With the Democrats suffering substantial losses in the 2014 midterm elections, it is likely that the advice from pundits and political journalists will be the same as it always is: Move to the right.
This has been the counsel almost any time that Democrats lose at the polls (Extra!, 9/92, 1/95, 1/11), rooted in the assumption that when the party veers too far leftward, the public reacts.
The advice is already coming in; USA Today (11/4/14), for instance, used an interview with a former adviser to Ronald Reagan to recommend that Barack Obama deliver a “mea culpa” speech along the lines of Reagan’s 1987 Iran/Contra address. There’s still time, the paper notes, for Obama to “score progress on big issues” if he “launches a concerted effort to build bridges with congressional Republicans.”
More outreach to the GOP is in order, say the pundits–but it’s more than that. The news site Business Insider (11/5/14) quoted a “Democratic insider” as saying that “the president has 60 days to clean house, regrow his spine, and lay out an aggressive, centrist agenda. If he fails at any of those, he might as well just start writing his memoir.”
In the parallel universe inhabited by the New York Times, “Democrats largely abandoned the more centrist, line-blurring approach of Bill Clinton to motivate an ascendant bloc of liberal voters.” (photo: Pete Souza/White House)
Where to find a model for this kind of “aggressive, centrist agenda”? Many accounts are offering the Clinton years as a recipe for success. As the New York Times (11/5/14) reported:
The Obama years have in effect represented a political trade-off: Democrats largely abandoned the more centrist, line-blurring approach of Bill Clinton to motivate an ascendant bloc of liberal voters. That strategy twice secured the presidency, but in the two midterm races it meant sacrificing the culturally conservative districts and states that had ensured Democratic congressional majorities.
While it’s dubious to say that the Obama-era Democratic Party ever really abandoned Clinton-style “centrism” (FAIR Media Advisory, 1/27/11), this conventional wisdom about the Clinton presidency misses some crucial facts. As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen observed (L.A. Times, 4/9/00), Clinton’s ideological positioning didn’t do much to help the party:
When Clinton entered the White House, his party dominated the U.S. Senate, 57–43; the US House, 258–176; the country’s governorships, 30–18, and a large majority of state legislatures. Today, Republicans control the Senate, 55–45; the House, 222–211; governorships, 30–18, and almost half of state legislatures.
One of the more intriguing findings from the 2014 exit polls is that voters overwhelmingly think the economic system favors the wealthy; 63 percent of respondents said so, up from 56 in 2012.
This would suggest that a more vigorous brand of economic populism—often derided as divisive or polarizing—would resonate with voters. Instead, though, various reports suggest the White House seek common ground with Republicans on trade policies—presumably corporate-friendly deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Newt Gingrich promotes the bigoted falsehood that Sharia law poses a threat to the United States. (cc photo: Gage Skidmore)
As USA Today‘s Susan Page (11/5/14) observed:
To be sure, turbulent midterm elections sometimes have set the stage for more bipartisan cooperation. When Democrats lost control of the House and Senate in 1994, President Clinton recalibrated his strategy, reached out to an energized Republican majority and a new House speaker, Newt Gingrich, and succeeded in balancing the budget and passing a welfare overhaul.
You may remember that post-1994 era of “bipartisan cooperation” as the time when the Gingrich-led GOP forced two government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996.
And it’s telling that bipartisanship is illustrated in policy terms by the overhaul of welfare. The idea that bipartisanship is exemplified by making life harder for the poor speaks volumes about the attitude of the corporate press corps. When they talk about politicians finally overcoming Washington “gridlock,” these are the policy outcomes they cite as successes.
Who better to pick up the centrist mantle of the Clinton era than Hillary Clinton herself? The Washington Post‘s Anne Gearan (11/5/14) contrasted Clinton favorably with Obama, giving a taste of the narrative corporate media is hoping to sell over the next two years:
Clinton has gone public with her disagreement with Obama over his first-term reluctance to arm the Syrian rebels, and is expected to air other criticisms if she becomes a candidate.
That sets up a potential candidacy very much in the centrist Democratic mode that Clinton naturally inhabits, several strategists said: family checkbook issues, job and worker security, women’s pay and healthcare equality, plus a muscular projection of American strength abroad.
New York Times image of apparent non-extremist Joni Ernst (Eric Thayer/NYT)
Meanwhile, Republicans are getting credit from corporate media for achieving their big win through centrism. Under the headline “Republicans’ First Step Was to Handle Extremists in Party,” the New York Times‘ Jeremy Peters and Carl Hulse (11/5/14) wrote of the GOP’s “dogged campaign to purge the party of extremists and regain power in the Senate.”
Next to this article in the print edition of the Times was a picture of Iowa’s Republican Senator-elect Joni Ernst, who believes, among other things, that the UN is engaged in a conspiracy to round up Iowa farmers and force them to live in cities (FAIR Blog, 11/4/14). Yet she doesn’t appear in the Times article about extremist candidates—perhaps she’d been purged.
Telling Dems to move to the right is the very definition of “preaching to the choir”, don’t you think?
The republicans NEVER move leftward.
The Dems should take the hint.
Voters don’t want you to be republican lite. They want you to move FURTHER TO THE LEFT and to take that stand.
This is COMPLETE BULLSHIT!!!! So, we should ‘move to the right’, huh? In other words, the ‘problem’ with Democrats is they refuse to become Republicans! WHAT COMPLETE BULLSHIT!!!!! I suppose they attribute the war the police are having on young, unarmed black males is caused by young black men’s ‘obstinate refusal to become white, and conservative whites, at that. And all this ‘Obama hasn’t moved to compromise’ with the GOP’, is crap. He bent over backwards for most of his first term, andand a fair chunk of his second term, and gave, caved, conceded, and accommodated them, and every time he did, the GOP ‘moved the goal posts’ and said, ‘No, this isn’t enough, give us a little bit more…’ Well, deal’s off, no more! If Obama has any balls left, he should stock up on extra refills for his ‘veto pen’! If the GOP thought they were the masters at obstruction, wait until they get a load of Obama right up until Jan. 20, 2017! Go get ’em “O Man”!
What a load of crap these talking heads are spewing out. Obama has for 6 yrs bent over backward policy wide to accommodate the GOP who was hell bent on honoring their pledge of making him a one term president.
This election, corporate America won. They’ve just purchased the entire GOP and placed them in charge of congress to do their bidding. And these talkers say Obama should just give it to them. When he won in 2008 with congressional control….did any talking head say GOP should move to the center to meet Obama…NO!!!
Conventional wisdom may be conventional, but it certainly isn’t wisdom. If we keep catering to the racism and religious zealotry that motivates many voters, we may win some elections, but then what. The Democrats have to lead; they have to educate the voters, they have to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpopular. That’s the only way we can come up with real solutions to real problems. We certainly don’t have to move to the center, or even to the left. We have to move to the truth.
A “suicide” note written by the presstitute perps for their DEM “victims”!
Bear in mind we are talking about the corporate media which likes to remind a Democratically controlled Senate that, in dealing with a Republican President, “While the Senate has the Constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential nominations, a duly elected president has the right to surround himself with whomever he chooses.”; whereas this same corporate media will warn a Democratic President contending with a Republican Senate,” While a duly elected president has the right to surround himself with whomever he chooses, he must nevertheless be mindful of the Senate’s Constitutional duty to advise and consent on presidential nominations.”
The oligarchy has spoken!
You have the right to elect who they select!
When Barack Obama first ran for the presidency, he had nothing to lose and so his “act” to attract voters was brave, his statements strong and appealing, his “campaign promises” were inspiring to many. Once elected, the applauded Obama persona disappeared behind the White House scenery. popular promises were abandoned or only tepidly fought for. Even when campaigning, as his popularity soared, it was obvious that his financial advisors were the same old dollar-chasing guys who were not going to revolt against big money baggers, banks and Wall Street. The Obama who led in that first polls-to-pole race was quickly replaced by an understudy who exhibited few of the commanding on-stage leadership skills necessary to keep the voters on his side. Presidential leadership requires real “acting” — and the actor must enjoy playing many parts. Once in office and with “plenty to lose,” Obama the Brave became Obama the Mild. The Democrats, already weakened from years of Bushism and big money influence, may grumble about Obama’s presidency, but they have also abandoned the inspiring progressivism of the past. The cancer on the entire political System has triumphed and made cowards of most of “them all.” While the ever-rightward GOP came out swinging with below the belt sucker punches and rope-a-dope strategies, the Democrats were often not in the ring. They could learn someting from
Ali, who even as his brain is ravaged continues to fight in the only ways he can. These days Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stand out because they are some of the few who are willing to speak truth to money, power and the corrupting System so fawned over by almost everyone else.
Doug Giebel
Big Sandy, MT
21,000,000 Non Voting Republicans
40,000,000 Non voting Democrats
Anyone see the problem here?
Also, Democrats need to stop acting and talking like Republicans.
They have been kissing up to Republicans since Reagan swept the last of the Dixiecrats, 30 years ago.
Those Dixiecrats are gone and won’t come back
Start acting and talking like Democrats and people will be able to tell the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PARTIES.
Democrat liberal ballot issues won big last night, but the RIGHT LEANING, SHAME ACTING Democrats lost in a huge way.
Democrats COME BACK!
I do not care if I remain a minority of one. Never will I support the corporate state, its empire and its ruling plutocrats.
Harry Truman said something like this: When a Republican and a fake Republican run against each other, the Republican wins every time. It’s time Democrats started acting like DEMOCRATS. Our policy positions are what the people of our country actually want, and yet our candidates (with a few notable exceptions) run away from them. That needs to stop.
Over the years Republicans have been the party of concession. The democrats have consistently moved the bar of legislation to the left. Republicans have continually lost ground by giving in. The bar has now moved so far to the left, republicans have no more concessions they can make other than become democrats themselves and abolish what’s left of the hardly recognizable republican party. THEM NOTHING! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHxIssSROjk