Debating with My Father

I had a long discussion with my father last night about the future of Howard Dean's campaign. We agreed on certain fundamental principles:

* Four more years of George W. Bush and John Ashcroft will be disastrous for this country economically and socially;
* It is imperative for a Democrat to win not because he will promote this or that program but because the composition of the Supreme Court will be up for grabs in the next four years, and the composition of the federal judiciary will be up for grabs as well. Judicial appointments are for life, so we had better get a less ideologically conservative person into the office that appoints the judges lest we have a conversative judiciary for the next 25 years;
* The place where much legislating gets done in this country is, surprisingly, in the executive branch, which annually issues thousands of pages of regulations on every subject under the sun. We had better have a Democratically led executive branch if we want to preserve our rights and freedoms and not have them eroded by rule-making that takes place out of the public eye.

My father's view is that if we are not out there actively supporting whomever is the Democratic nominee, we are, in essence, capitulating to the reelection of George W. Bush, and are, by our inaction, bringing about the result that is opposite of what we desperately want. As he sees it, therefore, whatever I think of John Kerry or John Edwards (I am a supporter of Howard Dean), if one of them is the nominee and Dean is not, fealty to my democratic ideals (and my Democratic ones as well) requires that I devote the same energy to them that I would devote if Dean were the nominee.

As background, he shared with me his experience in 1968, when he, and many other idealistic Democrats like him, refused to support Hubert Humphrey because he would not break with President Johnson over the Vietnam war. Because they deemed Humphrey "not ideologically pure" (as it were), they didn't support him until it was too late. The price they paid was six years of Richard Nixon. Even their attempts to expiate their guilt -- fervant support of McGovern in 1972 -- wasn't enough to reverse the mistake.

I argued that John Kerry (and to a lesser extent John Edwards) haven't earned my support precisely because they are part of the status quo that has failed to excite the Democratic base all along. They voted with the majority to pass the Patriot Act 99-1 in the Senate. Establishment Democrats supported the No Child Left Behind Act, and the resolution authorizing war in Iraq and the $87 billion to bail Bush out of his own lack of planning, and both tax cuts and the Medicare "reform". For the first time in many years, the Democratic establishment engineered the first mid-term election loss of Congressional seats by the party not in the White House. In short, the politics as usual in the Democratic party has been a disaster. Somehow, that message has got to get through because sooner or later, if things don't change, the party will cease to have any relevance whatsoever.

In the end, I think I might have the better argument (such is the hubris of youth) because fealty to your ideals sometimes means accepting short-term defeat in service of a longer and more lasting success. As it turned out, this morning's New York Times had an op-ed by Robert Reich directly on point (and, no gloating intended, it went my way). Here's one of the key nuggets in what Reich had to say [link]:

For so long now, everyone has assumed that recapturing the presidency depends on who triumphs in the battle between liberals and moderates within the party. Such thinking, though, is inherently flawed. The real fight is between those who want only to win back the White House and those who also want to build a new political movement — one that rivals the conservative movement that has given Republicans their dominant position in American politics.

In other words, the whole notion of "electability" is inherently flawed because it isn't about ideas, and therefore will always be a hit-or-miss proposition that depends on the personality of the candidate and the fallibility of the opponent. Reich again:

As we head into the next wave of primaries, the Democratic candidates should pay close attention to what Republicans have learned about winning elections. First, it is crucial to build a political movement that will endure after particular electoral contests. Second, in order for a presidency to be effective, it needs a movement that mobilizes Americans behind it. Finally, any political movement derives its durability from the clarity of its convictions.

In the end, I believe that the whole problem with electability might be best summed up by something I saw on Howard Dean's campaign blog today: Electability is all about trying to figure out what someone else will think instead of thinking for yourself.

So in a nutshell, here's the conundrum: on the one hand, there's a saying in politics that "where you stand depends on where you sit". This, to me, is what the electability argument rests on -- we'll stand for whatever we have to stand for because the goal has to be winning in November. On the other hand, there's also a saying in politics that "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." And this, I think, is the crux of the movement politics argument -- we can't just concern ourselves with this November, we have to build a movement that can reliably win for many Novembers to come.

Both are compelling arguments, and they may be irreconcilable. I suspect, as Reich suggests in his op-ed, that the failure of centrism to catch hold in this primary season (uber-centrist Joe Lieberman has struggled to get traction, while Howard Dean, or more accurately, Dean's rhetoric, whether mouthed by him or Kerry or Edwards, has enjoyed comparatively more success) means that movement politics is winning out over win-at-all-costs politics, at least for now.

As is often the case, I don't have a neat summation for this post. For the moment, I will continue to support Dean, because I think that his message is important. What happens after the primaries remains to be seen. In any event, I do think that this is one of those fundamental moments in history in which what we decide now (or in the near term) will reverberate throughout the party and politics for years. In the circumstances, it behooves us all to pay attention.