Will the Democrats Grow a Pair?

Diane Feinstein will be 85 years old when Californians go to the ballot box in November to elect their new senator.  She has already held her seat for more than a quarter of century, during which time she has amassed a record that is distinctly to the right of center relative to other Democratic Senators.   Given that she hails from one of the nation’s most progressive states, it should not have been shocking that Feinstein’s re-election campaign failed to gain the official endorsement of her state’s Democratic party.  It should also not have been shocking that mainstream Democrats are concerned about “crazy progressives” kicking to the curb one of the party’s most credentialed women leaders.   So, for example, this morning in the Washington Post, readers are treated to a cartoon in which Feinstein, briefcase in hand, is standing on a dock labeled “Left Coast” while a bus labeled “California Democratic Party” drives insanely into the Pacific. 

Personally, I welcome the challenge to Ms. Feinstein.   I don’t relish the idea of our nation’s most populous and most trend setting state being represented in the Senate by a center-left nonagenarian.   By the end of this weekend, there is a reasonably decent chance that I’ll be a grandfather, and I can’t understand why my party is being run by people old enough to be my parents.  But the age issue isn’t the biggest problem.  Bernie is old, and I had no problem voting for him in the last Presidential primary.  The real problem is that I don’t know what these mainstream Democrats stand for other than whatever the Gallop Poll tells them to stand for.  They even boast about how their policies are invariably more popular than the Republicans’.    Believe me, that’s not something to brag about.  What they should brag about is when they have the guts to stand against the majority and fight for something unpopular and righteous.  That’s the quality I’d be looking for in whoever is challenging Feinstein for the nomination in Cali.

I’m going down this road because of an article I saw in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago.  It pointed out that now, for the first time, the polls are saying that the recent tax reform bill is supported by over 50 percent of respondents.  As a result, the article said, Democratic insiders are re-thinking whether their candidates should be including opposition to that bill as part of their platform in the 2018 election.  Such opposition may be too risky, the argument goes.   It was the same argument that caused Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to oppose gay marriage even when vast majorities of their political base supported it.  In fact, it has been an unwritten rule of Democratic leaders since William Jefferson Clinton took over the party in 1992 that you virtually never should support any position unless it polls over 50 percent.  If memory serves, Clinton might have violated the principle on occasion when necessary to maintain his African-American base (I’m thinking of certain affirmative action policies), but other than that, he went wherever the majority went.  The fact that Bernie bucked that trend and frequently took on conventional wisdom is the main reason why his candidacy skyrocketed in 2016.  Is it a surprise that the states that voted Trump into office also supported Bernie in the primaries?   These voters didn’t get the memo that somehow being afraid to take on the Gallup Poll is a political virtue. 

I say, the hell with obsessive poll-watching when it comes time for leadership.  I’d find it galling if a Democratic candidate for office lacked the balls to take on the tax reform bill.  Isn’t it obvious that this bill is a major giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest citizens and comes largely at the expense of people like my grandchild-to-be?   The fact that most American taxpayers can expect to gain a few pennies tomorrow doesn’t take away from the fact that they will be paying a whole lot more than that in later years.  And to what purpose?  To make sure that yacht owners can buy an extra boat?  Or so those with a second home can soon afford a third?    Notably, the Democratic legislators in Congress were unanimous in their opposition to this tax bill when it came time to vote.  So why shouldn’t they have the guts proudly to denounce that bill on the campaign trail?   Why are Democrats so afraid to campaign as Democrats, instead of tucking back into their technocratic shells and campaigning as robots?

We saw Michael Dukakis campaign as a robot, Al Gore campaign as a robot, and John Kerry campaign as a robot.  Where did it get them?  Then we saw Hillary Clinton campaign on an “I’m not like that idiot but I don’t exactly have a vision for change” platform, and where did it get her?  If Democrats hope to start winning elections, they need to start speaking their minds and speaking their hearts.  There’s no shame whatsoever in losing such a race.  But more to the point, there’s plenty of nobility in winning this way.  You might even get to change the world after you get elected.