Back to Our
Liberal Roots
We have
often expressed our Liberal Values. As
Liberals, we believe:
1.
All
Americans should have the same freedoms and opportunities.
2.
We
are each responsible for protecting the freedoms and opportunities of all
Americans.
3.
We
and our government should be competent and compassionate,
using
our freedoms and opportunities wisely and
helping those with fewer freedoms and
opportunities than the rest of us.
4.
Our
Gary
Hart’s newly published The Courage of Our
Convictions, A Manifesto for Democrats argues that Democrats must go back
to our liberal roots, including the values expressed by presidents Roosevelt,
Truman, Kennedy and Johnson:
·
·
Johnson’s
Equality for all our citizens # 1 and 3
·
Kennedy’s
civic duty and service - #2
·
Truman’s
internationalism - #4
We Democrats Lose Our Convictions
and Courage
Gary Hart
argues that beginning in the 1970’s, we Democrats lost our commitment to these
values. With Johnson’s passage of the
civil rights bill, southern conservatives switched from the Democratic to the
Republican Party. Oil shocks, declining
productivity and foreign competition ended three decades of steadily increasing
incomes. Declining manufacturing
employment reduced labor union membership.
More wives entered the labor force. White men reacted negatively to new
competition from both Afro-Americans and women.
Financially threatened, middle class
With
Reagan’s call for fewer taxes and less government, he capitalized on this
discontent to initiate an era of Republican control. In collaboration with business interests, he
redefined government from being the solution (protecting workers and consumers)
to being the problem (abusing businesses).
He demonized liberals and government workers for enabling incompetent
poor people and labor leaders for taking advantage of workers. A determined Cold Warrior, Reagan supported
the military-industrial complex, leaving post-Vietnam War Democrats to be
viewed as weak on defense.
This onslaught
of changing economic and social circumstances and political calamity
disheartened and divided Democrats.
While some Democrats sought to maintain traditional alliances and
programs, others sought to distance themselves from them. Like Republicans, they began posing as
We Democrats Now Need to Return to
Our Roots
Republicans
have now failed miserably and obviously to provide for our common welfare,
severely harmed our economy, become obviously incompetent and corrupt, and
forsaken our long bipartisan internationalism.
Gary Hart argues it is time for Democrats to return to our traditional
values, express them courageously in contrast to Republican failures and propose
policies to implement them under our present circumstances.
We must
restore our internationalism, reaching out to cooperate with other nations and
provide leadership to create new international political institutions to
respond to failed and corrupt societies and economic globalization. We must restore our safety net (including
crime prevention; health care; education; family friendly jobs; worker,
consumer and environmental protections, and income for workers, dependents and
retirees), providing all our citizens the security and assistance they need to
pursue our American Dream. Perhaps most
difficult, we must revive a sense of shared patriotic responsibility. We must create new balances of federal, state
and local government, business and voluntary activity. The result must be a new thrust among us that
restores our sense of being one community of equals.
We
confront a huge mixture of tasks, as Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson did
before us. With the failures of both
Democrats and Republicans in recent decades, many Democrats appear ready to
provide principled leadership based upon our new realities. And a majority of Americans appear ready to
join in the task. Let us proceed. Other commentaries in our Time for a Change
series will report and evaluate our progress.
Are Our Newly Elected Democrats
Liberals?
Conservative
and media pundits have rushed to proclaim that the Independent and Moderate
voters who helped replace Republicans with Democrats in our federal, state and
local races are more conservative than Democrats. They assert that our newly elected Democrats that
Independents and moderates helped elect are more conservative than long term
office holders. They predict that either
paralysis or conflict among Democrats will occur, such that the Democratic
revival will be short-lived.
I believe
these pundits are wrong. They are wrongly assuming that the independents
and moderates who voted for Democrats are not liberals. One conservative pollster argued that
Republicans can focus on their conservative base, because there are few voters
who aren’t liberals or conservatives. I
agree. When asked about their values,
about 2/3rds of Independents express commitment to liberal values and 1/3rd
to conservative values. Virtually all of
these liberal Independents vote for Democrats, except for those who vote for
smaller liberal parties such as the Green and Independent parties. Independents
who vote for Democrats are likely as liberal as Democrats.
Moderates
are often liberals who react against the label as it has been demonized by
conservatives since Reagan. They support
our liberal values of freedom, opportunity, equality, competence and
compassion. They are against unnecessary
government regulations, programs and spending, which they associate with the
word ‘liberal’. But contrary to what
conservatives say, liberals are also against all of these. Moderates
are often liberals who don’t know what liberals are and that they are liberals.
An
examination of the political positions of our newly elected members of congress
reveals them to be liberal. For example,
Senator John Tester of
Democrats are ready to restore our
American Dream
If
Independents and moderates are similar in their values to liberals and the
newly elected Democratic officials are liberals, then there is no reason to
assume that Democrats will be paralyzed or divided. Democratic strategists and leaders are
already focused on winning the White House in 2008. They have learned a lot during the last 12
years. They are planning to begin by
passing popular mainstream liberal legislation (hopefully with support from
some Republicans) to implement ethical standards and practices for legislators,
restore fiscal responsibility (including eliminating subsidies for wealthy
industries) and repair torn parts of our safety net (such as updating our
minimum wage, bargaining with drug companies to lower costs of drugs for
Medicare recipients) and limiting interest rates on student loans.
Democrats
may delay dealing with issues where mainstream
There
will be competition for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president. Hillary Clinton appears to have the best
chances. But it is difficult to know how
consistently liberal she would be. Her
medical reform proposal, vote to authorize the Iraq War and other positions
have been conservative; but she also indicates an ability to change. I think John Edward and Al Gore (if he enters
the race) are the most consistently liberal, with John Edward being a
Southerner and well known in