Nothing But Words

You can tell from my last post that I like the campaign model exemplified by the Republican’s 1994 Contract with America: it nationalized traditionally local House races, unified the Republicans around an easily understood, crystal clear picture of what they stood for and what they wanted to accomplish, and actually invited Americans to keep score on how much they delivered within the promised 100-day time frame.

Compare that to the House Democrats’ Partnership for America’s Future (in PDF format) that they ran on in this election. It had two major shortcomings. First, nobody’s ever heard of it. Second, it’s organized around a series of amorphous terms like “Prosperity” and “Fairness,” each of which is followed by a big, unsorted barrage of fragmentary ideas that’s more a wish list than a legislative agenda.

Preparing for the 2006 midterm election is a greater imperative right now than worrying about possible 2008 Presidential candidates. A crucial element in Bush’s November victory was that the Republicans re-took the Senate in 2002. If the Democrats had maintained control, they’d have had a crucial platform for reaching the public. They could have made counter-proposals to the Bush agenda (they wouldn’t have made it into law, but the Democratic positions would have been much more in the public eye). They could have launched investigations of not just intelligence failures, but of intelligence abuses by the executive branch. If Kerry had won without a popular majority, and with hostile Republicans controlling both houses, he would have spent all his time fighting for his political life, with little hope of advancing an agenda. Retaking the Senate in 2006 is crucial for laying the groundwork for the 2008 Presidential campaign.

I’m not yet sure of the right name for it, but for 2006 the Democrats need their equivalent of the Contract with America. It should be used for both House and Senate races. While reading through my ideas below, keep in mind the car advertising analogy in my last post: emotional touchpoints, crisp terminology, and real improvements that the public can easily measure. But that doesn’t mean every element of it has to be something big. Like the Contract with America, some elements are symbolic measures of what you stand for, while others are substantial legislative proposals.

Saving Infants: astonishingly, there are 40 countries in the world with an infant mortality rate that’s lower than ours (and for blacks in the US, the rate is twice as high as whites’). Countries like Japan and Sweden have an infant mortality rate that’s two times lower than ours. Even economically moribund Cuba does better than we do. The Democrats need to re-frame the abortion debate, and this is how to do it. The anti-abortion movement is not pro-life – it is merely pro-pregnancy, and they need to be called on it. What’s been brilliant about the Republican approach to social issues is that they deliberately single out issues like abortion and gay marriage – things you can oppose at no financial cost to yourself. The Democrats can start to advance their long-held goals about child health care while at the same time laying plain the hypocrisy of the Republican position. In terms of specific legislation, I’m not a medical expert, but I’m sure some bullet-point proposals could be drafted which would outline how to make improvements on this front.

Independence from Middle East oil: this has floated out there for some time, but the Democrats have yet to really embrace it. The intent is to advance green power technologies, make us more of an honest broker in Middle East affairs, and remove our economic dependency on this very unstable part of the world. Such achievements would garner rich rewards for the Party. What’s held the Democrats back is that pursuing it would put them in a political bind in regard to domestic drilling for oil. Frankly, I think we have to allow for that (and over the next two years of Republican control, it’s likely to happen anyway). Even if there were massive funding for alternative energy research starting tomorrow, it’ll be a long time before we lose our dependence on oil.

I think an effective case can be made within the Party that it’s better to make some short-term sacrifices on this front for the sake of brightening the future of the Middle East, securing the stability of our economy (i.e. jobs), and advancing the long-term, global cause of environmental protection. The parallel example is how the GOP has dealt with the Department of Education. In the 1990s they tried to abolish it, and they got slapped back hard. Now Bush is pouring money into it, but under a set of guidelines he’s dictated. The lesson is, if you have to live with something you don’t like in order to achieve broader goals, at least do it on your own terms.

No indicted party leaders: this is a no-brainer. The GOP repealed it’s own rule on this in anticipation of an indictment against Tom Delay. The Democrats have instated such a rule for their Party, but they didn’t get much press attention for it. They need to bring it up again for the 2006 races. This isn’t a one-off though. It ties into the next three items, which can be used to construct a narrative about the responsibilities of power.

Honesty in legislation: the Democrats should propose a rule that any amendments to a piece of legislation must be relevant to it. This would serve to both highlight the massive pork barrel spending occuring under Bush’s watch, and attempts at abuse of power (such as the amendment that recently almost made it into law, granting the Chairs of the Appropriations Committees the power to disregard privacy rules and read anyone’s income tax return).

Legislation for the people, not lobbyists: the Democrats should make a pledge that they will have a publicly transparent process for writing legislation. It wouldn’t be hard to portray the current House leadership as a cabal of industry lobbyists and Republican frontmen, because that’s what it is. Industry lobbyists are literally writing legislation (this and much more is covered in the book The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress).

No more living on the credit card: with unprecedented deficits that have more to do with tax cuts for the wealthy and massive increases in discretionary spending than they have to do with Iraq or the war on terror, the Republicans have ceded their touchstone of being the party of fiscal responsibility. The Democrats must claim it. Politically this is a tough nut to crack, which is why Kerry didn’t pursue it too vigorously. But I think the American people are more open to some tough love than the Democrats give them credit for. It must be framed first and foremost not in terms of taxing and spending statistics, but in terms of the nightmare our children will inherit if we keep up what we’re doing now (as well as what might happen even sooner if the dollar continues it’s downward slide).

Enhance small business opportunities: traditionally Democrats have seen the business community as a monolith. But it is not. Big business is often the enemy of small business, and small businesses need help. More on this can be found in the article Top Billings, which describes how super red-state Montana now has a newly elected Democratic governor. His advocacy for small business was a cornerstone of his campaign. This is the 21st century face of populism.

Those are some of my ideas. I have others too. Senate Democrats could keep the party engaged on foreign policy matters by formulating their own Israeli-Palestine peace plan, as a way of possibly building some momentum (even if it’s the Europeans who end up riding it) and highlighting Bush’s dithering in this crucial area. They could even come at the global warming issue by framing it in terms of preserving property values (who wants waterfront property that will soon be underwater?). But I’ll stop there. The point of all this is to illustrate that, as a Party, we surely have the brainstorming abilities to put together a winning agenda. It must be a bold agenda that reframes key issues. And it must have clearly defined goals, the achievement of which can be easily measured and publicized.