Will Rogers Was Right

A common theme of today's punditry is that Democrats need to go beyond "We're not Republicans," or "We're better than they are," if the party of Jefferson is to win back one or both houses of Congress. Maybe, but I wonder.

Easy for commentators to say that Democrats should stand for something--that is, that they should agree on what they stand for. Harder to put into practice. (At the recent Gridiron Club dinner, Sen. Barack Obama commented that people who say Democrats don't stand for anything are wrong. "We stand for everything.") Democrats have never been highly organized. They have always been a party of coalitions. That used to be the norm for both parties, which is why there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. In the past few decades, Republicans have found party discipline and have looked like a unified party. Sen. Gary Hart says that the Republicans are a "corporate" party, not in the sense that they represent the interests of corporations, but in the party's structure. Democrats are very different. (The Republican Party is still a party of coalitions, which are beginning to fracture, but that's for another day.)

I'll agree that it would be nice if Democrats could agree on two or three planks to which they all adhere, but who is going to decide which ones those are, and are Democrats going to read anyone out of the party if he or she doesn't agree with one or two of them? Not likely.

It's not as if it would be a good idea for all Democrats to campaign on the same issues or to approach them in the same way. If I were Francine Busby, campaigning for the seat vacated by the disgraced and imprisoned "Duke" Cunningham (it's in San Diego), I wouldn't campaign hard against the Iraq war--I'd tell people that integrity is the most important quality in a congressman. And that's what Ms. Busby is doing. Now if I were advising Tammy Duckworth in her race for the seat of retiring Rep. Henry Hyde, public integrity would not be the issue I would hit first, Even though Illinois Republicans have had numerous problems in that area, Hyde has been pretty much untouched. (As I understand it, although Ms. Duckworth had had a lot of publicity as a double-amputee veteran of the Iraq war running as a Democrat, she is steering toward pocket-book issues--a smart move in a district that has been Republican, especially because her status as a wounded veteran is already known to all.)

Democrats running in the Northwest and Northeast would do well to emphasize their environmental credentials. A Democrat campaigning in Nebraska, say, or parts of the South, might do better to emphasize how the Republicans have become pawns of big business--there's still a lot of hostility toward corporate dominance in those parts of the nation.

I heard Rep. Sherwood Boehlert of New York on NPR today (he recently announced his retirement, so there's a seat around Utica up for grabs). He repeated the cliche that the November election for the House is really 435 elections. It's a cliche, because it's true. There will be some people who are going to vote for the Democratic candidate for House or Senate because he or she is a Democrat, and some who will vote for the Republican for a like reason, but the people who will decide the heavily contested races are going to be voting first for the candidate and second--if at all--for the party. To the extent that those swing voters do think about party, not being Republicans may be the best thing that Democrats could say for themselves.

We can wait for the presidential campaign to define the Democratic Party, but let's not be too precise, even then. Will Rogers was right, after all.

(For those who don't recall, Will Rogers said, "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.")