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Yesterday in the first part of Myths of the Netroots, I discussed how the term “Democratic base” is often misused on the left and spoken of in such a way as to exclude the majority of the Democratic base – the real base. Today’s topic is the 1994 mid-term elections and the causes of the historic and sweeping Democratic losses. Despite what you may have read at DailyKOS and other “progressive” stops in the blogosphere, centrist Democrats were not the culprits.

Like their rightwing counterparts, the New Left and their younger ideological heirs in the netroots have convinced themselves centrist southern Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Council directly caused the massive Democratic losses of 1994. No amount of reasoning and presentation of facts and voting trends will convince them otherwise. It is so simply because they need it to be so – to fit into their vision of Democratic party history.

There’s an old saying that goes, “if something is repeated often enough, it will become true.” The DLC’s role in Democratic losses from 1994 on is a prime example of that saying in action among the left.

I used to believe there were two schools of thought among the more progressive Democrats when it came to pre-2006 congressional losses for the Democratic Party, the first being that it was the fault of the Democratic Leadership Council that the Democrats lost in the 1994 mid term election cycle, setting up further Democratic losses in subsequent elections. The other school of thought being the last three elections were “stolen” through a combination of voting machine rigging, voter intimidation, and other forms of fraud. However, It doesn’t take long to realize those putting forth these seemingly conflicting theories are often the same people. If the DLC is the focus of the discussion, the first theory is espoused. If the discussion deals primarily with the elections and not the DLC, then the second theory is favored. I tend to believe the latter theory myself. At least there is evidence to suggest voter irregularities in the last three election cycles.

But those aren’t the only pieces of conventional yet conflicting wisdom among some Democrats that gnaw at me.

Another gem often offered up when discussing Democratic losses in pre-2006 election cycles is the Democratic party has moved too far to the right, courtesy of the DLC. And when people have to pick between a Republican and what they perceive as “Republican-lite,” they’ll pick the Republican. People who believe this often quote Harry Truman, a great moderate Democrat, who said “When given a choice between a real Republican and an imitation, the people will choose the real thing every time.” I believe this only if the people in question are Republicans! What is being implied here when this thought process is applied to Democrats is they will either vote for a Republican if they feel the Democratic choice isn’t liberal enough or they won’t vote at all. Either way, if we follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion, Democrats throw elections to Republicans if they aren’t happy with the liberal “purity” of the candidate. That certainly is not true. We do know “progressives” have the capacity to do that, though. In 1948, they almost cemented a Harry Truman loss to his Republican opponent. In 2000, they did swing Florida into George W. Bush’s column by voting for Ralph Nader.

Finally, when Truman spoke those now often misquoted words, his “Republican imitators” he was referring to was the Dixiecrats, a faction of Democrats who split from the party over civil rights issues, most of which eventually joined the Republican party.

But I’d like to see some polling data to confirm what modern “progressives” claim about the election losses in ‘94. Gallup does polls for just about everything else. Surely there must be one that asks something like, “If you’re a Democrat, why do you feel the Democrats lost in pre-2006 election cycles?” – with choices that range from “they just didn’t get their message out” to “they were too close to Republicans on some issues so I just went ahead and voted for the Republican.”
Until I see that polling data, I’ll continue to seriously doubt the claim that the DLC caused losses in any election cycle. There is simply no evidence to support it.

In my estimation, the blame being cast upon the DLC for Democratic losses springs from “progressive” frustration that they cannot garner more power and influence in the Democratic Party Blaming moderates for that is convenient. Afterall, Southern Democrats did lose in greater numbers in 1994 but mainly because the south had been trending Republican since President Nixon’s Southern Strategy. I can understand and sympathize with “progressives” who are looking for an easy target to blame. I was very frustrated until the 2006 elections that the Democratic Party couldn’t regain the power it once had over the Republican Party and I was just as passionate in my quest as “progressives.” But their task is even more formidable because they have to overcome two barriers – the DLC and moderate wing of the party and then the Republican Party. Although the DLC doesn’t have the gravitas it once had, it is still a formidable force when it comes to fielding candidates and raising money. I can understand how this can infuriate people who don’t subscribe to the DLC’s point of view. And with the Democratic Party losing several election cycles up until 2006, the faction that seemingly leads the party is an easy target to blame.

But is it fair?

It could just as easily be surmised that if it weren’t for the DLC’s brand of centrism the Democrats would be losing more often and by larger margins. Polling data on issues indicate that the DLC’s positions are often closer to that of mainstream America ’s in most areas. Indeed, the purpose of the DLC’s formation was to serve the national interests as opposed to more special interests. Granted, this may not always be the best way, but national elections are won on national issues. But the underlying question remains: Was the DLC responsible, fully or partially, for Democratic losses in 1994 and beyond as some on the left claim? Historians and Democratic strategists say no.

Ideological Bankruptcy… Or Ideological Drift?

An article in the Boston Globe took up the issue of Democratic losses a week before the last presidential election. When a party holds power for too long, Adrian Wooldridge, reporter for The Economist, said in the article, “it grows fat and happy, (and) it also grows corrupt.” The classic example, he pointed out, is the Democratic Party of the 1970s and `80s, which, spoiled by generations of congressional power, “became a party of insiders and deal makers without any sense of the principles they stood for and eventually collapsed” when they were turned out in 1994.

The more common explanation for the 1994 Republican Revolution, though, is that liberal Democratic ideals — or at least the way they’d been presented since the late 1960s — no longer resonated with the majority of Americans. According to Ruy Teixeira, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Century Foundation, the danger for the dominant party isn’t ideological bankruptcy but ideological drift. “Certainly you can make the argument that, if a party’s far enough away from the mainstream, if they don’t lose they don’t get enough impetus to correct their behavior.”

We saw another prime example of this in 2006 when the GOP, having moved to far to the right, no longer “resonated with the majority of Americans” and they were swept from power. We also saw it in the midterms of 1998 when Republicans lost seats in the house in an apparent backlash against the impeachment of President Clinton.
Interesting, though, that the point in the Democratic Party where the more liberal elements held the most sway – the post McGovern era to the late 80s – is the time described by Wooldridge as our “fat, happy, and corrupt” period. Even more interesting is Teixeira, who has solid Democratic credentials, states the party had moved too far away from the mainstream during the period of massive electoral losses for McGovern, Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis.

Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election

Philip A. Klinkner, author of “Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election,” presents a very interesting and expansive theory concerning the major Democratic losses in 1994 that Wooldridge and Teixeira only touched on. Klinkner explains the circumstances surrounding the 1992 election provided ample evidence of a radically changed political environment. Several observers have commented on the growing volatility of the electorate since the late 1980s (Greider 1992; Phillips 1990, 1993, and 1994; Germond and Witcover 1993; Greenberg 1995). By most accounts, this phenomenon reached a new high in 1992, as voters expressed growing disgust with the federal government, elected officials, special interests, and politics in general, and a greater willingness to support outsider candidacies, even those of such diverse figures as Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot.

The author continues by writing that current American politics is best understood in light of the “Court versus Country” dynamic that has been a recurring theme in Anglo-American politics over the last 300 years. The label was first used to describe the intense political conflict in English politics from the Revolution of 1688 until the mid-eighteenth century. Historians have also used the Court versus Country framework to describe the politics of America ’s early national period, roughly from the Articles of Confederation to the election of Thomas Jefferson.

Politics in both of these periods revolved around the scope and legitimacy of governmental power. On the one side was a Court persuasion, which firmly believed in the necessity of a powerful central government to ensure prosperity, domestic order, and international prestige. “Court apologists were intensely statist . . . . They tried to endow the government with the resources and vigor necessary to command great respect abroad and maintain order at home” (Murrin 1980: 379) To achieve these ends, Court proponents advocated increased taxation, expanded government expenditures, a funded public debt, government guidance of the nation’s economic and financial systems, and a bureaucracy large and powerful enough to ensure the attainment of the government’s objectives.

In opposition stood the Country advocates who saw the Court proponents as a corrupt elite, antagonistic to the economic interests and cultural values of the nation and striving to increase the power of government to serve their own evil ends. Moreover, Country supporters believed that the Court faction, through its links with financial elites and political manipulations, had managed to entrench itself into the office, upsetting the political system’s natural balance. Once free from the usual checks and balances, they claimed that the Court elite would then set out to further aggrandize power and debase the natural rights and liberties of the people. In response, the Country supporters advocated limited government, reduction of government debt and spending, reduction and/or reform of taxes, and structural and procedural reforms of the political system as a means of restoring the proper control and accountability to the government.

The County supporters sound very much like what the Republican party used to stand for or, rather, what they say the used to stand for.
These Court versus Country themes are readily discernible in contemporary American politics. To a large extent, with their emphasis on a powerful federal government to provide direction and leadership on a range of issues, from macroeconomic management to civil rights to environmental protection, modern liberal ideology reflects the Court tradition of earlier times.
The Country attitude, with its “plain distrust of government as such, and a considerable sense of apprehension at its ever spreading tentacles” (Holmes 1987: 121), is readily apparent in current popular attitudes. Like their Country predecessors, current critics of the political system oppose excessive government, as reflected in debt, high taxes, increased spending, and extensive regulation. In particular, they share the traditional Country concern for governmental corruption, especially the ways in which elected officials, bureaucrats, and special interests combine to create an entrenched governmental elite, unresponsive and unaccountable to the public interest.
The rise of these Country attitudes in contemporary America seems to have resulted from a number of forces, one of which was the civil rights movement of the 1960s.. and many began to question the scope and legitimacy of the governmental power on a range of issues from taxes to welfare to the criminal justice system (Edsall and Edsall 1991; Dionne 1991; Horowitz 1986).

By the early 1990s, Country sentiments were evident among much of the public. In 1964, over 70 percent of the public said that they could trust Washington to do what was right most or all of the time; by early 1994, only 19 percent expressed similar confidence (Phillips 1994: 7). In 1964, when asked, “Would you say the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all people,” nearly 40 percent more people agreed with the latter than with the former. In 1992 that sentiment had reversed itself, with 60 percent more people believing that the government was run for the benefit of special interests than those who believed it was run for the benefit of all. (Stanley and Niemi: 169).

Again, this period was largely dominated by the Democratic Party and the counterculture that was associated with it.
The emergence of Court and Country politics spelled trouble for the Democrats. As the party of governmental activism, the Democrats were bound to suffer from the rise of popular cynicism toward government. At the same time that Bill Clinton was winning the White House, voters preferred having “government cost less in taxes but provide fewer services” to having “government provide more services but cost more in taxes” by 54 to 38 percent (Milkis and Nelson 1994: 395). source

This was no better exemplified than by Bill Clinton’s healthcare plan, which support for collapsed, seting back his presidency, and figuring in the Democrats’ loss of control of the House of Representatives in 1994. They didn’t recover from the loss until 2006. Soon after Clinton took office in 1993, he promised health insurance for millions of Americans who had no coverage. But before long, the plan was a shambles, derailed by concerns that it would cost too much and create a huge new bureaucracy. “People have not gotten over 1994 yet,” Karen Pollitz, the project director for the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, said of the Clinton plan. “President Clinton tried to fix everything at once. It was not well received. And not only that — the Democrats got turned out at the next election.” http://www.freep.com/news/politics/issue27_20040127.htm

So, technically speaking, Clinton’s attempt to enact a left-liberal policy partially contributed to the Democrat’s downfall in 1994. A two decade long move to the left by the Democratic party – capped off by the failed healthcare plan (which I was for and still am) – brought us down. NOT movement to the right as the netroots often assert.
Who Gets The Blame For Prior Losses?

Of course, Democrats have suffered losses before – years before the DLC was even in existence. Surprisingly In 1938, Republicans gained 81 House seats running against Franklin Roosevelt. Again In the mid-term election of 1942, the Democrats lost 44 seats in the House of Representatives.

George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale suffered huge defeats in their 1972, 1980, and 1984 presidential runs. In 1988, despite the DLC’s best efforts to get either Al Gore, Joe Biden, or Sam Nunn the Democratic nomination, we got another “progressive” style candidate in Michael Dukakis and again lost big.

The Republicans won control of the Senate in 1981 and retained it for six years – until the midterm elections of 1986 when the Democratic party picked up 5 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate to regain power. Interestingly, this was the first election cycle after the DLC was formed in 1985. The Democratic Senators elected and who gave the Senate back to the Democrats included moderates Barbara Mikulski (a participant in the DLC’s National Service Tour), Harry Reid (who recently said Democrats have to “swallow their pride” and move toward the middle), Conservative Democrat Richard Shelby, DLCer Bob Graham, DLCer Kent Conrad, and DLCer Tom Daschle.

Just as the Democratic Party was voted out of power in 1994, so it was inevitable that the same fate would befall the Republican Party. (It happened in 2006) And if the current public mood is indicative of how they will vote, the GOP will find themselves completly out of power sooner than later for the same reason the Democrats lost power in 1994 – falling too far away from the mainstream of American thought and opinion. The difference is the GOP will have moved to the right of the American mainstream to cause the backlash. From the late 60s to 1994, the Democrats moved left. But the evidence is lacking to even suggest the DLC caused the Democratic losses in 1994. If anything, their presence may have prevented even more losses.

Joey Davis is the vice chair of the North Fulton Democrats, a political PAC in the North Atlanta area. He is also a former candidate for city council in Roswell, GA, a frequent writer for the Roswell Beacon, and blogs whenever the mood strikes him at donkeydigest.