Inside Politics

A rude awakening

“From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America’s industrial centers — and in its populist heartland as well — then they would win on math alone,” Matt Bai writes in the New York Times Magazine.

“Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like [America Coming Together] can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds,” Mr. Bai says.

” ‘I can’t think of a thing in Ohio that could have done more to boost our vote,’ [ACT chief executive] Steve Rosenthal told me three days after the election, as the trauma of the defeat began to subside. ‘The shortcoming in some ways is that the national Democratic Party has built this values wall between itself and a lot of voters out there, and the Republicans took advantage of it. The rude awakening here is that I always thought there were more of us out there. And this time there were more of them.’ ”

Feeling blue

“Blue about November 2? As a labor lawyer in a Blue State, I’m ready to give up,” Thomas Geoghegan writes in the Nation.

“Not because Bush will repeal the Wagner Act — I almost wish he would. The act is so screwed up, management could hardly have it any better. Worried about the National Labor Relations Board? Not really. No union serious about organizing uses it anymore,” Mr. Geoghegan says.

“The problem is, unions represent only about 8 percent of the work force (private sector). When the airlines finish with Chapter 11, we could be even smaller. In four years, could labor in the private sector be more or less gone? I hope not. Anyway, I suppose someone will always be on strike at Yale.

“The worst part about the next four years is that labor will be tied down, on Capitol Hill, fighting privatization of Social Security. We will be too bloodied, after that, to do much organizing in ‘the backlands.’

“Still, am I really that discouraged? You bet I am.

“Let the real me step aside, then, and bring forward a me who pretends to believe why our defeat on November 2 is, or could be, a good thing. Because now, after November 2, we know that we are Two Nations. We should give up on D.C.

“Let’s govern from the Blue States.

“If we govern from the Blue States, it may be possible to bring the labor movement back. What do I mean by ‘governing from the Blue States’? Use state law as much as possible to set up the kind of social democracy we would like to see for the country as a whole.”

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