Two Good Opinion Pieces

My friend Matt pointed out to me two opinion pieces in the New York Times, written by John Danforth and Bill Bradley. 

These are two former senators that I have always respected. They are smart and for the most part fairly centrist.

In his piece, Danforth states what everybody knows, that the Republican party has been taken over by the religious right.  He says:

As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

In Bradley's piece, he argues that the Democrats need a unifying strategy, vision, and mission. Bradley says:

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.

I think the answer to Bradley's challenge to the Democrats lies in the very concerns that Danforth is artuculating for his party.

I believe Democrats need to stand for fiscal conservatism because balanced budgets help everyone and red ink only helps the rich who are lending the federal government the money to pay the bills.

And I believe that Democrats need to stand for social pragmatism because the average american does care about morality and values, but they are also realistic and pragmatic about how these values ought to be legislated. As an example, I think most americans want abortion to be available to women who choose to have one but they also want abortions to be rare and only used as a last resort. I believe most americans support the use of birth control. I believe most americans feel that gays should be treated fairly in our society.  I believe most americans believe that stem cell research should be funded so that life saving drugs can be developed.

I think the Democrats need to become the party of the center as our country moves to the right.  They need to be the party of sensible policies, not religious fundamentalism.  That's a winning strategy.

Comments

[Andy Nardone]

The numbers belie your beliefs. Shouldn't Kerry be in the White House if your beliefs were correct? Or did the war on terror (fear) alone trump everything else?

There is a good argument for the latter rationale, given the sales job and scare tactics heaped on the American people post 9/11. If this is so, you would expect this "terrorism trance" to lift as time goes by and allow for more open debate on where we are headed.

And we'd be prudent to lift this trance post-haste, because the path down which this administration/religious right is leading us is getting more frightening each day.