It is a little-known fact that during the 1960s and 1970s, there was a major war for the soul of the Republican party. The Goldwater wing eventually won, but in doing so they had to have a pretty harsh confrontation with the John Birch Society and, to a lesser extent, with Ayn Rand and her followers. Both groups were quietly but rather firmly expelled from the party's leadership, pretty much at all levels. There were hurt feelings and recriminations and dark accusations of conspiracy and clique-ishness--in short, the predictable resentment from those who found themselves out in the cold. But a surprising number of Birchers and Rand fans wound up choosing to stay within the party and leave the whackjob conspiracy nuts (the Birchers) and the Philosopher Queen (Rand) behind.

Notably, William F. Buckley Jr. was a major instigator of this. He sort of started the ball rolling, allowing fierce criticism of Ayn Rand to appear in his National Review, and at one point actually making all his authors and employees make a choice: you may write for The National Review or you may associate with the John Birch Society, but you may not do both. Period. He helped make similar things happen within the Republican National Committee.

This matured the party considerably and helped it become more of a competitor to the Democrats than it had been for most of the 20th Century.

The Democrats may be entering a similar wilderness period, but if they're smart they can come out of it.

Although the Bush-as-dictator comment has some attraction to it, I'll admit. The new Republican chant: Forty more years! Forty more years!

;-)

Thinking about it a bit further, what progressives who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party should do in 2004 is exactly what they did in 2000: support the Green Party, and make sure everyone knows about it. And they should do the same thing for all elections at all levels. If splitting the vote between the Democrats and the Greens swings enough elections to the Republicans, the Democrats will skew left again to co-opt large chunks of the Greens' platform. The Democrats did it to the Social Party in the '20s, leading to the Democratic Party that gave us the New Deal and, later, the Great Society. The Republicans did it to the Reform Party in the '90s, renaming the Reform platform "Contract with America" and pretending they came up with it, to great effect. In both cases the "fringe" parties got a lot of what they wanted (although not everything) even though they largely ceased to be relevant as political organizations in the process. It's a tightrope for the Democratic Party; they have to keep the moderates in the fold but also increase their appeal to progressives. But the strategy Hartmann reccommends can only lead to infighting.

Of course that assumes the hardline leftists can stomach four more years of Bush if they don't succeed in wooing the Democrats far enough leftward for their taste. Their lack of success in doing so in 2000 is what got Hartmann and his ilk fired up in the first place, and I even went so far as to call it "shooting themselves in the foot" in my main article. I guess supporting Nader again would be akin to shooting one's foot off entirely. It won't hurt as much the second time, and maybe you can beat the Democratic Party over the head with the foot. ;) In other words it might be painful and necessary if they want to advance their agenda.

Jerry, very astute. That is very possible. Although there is another possible path.

While it's not widely talked about, it appears that Libertarians cost Republicans very nearly as much in 2000 and 2002 as Greens cost Democrats. Not quite as much, but they were a key difference in some crucial Senate races and a few House races.

Which may indicate that the Greens and Libertarians can both be ignored by both parties.

Your history is on the money though: third parties who become a major threat invariably find within a few election cycles that either the Democrats or Republicans (or, sometimes, both) have co-opted their issues. Our system makes this pretty much inevitable.

The big question you're asking yourself right now if you're in charge of the Democratic National Committee is whether your best strategy lies in trying to co-opt the Greens and the other far left progressives, or in ignoring them and trying to steal issues from Republicans instead.

If they ignore them, they'll have to deal with a walkout from some elements. The question is, are they better off without them?

They haven't decided that yet. Their winning Presidential nominee will play a huge role in making that final determination. Which is part of what's going to make watching the Democratic primaries this year interesting to watch.

Mind you, only an insane addict watches them constantly. But peeking in once a week or so to see what the candidates are up to is going to be very interesting.

Like you, I think that Democrats will probably implode if they try to play to the hard left too much. Although a brilliant candidate could make that work, that's betting on a long shot. I actually think they'd be better off writing off this element of their coalition. It would take huge cojones, but I frankly think they'd be better off.

It's what Clinton did--writing off the fringe left, I mean. Do they have another guy like that waiting in the wings, though?

Or maybe they've got their own version of Reagan, who can suddenly create a new coalition that no one expected to see before. If so, he's hidden at the moment.

All right, you two, enough of the love fest.

I have a question.

Democratic progressivism and Democratic liberalism are, on many subjects, diametrically opposed. Given the deep rift within the Democrat party, how do each of you propose solving the problem that one or the other group feels disenfranchised by the party?

This is an excellent piece, and I've had a few discussions that are tangental to this.

This is just a gut feeling, but I seem to think that the nation's overall political compass has shifted to the right a smidge. I say that because I seem to recall someone pointing out that Nixon ran his '72 campaign on single-payer healthcare (or something close to it) and social security guarantees. If that's the case, it would seem that Carter's bungling administration and the mass failure of the American small farms in the '80's with a Democratic congress might very well be to blame. Since the '80's (and I'm going from memory, so I may have this wrong) the traditional farm states have slowly been turning GOP, and that may have to do with that something like 75% of our farmland is now owned by mid to large-sized corporations and co-ops. All of a sudden, those voters have to figure out if the GOP or the Dems now speak for them, since the GOP has been the traditional champion of business and the argument can certainly be made that Clinton's morality (or lack of it) pushed more than a few of them over to the GOP side for good. And that doesn't even take into account the effect the environmental movement may have had within the party to alienate farmers as well.

With the farmers and the Dems moving further apart, I think Clinton was able to capitalize on the stock market bubble for votes to mitigate their loss, but he might have damaged the relationship the party had with it's other traditional buttress of the unions in the process.

I think the farm vote is pretty much history for the Dems, for all those reasons plus maybe a couple of more that relate to technology -- simply less farmers to cast votes. It'll be interesting to watch what happens with the Dems and the unions in the next few years.

But in my eyes, it's really hard to see a major Dem resurgence unless they can prove that they have a clue with regards to fixing the economy. Failing that, I just can't see how it can be done short of ecological catastrophes large enough to make the environmentalists get their message across to more Americans or a horrible failure of globalization. By that, I mean one that would really impact here.

I should note that I'm a Democrat, but really only a couple of issues that I'm passionate about keep me one. And I imagine that's true of a lot of centrist Dems.

Oh, and one final disclaimer -- don't read too hard into what I've written here. I can't really back up anything I've written with substantial facts, as I've really not looked into it -- these are just my impressions.

Democratic progressivism and Democratic liberalism are, on many subjects, diametrically opposed. Given the deep rift within the Democrat party, how do each of you propose solving the problem that one or the other group feels disenfranchised by the party?

They don't have to stop feeling disenfranchised by the party entirely, they just have to feel like being a Democrat is overall the best choice for being heard. This is going to be difficult for certain progressives who, like certain libertarians, are completely unwilling to compromise on anything or to even consider voting for "the lesser of two evils." Right now there seem to me to be a lot more hardliners on the left than there are on the right, but that could be an illusion.

In the long run I think, as I said above, that the best strategy for progressives who want to be heard is to try to make the Green Party powerful enough that the Democrats will make an effort to co-opt some of their platform. There are a lot of things that progressives and liberals agree on, and they could work together on those issues for the rest of their lives if they chose to do so.

You are right, Chad, that farm country is now pretty solidly Republican in most of the country. As is most of suburbia, with a few enclaves here and there of course.

I frankly think the Democrats are in horrible shape as a party, and have to pin most of their hopes on either a horrible economic downturn (and despite all the whining, mostly the economy is worrying people, not ruining them) or a disastrous handling of the war. Either that, or a saviour candidate.

I otherwise believe that, ideologically, their coalition is no longer functional. I honestly do believe they need a major overhaul. It could be very painful for them. And no, I am not gloating. Technically, I'm a registered Democrat, although I'm quite alienated from the party and mostly vote Republican. For the moment. I don't know how typical I am but I sense that for most people, it's pretty similar: the Dems don't have a core message that resonates with anyone, except "Republicans are bad." That's just not a vision for the future.

I honestly believe the Dems are in a serious pickle. They've got to make some really tough choices as a party, and there's going to be a lot of second-guessing of any choice that's made.

Republicans went through something very similar in the 1960s and 1970s, though, and look where they are today.

The way that I see it, with the people who have put their bid in for the 04 presidency, the republicans will remain in office. The problem that I see with my party is that there is no strong voice of leadership to make a change. We complain about the budget, the war, education... and so on, However, what is anyone doing about it? We whine and complain more than taking a stand. The people that are running in 04 are only going to cause a split ticket for the republicans to continue to have control. I admire Bush and his strategy. He told the voters he wanted a republican congress and senate because he wanted a permanent tax cut, a war to fight terrorism, and so on, and he got what he wanted. In order for the dem's to even contemplate regaining control, they need a stronger strategy, and better candidates who are serious about making a change, rather than being seen.

There are a lot of interesting points in this thread but I have some comments about a few of them...

Regarding third parties: I find that few people really understand the reason for the existence of the two-party system, the theory behind it, and why there can never really be serious third parties in the US. Unlike in parliamentary systems of Europe (where even Nazis and Communists can get a few votes), the US has a "winner take all" election system. This means that in a congressional election a party that gets 10% of the vote gets 0% of the power. Even if they get 20%, 30%, or 49% they still get zero percent of the power. Winner-take-all election systems mean that coalition parties which band together to accumulate 51% of the vote get all the power while special interest or small parties get no power at all. The only way that such groups can get any power at all is to compromise and join a coalition party. I'm not saying that no third party can ever win a single election, but they can never win on a regular basis. This frustrates (and sometimes even infuriates) idealogically driven candidates and their supporters, but yelling doesn't help. There are only three things that minority parties can do. One is to get the Constitution changed (yeah right!). The second is to hold their noses and cooperate with the coalition party which most closely reflects their views and once they have access to power, try to guide the coalition in their direction. The third is to (somehow!) form a completely new coalition, perhaps stealing members from both of the main parties and driving a stake through the heart of one of the remaining parties. That has only happened once in history as the Republicans knocked out the Whigs. I don't see the first or third happening in my lifetime. This is actually on purpose, not in an effort to screw the Greens or Libertarians, but in order to keep extremists out of power. This single factor IMHO explains why the US Constitution is the oldest functioning one in the world. It makes life very hard for people with unusual and unpopular minority views to get any control over the mechanisms of the state at all.

Regarding the "fight on the right" in the 1970's: Indeed the Libertarians, Objectivists, Birchers, and the "racist/anti-semitic right" were all ejected from the core of the Republican party in the 1970's (and even from the fringes too for the most part). The quixotic Libertarian penchant for glorious victory without the religious right violates all of the rules I listed above and you can see where it has gotten them. Basically nowhere. The Objectivists have since gotten a bit more cosy with the Republicans (at least they vote for them for the most part), and from what I have seen, the racists and paranoid types have mostly evaporated or joined the Democrats. There's no doubt that the Libertarian party has cost the Republicans a lot of elections without winning much on their own. In a way, the Greens are balancing out this process by similarly weakening the Democrats. To make matters worse, by the way, in cases where Democrats are likely to lose a given election, even more people will be inclined to "go green". After all, if you are going to lose anyway, why not lose while advocating ideas you truly agree with rather than compromising? I think that tendency has been a problem for the Right/Libertarians in the past as well.

Regarding what the Left can do today: I think that the prospects are grim because most of the "workable" things they can try have serious negative side-effects. One way of papering over the cracks in the coalition is to become bland and vague, taking no hard positions on much of anything that might alienate any particular internal constituency. While that is helping a little, I would say that's what killed them in the last election cycle. Another way of addressing the problem is "grabbing the middle" by explicitly abandoning the hard left and embracing as many of the right's best issues as possible (as Clinton did). This means that the left will be upset, but who else will they vote for? It also means that the Right can't take on the easy task of scaring the population with prospects of unpopular positions of the hard left, and they also can't get the benefits of their own more centrist points of view because they become non-controversial. Lastly, the left could also campaign hard on their own best arguments and policies and try to beat the right in a straight up fight. Alas, the Democrats don't really have much to say other than (as one other poster pointed out) "The Republicans are bad!", and that's not a point of view that is going to convince anyone of anything.

Regarding how to bridge the gap between the "liberal Left" and the "progressive left": That's a very hard problem to solve since I don't think that these disagreements are accidental or minor. The idealogical war is real and is more or less at a stalemate. If one side or the other could quickly win this conflict (including expelling the losers as the Republicans did in the 1970's) at least the party would have a consistent rhetorical and policy position to promote. Otherwise if the internal party war remains at a stalemate, and as long as the Greens stay outside the Party we are going to see a lot of Republicans in office for a long time.

What about 2004? The only other issue likely to have significant effect is the personal charisma of a candidate who could unify the party because of his personality, leadership, and so on. Alas, none of the guys on the current short list seem to have anything close to what it takes. Most of them are either outright clowns or weak (like Lieberman who strikes me as a decent fellow, but not a strong unifying force or even close). That's the rub. Given all of these other problems where is the party going to find anyone worth voting for?

--Brian