Backward, March
The Democrats rally.

By NR’s John J. Miller and Ramesh Ponnuru
February 5, 2001 2:05 p.m.

he race for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee showed the two faces of the contemporary Democratic party. On the one hand, Terry McAuliffe, the winner, running as one of Bill Clinton's sleazier moneymen (but one committed to "campaign-finance reform"). On the other, Maynard Jackson, the loser, running as a black man. It was a choice between yuppie hypocrisy or p.c. zealotry; between the banal corruption of venality and the insidious corruption of identity politics. In his first speech as DNC chairman, McAuliffe made it clear that the party would be a home for both tendencies.

"George Bush says he's for election reform," McAuliffe said. "Reform this! I say, park the state police cars, take down the roadblocks, stop asking people of color for multiple forms of ID, print readable ballots, open the polling places, count all the votes, and start practicing democracy in America again."

In its article on McAuliffe's victory, the Washington Post commented on these remarks: "With that litany, McAuliffe endorsed complaints — many of them sharply disputed or…unsubstantiated — about alleged voter intimidation in Florida and elsewhere." McAuliffe, on our reading, insinuated that Bush (or his aides) had orchestrated a campaign of such intimidation. If so, it was a remarkably unsuccessful campaign: Black turnout jumped dramatically in Florida.

A lot of Democrats, obviously, feel angry both about Bush's victory and the way it was achieved. Even the most partisan Republican must admit that their anger is understandable (even if it is not justified). Democratic politicians can't be expected to ignore that anger. But they can reasonably be asked not to stoke it, and not to make deliberate appeals to paranoia.

Other Democratic pols have to be worried that they will lose support among swing voters by tending to their base. Many of them were initially inclined to back John Ashcroft before realizing how revved up Democratic activists were. Democrats won't, in most cases, have hurt themselves by opposing him, even in conservative states. As they quickly calculated, the activists were more likely to remember the vote in two years than ordinary voters. But they can't keep putting Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and Maxine Waters on stage without damaging their image.

It seems safe to predict that waving the bloody shirt over Florida will work about as well for Democrats in 2002 as impeachment did for Republicans in 1998. But the question of the party's direction goes beyond the Florida dispute, of course. Its left wing has been emboldened by the fact that a majority of voters went for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader. The party's intellectual energy increasingly comes from places like The American Prospect, which is to the left of The New Republic (though to the right of the Nation). And it seems fair to say that The New Republic itself has moved left over the last few years.

Conservatives may be tempted to cheer if the Democrats move left, because it is likely to help Republicans. But that would be shortsighted. Clinton's move to the right on crime, welfare, and trade may have made life difficult for Republicans, but it was good for the country. If the Democrats now move left, there could be trouble ahead — for them, and maybe for us.

Defending DiIulio
Vincent Schiraldi, head of the liberal Justice Policy Institute, performs the op-ed version of a drive-by on John DiIulio in today's Washington Post. A few years ago DiIulio came under attack for not being in the mainstream of criminology. His sin was to argue that putting criminals in jail was an effective crime-fighting strategy. In his op-ed, Schiraldi rehashes all the old, baseless charges that DiIulio is a political hack, fudges the numbers, etc.

Then he adds a new charge: "After the backlash against his gloom-and-doom proclamations [about rising teen crime], DiIulio wrote several pieces toning down his rhetoric. He began working with churches in inner-city communities, claimed that he never intended for young people to be incarcerated with adults, and urged a stop to prison growth. These were startling turnarounds from a man who provided the intellectual backing for the largest prison expansion in our history, most of it at the expense of the inner-city blacks he was coming to embrace."

The new charge is no stronger than the old ones. What's so inconsistent about thinking that prisons can help reduce crime — which, incidentally, disproportionately saves the lives of inner-city blacks — but that building prisons can reach a point of diminishing returns? And DiIulio's "soft" rhetoric is hardly new. The spate of attacks on him appeared in the spring of 1996. In June 1995, he wrote a book review for National Review — which Schiraldi quotes misleadingly — takes up the theme of inner-city churches reclaiming neighborhoods. He opposed welfare reform in 1995 and 1996. When the Wall Street Journal ran the headline "Let 'Em Rot" over one of DiIulio's pro-prison articles in January 1994, he wrote an outraged letter to the editor about it.

Anyway, what harm does Schiraldi think DiIulio is going to do running the administration's office on faith-based charities? Lock up the kids being ministered to?