Demosophia

You may want to incorporate this recent story into your analysis, Scott:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040126/opinion/26glo.htm

I pick #3, in large part because I suspect that much the same scenario you project will in fact occur and Hillary Clinton will run against Rudy Guiliani (hope I spelled that one right) or someone of a similar mold. The problem is that the damage from a Democratic defeat in 2004 is not just going to go away - I think that many of Dean's supporters are far more motivated and driven than a lot of people give them credit for and are not easily going to succumb to what they view as a betrayal of their core principles by the party establishment (a charge that is already flying around now by Dean supporters against those who voted for the war). As a result, they're likely to either stay at home or side with the Green Party, which I could easily bolster itself at the expense of the Democrats. That leaves Hillary in a weakened position in 2004 against whoever the Republican nominee is, with her defeat serving as the last gasp of Democratic politics as a viable electoral force in the US.

As a result of this defeat, what I see happening is more and more of the Michael Totten or Armed Liberal (from my co-writer over at Winds of Change)-esque Democrats leaving their party for the GOP, at least long enough to prosecute a successful war on terrorism. In effect, I see the "Grand Old Party" will become a de facto national unity government for the duration of the war - I look forward to reading many a bitter Guardian editorial claiming that the US has degenerated into one-party state. However, in the aftermath of such a conflict or maybe even during it, the influx of former Democrat and independent voters is going to have the effect of moderating the more conservative aspects of the GOP's national agenda on at least some levels (something we're already starting to see the beginnings of right now, in my opinion), a fact that many of the old guard Republicans are likely to consider rather disconcerting.

These developments are likely to pave the way for a full-scale schism between the social conservative and small "l" libertarian Republicans that I see taking place in the late 2020s to early 2030s and the formation of new national political parties along such lines. Beyond that, I don't intend to prognosticate, but that is more or less the way that I see it going down.

So, Dan, do you see Bush & the GOP as a replay of Churchill and the Conservatives? IE, riding high on a total war surge, only to be thrown to the wolves as soon as the external threat dies down enough to make all the other issues important again?

I don't know. I mean, Churchill & Co. had a much more dire war situation to deal with.

Not exactly Churchill, because he was thrown out as soon as the war was over with. I expect that Bush's legacy combined with a weakened Democratic Party in 2008 is going to ensure the final marginalization of the Democratic Party on the national playing field as the far left moves into the Green Party and the moderates leave for the GOP. That paves the way for a GOP ascendancy as a national unity party from 2008 onwards. The Democrats will scream and moan and whine to the Europress, but this kind of refusal to accept the reality of their situation is the same thing that has led to their defeats in 2002 and will likely again in 2004. As I think Scott eloquently stated, there's quite a big gap between the people who want to address the issues from a liberal perspective and the people who believe that George Bush is a war criminal. The fact that the latter of such individuals are trying to internationalize their cause by enlisting sympathetic Europeans illustrates that they've already recognized on an unconscious level that they've lost the battle at home and are hence trying to widen the ideological battlefield.

In any case, you get the same result - GOP ascendance for the duration of the war and its aftermath, with the more conservative policies being moderated by a steady influx of independent and formerly moderate voters. This frustrates the old guard but they go along with it, but there are already fractures in the social conservative/liberal coalition that you can see forming right now. That was why I postulated the split as taking place in the late 2020s or early 2030s, that's long enough for us to deal with the war on terrorism and its immediate aftermath - if there is another war during the second term of a Bush presidency, it's likely to be against Iran or North Korea, the fighting of which and its immediate aftermath is likely to preoccupy most of that term. That leaves the 2008 term to deal with whichever member of the Axis of Evil survives and the 2012 candidacy to contend with any number of remaining threats (Sudan, a possible al-Qaeda coup in Pakistan, ect.) though sooner or later there has to be a reckoning with Saudi Arabia. I figure by the time we're done with all of that it's well into 2016 and then we have a whole new game dealing with the post-war world among other domestic issues.

Also, with regard to total war, consider the following - Abu Musab Zarqawi and his minions almost used chemical weapons against 5 major targets in Europe in the winter of 2002. His plots were thankfully stopped, but they came far too close to succeeding for anyone to exhale just yet. Had they been carried out, then I suspect that European attitudes would have shifted dramatically with regard to the war on terrorism. And God forbid al-Qaeda gets their hands on a nuke and sets it off inside the US ...

That, in my assessment, is all it would take to put us on total war footing. I don't want it to come to that point and to be quite frank I don't think that anyone does. That's why we're fighting now - so it doesn't reach that point. But it could still happen.

It's too early to say for sure what will happen. Here's a prediction I do feel comfortable in making, however: If the Democrats don't act quickly and decisively to counter the widespread perception that they don't care about national security, they face a long time in the political wilderness. When external threats exist, domestic issues are pushed to the wayside. The fight against Islamic Fascism (or whatever you want to call it) is likely to be a long one. The Democrats have shown me nothing to demonstrate that they (1) recognize that there is a problem with certain elements in the Islamic world and (2) have some idea as to how to deal with it. I cannot trust them with my vote until they do, and I suspect that this holds true for a lot of people. They must bring their radicals to heal or they have big problems ahead.

Thanks, Dan, for the link to the Borger article. Tom Mann has made something of a career out of observing the ideological stalemate between Democrats and Republicans in the US, and Borger seems to question that wisdom, for once. I've had a number of debates (via email) with Rob Richie at the Center for Voting and Democracy over this issue of whether or not the politics of extremes "sells better" to the voters, than an appeal to the center. As a general rule I'd have to say that extremes don't sell, and that politics in the US is what's usually referred to as "centrapetal" rather than "centrifugal." But even though the overwhelming impetus is to move to the center I think we may be ending the period of stalemate between the parties.

The Democrats seem to be betting on centrifugal politics, and that wing of the party has been winning out over the "centrapetalists" at the DLC (which included my dissertation chair, S.M. Lipset). Because of the war, they seem to have lost patience with what was undeniably a winning strategy outlined by the DLC. This is a grave and fundamental error in a Presidential two-party system, and it's the legacy of allowing novices to control events.

Something very much like that happened in the mid-nineteenth century, as the Democrats not only rebelled in the form of the radical secessionist, Breckenridge, but with the New York riots at the beginning of the Civil War (grievously misrepresented by the Scorsese film The Gangs of New York.)

The fact is that "purist" centrifugal politics simply don't work in a two-party presidential system because it tends to under-represent minorities. (We have a choice, it appears, of either over or under-representation and have chosen the latter as preferable for the sake of stability and growth.) And, within the US, the "center" that defines the point at which the partisans are tethered, is locked in place by the American Ideology. The farther one strays from that, the farther one strays from the center. So the center is not a statistical mean, but an ideological imperative.

For instance, in the 1860s slavery was anathema to the American Creed. We had, indeed, suffered it for a long period of time, but that was no insurance whatever when it came to the confrontation. For as long as a stark choice can be avoided, it will be avoided in US politics, but faced with a choice that can't be avoided Americans will adhere to the founding principles in their decision. So, when push came to shove the institution of slavery was doomed because it lay in direct opposition to the American Creed that defines us as Americans. We are not, in other words, defined in terms of our ethnic identity as are most other nations on earth, so there is no "common ground" that transcends creedal divisions. The creed defines the common ground. When we differ with respect to the creed those who are more orthodox win, no matter what other contingencies are on the table.

This is the "crucible" that the playwright Arthur Miller so eloquently represented, for good or ill. We will always seek the center, but the center of American politics is that creedal passion that defines us as a people, not some "golden mean" in an idealized or pragmatic "Missouri Compromise." Ultimately, we accommodate up to a point, but we don't compromise. And in the mid-1800s the Whigs, who had become complacent and who represented compromise, became extinct because they simply lost their center. And in the 1860s the Democrats bet on the wrong horse. The Democrats did not follow the Whigs into extinction only because they happened to be aligned with the losers, a constituency that needed representation.

But the percentage of voters, and their regional distribution, was critical to maintaining the Democrats. They had failed to come to terms with the critical creedal issue of the times, but had come to terms with the aftermath: reconstruction. That saved them, and the economic turmoil of the 1930s propelled them to power. But between the Civil War and the Great Depression only two Democrats became President.

So the critical issue in assessing the Democrats' current viability, it seems to me, concerns their ability to come to terms with the creedal passion issue of our own times: totalitarianism. And looking at everything they've done since 1930 one has to say that they have the means, but not the will. FDR essentially had to redefine liberalism in order to build the constituency to help him in the 1930s. And he defined it as a "compassionate order," or a humane interpretation of the liberal tradition. It was certainly humane compared with the alternative, but it achieved that compromise at the expense of the American Creed. It bought the needs-based assumptions of the welfare/socialist sate and eschewed private incentives for public. It sought a common denominator.

This is a complex nexus, because while humanity or compassion is an essential value of humanism it is not necessarily an essential value of liberalism. The argument is not that liberalism is more humane, but that it's consequences are humane and its motives pragmatic. The two are invariably aligned, in theory, but not necessarily in practice. And if the two are ever in direct conflict the latter will always win in the US. If compassion and liberalism are in direct conflict, compassion takes the back seat and goes along for the ride. It demurs.

As I write this Kerry appears to have won the Iowa Caucuses with approximately 38% of the vote, and Edwards a close second with 32%. This, even though 3/4ths of the people attending the caucus opposed the Iraq War. This reflects some pragmatic assessments, but does not testify to the Democrats willingness to come to terms with the central issue. They are, essentially, defining their status as followers. Whatever the justifications for the War with Iraq, Democratic leadership has failed to communicate those justifications to their base constituency, and have therefore left themselves in a precarious position. If they support the War and the Reconstruction they have no way to justify it to the voters, who overwhelmingly disapprove.

It is still very difficult to prognosticate what will happen to the Democrats, but it's clear that they are at least attempting to move toward the "center." The problem is that they may very well miss the mark, because they don't really understand where the center is.