GregsOpinion.com

Well, this one's a surprise of sorts: Elaine Kamarck endorses Howard Dean.

In and of itself, not overwhelming. But for those of us old time DLC afficianados (ok, so I interned at PPI four years after the DLC was founded), this is big. Unfortunately, it also represents Elaine Kamark's continued slide away from much of what she seemed to believe back in 1989. Then, her co-authored tome, The Politics of Evasion, set the gold standard for hitting all the right notes on what ailed the party at the time. By the 2000 campaign, Kamark moved onto the Gore camp, she was famously silent as she apparently bought into Donna Brazile's "four pillars" strategy of campaigning as a Democrat.

So the question now is ... what becomes of the Myth of Liberal Fundamentalism that Dean seems so hellbent on reinvigorating?

The oldest of these myths is that Democrats have lost presidential elections because they have strayed from traditional liberal orthodoxy. The perpetrators of this myth greet any deviation from liberal dogma, any attempt at innovation with the refrain "We don't need two Republican Parties." Liberal fundamentalists argue that the party's presidential problems stem from insufficiently liberal Democratic candidates who have failed to rally the party's faithful. The facts, however, do not sustain this allegation. Losing candidates Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale were very successful, in fact in most instances more successful, than 1976 winner Jimmy Carter, in winning over the ideological (and racial) base of the Democratic Party. According to CBS/New York Times exit polls, Dukakis got 82 percent of the liberal vote and 89 percent of the black vote. This is better than Carter, who received 74 percent of the liberal vote and 83 percent of the black vote in 1976. Mondale's loss was so big that he did less well than Carter in most groups, but he still received 71 percent of the liberal vote and fully 91 percent of the black vote.

The real problem is not insufficient liberalism on the part of the Democratic nominees; it is rather the fact that during the last two decades, most Democratic nominees have come to be seen as unacceptably liberal. Fully 36 percent of the electorate told ABC exit pollers last November that Dukakis' views were "more liberal" than their own. In contrast, just 22 percent thought George Bush's views were more conservative than their own. In 1976, CBS/NYT exit polls showed that Carter was able to win the support of 30 percent of the self-identified conservatives and 48 percent of the independent voters. Dukakis won over only 19 percent of self-identified conservatives and 43 percent of independents and Mondale won only 18 percent of conservatives and 36 percent of independents.

Be mindful that the candidate Kamarck is endorsing is set on a course to "crank the base, and that will "crank the heck out of [the Democratic] base" in the hopes of "win[ning] the middle-of-the-roaders." Dizzying logic, but that's the test we'll see at play if Dean wins the nomination.

One additional reading for Elaine might be this article on why Massachusetts, that liberal bastion, cannot find a way to elect a Democratic Governor. Seems, the author indicates that the electorate finds the nominees unsuitably liberal and the state party is losing ground with independents.

But ideological appeal explains little about the voting patterns of the 1990s. Presidential candidates Clinton and Gore, who both identified themselves as "New Democrats" periodically at odds with the liberal base of the party, captured a far larger share of liberal votes in Massachusetts than did Roosevelt and Harshbarger (let alone Silber, who seemed to delight in irritating liberals). They won more moderate votes as well. This would seem to give the lie to typical ideological critiques of the gubernatorial candidates, both from the left (they were insufficiently liberal) and from the right (they were too liberal to appeal to moderates). Democratic candidates for governor in the 1990s neither mobilized the liberal base nor made as strong inroads among the moderates as the party's presidential standard-bearers did. With the exception of Silber's relatively strong showing among Massachusetts conservatives, the gubernatorial candidates of the '90s failed to win as big a following as the presidential candidates did across the ideological spectrum.

The author? None other than Elaine Kamarck. And that was written this past summer. What's curious is that in the Massachusetts case, Kamarck seems to lament that the state GOP has taken over New Democratic turf. Now, she seems content to endorse the candidate who would hand it over to national Republicans on a silver platter.

Looked at another way, I can see Kamarck's logic ... the Washington candidates are too out of tune with the electorate and hitting mostly wrong notes. Its been a lamentation of mine with my own candidate of choice: Joe Lieberman. Great guy, solid issue stances, looks good on paper. But to see him give a stump speech is to ask "Who else is there?" Although superficial in reasoning, the fact that nobody else seems to come close to the mold of New Democrat (apologies to one other DLC member [Kerry] and a DLC founder [Gephardt]) underscores the dilemna. The bench is just not looking that deep for us. Not that I put Bush higher than some on our bench, but still.

Does that mean Kamarck is best off endorsing one candidate who can do "no worse" than anyone else? I'm inclined to frown on the concept. Maybe I'd be forgiving if it were some lower level race ... I've been known to make my own justifications for votes I was less than 100% happy about by the time I get down the ballot. But this is for leader of the free world. Shouldn't there be a higher standard?

UPDATE: TNR gets the best headline on this story: "AL FROM'S HEAD EXPLODES." I did rattle off an email to Kamarck and encourage her to elaborate on dispelling any discrepancies between what she felt in 1989 and today. Her response back (polite as it was) indicates we may hear more on that very subject (although also stating, not surprisingly, that she sees more consistency). I'll disagree with Noam Scheiber's point that Kamarck makes a "solid case" for Dean, my own leanings notwithstanding. Rather, her case strikes me as a bit cynical, and reeking a bit too much of the "You've got the power"-flavored kool aid that some seem to be sipping.