The People Have Spoken

But what did they say?

They said 60 million different things, as many as there were individual voters; it's always dangerous--if not downright misleading--to pontificate on the "message" sent by the electorate.

Nonetheless, let me suggest one message that Americans were sending: that they are tired of secretive, partisan government, where scoring off the opponent, feathering one's nest and engorging one's campaign contributors are seen as the highest goods. I don't mean to suggest that voters want some sort of mushy can't-we-all-get-along politics (or maybe I fear that as the end of blogs like this one), but I do believe that Americans reacted strongly against the kind of extremism, both in doctrine and tactics, that has characterized the present regime.

During the campaign a lot of observers complained that the Democrats had no unified platform, unmindful of the fact that the minority party--lacking a titular leader--never has a single-minded platform. (The cynic--me, for instance--will observe that Democrats seldom have a unified platform even when they are in the majority.) Those pundits made a deeper error, too. They failed to see that American voters are tired of litmus tests, tired of the very single-issue politics that we have grown so used to. The number of conservative, often pro-life candidates who ran as Democrats (and frequently won) is proof of that.

It won't be easy or fun to work out a way for the Democratic Party to accommodate many interests, but it has done so before. If you don't remember the party that dominated American politics for almost almost thirty-five years, from 1933 to 1968, go back and take a look. You'll see segregationists and civil rights advocates, union members and business people (generally small businesspeople), internationalists and people who wanted America to mind its own business. They did not agree on every issue--all of them probably did not agree on any issue--but they found enough common ground to govern, and to bring this nation to its highest level of greatness so far.