"The Democratic Party of the nation ain't dead," said New York political operative George Washington Plunkett at the turn of the century, "though it's been givin' a lifelike imitation of a corpse for several years."
Quick, somebody check Tom Daschle's pulse! Does the Democratic heart beat within the new Senate majority leader? Ready or not, he is now the public face of the Democratic Party, ironically having been thrust on stage by a Republican. When Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords got so fed up with George W.'s corporate extremism and frat-boy arrogance that he switched from the GOP to become an independent, his sudden move yanked the Senate gavel out of Trent Lott's slimy hands and delivered it to Daschle.
It was a windfall not only for the Senator from South Dakota, but for all the Senate Democrats, giving them an opportunity to breathe new life into a party made moribund by the weight of Big Money.
The media focus, of course, was on process rather than substance—which committee chairs were switching to whom, what did the switch mean to Senate decorum, why was Bush so clueless as to let this happen, which lobbyists were out in the cold now that Democrats chaired the Senate committees, etc.? The bigger question was largely ignored: What will the Democrats do with this amazing opportunity?
Here's a chance to change the national debate from a myopic, bottom-line, corporate- boardroom fixation (is it good for Wall Street?) to the broad, common-good concerns of America's workaday majority (is it good for ordinary folks?). It's also a propitious opportunity to literally move the debate out beyond the Beltway directly to the people.
The road less traveled
Daschle and his Democratic colleagues are presented with two very different choices: (1) Adopt a defensive posture and play the inside game; or (2) Go on the offensive and move the policy battle to the grassroots. The first choice is much preferred by the money interests, the media moguls, the lobbyists, and the other forces of the status quo. Their arguments are couched in words like "bipartisanship," "responsibility," and "governance." The pipe-smoking pundits and editorial aristocrats have been busily lecturing Daschle that, with his barest of majorities, his only responsible course is to build an "atmosphere of cooperation in Washington," as the New York Times editorialized.
This means that Daschle should use his gavel, his legislative scheduling power, and his ability to authorize hearings judiciously—to block if he can a few of George W.'s loopier ideas (like fully deploying Reagan's Star Wars fantasy), and seeking slightly more progressive compromises on the margins of Bush's agenda (expanding the patients' bill of rights, for example).
As a Democratic Party strategist advised after the Jeffords' monkey wrench was thrown into the Senate machinery: "This is still largely a game of defense, of moderating or deflecting the worst excesses of a conservative administration. ... [ read more ]
Help us out by throwing some cash in the bucket:
Their names probably won't mean mean anything to you, but these people ought to have some modicum of personal recognition: Jason Anderson, Aaron Dale "Bubba" Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Gordon Jones, Roy Wyatt Kemp, Karl Kleppinger, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, and Adam Weise. These are the 11 workers who were killed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.
