DEMOCRATS HAVEN’T TURNED BACK FROM 1968

 

A very interesting article written by a long-time Democrat, analyzing what has been happening in his party.  Nancy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Democrats Haven’t Turned Back From 1968

The politics of identity and attack have supplanted the old liberal tradition, which favored national unity.

Democrats Haven’t Turned Back From 1968
PHOTO: CHAD CROWE

America is polarized in many ways, but one of the most significant is between generations in the Democratic Party. Coming out of the Great Depression and World War II, we present-day seniors saw liberalism as the promise of racial and social justice and broadly shared prosperity. We also saw it as a defender of civil liberties against abuses such as those that took place in the 1950s McCarthy era. Abroad, we supported a strong United Nations and other multilateral institutions to reduce conflict but had no illusions about the expansionist ambitions of totalitarian states.

In other words, the dwindling number of Greatest Generation and Depression-born Democrats came of age with a liberal tradition that is increasingly marginalized in today’s party. That was evident in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation fight and in the party’s use of race, sex, ethnicity and other identity markers in politics more broadly.

The best example of the old Democratic Party’s aspirations was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provided that no citizen should receive favorable or unfavorable treatment based on irrelevant factors such as race, sex, national origin and religion. Our domestic agenda was further realized in President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal aid to education and other measures designed to create greater opportunity for all, underwritten by a safety net for those who needed it.

You could feel the first big change in 1968 as a new generation in the West rebelled against established institutions and leaders. In the U.S., protest formed around opposition to the mistaken Vietnam War. I experienced this rebellion first as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s assistant in the Johnson White House, then as a vice president of Columbia University during the disorders there, and later as an active member of the antiwar movement and George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.

 

There was idealism in the protests but also cynicism and a touch of totalitarianism. “We Demand!” often preceded the protesters’ list of objectives. You could have a discussion with them over coffee or in small groups, but when an audience was present, a professor, speaker or political candidate expressing a contrary opinion would often be shouted down, sometimes with obscene chants. “Never trust anyone over 30,” the slogan went (or, as I often thought silently, no one under 25). Those in established positions were usually judged reactionary no matter the substance of their views.

Over time the late-1960s protesters found adult roles. Some, perhaps not surprisingly, found outlets in self-indulgent consumerist lifestyles. Others gravitated toward politics, academia or the media and brought their youthful outlooks with them. But in the national Democratic Party, leadership continued to rest with politicians with traditional liberal values such as Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Ted Kennedy and then with moderates like Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey, Paul Tsongas, Jay Rockefeller and Gary Hart. These latter figures were economically liberal, socially tolerant, wary of unwise foreign interventions, and willing to govern across partisan and ideological lines.

The next big change came in 1992 with the nomination and election of Bill Clinton. His moderate platform was similar to his peers’, but his political style was a departure. The concept of a permanent campaign came to the White House. Every move was measured against its short-term political value to the president. The Clinton team launched personal attacks against policy dissenters and against women who brought charges of sexual misconduct against the president. In 1996, Mr. Clinton accused Republican nominee Bob Dole of “trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare” through his support of a bipartisan entitlement-reform effort Mr. Clinton himself had previously praised. By 2001, when Mr. Clinton left the scene, say-anything attack politics had become the normal order of the day in the Democratic Party.

President Obama brought hope of a more tolerant, less deeply partisan politics. But he was surrounded by Clinton alumni who, for the most part, kept on as before. His signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, was introduced and passed only by Democrats—a sharp contrast to the bipartisan approaches taken by Johnson with his Medicare and Medicaid proposals, and by Ted Kennedy with his Medicare prescription-drug legislation. To pass ObamaCare, the White House and its allies launched a full-court press against all House Democrats, including moderates with doubts about its cost and coverage. The legislation passed narrowly, but 63 House Democrats lost their seats in the 2010 midterm elections. That left the body sharply divided between Republican and Democratic partisans, stalling the administration’s legislative agenda for the remaining six years of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

Mr. Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign labeled his opponent, the temperate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, as antiminority, antiwoman, anti-middle-class and a financial predator. The theme continued against Republican congressional candidates in 2014. Hillary Clinton tried to replicate it in her campaign against President Trump but did not comprehend the electorate’s determination to reject political establishmentarians, including herself.

Democratic seniors look back to their roots in the Civil Rights Act and wonder why we so relentlessly attack Republicans as racist when Democrats, the party of civil rights, have no apparent agenda to address daunting school-dropout and incarceration rates, drug trafficking and use, unemployment, violent crime, and broken or nonexistent family structures in afflicted urban neighborhoods. We ask why Democrats, the party of civil liberties, would try to destroy Justice Kavanaugh with uncorroborated accusations of sexual misconduct in high school.

You can see the roots of what is happening now in the habits of 1968, which have been carried on by politicians, journalists and academics who seem unaware that deplorable means do not yield virtuous ends. Democrats and many in media now accuse Mr. Trump of totalitarian methods and objectives. There is much to fault in the Trump presidency, but the totalitarian tendencies appear to flow from our own party. Its present presidential aspirants appear to be emulating Robespierre in their over-the-top denunciations of Mr. Trump and all others they deem unworthy.

What is missing now, among Democrats, is any semblance of a coherent policy agenda directed to the future. Partisan anger is not an agenda. Positive, practical policy proposals constitute an agenda. To get started: peace, prosperity and justice. How can Americans of all parties and persuasions get there together?

Mr. Van Dyk was active in Democratic national policy and politics for 40 years. He is author of “Heroes, Hacks and Fools” (University of Washington Press, 2007).

 

 

 

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