Last week, in this space, I wrote a column bemoaning the Democrats' all-too-characteristic circular firing squad, and pronouncing the winner of the South Carolina Democratic primary debate George W. Bush. Since then, things have only gotten worse.
Think of the nine-person Democratic field as several sub-fields. One sub-rivalry is the two New Englanders, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Both of their states border New Hampshire, site of the first 2004 primary. Whoever fails to carry his neighboring state could be knocked right out of the race.
Kerry is the presumptive front-runner. He's liberal enough to satisfy the liberals, but credible enough on defense to satisfy the moderates. He also can sound and look very presidential (when he's not looking hangdog).
Dean, in the weeks before the Iraq war, won the hearts of the party's left-liberals, He is trying to keep them, plus a large gay base, by building a grassroots army. His challenge is to avoid being the Gene McCarthy of 2004, beloved but ultimately ineffectual. So Dean and Kerry are natural adversaries.
Meanwhile, former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt and North Carolina Senator John Edwards are jousting for the role of populist. Each is in the other's way.
Last week, I took Edwards to task for misrepresenting the effect of Gephardt's proposed health plan, which Gephardt said he'd finance by repealing Bush's 2001 tax cut. Edwards characterized this as "almost a trillion dollars out of the pockets of families making $30,000 to 40,000 a year." Shame on Edwards, I wrote. In turn, I was taken to task by the senator's staff.
But here are the numbers. Families making less than $40,000 a year get only about $124 billion, not a trillion, from the Bush tax cut. His staff explains that although Edwards said that Gephardt was imposing a trillion dollar tax hike on families making $30,000 to $40,000, he meant families earning less than $100,000. Oh.
Edwards, who could charm a dog off a meat wagon, has the challenge of being liberal enough to attract the party base, but not so liberal that he blows his current North Carolina Senate seat if he fails to win the presidential nomination. And as the heir to the premise that only southern Dems can win, he now must also contend with Florida Senator Bob Graham claiming to be the better good ol' boy.
In fairness, Gephardt also has some explaining to do. At a time of fiscal scarcity, why give more than a trillion dollars in tax-credits to corporations for worker health-insurance, when many corporations already provide health insurance? Gephardt's staff admits that a lot of this money will just be a windfall for corporations, but hopes they will use it to retain and improve worker wages and benefits. That's not exactly convincing. You might say the same of Bush's proposed corporate tax cuts.
It's tempting for each candidate and his or her staff to disparage rivals in nasty shorthand: corporate stooge; union shill; spendthrift; soft on defense. Collectively, this talk just disparages the whole Democratic field and the Democratic Party.
These policy debates are well worth having -- but respectfully. Just how much of the Bush tax cut should be repealed (about 30 percent of it actually benefits working families)? And how to use the proceeds of the repeal? How much money for deficit reduction? How much to what kind of health insurance? Better child care and early child development? Education?
Polls reliably show that public opinion tends to side with the Democrats on one domestic policy issue after another. That's why Bush keeps trying to steal the Democrats' rhetoric but not their program.
For a Democrat to stand a chance against George W. Bush, three things have to happen. First, the Democrats need to change the frame, so that the election is about all kinds of security -- economic security, health security, social security -- not just national security.
Second, the Democrats, as Joe Lieberman said, must be credible on defense. But that doesn't just mean emulating the Bush foreign policy. It means challenging how the Bush team has dealt with homeland security, how it handles the aftermath in Iraq, and whether on balance Bush is making the world a safer place.
Third, when the demolition derby ends, a viable Democratic candidate needs to be left standing, so that the message is heard. And for that to happen, there needs to be some kind of mutual arms control agreement among the contenders during the long primary season -- so that the candidates keep their criticisms trained on You-Know-Who, rather than on each other.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of the Prospect.
A version of this column originally appeared in yesterday's Boston Globe.
