After Tuesday, after the Battle of Connecticut, expect to hear a lot talk about the need for healing in the Democratic Party if the party wants to win in November. Which raises two questions: First, is healing possible, and, much more counter-intuitively, do Democrats really want to win in November? The answer to the latter is presumably an obvious affirmative -- who wants to lose? -- but the questions are actually related, and together they map the pathology of the party.
Last week, a lapsed Democratic friend was explaining to me her theory of why it would be better if Democrats did not win back control of the Congress this fall. In its simplest form, it goes like this: Things suck and they're going to get worse; as the deterioration accelerates, the people in charge are going to be the ones blamed for the mayhem. They will be punished by the voters in the next presidential election, in 2008. So let the Republicans have this mess and the consequences that flow from it.
Familiar themes in a familiar narrative, no doubt, and I was not entirely surprised by the sentiments, partly because, in this case, "lapsed" is best defined as “really pissed off at the party for 2000, 2002, 2004, and on and on.” Still, I did not expect the premonitions of defeat to appear this early. After all, the Republican president is in horrible shape in the polls, and people keep telling pollsters, by increasingly wide margins, that they prefer Democrats over Republicans in the fall's elections. This should be a season of hope. Picking up 15 seats in the House, while always a challenge, is not impossible when you look at what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East. The winning calculus for six more Senate is more difficult to imagine, but the same theory applies: If this election is essentially a referendum on GOP stewardship, then all kinds of unpredictable outcomes are possible.
Still, despite the prospects of huge GOP losses this fall, Democrats have in recent days began to act like losers. We learned recently that DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel is not talking to DNC Chair Howard Dean on account of strategic differences. And if this is not a bad enough omen, I watched last week as House leaders tried to “assuage fears” about some of the Democratic veterans who are in line to become committee chairmen. In response to a GOP plan to demonize some of those potential chairmen, the Democratic leadership is letting it be known that no one has a lock on a committee chairmanship if they win in November.
According to Newsweek's Mike Allen, part of the GOP strategy this fall is to scare its base to the polls by playing up some of the specific individuals who would have power in Congress if Democrats win. According to Allen, "The Republicans have begun making their case by focusing on the top Democrats on each committee, on the assumption they would move from ranking member to Chairman if the party took over: Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY.) at the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) at Judiciary and, perhaps scariest of all for the GOP, the aggressive Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) at the Committee on Government Reform, which can issue subpoenas."
Republicans are going to say that these guys are too liberal to be in charge of important congressional committees. In this climate, you'd think that is not a notion Democrats would want to help reinforce, especially when standing one's ground is a question mark issue for the party.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made sure that every one knows that a Democratic win in November does not automatically elevate a slate of ranking members to chairmen. "She said members should not feel entitled and nobody should assume anything, including who will be chairs," one of her aides told Allen, "It's very clear that the Republican strategy is to attack the ranking members. It's part of their scare campaign to try to sow fear of the Democrats."
That response may illustrate the fear that some Democrats have of Democrats. If there is any real chance that, under Speaker Pelosi, Rangel does not become Ways and Means chair or Conyers does not head the Judiciary Committee, she would be looking at a revolt in her caucus that would be impossible to contain, and it is hard to see where the healing might begin. Waxman with subpoena power is a genuine GOP nightmare. What's there to hide about? If these are your chairs, stand your ground and stand by them. If not, just wait to see what kind of "healing" is going to be required.
Which brings us back to the question with the obvious answer: Do Democrats really want to win in November?
Terence Samuel is a political writer in Washington, D.C.
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