The 2004 Democratic convention is a study in both discipline and in self-discipline. That makes it a refreshing rarity.
Not only does the official program offer both consistency of message and a great variety of voices and styles; the restive Democratic base has been admirably, almost eerily, self-restrained. Advocates of universal health care may wish that John Kerry had embraced a single-payer plan, and peace activists may wish that he had renounced his vote for the Iraq War. But this year, everybody here is a realist, and there is no sniping at the nominee. The stakes are just too high.
This self-restraint was not the case in such years as 1948, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, or 2000 -- and the party often paid the price.
Polls suggest that most individual delegates to this convention are to the left of Kerry on the issues. But the delegates, and even most of the cause activists in town, are adopting a both/and strategy: First, let's get the ticket elected; then, let's keep on rebuilding a progressive movement.
This spirit is very much on display at the Campaign for America's Future (CAF) three-day "Take Back America" fest, taking place at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge overlooking the Charles River and the Boston skyline. This is the gathering of the progressive tribes. At Tuesday afternoon's opening session, CAF Co-Director Robert Borosage led the energized attendees in a series of cheers for the Kerry-Edwards ticket. But Borosage also declared, "It's progressives who are doing the voter registration, and the air war. We're doing the politics this election season." Borosage added that progressives needed both to elect Kerry-Edwards and to "build independent progressive institutions."
With a lineup of mainstream progressive activists that included Robert Reich, John Sweeney, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Michael Moore, the sessions had an overflow crowd that swelled to greater than 400 inside the hotel and at least 700 outside. The Cambridge police, dressed in jumpsuits, allowed the sessions to continue on the riverbank overlooking the skyline, and, one by one, the speakers addressed the good-humored crowd outside on the grass after finishing their speeches inside.
The only oddly sour note came from Howard Dean. He lavishly criticized the Democratic Party for "failing to stand up to George W. Bush for three years," and spent most of his speech telling self-congratulatory war stories from his own campaign. You would almost have thought he'd won the nomination -- and you were reminded why he didn't. The phrase "tone deaf" came to mind. Dean mentioned Kerry almost as an afterthought.
Although Dean offered his trademark shouts to the assembled progressive activists Tuesday afternoon, his tone was more subdued when he addressed the convention Tuesday night. But the message was pretty much the same. He recounted the story of a 19-year-old student volunteer from Alabama who had come to the Dean campaign in Burlington, Vermont, because "no one in Washington" was speaking to his needs. That would presumably include John Kerry and John Edwards. And Dean declared, to general bewilderment, "Never again will we be ashamed to call ourselves Democrats. Never. Never. Never."
For the most part, however, the Democrats have managed their balancing act -- work like hell to elect Kerry and work like hell to build progressive institutions.
It is tempting to conclude that they should have learned this long ago, that the "circular firing squads" of past Democratic conventions reflected just immaturity or self-indulgence. But that conclusion would be a little too facile and ahistorical.
In 1948, the enactment of a strong civil-rights plank in the party platform triggered a Dixiecrat walkout. But it was the right thing to do, and Harry Truman was re-elected anyway. At my first convention, in 1964, I was working as a volunteer for the Young Dems and smuggling passes to Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party activists mounting a credentials fight over the official, all-white delegation. Once again, momentous civil-rights issues were in contention and could not be papered over. The same principled differences were true of the two conventions dominated by divisions over Vietnam, 1968 and 1972. And at the conventions of the 1980s and '90s, it was the Democratic Leadership Council people who deliberately picked a fight with the liberals to drag the party more to the center.
This time, mercifully, there are no such fundamental schisms, and Democrats who'd like Kerry to be more of a progressive more of the time are willing to defer their efforts until November 3. As more than one speaker has observed, George W. Bush has proven to be a great uniter after all.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.
