Questions for Democrats Post Election

What If?

In many ways, today is like where I came into national leadership. It was 1996, after the1994 Gingrich revolution Republican sweep of Congress, in a huge Tea Party-like backlash against the progressive initiatives of President Bill Clinton’s first term.

While I’m processing the key question in my mind–why do the Democrats never learn????–I want to share questions that Political Voices of Women’s Pamela Kemp put forward last night:

This election has been all about the economy but What If?
What if the Obama administration had realized from the beginning that the kids across the aisle just don’t play nice?

What if, in 2009, the newly inaugurated Obama administration had responded to calls from the Democratic base ( aka the professional left ) to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush/Cheney administration?

INTENTIONING

Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good

The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.

What if for the past two years the American people had been reminded that the Bush administration inherited a budget surplus from the Clinton years which they, in turn, squandered, leaving the largest budget deficit in history?

What if for the past two years the national political dialogue had included a real discussion of the cost of the Iraq war (which was entered into under false pretenses) and how those costs contributed to the national debt?

And what if the American people had been reminded day after day that the corporate friends of Bush/Cheney (Haliburton, Blackwater, KBR, et. al) made billions from the government contracts secured during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

What if the Democrats had reminded the American people that the bank bailout was a parting gift from the Bush administration?

And what if the Democrats had reminded the American people day after day after day that the deregulation policies of the Bush era lead to the housing crisis and the great exodus of US jobs to foreign shores?

What if the Obama administration and the 111th Congress had realized early in the game that when you have an opponent on the ropes, you keep him there.

I hope that President Obama and the Congressional Democrats left standing will ask themselves these questions. And that they answer them with the same spunky attitude that Kemp begins to use here (big shout out here to the inimitable Barbara Boxer):

Today’s reality is that the Democrats have two years of landmark policy accomplishments to their credit but weren’t able to convince much of the American public to stay the course.

Yet, what if, it’s true that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.   As Senator Barbara Boxer told her supporters after winning her bid for re-election, her opponents threw everything at her but the kitchen sink, with money from known and unknown sources. Yet she overcame it all.

So what if, in some strange way, this all works to the Democrats’ advantage. After all, now the Republican controlled 112th Congress will have to “man-up” and put up or shut up. And best of all, the Republicans won’t have Nancy Pelosi to demonize in 2012.

What if, having to survive near death political death during campaign 2010, it’s just what the Democrats’ needed to re-energize the base?

What if indeed. I suspect that we the people, in particular we the progressive women, will to have to lead ourselves and the Democrats forward if we want any of those “what ifs” to become future reality.

And that future starts today, the first day of election 2012.

19 Comments

  1. S on November 3, 2010 at 10:24 am

    This is making me feel a little better here in Illinois….we had quite a ride last night. Glad to read it. I feel a little Howard Zinn in this, Bill Moyers spoke about him October 29 at Boston University, “For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That’s the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justice – by fighting for it.” He also talked about the little things that people do, the finally happen that turn out to be the tipping point. Thinking of Rosa Parks and people who instigated great change which began with a simple act, in a single moment, that began a significant change.

    We do have to learn from this, like so many things, we have to fight for what we want. We cannot sit it out, we have to engage, and be in it with everything we have.

    • Gloria Feldt on November 3, 2010 at 10:40 am

      Yes we could all use an infusion of Howard Zinn (and maybe a little Zen?) today. But think of what Sarah Palin is up to now, and that will give you lots of energy!

  2. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dior Vargas, Gloria Feldt. Gloria Feldt said: New post: Questions for Democrats Post Election http://bit.ly/cqp3EM #NoExcuses […]

  3. John on November 3, 2010 at 10:17 pm

    Bloomberg 2012!!!!!

  4. Aletha on November 4, 2010 at 2:20 am

    Hmm. Under whose administration was the Glass-Steagall Act repealed, and NAFTA and GATT passed? Perhaps the Bush administration opened the floodgates, but Bill Clinton cracked open those doors.

    I doubt Democrats will learn from this shellacking. Already Obama is talking about being more willing to compromise, as if he has not already compromised too much.

  5. Gloria Feldt on November 4, 2010 at 8:58 am

    I was very disheartened by Obama’s immediate offer to compromise yet more on health reform (if you can call what we got reform). When people suffer a defeat such as this election, they can either become stronger or they can become completely co-opted. Clinton was a master at appearing to be co-opted and then co-opting his adversaries. So far, Obama’s pattern is to give it away before he’s even asked. I hope he will shake up his staff and bring in people who will shore him up with more fight and tougher strategies

  6. Ruth Nemzoff on November 11, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    Hi Gloria,
    Speaking of unused power….
    The Democrats didn’t use their power in the Brown-Coakley senatorial election. Martha Coakley was a convenient scapegoat. It was easy for the Democrats to blame her for loss of the senatorial seat. This election has proven it was not Martha’s fault. This time, the Democrats worked together and succeeded in holding the entire delegation. In the senatorial election, Barney Frank, John Kerry, and Marty Meehan were scarce until the eleventh hour when it was clear that Scott Brown was zooming ahead. Martha has proven her mettle by running a forceful reelection campaign for attorney general after her senatorial defeat. Hopefully the Democratic Party has learned a lesson: that even the most prominent Democrats must engage the voters.

    Ruth Nemzoff, Ed.D.
    Author and Speaker: Don’t Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships with Your Adult Children (Palgrave/Macmillan,2008)
    Resident Scholar
    Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center

  7. Stacy on November 13, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Hi Gloria!

    Thought I’d chime in- I know there is more to winning elections than messaging, but I have never in my life witnessed such political negligence in my life. As Gloria pointed out, via Pamela Kemp, most Americans had NO clue that the bank bailout was initiated under Bush. The messaging on health care and Wall Street reform was also terrible. Of course, part of the reason for that, in my opinion, is that the Obama admin. was trying to have it both ways- create legislative reforms (and thus political victories) that tried to keep everyone happy and the reality is, if you really want to change/reform the system, some in the status quo (like bankers and health insurers) aren’t going to be very happy. If I were an Obama adviser I would have forged an alliance with the American Nurses Association and had nurses out in force plugging health reform. In fact, I wouldn’t have let the President go to a single event about health reform without a nurse at his side.

    I don’t really think it was a smart strategy in the weeks leading up to the midterms, for the administration to FINALLY get angry and channel that anger outward- at the progressive base! Hello? I remember watching that horrible, arrogant Robert Gibbs lash out at the liberal base (of which I am a proud member) and then say that they/we would vote for democrats because the other guys were worse. I thought “that’s one helluva message, Robert. You’ve gone from ‘change you can believe in’ to ‘vote for us, we suck less than they do.”

    Then there’s the media, which thinks that Democratic Presidents who try to keep their campaign promises are giving in to the liberal base as opposed to, say, standing on principle. However, when a Republican President keeps their promises to their base, they aren’t far-right wingers who need to move back to the center, they are merely staying true to the GOP platform. So much for the liberal media.

  8. Gloria Feldt on November 13, 2010 at 8:40 pm

    Stacy! I’ve missed you! I’m awfully glad to hear from you but so sad that we are in agreement about the current administration and its leadership fails. And of course the complicit media, but letting that get out of control also unfortunately falls onto the shoulders of those with the platform. They need to pay attention to my power tool #2–define your own terms–first before someone else defines them for you.

    It there were something positive that I could do to help turn this around, I would, and I imagine you would as well. It just seems that they don’t want to hear it. Your recommendation about nurses participating in the health reform discussions is a good example. I am re-imagining what the town halls might have been like had there been a cadre of nurses on the dais.

    • Stacy on November 14, 2010 at 6:52 pm

      I missed you too, been busy but I’m back.

      I bought your new book on iBook yesterday (for the iPad)- I have every single one of your books Gloria, I’m a fan! Why don’t I see Boston or Cambridge on your list of stops for your book tour? Don’t tell me you were already here?

      Ok, back to the media- case in point- Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell’s opinion piece recommending that Obama could be a great POTUS by not running again? Despite my annoyance with Obama, I just can’t wrap my head around their logic. But worse still, was Dana Milbank’s column today urging Obama to confront and “take on” the progressive base of the democratic party- you know, the people who got him elected. When was the last time you heard someone in punditland recommend that the GOP should toss THEIR base under the bus?

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111200063.html

      Barack Obama better get his political messaging shop in order- if he continues to allow the GOP to define both he and his policies, put a fork in him, he’s done. The GOP is much better at messaging but you know who could give Obama some pointers? Team Clinton. He needs to have a pow-wow with Bill about staying a step ahead of the GOP and also a bit about finding his spine. But perhaps most importantly he has to regain the trust of the electorate. While most people say they want bipartisanship they also want someone who stands up for certain principles and who goes to the mat for them. He articulated a lot of lofty principles in 2008 but at the end of the day, he has ended up sacrificing many of them for short term political gains that at the end of the day, have hurt more than helped.

      • Gloria Feldt on November 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm

        Stacy, the double standard you point out seems to apply both to the Democrats and by the Democrats to themselves. I recently happened across an op ed I wrote in 1978 about the need for moderates and liberals to become firmer and less insecure about their beliefs. So obviously I didn’t get through to them then–what makes me think I would now LOL?

      • Aletha on November 17, 2010 at 1:51 am

        Hillary Clinton recently invited Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke to keynote a major State Department conference on the history of the Indochina war. I would be suspicious of pointers she might give Obama on how to uphold liberal principles in conducting foreign policy. But I expect too much, I imagine; how could Democrats survive politically if they gave Republicans an opening to call them weak on terror? I still think Democrats have learned nothing and will take the election results as an excuse to compromise further whatever principles they have left.

        This is not to impugn the political skills of Team Clinton, but Bill and Hillary Clinton are not people I would look to for guidance on standing up for principles.

        • Stacy on November 17, 2010 at 11:10 am

          Who would you look to for guidance then? Barack Obama? He hasn’t exactly stood up for liberal principles. I think the sad fact is, right now in the Democratic party there aren’t too many that are standing up for the values they articulate in their own party platform.

          I personally disagree with some of Hillary Clinton’s more hawkish foreign policy views and I am not a Kissinger fan, but it should be noted that Obama hasn’t exactly chosen to surround himself with liberals in that regard so I don’t think Hillary should shoulder all the blame. Gates, Ross, Donillon, etc. are hardly liberals and then there is the frustrating tendency of this administration to not reign in the military. But that’s a whole other can of worms.

          • Aletha on November 18, 2010 at 1:09 am

            Of course Hillary Clinton should not shoulder all the blame. She has to take direction from the President. I have been taken to task before for criticizing her for not taking the initiative to forge her own path, since she is not really in a position to do that, at least not in a way that would cause a rift with Obama. I found it absurd for Obama to present himself as the peace candidate in contrast to Clinton because she had not originally opposed the war on Iraq. It is a tossup who is more hawkish. I wrote a blog entry just before the election, The Peace Candidate is Anything But. I have seen nothing to change my opinion on that score.

            You sort of answered your own question about who I would look to for guidance; I have been protesting the gulf between Democratic Party principles and actions since I was a teenage rebel, and I am well into middle age now. Foreign policy is one of the major topics on my blog. In other words, this sorry state of affairs posing as representative democracy is nothing new, but perhaps after the darkness of the previous Administration, that gulf is more apparent, since the contrast between what Obama promised and what he has delivered is hard to miss. Unfortunately, I see that gulf only growing wider as Obama triangulates, attempting to recapture the swing vote.



  9. Stacy on November 21, 2010 at 4:18 pm

    Aletha- actually, I think we both agree. I am no hawk and I get frustrated at how the Democrats are spineless when it comes to foreign policy- their fears about being called “weak on national security” has resulted in some terrible policies.

    You are right about Obama- he really did try to come across as the anti-war candidate but that was really because he wasn’t around to vote on the Iraq War and a lot of progressives, in my opinion, projected their own values/policy desires onto him. Based on what we have seen so far from Obama in the foreign policy arena, I seriously doubt he would have opposed the Iraq War- of course I don’t know that for sure, but the lofty principles he articulated during the campaign have gone the way of the dodo bird.

    I think the media plays a huge role in perpetuating the myth that a) only the GOP is strong on national security and b)only military action makes a country strong on national security. While the media doesn’t talk about it much, it seems that our two wars have actually fueled terrorism and empowered Iran- two things which completely undermine our national security. And yet, if one opposed those wars, one was labeled “unpatriotic” or “weak” in dealing with terrorism.

  10. Aletha on November 24, 2010 at 1:19 am

    Gloria, you said, “If there were something positive that I could do to help turn this around, I would, and I imagine you would as well. It just seems that they don’t want to hear it.” You also made a rueful observation about your op-ed from 1978 not getting through, so “what makes me think I would now LOL?”

    There is something women could do to force Democrats to sit up and take notice. I have mentioned this before, but obviously there is great resistance to such a drastic action. Women could declare independence, since Democrats have proven they do not deserve our loyalty.

    I think I know why this is so difficult to countenance. Women have invested so much time and energy into working with the Democratic Party, and it may seem pointless or quixotic to go our own way, to abandon those alliances with women (and a few men) fighting so hard for our rights and interests within the party. However, as long as Democratic leaders believe women have nowhere else to go, they will feel free to take our support for granted, even in the face of the vanishing of the gender gap that occurred in this election. I do not believe that was due to increased support for Republicans among women, rather to multitudes of women too turned off by Democratic betrayals to bother to vote. Women do not need the Democratic Party. We are too numerous, and once men realize we are serious about challenging political reality, I think some will support that. If a woman needs a room of her own, does it not follow women need a party of our own? Or are we supposed to be satisfied with always having to play second fiddle in a party that says it cares about our rights, but then sells us out whenever it is politically expedient?

    Eleanor Smeal last Friday posted on the Ms. blog Senate Republicans Tell Women: You Are Mere Pawns, in response to Republicans voting in unison against the Paycheck Fairness Act, as she put it, sending a message to women, “You are dispensable.” Perhaps so, but Democrats have sent the same message, though not quite so blatantly. Ms. Smeal gives Democrats high marks because “they will continue working with us until the Paycheck Fairness Act is passed.” That act is important, as was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but the Democratic Party has always played this game of supporting women’s rights with one hand, and taking them away with the other. Ms. Smeal cautioned against blaming Democrats for failing to stop the Republican filibuster, saying that would be misplaced anger. However, an unreliable ally is an ally in name only, and perhaps that is just how the Democratic leadership likes it.

    I was tempted to respond to Ms. Smeal (nobody has, yet), but I have been walking on perilously thin ice over there, never knowing if a comment will be approved or edited, or if the moderators just want me to go away.

  11. Aletha on November 25, 2010 at 2:33 am

    My comment from last night disappeared! Did it go to spam? I have a copy. Should I post it again?

  12. Gloria Feldt on November 25, 2010 at 11:49 am

    Aletha, it’s not here. Please try again.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.