A few thoughts as part of the Wednesday morning quarterbacking:
People never tire of making comparisons between sports and politics. But here's the difference: a win in politics is only meaningful if it leads to something else.
What will this win lead to?
Hopefully, two things. One is immediate -- stopping bad public policy, proposing better public policy, holding the White House accountable for its illegal activities, getting us out of this war.
The second is a bit more ephemeral.
Electoral victories are short-lived unless they lead to a fundamental rethinking in the consciousness of people about what kind of government they want.
Voters voted for "change." But that change can't just be a change in party. For Democrats to win long-term, they will need to communicate that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is more than a stance on the war, but an ideological clash over whose interests should drive politics and policy, and what the role of government should be in our lives.
Hurricane Katrina, the quality of our schools, stagnant wages, an energy crisis that we will surely see again, the skyrocketing cost of higher education, a nation in which 47 million are uninsured, including an increasing number of middle-income earners -- all of these issues are connected. Republicans have failed to address them, resulting in yesterday's backlash, because their very philosophy of governing prohibits them from addressing them. This is primarily because they hate the notion of government, and because they have chosen to align their interests with big business. Their excuse? The benefits will trickle down. The result? Thriving big business leading to an overall expansion of the economy but no benefits for the average American, whose wages are stagnating, whose future isinsecure, and who is being overwhelmed by the increased prices of everything from gas to tuition, and who otherwise hasn't been adequately compensated for his contribution to the increased bottom lines of multi-national corporations.
The response of Democrats shouldn't be to pick a Chinese/Greek diner (pick your cuisine) menu of public policies to advance. We did that during the Clinton years. The result was that people loved Clinton himself, but didn't understand that the improvement in their living standards was the result of a philosophy: government is a good thing, a positive thing, not the enemy, not something that should shrink until it's small enough for Grover Norquist to drown in a bathtub.
When I was on the Brian Lehrer show on our New York NPR affiliate on Friday debating the issues with Stephen Rose of Third Way, he took that DLC approach. He refused to admit that there was even a middle-class squeeze, because apparently that was "too negative" and would alienate working class voters (I wonder what he says to the exit polls that testify to people's dissatisfaction with the economy, frustration that their children won't do better than they did, and support for minimum wage increases). So instead of saying - yes, there is a problem, and there's a problem because corporate interests have driven our politics and driven our middle-class to the breaking point, without a government to respond because it doesn't believe in responding - he wanted to deny any wholesale connection of our failures in education, economic, and health care policy and instead offer some piecemeal proposals that could get broad support.
Such an approach will not lead to a fundamental victory in the war of ideas. President Clinton was successful at staying in office, but because the consciousness of people wasn't changed the governing philosophy of Grover Norquist -- that corporations need help and direct intervention but people don't -- won out. That's why Republicans took over Congress and have won up until yesterday. The progressive movement will succeed if it leverages these victories into a shift in public consciousness that reasserts that we need government. Not big government. But, as Governor Mario Cuomo put it to me, "just the government we need."