The assumptions of taking for granted that you are a majority
In the early 1970s, when the right wing began in earnest to build its infrastructure, Democrats felt like they were the natural majority party, and progressives were used to winning substantive policy victories as well. Since Franklin Roosevelt had swept the Democrats into power in 1932, Democrats had held the White House 28 of the 36 years from then until Nixon took office by the slimmest of margins in 1968. Democrats had been in control of both houses of Congress all but four years in that same period, and were still even with Nixon's landslide re-election victory in 1972. When, after the Watergate scandal, Democrats swept the table in the 1974 congressional elections and then Jimmy Carter won back the presidency in 1976, it just seemed like things were returning to their natural order.
On the policy side of things, progressives were also used to winning important victories. The New Deal had institutionalized government as a major positive force for the American people, with social security, labor law reform, progressive taxation, backing and financial services regulation, and other policies that made difference in people's lives. Truman had pushed through the hugely important GI bill on the domestic side, and the forward thinking Marshall Plan in international policy. JFK and LBJ had striking success in the area of civil rights, and had gotten through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that helped reduce poverty. Even Republican presidents Eisenhower and Nixon were moderate enough to support important new government programs such as the interstate highway system, OSHA, and EPA.
With this kind of 40-year track record of political and policy success, perhaps Democratic and progressive leaders in the 1970s can be excused if they did not see the need for big new institution building projects similar to the ones the right wingers were undertaking. But taking for granted that we would always have a natural majority, had some very unhealthy consequences for our side, including:
• Becoming defenders of the status quo. When you have passed a lot of big initiatives, and are running things, you start to think things are pretty okay in the world. The openness to new ideas by the powers that be in the Democratic Party faded, and the congressional leadership became very well entrenched. When Republican Presidents started getting elected on a more and more regular basis, the natural reaction was to defend the programs of the past without coming up with new ones, which made Democrats sound increasingly defensive and whiny to the general public.
• Intellectual laziness. Along with becoming defenders of the status quo came a certain intellectual laziness. Democrats felt like they had solved many of the problems of the world, and that voters would keep rewarding them for their historic accomplishments. It did not seem like there was much need for rethinking broad ideology or governing assumptions.
• Protecting incumbents was more important than building the farm team or shaking things up. When you take for granted that you are in a permanent majority situation, it's natural to think first and foremost about protecting incumbents. The emphasis on protecting incumbents hurt us both in terms of an overall flabbiness to our message, and in terms of recruiting, training, mentoring, and supporting promising young people coming up through the ranks. Entrenched incumbents never want to rock the boat too much in terms of a populist change message, either in general or any particular issues such as healthcare, and they just don't pay as much attention to the young turks on the way up.
Entrenched incumbency also had a devastating impact on building a Democrats farm team. A program similar to what Gingrich did with GOPAC, of spending millions to recruit and train young potential office holders, simply was not going to happen in any major way in the Democratic Party of the 1970s and 1980s.
• Building for the long term. Conservatives felt perfectly comfortable about digging in for the long term on issues and message because they felt they had no choice. Progressives, not worried about having a long term majority and believing any electoral setback to be a short term aberration, tended to focus on whatever short term issue fight was at hand.
• No urgency about institution building or ideological coherency. This was the most important failing of all. Republicans and conservatives knew they had top build their case with the American public for a more conservative America, and they acted accordingly. They systematically built think tanks and issue advocacy that had a coherent conservative message, ideology, and agenda at their heart. Progressives and Democrats assumed the public was with them ultimately, and tended to focus on specific policy areas to defend or do better on - the environment, choice, gun control, etc. - or specific consistency groups to help - labor, blacks, women, hispanics, gays/lesbians, the disabled, etc. We had a tinkering-around mindset, rather than being focused on building institutions or a broader message that could help win in the long term.
The end result of this fundamental difference in mind sets resulted in Republican and conservatives building a movement and infrastructure that held together both philosophically and in terms of political strategy. In the meanwhile, Democrats and progressives were more and more on the defensive, and were building issue based or demographically based groups that had few common goals or language. The conservatives built themselves a movement; progressives built a series of narrowly defined interest groups.
Progressive vs. conservative culture
There is also a fundamental difference in the culture of progressives versus conservatives. I mention this with a fair share of trepidation, because I know some folks may react badly to this analysis, but I believe in its truth. There are a great many positive things about the progressive movement's culture - including diversity, tolerance, creativity, and a willingness to question authority - but these same positive attributes have also contributed to us not building a strong political infrastructure.
Conservatives are much more likely to come from the worlds of business, the military, and/or conservative churches, all of which tend to be top down institutions where authority is deferred to and discipline is tight. Progressives are much more likely to come from the labor movement, community organizations, non-profit and social services organizations, and liberal churches where people are encouraged to question authority and value diversity of opinion and action. These fundamental cultural differences have shaped the nature of both movements, and of the political parties that are natural homes of each side.
One of my favorite political quotes of all time is from Newt Gingrich, who once said, "Democrats are the enemies of normal Americans." I love this quote because it neatly summarizes the attitude of right-wing Republicans, and the differences between the parties. To Gingrich and his allies, being normal means being the most traditional kind of American: White, heterosexual, married, Christian, regular church-goer, at least reasonably well off, no serious health problems or disabilities, with a home in the suburbs or in small town rural America. And if you accept this definition of "normal", Gingrich tends to be right. If you are a male and fit all these categories, your demographic group consistently gives over 80% of your votes for Republicans at all levels. If you are a female, but still fit the rest of that demographic profile, the Republican percentage tends to be less but not by a huge margin - generally only five to ten percent depending on the year. Democrats, on the other hand, are the party of all those folks who do not fit the Gingrichian definition of "normal": African Americans, Latinos, Asian and Pacific islanders, immigrants, union members, gays and lesbians, unmarried folks, people of diverse faiths as well as non-church-goers, people with disabilities, intellectuals, artists, people who live in- and actually enjoy doing so- big cities, low income folks, etc. That kind of diversity in our coalition means we have tended to be less disciplined and consistent in our message and strategy, and less willing to describe a coherent philosophy or framework for what the Democratic Party or the progressive movement stands for, and why we do. And because we tend to come from non-authoritarian religious, political, and social institutions, it reinforces this "let a thousand flowers bloom" tradition. For 30 years, I've been seeing people at political meetings wearing "question authority" buttons.
Another difference I have found between the conservative and progressive cultures is the way business is viewed. Because so many conservatives come oout of the business work and respect it, many of the techniques of business were brought to bear in their political work in terms of:
• the raising of capital
• income and cash flow management
• the development of long term business plans
• creating long term multi-media marketing strategies
• developing branding strategies for their products
• creating linkages (such as interlocking boards of directors) and business to business partnerships
These strategies, if applied in the right ways, can be just as effective in politics as in business, in both specific campaigns and in long term organization building.
Specific firms as well as techniques have also been brought in to help Republicans in campaigns. Republicans, for example, have a long tradition of involving commercial ad agencies in the development of their Presidential ad campaigns, as opposed to Democrats who have mostly used traditional political ad firms for their ad campaigns. The most famous example- but far from the only one- of how these non-political ad firms can bring a more sweeping thematic image to a campaign was the 1984 "Morning in America" ad campaign developed by Hal Riney of Ogilvy and Mather, whose brilliant evocative images perfectly captured the broader image Reagan's team was trying to build.
Democrats and progressives have been far slower to embrace these kinds of strategies. Sometimes that was because of suspicion and political correctness, sometimes because these strategies were so fundamentally foreign to progressives' experience and world view. This dynamic is starting to change, as we will see later on, but that change has been agonizingly slow to come.
As a result of progressives assuming we would always be a majority, and having a culture that was too diverse and non-authoritarian to create a coherent political strategy and ideology, we have not responded very effectively over the last thirty years to the conservative movement's steady progress of building a powerful infrastructure. It is actually remarkable that despite the right wing's overwhelming infrastructure that we are still as competitive as we are. After losing control of the Senate, and working control of the House (because of conservative southern Democrats voting so often with Reagan) in 1980 we regained working control of the House in 1982, and of the Senate in 1986, and held both until 1994. From 1990 through 2000, we had more votes then the Republicans in three consecutive Presidential elections, and gained seats in Congress in five of six elections. A Democratic President had consistently high approval ratings through his last six years in office despite scandal and impeachment. Even in 2002 and 2004, we were closely competitive in spite of being on the losing side.
So that was my thinking on some of the things that went wrong with American progressivism over the last couple of generations. And by the way, I am in no way suggesting that the way to rebuild is to copy the top-down culture and ugly tactics of the right: quite the opposite. I believe instead that we need to build our own kind of movement, one that is fueled by a more egalitarian and communal culture. Sort of, well, an Open Left…