Kevin Drum remarks upon the difficulties of uniting the Democratic Party, which I suppose I’m happy enough to take his word for, not being the sort to pay much attention to the technical difficulties of a “big tent” party. But I think he suffers a hiccup in his reasoning in the addendum:
There’s a good example of this in Warren’s speech, where she says this:
A few weeks ago, I saw an op-ed in the New York Times from a so-called Democratic strategist titled, “Back to the Center, Democrats.”…We’ve been warned off before. Give up, keep your heads down, be realistic, act like a grown-up, keep doing the same old same old.
But here’s what’s interesting: instead of lots of ferocious back-and- forth and piling on, this time, no one cared. Big yawn. Why? Because the Democratic Party isn’t going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill.¹ It is NOT going to happen.
Bill Clinton campaigned on both those things and he won the presidency. But when he actually followed through, a lot of lefty Democrats rebelled. Nevertheless, Clinton won reelection by a huge margin. Warren is correct that the Democratic Party has moved left on these issues since Clinton’s presidency, but she’s not correct that this means moderates no longer exist. They do, and Democrats still need them to win.
There’s one big omission in Kevin’s reasoning: President Clinton’s opposition. Bob Dole ran a poor campaign and didn’t have the personal charisma that I’m told President Clinton had (I never understood that myself, but I’ll stipulate it). Clinton beat Dole by nearly 9% points in the popular vote. Some of that might be attributable to welfare and crime, but I doubt much of it. I remember that campaign, and Dole really never had a chance, despite Clinton’s political failings.
