Democrats’ worst enemy
The San Francisco Chronicle (of all papers) has an article that douses a little water on the Democrats’ argument that Governor Davis is being blamed for problems that he has no control over. The article points out that when Davis was elected governor in 1998 he was the first Democratic governor in 16 years. Democrats had control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time, and Davis promised to end politics as usual. Almost immediately after his election, however, the in-fighting began. Instead of working together to achieve common aims, Democrats were busy arguing with each other.
The article makes a great comparison to Bill Clinton in 1992. When Clinton was elected he ended 12 years of Republican control of the presidency, and there was hope that with Democrats in control of the legislature many great things could be accomplished. Then, as the article points out:
But, being Democrats, they were soon fighting each other over Clinton’s No. 1 priority: reforming the health-care system. Hillary Clinton cooked up her own secret plan. Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. Pete Stark and a host of other Democrats all came up with their preferred versions. Why they wouldn’t get together in a room and agree on a single plan was (and still is) beyond me.
Instead, health-care reform crashed and burned. It’s true that even if Democrats had agreed, the insurance industry might still have killed the legislation. But Rep. Newt Gingrich was able to exploit the Democrats’ disarray to topple them from power in Congress.
The Democratic Party’s inability to organize around a coherent platform and impose party discipline has always been a weakness. For a political party that controls neither the White House nor Congress, it may prove to be fatal.
The Democrats’ worst enemy by SharedThought, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
August 26th, 2003 at 8:40 pm
“The Democratic Party’s inability to organize around a coherent platform and impose party discipline has always been a weakness.”
Maybe. But the Republicans have the same problem.
I think their biggest problem (on the national level) has been their inability to form some kind of strong but liberal version of national purpose - the way Kennedy did.
JFK could take about noble visions in the world, but nobody could doubt his cold warrior credentials.
The democratic party still suffers from the Vietnam complex: promoting a weak and uncertain national purpose while hoping from the best from our enemies.
When the issue is foreign policy, the dems lose. That is their biggest problem, particularly after 9/11.