Republicans thought they would win this election handily. With control over all branches of government up for grabs, Karl Rove, who serves as Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush’s brains, stated confidently that we were witness to the beginning of a new era of conservative governance.
He is as wrong about that as he was about the election results. Obviously the electorate is divided: the Presidential election is going to the mattresses, the Senate split evenly, the House with a margin of three to five, depending on recounts, even in 46 of the 50 state legislatures a swing of five seats or less could change party control.
But beneath the divide is a growing majority for progressive reform. Together Al Gore and Ralph Nader, the irascible Green protest candidate, won 52 percent of the vote. This is the largest center-left vote total in the US since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The politically challenged Al Gore won more votes than the supposed campaign maestro Bill Clinton ever did.
Moreover, Gore’s message and issues were far more popular than his candidacy. An election night poll by Gore pollster Stan Greenberg, for the Campaign for America’s Future, revealed that voters preferred Gore’s central message over Bush’s by a margin of 54 to 37 percent. His margin on key issues – education, prescription drugs, social security – was even larger. According to exit polls, voters who considered issues the most important factor in their vote went for Gore 55 to 40 percent.
The election was close because Bush succeeded in blurring the issues – offering his own education, prescription drug, healthcare reform proposals – and distancing himself from the party’s hard right base. He focused the choice on personality, on ending the scandals and bitterness of the Clinton years. Gore’s ‘lies and sighs’, much exaggerated by the media, and his egregious performance in the debates, helped Bush make his case.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Gore’s populist assault on drug and health insurance companies for getting in the way of reform helped bring him back from a double digit deficit going into the summer months. What hurt him was that his agenda was too timid, not too bold, and thus was easy for Republicans to co-opt and blur.
Clinton used gestures and token programs to define his differences from Republicans in 1996. This year, Republicans responded by cross-dressing, offering counter-gestures that cost little. This is the true vulnerability of Clinton’s centrist positioning: it requires a zealous conservative opponent, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to make it work.
Rather than inaugurating a new era of conservative governance, the election will embolden progressives in the Democratic Party. They will push to define a more populist, more aggressive agenda to address the kitchen table concerns of working families. And they will push hard to take back the House and Senate in two years, confident that majority public opinion provides wind for their wings.