Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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I'm not sure I entirely agree with Michael Lind of the American Prospect, but I think he's on to something:

Today, outside of big cities with large black and immigrant populations, the Democratic Party is slowly being confined to Greater New England. The political heirs of the Federalists, the Whigs, and the Progressives, today’s Democrats are in danger of following those parties into oblivion.

It would be a mistake for the Democrats to think that they can regain a national majority by changing their policies or their style to appeal to more red-state voters. A new majority cannot be built on bland compromises between blue-state liberalism and red-state conservatism. Nor can northeastern or West Coast politicians successfully reinvent themselves as heartland types.

What is necessary is to recast the Democrats as, in effect, a loose federation of regional parties. All successful majority parties have had regional wings. This is true even in today’s Republican Party, which, though heavily dominated by right-wing southerners, includes socially liberal governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and George Pataki of New York, pragmatic internationalists like Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, and moderate New England senators such as Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chaffee.

Today’s Democratic minority is defined in the public mind by identity-politics groups — blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays and lesbians — and economic-interest groups, like unions. A majority Democratic Party would be defined, in contrast, by its regional wings: northeastern Democrats, West Coast Democrats, Great Plains Democrats, midwestern Democrats, and even some southern Democrats. The regional factions would agree on a brief national platform that is chiefly economic. But they would be free to express their regional differences in the areas of values and foreign policy.

At present, the Democratic Party is a socially liberal party that welcomes both economic conservatives and economic liberals. But in a country with a center-right majority on social issues and a center-left majority on economic issues of interest to the broad middle class and working class, this is exactly backward: Defining liberalism in terms of social liberalism is a formula for minority status. According to various polls, the number of self-described liberals in the United States is no more than 18 percent or 20 percent. Public attitudes on race, gay rights, and other subjects have been getting more liberal with each generation, but widespread opposition to unqualified abortion rights and gay marriage shows the limits to this trend. The religious right cannot and should not be courted. But in the foreseeable future, the Democrats have no chance of regaining a majority without the votes of many moderate traditionalists.

The Democrats should retain their bedrock commitment to fighting laws that discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. On other issues, which might include affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay marriage, the Democratic Party as a whole should take no stand. The litmus tests should be economic, not social: Do their candidates support policies that improve the lives of working Americans? Do they support a more progressive system of taxation and spending? If so, they should be welcome, even if they oppose abortion or gay marriage (indeed, the new Democratic Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, opposes abortion rights). Conversely, economic conservatives with liberal social attitudes should be invited to leave the Democratic Party and join the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. If this means that the Democrats lose some wealthy coastal donors who are motivated by social liberalism, so be it.

I suppose one could argue that the party is already doing this to a degree. The real problem is that every four years, the Democratic party has to nominate a presidential candidate, and the factions of Northeastern, Midwestern, Southern and West Coast Democrats would have to unite behind some candidate who would have to take a stand on affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay marriage.

There's a big difference between nominating Evan Bayh or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton — and either way, some big chunk of Democrats would be left with a nominee that they have some big differences with.

[Posted 01/04 04:17 PM]