Third Way "Electorate" Con-job

Much is being made in the blogosphere today of a report, sponsored by the moderate Democratic strategy group Third Way, from political scientists Elaine Kamarck and William Galston. The AP reports Kamarck and Galston as claiming that "to regain political power Democrats must abandon favorite election myths, adopt a strong position on national defense and pick candidates who connect with average voters. these "myths", they say, are:

The belief Democrats can win if they just do a great job of mobilizing their base. Republicans have improved at mobilizing their own base, so Democrats need to do more than that.

The theory demographic changes over time will make Democrats a majority, a questionable concept with the Hispanic vote increasingly up for grabs.

The belief Democrats can succeed politically if they simply learn to talk more effectively about their positions.

The strategy of avoiding cultural issues, playing down national security and changing the subject to domestic issues. National security is too dominant a concern now.

The report noted Republican gains among married people, Catholics, Hispanics and women during the last presidential election.

Democrats must choose to appeal to a broader majority that includes many moderates, said Galston, a political scientist at the University of Maryland.

The Democrats also must develop a coherent foreign policy because "we just don't have one," said Kamarck, a political scientist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Which, if it were all true, would pretty much sound the death knell for liberal hopes of actually getting a Democratic Party that would stand up for liberal values and propound a left-of-center agenda.

Yet on close inspection, it appears that Kamarck and Galston are stacking the cards in their favor before even beginning their analysis. All of their results, all of their opinionating, are ultimately based upon one crucial statistic:

In 2004, the electorate was 21 per cent liberal, 34 per cent conservative and 45 per cent moderate. That is practically a carbon copy of the average over the past thirty years - 20 per cent liberal, 33 per cent conservative and 47 per cent moderate with remarkably little variation from election to election.

This, the authors claim, is the source of all modern political turmoil - to blame for polarization, for alienation of the people from politics, resentment of political parties and for the fact that "the playing field is tilted against Democrats". This, they say, is because:

With three conservatives for every two liberals, the sheer arithmetic truth is that in a polarized electorate effectively mobilized by both major parties, Democratic candidates must capture upwards of 60 per cent of the moderate vote - a target only Bill Clinton has reached in modern times - to win a national election.

Can anyone spot the deliberate stacking? Its that key word - "electorate".

As I have discussed elsewhere, the current US "electorate" is very different from the US "people" - for one thing the electorate is much richer. The poorest, most disadvantaged, most likely to benefit from a leftwing agenda, are the people who overwhelmingly do not vote at the present time. They make up at least 25% of the people - and that means if they voted they would add 40% to the numbers of the current "elecorate". The reason they don't vote right now, given time and again, is that they don't feel either major party has enough for them.

So there is the misdirection, the fancy shuffle perpertated by the entrenched Republican-lite leadership of the Democrats: their figures in support of "moderation" only have meaning in relation to the status quo and aren't actually an argument against a leftward move by the Democrats at all. On the contrary, a truly liberal agenda would capture the current 21% of the electorate plus add an energized new influx, a brand new constituency of the Left, which could easily amount to another 25%. At that point, liberals would heavily outnumber conservatives and it would be the Republicans who would be faced with the uphill struggle of gaining enough moderate votes to overcome that superiority. This would inevitably reverse the current trend and push the Republicans towards the center.

So why doesn't it happen? I think a variety of reasons. Chiefly, so many of the high-profile leaders of the Democrats are beholden to corporate profit-making via campaign contributions and lobbyists. Secondly, when threatened (as they must be right now by the vocal liberal elemnt in the party) those leaders mobilize talking heads like Kamarck and Galston. Many well-meaning pundits will follow that lead too, most out of knee-jerk loyalty to the party or by being taken in by their fast shuffle. Lastly, there is a lack of courage. The centrist Democrats lack the courage to try something radical and stick to what has been tried before even though it keeps failing and many liberal Democrat voices lack the courage to put their actions where their mouths are - the liberal pundits, by and large, like to moan and whine but are reluctant to actually get off their asses and take action. They accuse the Democtratic leadership of not presenting clear alternatives to Republican policies but, even though the liberals actually have those alternatives, are unable themselves to grasp the moment and stand up for counting - preferring sniping at others to putting themselves in a position of succeeding or failing by their own efforts rather than the mistakes of others.

Color me underwhelmed.