| THE
FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: A DEFINING MOMENTS ANALYSIS
by Herb Rubenstein
CEO, Herb Rubenstein Consulting
The November, 2002 Democratic
loss of the Senate, House seats and key Governorships presents the
party and its candidates a true defining moment in U.S. history.
As described in Joe Baderacco’s book, Defining Moments, and
my book, Breakthrough, Inc., a defining moments analysis requires
an accurate analysis of the current reality, a clear understanding
of the times and a deep introspective look at the Democratic Party
today. The goal of a defining moments analysis is to set a clear
strategic vision and action plan for the future. Today, these goals
elude the Democratic Party.
The current political
reality is that the Democratic Party, its leaders and candidates
are sorely out of step with the majority of the electorate for five
key reasons. First, like the 1960’s, the first decade of 2000
is all about action. Action figures like Bush win big. Thought leaders
like Daschle, Edward Kennedy, Gore, Lieberman, Gephart, Kerry and
many other party leaders do not compete well in this post 9/11 era
with the “action figures” that Republicans run in race
after race. In politics today, action figures trump thought leaders.
Who are the action figures in the Democratic Party today?
Second, the Democratic
Party now appears to many voters as “the enemy of the future.”
Whether you agree with futuristic ideas or not, name one democratic
candidate who can legitimately claim to present futuristic ideas
on a regular basis. The futuristic focus of the 1960’s democrats
(Kennedy-space; Johnson – civil rights) has been lost in the
voter’s mind to a focus that appears to be “anti-future”
in areas such as education, foreign policy, social security, homeland
security and tax reform.
Third, the Republicans
have taken the issues away from the Democrats. McCain took election
reform away from the Democrats. Bush took the role of the U.S. as
the leader of the world away from the Democrats. The Democrat’s
edge on education was lost to forward thinking “school choice”
Republicans. It was the democrats who gave the country social security,
yet the Republican’s social security reform agenda has stolen
the hearts of seniors. Young voters who were Democratic in the 1960’s
are now decidedly Republican. Republican candidates are becoming
younger and younger while Democratic candidates appear to be squeezed
into the 40-60 age demographic.
Fourth, the Democratic
Party’s pro-government stance has severely backfired because
government workers – from police officers, to DMV clerks,
to election officials, to IRS agents, to postal workers (quasi-public
workers), to teachers, to workers in our court systems, to just
about every conceivable group of bureaucrats, is in the voters’
eyes failing miserably in executing government policies and programs
successfully, efficiently or courteously.
Voters hate dealing with
the government today. Government workers often treat citizens in
a way no private company would ever tolerate. Yet, the Democratic
party is seen as protecting government workers’ jobs and giving
them even more duties (programs to implement, regulations to enforce,
responsibilities to manage) when they can’t even do their
current jobs up to a minimally acceptable level.
Fifth, the Democratic
Party has lost its fight, its soul and is no longer in touch with
its core constituencies. While Republicans are viewed as tools of
the rich, the oil interests, big corporations, the military-industrial
complex and the power elite, the Democrats are viewed as being the
prisoners of the union’s environmentalists, pro-life activists,
sexual activists and the anti-religious left. No party and no political
leader today can be viewed as a prisoner of certain interests and
get elected today.
The current reality is
bad for the Democrats; but it will get much worse in 2004 unless
changes are made very quickly. A Bush 2004 landslide could bring
along 60 Republican Senators and 250 Republican House Members. How
do the Democrats get back on track? There are three steps:
- Recruit, nominate,
train and support (with new technology) a new generation of “action
figures” to lead the party and run for political office.
- Become again the
party of the future by creating policies and legislation that
will:
• prunes government to what it can do best,
• sets a new agenda for education that embraces rather than
blocks reform,
• promotes efficiency in the workplace at the expense of
old union job protection rules,
• develops a new tax system based on consumption (V.A.T.)
rather than income taxes,
• firmly declares its support for the United States to lead
the world toward peace and economic property,
• creates a better balance between environmental concerns
and economic concerns based on the policy of “sustainable
development” as the keystone,
• reforms the court system,
• sides with the voter (the customer) and not the government
worker,
• the Democrats must promise to the American people that
the Democrats will achieve these goals BY THE END OF THE DECADE.
- The Democrats must
also broaden their base of support among young people, by working
hard in rural areas to cast off the Party’s image as “urban,”
and by creating and funding at a $100 million dollar level a new
Democratic Party task force to recruit, train, develop and support
new leaders coming into the party to run for office and to get
voters out to the polls in record numbers.
These steps do no appear
to be on the agenda of the Democratic Party today. And like the
U.S. Senate race in Virginia in 2002, if the Democratic Party does
not implement these steps, it won’t even be on the ballots
for many important races in 2004. This is a defining moment not
only for the Democratic Party, but also for politics as we have
come to know it in the United States.
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