The Democrats are set for an electoral breakthrough in the forthcoming battle for the US Congress. They hold a substantial lead in the generic race for the House of Representatives. The president’s approval ratings are at their lowest ever. From Iraq to social security, the American people no longer trust George W Bush.
This is fuelled by strong evidence of rampant corruption in the Republican establishment. Their coalition is divided, chiefly between the religious right and anti-government libertarians, over issues such as how to tackle the rocketing budget deficit. Voters see the Republican party as increasingly right wing, and disagree with almost every major policy of the Bush administration.
There is no doubt that Bush and the Republicans are floundering. But are the Democrats really able to capitalise on their opponents’ vulnerabilities?
In truth, the party has increasingly allowed the Republicans to define the territory on which elections in America are fought. The Democrats have persistently struggled to match the clarity of the Republican message. The 2004 election was marked by Bush’s ability to emit clear, values-based messages to his political base, energising voters in the conservative heartland – including the very hard-working families that Labour in Britain regards as among its natural supporters.
Bush’s high disapproval ratings today are beyond dispute. In a recent survey for the Democratic Leadership Council, just 34 per cent of voters believed that the US was on the ‘right track’. The president’s job-approval rating of 31 per cent in March 2006 was its lowest ever. He is deeply mistrusted on the two issues that matter most to the electorate – Iraq and the economy. Indeed, 39 per cent of all voters, and a staggering 49 per cent of key independent voters, also believe that the Republicans are too conservative.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Democrats hold a seven-point lead in the race for Congress. According to the DLC survey, when asked who should win the White House next time regardless of their own preferences, voters chose the Democrats by a margin of 58 per cent to 28 per cent.
Yet the Democrats still have an awful lot to do. The party trails the Republicans among key segments of the electorate, including married couples with children, middle-income families and white women. The Democrats’ lead across the electorate as a whole is the result of declining presidential approval ratings, not renewed faith in the party’s governing agenda. Too many voters believe that the Democrats only complain about the Republicans but have no alternative programme. There are tactical and strategic lessons here for centre-left parties everywhere.
It is clear that parties who define the terrain on which political battles are fought win elections. Yet the Democrats look deeply confused, even perennially uncertain. They appear to have forgotten that the promise of their party lies in forging a new populism in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy: appealing to the American middle-class values of work, reward for work and responsibility, instead of wealth concentrated exclusively in the hands of the few.
The DLC argue that Al Gore’s embrace of populism in 2000 injured the Democrats. Accordingly, populism repelled aspirational voters and many potential middle and upper middle-class allies in the suburbs.
But this perfectly encapsulates why the Democrats have so badly lost strategic direction and ideological confidence. In reality, Gore’s populism was of a highly tempered kind. His targets were large insurance companies, ‘big polluters’ and ‘big oil’ – an inevitable attack given the business ties of Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney. Gore’s assault on insurance companies and health providers was harnessed to popular causes, notably a prescription drug benefit for elderly Americans under the Medicare programme and a patients’ bill of rights.
Democrats remain deeply scarred and traumatised by past defeats, stripped of faith in their own values. Yet Gore’s weakness, as the columnist EJ Dionne has noted, was not his populism, but the inability to integrate populist appeals into a self-confident, forward-looking message that promised to build on past achievements.
By shifting rightwards, the Republicans have given the Democrats a decisive opportunity in 2006 – not only to make major advances in the congressional elections, but also to redefine the political centre ground in American politics. This requires Democrats to rediscover the populist tradition, instead of repeatedly eschewing it.
A recent biography of William Jennings Bryan, The Hero of American Populism by Michael Kazin, brilliantly reminds us how the Democrats were transformed into a progressive party that achieved voting rights for women, unionised labour and anti-trust laws, while expanding the powers of the federal government to improve the welfare of ordinary American citizens.
As political strategist Stan Greenberg has argued, it is ‘the link between the broad working middle-class and affirmative government that allows the Democrats to define a majority politics.’ Democrats will only win again if they discover the confidence of their ideological convictions.