Eric Massa NY29: Reforging Democratic Identity

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Building a Majority Party: Reforging Democratic Identity

In November of last year the Democratic Party regained majority status in both houses of Congress. Opposition to the Iraq War was by far the main issue of the election and the strength of the new Democratic majority status in the House was tested this week with a vote on funding and timetables for the Iraq War. Simply put, ending the Iraq War is what the American people expected from the Democratic congress it sent to Washington. The American people have realized that the War was started based on lies, that it has been poorly executed, and that our soldiers are stuck in the middle of a Civil War. And so they want out. They voted for the Democratic Party to get us out of Iraq and we need to show we are trying to do just that.

The Iraq War vote this week also reminded us once again of how Republicans have voted in lockstep with President Bush. What is left of the Rubber Stamp Congress, including my opponent John “Randy” Kuhl, voted with the President and against the clear wishes of the American people, as demonstrated in poll after poll link, with respect to the Iraq War. I believe this lockstep voting with the President, especially on Iraq but also on a broad range of issues, is the main reason a broader poll out this week (link, link) shows Democrats making significant gains and forging a new majority party.

Our margins are thin and we really need to build on our majority – we need an FDR majority so that the real changes that need to be made in Washinton can be made.. The move this week was successful, but if we are to build on the current majority, which is particularly tenuous in the Senate, we must articulate a vision that is broader than just the Iraq Policy. And we need to consistently explain that vision to the American people. Delivering on what the people asked for with legislation designed to get us out of Iraq is a crucial part of showing that we are the party that can be trusted to do what the people want rather than what certain politicians and special interests want. But we need more than just a good Iraq position. Today I want to share with you where I think we can find a broad vision the American people will respond to.

Here in the 29th Disctrict, I get asked all time what sort of a Democrat I am. With the Presidential elections now well underway, a record early start, I am often asked to place myself in this camp or that. I believe that the best example of the values of the Democratic Party, the best starting place to articulate a vision for the future of the party, is the philosophy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: the founders of the modern American Democratic Party.

In January 1944 (link):, addressing a nation at War on the occasion of the State of the Union, FDR placed before the American people a new vision for the role of government. It was a role that foresaw the immense inequality that was growing between the haves and the have-nots in America and sought to level the playing field so that all Americans could realize their dreams. President Roosevelt looked beyond the failures of the then global Economy and the failed Hoover response to the crash of the international markets, the failed farm economy and declared that his Government was to guarantee certain rights for All Americans. Among them (link):

• the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• the right of every farmer to raise and sell his produce at return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• the right of every businessman, large or small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair completion and domination by monopolies at home and abroad;
• the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• the right to adequate protection form the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• the right to a good education.

FDR identified many of the same issues where the recent Rubber Stamp Republican Congress consistently voted with the President and special interests and against the needs of the American people. Iraq will probably continue to be the biggest issue through he 2008 elections. But there are a host of issues where the Democratic Party needs to boldly establish its identity and talk about how it differs from the Republican Party. Among other things, we are the party of the working man and the middle class. And the working class and the middle class have been under assault during the Bush years, with most of the growth in the economy going to the wealthiest Americans. No small amount of the blame for the plight of working Americans goes to Rubber Stamp Republicans in Congress.

FDR did something else in this speech that speaks directly to a twenty-first century audience. In this decade the words liberty, freedom and security have been so misused and overused by the Bush administration and its supporters that the words have lost much of their meaning. But in 1944 FDR, carefully echoing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, said that without the rights listed above the American people, particularly working American families, had no real security and that without security there was no true liberty or freedom:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

This is the road map for the modern Democratic Party. This is the call to arms to combat the forces of un-American corporate greed that have seen companies like Halliburton steal from the American treasury and desert the very people who funded their greed. In the words of FDR are the guidelines to action for all Democrats because the Republicans simply have demonstrated that they do not care.
Absent from the above is a discussion on National Defense because in the age of FDR it was the Democrats who wore the mantle of national Defense. It was FDR who reacted with purpose, deliberation and competence to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. It was FDR who navigated the country through the maze of neutrality and alliances in the pre WWII years, allowing a revitalized American defense industry to prepare for the Global War on tyranny against Nazi and Imperial governments who waged war against all of Europe and the United Sates. It was FDR who created an alliance so strong and so united that it has lasted until the current incompetence of the Bush administration.

As the “New Democrats” stand ready to receive the mantle of leadership to replace the “Old Guard,” it is well if we hearken back to FDR’s resounding call in enunciating once more in clear and unequivocal terms the fundamental American values and principles on which this nation was founded. I believe that if we can articulate the vision of FDR we can further revitalize the Democratic Party, expand on our current majorities in Congress and quite possibly win the White House in 2008. I stand with FDR and over the course of the next few months I will outline how we will learn from the past and move into the future.

Eric Massa
Commander, US Navy (retired)
Candidate, US Congress