No sooner had the election results rolled in two weeks ago than commentators of all political stripes began to analyze why the Democratic Party (largely) lost and offer advice about its future. They inflated the importance of their discussion with frequent reference to the party's "soul" -- as though the electoral defeats constituted a spiritual rather than a political problem. Some said that the country is lurching rightward and that Democrats must follow suit. Others said that the Democrats had lost touch with their liberal base and thus suffered the consequences in the form of low voter turnout. Still other commentators predicted that the longstanding ideological tug-of-war between the liberal and centrist wings of the Democratic Party would continue unabated.
Amid the din of competing analyses, one thing is certain: The impulse toward self-reflection is a thoroughly liberal one. Indeed, the introspective reflex seems ingrained in the liberal psyche, which engages in far more soul-searching and self-recrimination than its conservative counterpart.
The last time Republicans were shut out of power at the congressional level in 1992, the GOP did not embark on a series of public internal debates about what had gone wrong. Then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) instead circulated a memo reminding his fellow Republicans that President Clinton had only garnered 42 percent of the popular vote and hence had no mandate for the policies he would seek to implement. Rather than commiserate over his marginalized status, U.S Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was busy planning a conservative comeback in the House of Representatives via his "Contract with America." More recently, conservative grumbling about Sen. Trent Lott's (R-Miss.) ineffective performance as majority leader -- when the Democratic Party picked up five seats in the 2000 election and took control of the Senate after the defection of Republican-turned-Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont -- was relatively hushed compared with recent calls for the outright dethronement of the Democrats' current trio of national leaders: Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.
Up to a certain point, internal debate can be revitalizing, and there is no question that Democrats need to think more about the overall coherence of their party platform -- rather than leaving their core constituents to piece together what the party stands for from its particular stances on prescription-drug benefits and Social Security. But there comes a time when the liberal and centrist wings of the Democratic Party need to stop their public airing of self-criticism that the general electorate -- and, more importantly, Republicans -- will inevitably interpret as a sign of enduring weakness.
Part of the Republican Party's appeal no doubt lies in its appearance of self-assurance, reflected in the ideological consistency and discipline that it has achieved on a number of issues. Not a single House Republican voted against the $1.35 trillion Bush tax cut. Think, on the other hand, about the phrase "knee-jerk liberal," used to attack those on the left who reflexively adopt a party-line position. It is significant that no direct equivalent, such as "knee-jerk conservative," exists for the other end of the ideological spectrum. The underlying assumption behind the phrase, however erroneous, appears to be that conservatives are deeply committed to the positions that they espouse whereas liberals have their positions dictated to them (remember the first President Bush's "card-carrying member of the ACLU" attack on Michael Dukakis in 1988) or act on instinct rather than conviction. In the language the mainstream media uses to characterize the Democratic and Republican parties, one can detect subtle semantic differences in how the comparative depth of ideological conviction is perceived. For example, political analysts and journalists commonly refer to certain parts of the country as "staunchly Republican," whereas this term is rarely applied to areas that vote Democratic by similarly lopsided percentages. Instead, those in the media say "overwhelmingly Democratic," usually in reference to major cities, as though the proportion of Democratic voters were simply a demographic effect of dense urban populations. The word "staunch," on the other hand, suggests a brand of political loyalty and determination not associated with the Democratic Party.
One concrete lesson that the Democratic Party can learn from the GOP, entirely apart from policy debates and campaign strategy, is how to respond to electoral defeat. Liberals and centrists alike who care about the future of the Democratic Party need to listen to what their ideologically disparate constituents are saying in the aftermath of Nov. 5's defeat, then continue the discussion in more productive ways -- rather than conducting the kind of internecine warfare Democrats have thus far waged all too publicly. The urgent need for political "regroupment," as former Vice President Al Gore called it in his post-election interview with Barbara Walters, is abundantly clear. Perhaps Democrats need to stop tearing out each other's bleeding hearts and start wearing them on their sleeves again.
