The Democratic Party stands poised to have a good Election Day this November. Yet to hear many pundits talk about it, it sounds like the Democrats have already lost.
The party, according to some commentators, is torn between its ideologues on the far left and its more moderate wing, and is therefore unable to offer a coherent message.
Thus, the argument goes, Democrats are doomed. They are blowing a momentous opportunity because they can’t offer us a compelling alternative to what the Republicans are doing. Republicans, meanwhile, will continue to lead, because at least we know where they’re taking us – even if we don’t particularly like the destination.
This argument has appeared in scores of publications in recent months and has been accepted and eagerly repeated by the Beltway punditry. It is also quite wrong.
It is wrong, for one thing, because it totally ignores what Americans are telling pollsters lately. According to a recent Washington Post poll, a majority of Americans say that they’d prefer the country to move in the direction offered by the Democrats than the direction offered by President Bush. This is all the more fascinating since a majority of Americans cannot describe the direction that Democrats want to go.
Simply put, you don’t need to offer a coherent message to serve as an effective opposition party or even to win elections. There may be a lot of division within Democratic ranks, but Americans understand that how the Democrats would govern is substantially different from how the Republicans are currently governing.
The incoherent-Democrats-can’t- win argument is also wrong because it ignores history. Parties have been able to make substantial gains without offering any coherent message to voters:
The 1952 presidential election, in which the Republicans took the White House after 20 consecutive years of Democratic control, largely turned on the issue of the Korean War. The public was so dissatisfied with Truman’s management of the war that he chose to retire rather than run for re-election. And what was Dwight Eisenhower’s detailed plan to distinguish himself from Truman and end the war? Five simple words: “I will go to Korea.” The American people didn’t much care what Ike’s plan was – they just knew it would be different from the Democrats’, which they felt had failed.
The Democrats made large gains in the 1974 midterm elections, both in Congress and in most state legislatures. What great coherent message allowed them to do this? There wasn’t one. Indeed, the Democratic Party of the early ’70s was much less unified than the one that exists today, as it consisted of both Northern liberals and Southern conservatives. The public rewarded the Democrats in 1974 because the election occurred just a few months after Richard Nixon’s resignation. The Republican name had been severely damaged by scandal and a slowing economy, so the public turned against it.
Pundits will often point to the Republicans’ takeover of Congress in 1994 as an example of why a party needs a coherent message. After all, Newt Gingrich had put forward the Contract with America – a 10-point plan detailing what the GOP would do if it gained power. The fact is, though, that two-thirds of Americans had never heard of the contract at the time of the 1994 election. Voters were just dissatisfied with the Clinton administration and felt like throwing out some Democrats. The power of the contract is a myth that’s taken hold of the punditry, but it is still nothing more than a myth.
An election is a referendum on the party in power. The out-party may feel free to offer policy alternatives – they may even consider that the responsible thing to do – but it will have little effect on the election. If voters approve of what the incumbent party is doing, it will be hard to defeat, even with the best alternative policies. An incumbent party that has lost favor with the voters, however, can be beaten with nothing.
Recent polling suggests that the Republican Party has lost favor with the voters. So will voters put Democrats in charge of one or both houses of Congress this year? It’s possible. But if that happens, it will be the result of voters’ anger with Republicans’ policies, not their love for Democrats’ promises.
Seth Masket is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver.
