—they're really lousy at defining the terms of the debate to their own advantage. Republicans, by contrast, are the masters. Republicans don't let something so inconsequential as reality get in their way—George Bush is already proclaiming a mandate, for chrissakes. If the narrow margin of victory in this election had swung the other way, does anyone doubt for a moment that an army of Republican surrogates would have immediately fanned out to the shouting-head shows to argue, until they were collectively blue in the face, that the election of John Kerry was nothing more than a statistical fluke that certainly carried with it no greater meaning?

This is not to suggest that the sole problem for Democrats is an inability to articulate a message, as if the entire Democratic Party simply needs to overcome its regrettable awkwardness around strangers. There also needs to be a message. At the start of this forum, Robert Wright described John Kerry's campaign as "ultra-risk-averse." The same might be said of the Democratic Party as a whole right now. Many of the issues for which Democrats stand are highly divisive—stem-cell research, gay rights, abortion—and in their attempts to finesse that divisiveness, they often seem to stand for nothing at all. In their eagerness to appear reasonable and moderate—and to avoid at all costs being tarred with the dread epithet "liberal"—they become the enablers, the loyal opposition seeking common ground (even as the opposition is doing its best to destroy them and scorch the very earth where they once stood). Gosh, they say, maybe we should go to war in Iraq for no apparent reason, and maybe gay people don't deserve full and equal rights. And so on and so forth.

Republicans don't have this problem. Republicans are perfectly comfortable with what they are and what they stand for ("pure evil," the provocateur in me is compelled to suggest). They're the ones who hope to stack the judiciary with right-wing nut cases and eventually repeal Roe v. Wade. They're the ones who run up sky-high deficits in order to provide tax breaks for the rich. They're the ones with the aggressive facts-be-damned policy of pre-emptive warfare. They're the ones who exploit antigay bigotry and antiscience superstition and wrap the whole package up with a neat little red-white-and-blue bow and say, "This is what real Americans believe."

[Cat Atomic]

1. He made some excellent points.

I agree with his description of the problems completely.

I also read Timothy Noah's article in the same series, and man- did he ever make a lame argument. He says the Democratic Party obviously sholdn't move to the left, because that strategy didn't work for Gore.

Huh? Gore didn't move much to the left, if at all. And besides, he won.

[Nashyra]

2. Ok folks, we talked about the Hitler comparison and backed

down. My mo from now will be, just like Hitler and if people look at me like I'm crazy I'll just tell them to read there history books, Hitler was elected and well loved by the MAJORIY also, but the new Hitler will be going after the poor when he's done with the minorities and you my friend will never be rich enough to be part of the *'s base. I will add insult to injury and let them know that I will be getting a tax cut under the *, too bad they won't, too bad your guy is ultimately going to help me especially when I was willing not to have it be.