What if the Democrats win? Let's get ahead of ourselves. Let's presume for a moment that all the nervous excitement coursing through Democratic veins these days is entirely justified and that they actually win in November. Let's say they win big and take control of the both ends of the Capitol. Let's assume that this fall we have to kill a few hundred acres of trees and use up lots of bandwidth to tell people about the Italian girl from Baltimore who grew up to be the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, and how the former boxer form Nevada, who spent the first real money he made to buy teeth for his mother, has become the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. In such a scenario, we will necessarily be talking about the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction, because for Democrats to take control of the Senate, Harold Ford must win in Tennessee. But let's say all that happens.
Then what? What will change then?
We know that there will be no withdrawal of troops from Iraq. We know that Congress will continue to spend buckets of money on the war. Instability in the Middle East will persist. The nuclear threat from North Korea will remain constant. The record federal deficit will remain firmly in place. The Medicare prescription drug plan will remain in place. An overwrought bankruptcy bill will remain the law of the land.
So what if Democrats win?
It is not a question a lot of Democrats would want to confront at this point, because the answers remain frightfully anemic. And the lack of a more concrete understanding of what Democrats will do if they win the election could easily turn into the biggest reason they don't. This is more than just the old "what-do-they-stand-for" argument. It is not so much that Democrats have yet to produce their own version of the Contract with America as it is that they have yet to sufficiently define themselves as a robust alternative to the GOP. This should have been easy, if you buy into the idea -- and I do -- that you define yourself by what you are against. What could have been easier than to define yourself as being against everything George Bush was for? A majority of the country would be with you today. Democrats will surely tell you -- and Republicans will agree -- that whatever else they did or did not do, Democrats were firmly and consistently against George Bush.
Were they really? While we know how they feel about him, Democrats never strategically, or even ideologically, challenged the president.
Take the centerpiece of Bushism -- the conflation of the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Democrats disagree with each other on this issue as much as they disagree with Bush. That leaves their position on the war, shall we say, undefined.
The first Bush tax cut? Twelve Democrats in the Senate voted for it.
No Child Left Behind? Ted Kennedy was a chief sponsor
The bankruptcy bill? Eighteen Democrats voted for it.*
The Medicare prescription drug bill? It was Democratic defections in the House that ultimately passed that bill.
So forget what they stand for. What are they against?
The myth about the GOP's 1994 Contract with America was that it was a list of legislative proposals so specific that it cloaked the Republicans in a sense of purpose and transformed the political landscape. But the truth about the Contract is in its preamble: It was one declaration of opposition after another, which made clear what they were willing to fight for, or against. In short, they were for the people and against the government. If you could see them now!
Democrats today still lack such a declaration. So what will happen if they win? Until they define themselves better, the question is entirely moot.
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C.
*This article originally stated that Barack Obama voted for the bankruptcy bill. He did not. The text has been corrected.
