Considering the way the election went Tuesday, you'd think it would be Republicans trying to reach out to the middle. But here's Evan Bayh, telling his party to avoid extremism:
Sen. Evan Bayh, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett on Thursday that most Americans don't know what Democrats stand for despite the party's electoral success.
The Indiana Democrat said Tuesday's election was a vote against the status quo in Washington and in Iraq, and Democrats need to show that they can deliver on issues that matter to most Americans.
"It's up to us to prove that we're something better than just a mirror image of the people they voted against," Bayh said. "And if we serve up a highly partisan, ideologically extreme, Democratic version of what they just voted against, we're not going to do very well."
Bayh said Democrats must focus on middle-class concerns, including affordability of health care and college, as well as pension and job security. But they also have to prove Democrats can be trusted with national security and should implement all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
A cynic might say he's jsut tryin to sound moderate because of his presidential aspirations. But he's also right that most Americans don't know what Democrats stand for. The election wasn't for Democrats as much as it was against Republicans. Now the winners have two years to show us their stuff.
Comments
What was it that Republicans stood for? The family values of Mark Foley or Larry Craig? The fiscal discipline of Ted Stevens? The strict Constitutional construction of George W. Bush? The respect for states rights of John Ashcroft? The integrity of Tom DeLay?
I agree that we don't particularly know what the Democrats stand for. But I disagree if you're insinuating that we ever knew what the Republicans stood for.
I think a great many Americans believed the Republicans stood for "stay the course" in Iraq, and voted accordingly. I think a great many more THOUGHT Republicans stood for fiscal discipline but acted otherwise and deserved to be voted out. You WON, for God's sake. Enjoy the moment.
It remains to be seen if I won or not. All I know at the moment is that I didn't lose. I traded the rubber chicken behind curtain #1 for the mystery box.
Perfect analogy. Maybe we should enlist Monty Hall to be the ringmaster for 2008. And if we all dress up in those "Let's Make a Deal" costumes, the election might even be bearable.
"Sen. Evan Bayh, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett on Thursday that most Americans don't know what Democrats stand for despite the party's electoral success."
What a crock. They don't have a direct quote here so I'm not sure what he actually said. But I would be very careful if I were him - undermining the party by setting up arguments like
"if we serve up a highly partisan, ideologically extreme, Democratic version of what they just voted against, we're not going to do very well."
is not in his best interest. I think most/all Democratic leaders understand his thought but the point is voters wanted a change and this opinion was overwhelming. While the party shouldn't go overboard they need to do SOMETHING vastly different otherwise they wouldn't be in power.
Bayh is treading a dangerous course right now and he risks upsetting the Democratic base. And it's pretty hard to become president if you don't win the primary - he can look to John McCain for an example of this...
It's a tricky course for all presidential candidates. Democrats have to please the liberal base to win the primaries, then come back to the middle. Republicans have to please the conservative base, then come back to the middle. We can argue on where the middle is (a little further to the right than it used to be, I'd say), and which party has to travel the furthest to reach the most of the non-base electorate. But the dynamics have been the same for the last several presidential elections and will be for the foreseeable future.
I think Evan Bayh made a lot of great points and that The Democratic Party should listen to him.
Mike Sylvester
Fort Wayne Libertarian
Leo - I agree
Mike, my point is that the Democratic party already understands those points and to make comments that suggest otherwise is condescending and can undermine the party leadership...
Evan Bayh is the kind of mainstream leader that Democrats need. Democrats must support economic fairness, traditional values and work to bridge the red-blue divide. While ideological hard-liners dominate the activist base of both parties, the reality is that you win elections by appealing to the center. That is especially true for Democrats since nationally liberals are still greatly outnumbered by conservatives.
I think Evan Bayh makes a key point but I doubt he will change any minds on the liberal side. Pelosi has apparently already announced that she will populate the committee chairs with "seniority." That sounds to me a lot like hard-line reactionaries who'd like to take us backward in time to the supposedly dreamy Clinton version of Utopia.
Everything we know about the liberal Democrat leadership suggests that they are so addicted to the same old hard left agenda items that they will spend the next 2 years ruining their current popularity in order to get a lot of pet bills passed. That appears to be inevitable, given that 2 years out from Kerry's '04 defeat, they still have no new platform planks. It looks like the same ol' same ol.' One indicator that they haven't really learned anything will be if they start reviving the old cronies' anti-Second-Amendment bills. If so, it'll be 2 years of liberal re-runs.
And it's still likely they'll run from Iraq and blame their own retreat on Bush.
We will see.
OH BY THE WAY Department:
This paragraph came from news reports:
>The head of al Qaeda's Iraq operations
>yesterday gloated in a new audio tape
>over the resignation of Defense Secretary
>Donald H. Rumsfeld and praised U.S. voters
>for punishing President Bush and the
>Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections.
What Chuck Schumer calls a "victory for the American people" is viewed by the enemy as a victory for Al-Qaeda. It's up to the Dems now to prove Al-Qaeda wrong, of course.