‘The conservative majority in national politics, that is the presidential majority that the conservatives were able to muster really from the Vietnam era on, has passed the high water mark,’ says Will Marshall, president and founder of the influential Democrat thinktank the Progressive Policy Institute, reflecting on the state of the Republican party as the grueling primary phase of this year’s race for the White House unfolds.
Echoing the campaign slogan of one of the main Democrat contenders, Barack Obama, Marshall detects ‘a mood for change in America is profound and sweeping, that has given Democrats advantages on virtually every issue. Severe fissures in the conservative coalition are being seen in the form of lack of ideological confidence and coherence. Their old advantages on national security have been washed away by the mishandling of security post-9/11.’
It’s a confident assessment, but one that the man once dubbed ‘Bill Clinton’s ideas mill’ is more than qualified to make. As co-founder of the Democrat Leadership Council in 1985 and its first policy director, Marshall was an instrumental figure behind the successful modernisation of the party which led to Bill Clinton’s election as president in 1993. In his subsequent role as head of the PPI he was the source of many of the ‘New Democrat’ themes that figured prominently in American politics in the 1990s, and that went on to influence the development of the ‘third way’ on the centre-left in Europe.
Now, after eight years of divisive Republican rule from the White House, Marshall believes it is not only the unpopularity of George Bush and his policies that favour the Democrats in the coming election. Whoever emerges as the party’s chosen candidate will be the beneficiary of ‘a broader structural change’, he predicts. Three main reasons underlie this shift. First, the ‘social issues that drove the conservative ascendancy for so long, that is concerns about abortion and a sense of general moral decline in America, are not as salient as they used to be’. Second, he cites the fact that young voters are ‘strongly trending Democratic’ – ‘that’s important because it means there will be an inbuilt progressive bias for the next generation’. Third, he points to the Latino voter as ‘a rising force in American politics,’ who are ‘more or less two to one more likely to vote Democratic already.’
But haven’t the Democrats made the mistake of underestimating the Republicans before? Marshall acknowledges it would be foolish to write off the Republicans chances at this early stage in the campaign, despite their current disarray. In his recent work for the PPI he has highlighted the need for the Democrats to take a strong line on national security to counter the Republicans’ accusations of ‘flip flopping’ – a slur used to brutal effect against the last unsuccessful Democrat contender for the White House, John Kerry. It is a stance that has not always endeared him to the Democrat rank and file, but Marshall is unrepentant in his conviction that the party need to take the fight to the Republicans, especially on national security and ‘values’ issues with which the Democrats may have traditionally been uncomfortable.
‘The conventional wisdom at this point in the 2008 campaign is that social values issues have receded, that they are not in the foreground, and that economic woes in Iraq and fear of terrorism in general are still the dominant issues. I think that is generally right, but I think that the Democrats should not pick the wrong lesson from that. That is, we have learned to our regret in the past that on highly flawed social and cultural issues, silence is death. What happens is, if we don’t talk comfortably about our views on these issues there is a tendency amongst voters to default to the negative stereotypes that Republicans create about Democratic views.’
The Democrats, of course, have still yet to decide which of the main contenders for the party’s nomination is most suited to take on the Republican machine, although with John Edwards withdrawing from the race the contest is now a straight fight between the former favourite, Hillary Clinton, and her charismatic rival, Obama. Following the Illinois senator’s decisive win in South Carolina and the controversy surrounding the “attack-dog” role adopted by Bill Clinton, was Hillary Clinton right to give her husband such a prominent position in her campaign?
Marshall admits that the question of Bill Clinton’s role is an ‘open one’. ‘We are not used to dynastic politics in the US and we have now had two Bushes, and this would be the second Clinton. It’s an open question as to how important that will be to voters. In the end, I think that on balance it is overwhelmingly positive for her to have that experience and to have fought those battles, precisely because people are looking for someone who can get in and make the machinery of government work for them.’
Beyond Obama’s vague appeal to embody ‘change’ and Clinton ‘competence’, some have questioned whether the Democrats now possess the ideas necessary to take on the formidable domestic and international challenges confronting the US on issues such as climate change, terrorism, and economic globalisation. Marshall acknowledges that the Democrats in 2008 are a ‘very different’ beast compared to the previous decade. ‘In the late eighties and early nineties there was a great deal of intellectual ferment and a lot of policy innovation’, he says. ‘Change was in the air and there was a broadly shared disposition amongst progressives to challenge the old ways and to be innovative in modernising on the policy front. There was an open market for ideas that doesn’t seem to be there today.’
‘Now the dominant passions are partisan’, he continues. ‘We think the Republicans have done a terrible job of running the country in the last seven years. They misused their power and rubbed a lot of wounds raw, and so there is a desire to correct what many see as a detour in American politics. That’s the dominant emotion as we go into this election. Today ideas don’t play the same kind of role in energising constituencies’ potential voters as they did in the nineties.’
One issue on which the Democrats have been accused of backtracking is on the party’s former commitment to free and fair global trade. Hillary Clinton’s suggestion at the end of 2007 that the US might take ‘time out’ from efforts to revive the stalled Doha trade round were greeted with concern by many on the modernising centre-left in Europe and the US. Marshall cautions that ‘there is a tendency to lapse into hyperbolic language in the primaries, where the candidates are competing to show concern and empathy for a beleaguered and worried middle class. No American president in the modern era has walked away from America’s commitment to a liberal, open, rules-based global trading system, and I suspect that would hold true no matter what is said in places like Iowa.’
Nonetheless, Marshall detects in Clinton’s remarks symptoms of a more worrying trend. ‘I’m concerned about the general popularisation of protectionist and nativist sentiments’, he says. ‘Ideas that used to be on the fringe of American politics are migrating increasingly into the mainstream. Lots of Democrats have become reflectively sceptical of trade agreements. It’s becoming a harder and harder struggle to get Democrats to support trade liberalisation. That’s a real problem.’
This, he says, points to the fact that there is ‘a real argument that needs to be won about the proper response to globalisation, trade inequities and insecurities, and disruptions and new risk that it brings. This points to a broad area of agreement for American progressives, which is the need for a new social contract to reduce risk for working class families and raise the floor of economic insecurity beneath them. That is common ground in the Democratic debate.’
While ideas may no longer be the most dominant political currency for the Democrats in 2008, for Marshall they are clearly still his bread and butter. Talking over his opinions on the erosion of the American middle class, the consequences of globalisation on increased worker insecurity, and his own ‘particular American approach to universal healthcare,’ one gets the sense of someone itching to leave behind the constraints of opposition for an opportunity to influence the future direction of the country, as he once did. If there’s a spare desk in the West Wing after November, President Clinton or Obama will know who to call.