Reconfiguring the Left-Center Relation: More Thoughts on Gerstein

In Dan Gerstein's second reply to me, he ended with this call to a common purpose.

All of which is to say that, instead of getting bogged down in this unproductive and increasingly irrelevant left versus center fight, I would much rather field a diverse group of dynamic, authentic, and innovative-thinking Democratic candidates who can help us reframe the discussion about the past versus the future and convince voters we are the party that can meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

I also want to get beyond the "left versus center" fight in the Democratic and the best way to do is to change the relationship between the center and the left in the Democratic Party. During the Clinton and early Bush years, "triangulation" meant primarily that the Democratic party leadership in the center would be "open" to the right-wing proposals but wouldn't want to go as far. The Democratic center was always compromising with right-wing initiatives, but was basically telling the left, unions, and African-Americans that they had no place else to go.

The Bush administration and the Republican majority first undermined this strategy by either refusing to negotiate or framing issues in such a way that centrist Democrats could not compromise without starting rebellions among Democratic constituencies. Sticking a "no union" poison pill provision in the legislation for the Department of Homeland Security to ensure Democratic opposition is a good example of this. When the Iraq War relegitimized the left, the triangulation of the centrist Democratic leadership was further undermined. The anti-war left was almost as disgusted with the Democratic leadership as it was with the Bush administration and has been contemptuous of the leadership's continued desire for "center-right" compromises.
I'd like to see the center-left relationship in the Democratic Party reconfigured in such a way that the left-wing (white progressives, African-Americans, hispanics, gay rights activists, consumer activists, etc.) became the primary source for policy initiatives. They would also maintain their role in providing much of the party's fighting spirit and small donor base. In this context, Democratic centrists would still be forging the compromises needed to get legislation passed and programs enacted. It's just that the direction of compromise would change. Instead of compromising from a right-wing idea base in a leftward direction, they would be compromising left-wing ideas so that they would be acceptable to moderates and mild conservatives.

Reconfiguring the center-left relationship would involve a lot of change on both sides. For the left, it would mean coming up with more policy ideas, better framing them in terms of legislation, and better promoting those ideas in terms of mainstream white values and culture. As long as the U. S. is a 70% white country and the white population remains relatively conservative, that kind of promotional work is a crucial element in political success. Lots of people on the left are working to re-frame foreign policy in non-neoconservative terms, Al Gore has had some success in linking environmental initiatives to economic growth, and there's been a lot of work on health care initiatives. There just needs to be a lot more of these kinds of initiatives.

For centrists, this kind of reconfiguration means that they would start looking on the left more as friends and allies and less as self-righteous pains in the butt. Not that people on the left can't be self-righteous pains in the butt, but they also have many virtues that need to be integrated into the core of Democratic Party functioning.