Revival

Post-election commentary from contributing editor and house political scientist, Mike Wagner.

Time to Send "Liberal" to Rehab
Mike Wagner

Paging Ted Sorensen. . .the Democratic Party is rolling on into the cultural-
issues ICU and needs a shot of adrenaline - stat! The soul-crushing defeat of
John Kerry and Dems across the nation could send the party of Roosevelt,
Kennedy and Clinton into such a shattered-in-the-face-of-defeat political coma
that even uplifting lines from former JFK scribe Sorensen wouldn’t be enough to
resuscitate them.

And yet, the four year search for the soul of the Democratic Party needs to
begin right now.

The biggest mistake that those putting together their 2008 exploratory
committees can make right now is to try and find yet another way to move to
the conservative-defined middle. With four years of what will very likely actually
be more of the same, Democrats have enough time to administer CPR to the
word “liberal.”

In short, to win back the White House, Democrats must run as liberals.

Sit down, Howard – the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party disagrees with
you on too many issues like guns to make you the standard bearer.

Democrats have four years to do what they should have done during the last four
years: reframe the debates that they have been losing in the red part of the
country between New Jersey and California.

After Gore’s campaign of “surely they’ll see how dumb W. is” and Kerry’s
campaign of “surely they’ll realize how bad things have gotten” it is time to
give people a reason to become liberal again.

It’s time for an intervention. Democrats must send “liberal” to rehab and
bring it back into the world as something that stands for freedom and equality,
two values that the middle of the country believe in. Then, the lefties will
finally be able to stand up to Republicans during debates over social issues
when conservative candidates give one and two sentence answers about how
abortion is murder or gay marriage damages traditional marriage. Now,
Democrats have to say, “Well, see, I respect your opinion, but I would have to
put aside my own faith perspective and uh, well, do something you don’t like.”

Post-rehab, liberals can say, “In America, we are free and equal. That means
that gay people have the right to get married and I support that and you should
too for the simple reason that it is American to support it. We have to
support some things that we don’t personally like or do or agree with for one
simple reason: we’re Americans. If you support freedom and equality for all
Americans, then you should support the right to gay marriage.”

Democrats must take the next four years to find a way to say that “In America,
people must be free before they can be equal. If we don’t allow women the
option to get an abortion, they are less free, and thus less equal. If you do
not want to be a part of making women less free and less equal, then you should
support a woman’s right to choose, even if you think it’d be the wrong choice.”

In other words, Democrats must stop saying they are resolute and actually be
resolute.

Once Dems do that, it becomes much easier to get traction on other issues like:
Hey, we actually lost jobs during an administration for the first time since
Hoover and Whoa, we invaded a country for no defensible reason, Uh-oh, no one
can afford health care, and Yikes, we’re not even in the top ten in education?

As Bubba likes to say, when people think - Democrats win. But in order to get
them to think, Democrats have to give people who are willing to listen a
reason to select the Donkey button on the paper trail-less voting machines. In
four years, that reason should be the following: Democrats are the party of
freedom and equality.