The Democrats' Loss of Vision

Could a third party, embracing progressive ideas, succeed in modern American politics?

As I have argued in previous posts, much depends upon how that party defines "success".  A third party must be more patient, and more tactically and strategically agile, than the leader-centered, flash-in-the-pan efforts of recent decades.

But the opening is there. 

Without question, the Democratic Party - always a coalition - is more fragile than it has been since the defection of white conservatives in the days of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy". 

There are many reasons for this, but one deserves special consideration:  The Democratic Party's loss of its focus on the future - i.e., its loss of vision.

In 1912 - when Woodrow Wilson edged out Teddy Roosevelt in a three-way election among candidates all of whom were, in some sense, progressive - the Democratic Party began to shift away from its traditional conservatism.

Twenty years later, it had successfully positioned itself as the more liberal and visionary of America's two great parties.  A generation of young Democrats who had flocked to Wilson's standard returned, as mature leaders, to serve under one of their number, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR and his New Dealers led America out of the Depression and through a global war.  Harry Truman built on his achievements, managing a vast demobilization effort while sustaining America's amazing economic growth.  Through the New Frontier and Great Society, the Democratic Party continued to lead America toward a bright and shining future.  

But somewhere in the '70's and '80's, the Democrats lost their way.  Between the Watts riots, disaster in Vietnam, the OPEC oil embargo and the seizure of the Tehran embassy, doubts began to grow about America's glowing future.

Ronald Reagan, seeing this, co-opted the promise of the future with the will-o'-the-wisp of "Morning in America".

Bill Clinton sought to revive Democratic optimism - gaining credibility from the end of the Cold War, the Boomer's arrival at the heights of power, and the enormous economic boost brought by the first wave of the high-tech revolution. 

But the '80's and '90's proved a time of optimism without vision.  Americans celebrated and squandered unlooked-for boons, but spent very little time envisioning an achievable, long-term future - or noting the real perils which lurked around their world.

And the Democratic Party - once led by Wilson's bright young men, Roosevelt's New Deal visionaries, and Jack Kennedy's New Frontiersmen - never seemed to recover from the Reagan Revolution.  Increasingly, it became a party of the past - with some Democrats indulging in a misty nostalgia for the glimmering illusion of Camelot, while others fought a stubborn rear-guard action against those who would repeal the gains of the past.

In either case, today's Democrats have become obsessed with an America that has passed away.  Their only salvation has been that the Republicans have embraced an even more retrograde vision - an odd mixture of the remembered Age of Eisenhower and a bizarrely romanticized Age of Coolidge.

Meanwhile, the future escapes both parties.  And, as there is no alternative party in the field, it threatens to escape America.

***

A third party, then, must begin as a party with a vision of the future.

There is much to lament - and much to reject - in the leadership of the present two-party duopoly.  But efforts to base a new party upon that rejection would be as useless as efforts to locate a new party somewhere between the existing parties.

The proper attitude toward the two parties may be better understood by looking at the history of America's most successful third party - the Republicans of Lincoln's day.  While Whigs and Democrats debated - or sought to avoid debating - how to handle the slavery issue, the Republicans proposed a different solution.  They sought to pen slavery up within the South, while adopting policies which would cause its eventual extinction.

Simply stated, the early Republicans envisioned a modern economy, based on personal liberty, freedom of contract, and a definition of private property which excluded the ownership of human beings.  They foresaw a continental Union, linked by railways, in which small, family farms and ranches fed the rising industrial cities.

It was a bold vision.  The fact that that vision became corrupted - and ultimately destructive - in the context of unregulated corporate capitalism should not blind us to the fact that the vision was originally benign and optimistic.

The vision of today's third party should follow this example.  Where the Lincoln Republicans envisioned the end of an economy built upon human slavery, we must envision the end of an economy built upon the sacrifice of future generations to the endless appetites of the present. 

The new party must be environmentally-conscientious, but it must not cast itself merely as a party of negatives.  Americans must look beyond the costly business of giving up our wasteful, consumerist ways and toward a new model of prosperity based more on human happiness and fulfillment than upon such myopic measures as the Gross Domestic Product.

Defining this new economy, and these new measures of success, will be an intellectual challenge of the first order.   Fortunately, there are many  thinkers already in the field - hard-headed thinkers who have begun the task of envisioning a sustainable, post-consumerist, environmentally-responsible future. 

And there are groups within American society - large, relatively cohesive groups, which fit poorly within the politics of the existing parties.  These groups could form the nucleus of a new movement.

The question is how to bring together the visionaries with the social blocs which could transform those visions into the platform of a viable party - and ultimately, into the policy of a government.