A Party Inverted--Bill Bradley--NYTimes

[Demeter]

Published: March 30, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30bradley.html



"FIVE months after the presidential election Democrats are still pointing fingers at one another and trying to figure out why Republicans won. Was the problem the party's position on social issues or taxes or defense or what? Were there tactical errors made in the conduct of the campaign? Were the right advisers heard? Was the candidate flawed? Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media.

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.... Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas...At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.

.....

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

(more)


Bill Bradley, a former Democratic senator from New Jersey, is a managing director of Allen & Company."


Sorry, Bill, the GOP has had these ideas for 50+ years....it wasn't until they decided to lie, cheat, defraud and steal elections that they got anywhere with them!

[jpgray]

1. But we are a different animal from the GOP

We have actual ideas. They do not. Their ideas are focused on a right-wing elitist economic agenda--ours are focused more diffusely on ideas of social and economic justice and egalitarianism. That means we cannot and will not have the same systems of party control or fundraising unless we adopt their views. That is the DLC and its dream--but in trying to use the GOP system to win, they are finding they have to cast aside more and more of our original values, and yet they will always come up short. Why? Because it is precisely the depravity of the GOP's economic views that their system of power-taking and -holding is built around. All else is secondary. We can't have their system because that's not the way we are, yet.

[zipplewrath]

3. Yes, we are

He makes some good points, but he is in effect doing the "republican lite" thing himself. The two parties ARE structurally different. But it is part and partial to who we are. We are in essence populist. We built the party by creating the middle class. The history of this wasn't always pretty. It involved patronage and political machines. These structures worked much like the pyramid described. Of course it was based as much on economic needs as ideals. But it was a "structure" upon which a "top" was placed. This same structure built labor unions, which in many ways replaced the political machines. It was also created through academia. The social studies which became the backbone of the civil rights movement (look at the key work which supported Brown vs the Board). Education became our issue because it was the path to the middle class for our constituency. The monied classes didn't need public education or land grant colleges, or pell grants or the GI bill.

Today many of our issues have been co-opted. Labor unions have been destroyed to a great degree. OSHA and EOE and a host of other alphabet soups ensure today in the workplace what unions used to have to fight for. Workman's Comp and unemployment insurance provide much of the kinds of services a union would formerly have to fight for in negotiations. Health care and retirement come directly from a company, instead of through a union. And many jobs that might formerly have been "union" jobs have been "professionalized" to avoid the interest of unionization, such as technology jobs, health care workers, and other semi-skilled trade level jobs.

The structures that Mr. Bradley leaves out of the important GOP base is that of the churches. It isn't just the CATO institute, but all the baptist and fundamental churches out there that will organize and motivate the voters. They will frame the debate and establish priorities. They are to the right as the unions were to the left. Ready, pre-organized associations of workers to man polls, walk the streets, and yes make donations.

To some extent Mr. Bradley is right in that we need to build new structures, but more modeled on the old systems. Building from the ground up structures that reach out and help create and expand the middle class, while also defending the same. Unions need to convert from "collective bargaining units" to "cooperative advancement" organizations. Providing services which can only be accessed through cooperation such as low cost health care, professional legal advice and representation, training and advancement, and (drum roll please) PRIVATE PERSONAL retirement savings and pension programs apart from the corporate structures which otherwise run them (can you say "ENRON").

We need other organizations, mostly on the local level. I believe that is where Dr. Dean has it right. We need to build local organizations, addressing local issues, with local talent, and building local reputations which can then be brought along towards the national stage (can you say Obama?). And Mr. Bradley is probably right about one thing, it will take alot of time and effort. But I might point out that MoveOn is already in place. The good Doctor has brought along his recent successes to bear on this problem. And might I add we have the next generation think tanks growing in place right now. Democratic Underground.com is a cauldron of great ideas being worked through and perfected by the best minds in the country. Don't ya think?

[Dhalgren]

2. Right. It's the lying, the cheating and the fraud.

Where can Democrats get some of that - and still be democrats?