Candidate George W. Bush promised to be a uniter, not a divider, and it's hard to dispute the notion that as president he has botched that pledge. Indeed, Dick Gephardt's “miserable failure” refrain may have been invented for Bush's performance in bringing the country together. Still, in time, Democrats may look back fondly and remember Bush as the great unifier. That's because, in at least one respect, he has kept his promise to bring people closer.
The downside for him is that they are all Democrats and “anybody but Bush” voters who want to see him defeated in November. And, if you believe the poll numbers, their numbers are growing. Bush, whether he wins re-election or not, will leave the Democratic Party more unified than he found it, and maybe more unified than at any time in the last generation. He has given the party life, and in that way he is the anti-Reagan.
Reagan, with his warmth and charm, crushed Democrats; he sat on their ambitions like an elephant on a seedless grape. Compared with its decrepit mid-1984 counterpart, today's Democratic Party looks like a fighter jet.
How Bush managed to take a demoralized, self-disparaging patchwork of a party and give it purpose and focus and energy is one of the great political mysteries of our time. Suddenly you have House Democrats, maybe the most disheartened of all the party's constituencies, sounding like a the Disneyland chapter of the Optimists' Club, thinking and thinking about how they will govern when they take control of the House next January.
All of this seemed impossible just a year ago, when Bush had everything going for him and Democrats were hardly an opposition party. It began with the shell shock after Florida and a timidity toward the tax cuts. They wanted to be generous on education and then had to confront the confusion of September 11. They seemed ill-equipped.
Consider that while the Clinton years were an emotional boom for Democrats, nothing like true party building occurred during that time. The fund raising grew more efficient, and the message was easier to communicate with the advantage of the White House megaphone. The veto pen, meanwhile, bought considerable leverage and drove Republicans on the Hill crazy, but in many ways Democrats survived in the same way that Bill Clinton did: on his remarkable political skills, and, in both cases, just barely.
In 1992 there were 28 Democratic governors; in 2000 there were 18. After Democrats lost 52 House seats in 1994, they got triangulated in 1996 by Clinton and Dick Morris. At the end of the day, Clinton's two terms failed to do for the Democrats what Reagan's eight years had done for Republicans: give them a core. It may be that it takes George W. Bush to do that.
On strict orders from their leader, Nancy Pelosi, House Democrats this week gathered in a windowless room in the basement of the Capitol to talk about how, in Pelosi's words, “the political climate was right” for Democrats. The room was packed, staff had to give up their chairs to the 125 or 150 members who showed up for the “Leader's Luncheon.” The sandwiches were fine, the brownies spectacular, and the incumbent president, whose stratospheric approval ratings once struck dread into the hearts of Democrats everywhere, was the of the good news. Last week, a Los Angeles Times poll showed a 19-point lead, 54-to-35, for Democrats when people were asked whom they preferred to represent them in Congress after the November election.
The conversation at the luncheon was about the opportunities that will be afforded Democrats in this year's House races. Some of them will likely become awfully familiar in the coming months. Democrats need to pick up 11 seats to take control of the House. A year ago, when it was 12, it was impossible to contemplate Democrats in control anything, least of all the House of Representatives.
Now they are counting down the 11 seats. At the Tuesday meeting, strategist and targeting specialist Mark Gersh, a noted realist, laid out the possibilities. Bottom line? It can happen.
“I've been feeling a sense of optimism among Democrats for some time, and this was just the punctuation on that optimism,” said Colorado Representative Diana DeGette. “The thing that really impressed me was that when you look at open seats and swing seats, even if we lose a few seats there are still ways we can pick up the 11 seats we need to win.”
Democrats are most excited about three open seats that had been held by Republicans in what are regarded as Democratic districts: New York's 27th, Washington's 4th, and the Louisiana's 3rd. Meanwhile, they think they can beat GOP incumbents Max Burns (in Georgia), Rick Renzi (in Arizona), Jon Porter (in Nevada), and Rob Simmons (in Connecticut).
The GOP response is that Democrats are seeing trends that don't exist and hoping for John Kerry coattails that are not going to be there on election day. But more important is the muted quality of the Republican response. Republicans, of course, are reading the polls, too, and they have to know how much trouble Bush is in.
Still, the economy is coming back, and redistricting endangers five Democratic seats in Texas. So whatever Democratic optimism there is must be contained by a little reality.
Pelosi asked everyone at the luncheon to pony up cash and whatever else he or she could to help. Richard Neal of Massachusetts pledged $100,000 on the spot.
It'll take everything they have. Clinton liked to talk about the politics of hope. The basement lunch was all about the hope of politics.
“We have to continue to drive home our message more clearly, and we have to run a picture-perfect campaign the rest of the way,” said DeGette. “The Democratic base is highly energized.”
Can Democrats say, “Thank you, Mr. President”?
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the online edition of The American Prospect.
