Last week, some of the Democrats' most engaged proponents of pushing the Democrats leftwards -- including Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana and author Thomas Franks -- gathered to promote economic populism at a panel discussion (scroll down to see video excerpts) about David Sirota's new book, Hostile Takeover. The book is a useful compendium of the way big-money interests have corrupted our political process, leading to the screwing of the public through such legislation as our energy policy and Medicare Part D.
When I asked Sirota and the other panelists about previous Democratic presidential successes (two in the last 40 years) and the past failure of populist messages to work nationally, he contended, "Any candidate who makes it clear that he will stand against big-money interests will inspire people on [their] authenticity beyond economic issues." Will that be enough? Walter Mondale and George McGovern believed what they said on issues, too, and that didn't seem to inspire enough people to vote for them. (The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson, pointed out, rightly, that Clinton, especially, campaigned to the left of where he actually governed, thus raising his hopes that a full-fledged populist could win the presidency.)
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Yet Governor Schweitzer, a straight-talking Democrat who has won in a red state, contended at the panel that it was the weakness of our candidates in articulating populist messages that doomed them. "A lot of candidates do the focus groups and pick the top five issues that test well," he noted. "They have to believe the stuff. Leaders don't lead by polling you. This is why we have to have issues presented in a way that validates character -- and explain it in a way that they're sure about me as a person." In other words, authentic candidates who strongly present their case can win election support, even if people don't agree with every position they take -- as long as they trust you as a person. That's the approach Bush used in his first election campaign, no matter how much we may have disliked his phony down-home act.
Schweitzer argued, "Our candidates haven't touched our heart -- and we haven't done that since Bill Clinton. The last two candidates for president just recited the polling. Until we find a candiate who can touch hearts, we'll lose elections, one after another."
But even writers for The American Prospect, which co-sponsored the discussion, have raised questions about the new quest for authenticity among progressives. Under a posting called "Authenticity is Stupid," Sam Rosenfeld argues, "Authenticity is a pointless thing to care about in politics. Obsessing over the personal motivations and supposed core beings of individual political actors is, in fact, close to the opposite of what politics is actually all about. Institutional arrangements and historical contingencies largely determine political (and thus policy) outcomes, and outcomes are what matter."
But it wouldn't hurt if the Democrats offered stronger, more personable and more courageous candidates. And why does it take political losses for Al Gore and John Kerry to finally find their voices?
Weakness at offering a populist message may not be our real problem after all, as The American Prospect's Matthew Yglesias points out in the latest issue:
More to the point, there's simply very little evidence to support Sirota's colorfully expressed view that "with the wild-eyed lunacy of a crack addict, many Democrats are so singularly focused on raking in corporate campaign cash and reinforcing the status quo that they are unable to see that their genuflecting -- not their spin, not their language, not their television ads -- is really the core of their problem." Sellout Democrats are a real problem, but primarily in the arena of actual policy. They vote for bad bills and against good ones. That fairly small minorities of Democrats favored the 2005 bankruptcy reform bill or oppose the re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada is unfortunate, but hardly the cause of the party's electoral woes in recent years. Clear majorities of Democrats already support almost all of Sirota's proposals, with the main exceptions (i.e., full public financing of campaigns) being dubious vote-getters. Indeed, Sirota's policy agenda isn't notably different from the one on which John Kerry waged his presidential campaign.
Kerry's loss wasn't due primarily to any inadequacy of his ideas on the topics Sirota addresses. Rather, Kerry was crippled by weakness on questions of culture and national security. Sirota's implicit view that simply turning up the volume on economic populism will make the culture and security problem go away is congenial to those of us who think the party is already too far right on those topics, but smacks of wishful thinking. Putting a stop to the Hostile Takeover requires power, and progressives will have a hard time acquiring any until we learn to see the political landscape as what it is rather than what we might wish it to be.
Ultimately, our ability to win with a populist message will rest on the candidates delivering it. Unfortunately, as Sirota has pointed out, until campaign-financing laws are changed to allow those who don't depend on corporate interests to get elected, it's going to be hard to successfully field -- and recruit -- such candidates. But Sirota has made a compelling case that it can work at the local and state level, and serve as a harbinger for the national Democratic Party's success. On the other hand, much-maligned centrists at the Democratic Leadership Council (sell-outs, in Sirota's view) have argued that old-fashioned populism is a hard sell amid changing demographic and economic trends, even though social and economic justice should be at the heart of the Democratic domestic platform.
Whatever the issues we make our stand on, better and stronger candidates are essential to our success. Can we find an effective candidate out there who is a)charismatic and telegenic b)courageous and c) can effectively articulate a populist message? And who can also raise enough money in the run-up to the Democratic primaries in 2008? All suggestions are welcome.