GregsOpinion.com

Back to this old bit of infighting. Kilgore finally has an official response up at The American Prospect regarding David Sirota's namecalling original article. Since Dave is getting married soon, I'll try to be nice. Truth be told, a few emails have been exchanged and they've not involved accusations of my posh corporate suite where I, too, look down upon the common man. For my part, I try not to mock his birkenstocks and withheld the urge to get him to eat something that "casts a shadow." Of course, we do both share an appreciation for Montana's new Governor-elect, Brian Schweitzer, whom Sirota worked on behalf of this past campaign. Still, there's a certain childishness to the response that Sirota offers to Kilgore's response. That, and one would be excused for thinking that Sirota just wants attention. Not like he's going for substantive points here.

Let's cut to Kilgore's reply first ....
Ain't No Easy Code

The styling of "The Da Vinci Code" article is revealing. Sirota argues that red-state success for Democrats is actually pretty simple, if they will simply abandon any policy positions or messages that interfere with 100-percent economic populism, as he more or less defines it.

There are two fundamental problems with this argument, which has been raised many times among Democrats over the last three decades. The first is the assumption that an economic message can serve as an electoral "silver bullet" in this particular age in the particular "red" areas the article is talking about. For one thing, there's this little matter of national security, which every reputable analysis of contemporary politics notes as a very significant, and perhaps the most significant, Democratic weakness in red states.

Some of the politicians Sirota cites as role models certainly seem to understand that. According to his own account (which he provided at a DLC event in Colorado two weeks ago), Ken Salazar, the one Democrat who won a seriously contested red-state Senate race this year, talked incessantly about national security in his campaign. John Spratt of South Carolina is much better known in his district for his tough-minded defense views than for any votes he's cast against trade agreements.

And even state-level Democrats understand the importance of security as a "trust" and "values" issue. Janet Napolitano has made homeland security (backed up by her crime-fighting credentials as Arizona attorney general) a signature feature of her governorship.

Conversely, we witnessed a compelling test of the "economics trumps security" hypothesis in 2002, when the default-drive message of the national Democratic Party in the first post-September 11 election was limited to Medicare prescription drugs and Social Security, on the theory that national security was a "Republican issue" that Democrats should largely ignore or concede. That didn't work out very well.

That Sirota thinks economic populism is a silver bullet is telling. My question is who does he think that bullet ends up in. I did make mention in email back-and-forth re: national security. Thought it odd myself that any grand cookie cutter stylus for Dems to follow would ignore the issue alltogether. I'll grant Sirota a minor point in that he agreed it was an issue that has to be addressed. His background and focus, however, is on domestic policy. Doesn't exactly dismiss the charge when something is put forth as a cureall for the party, though, when it omits the single biggest issue that confronts us in our lifetimes. If there's a lesson to be learned from the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, the inability to address national defense is a silver bullet that lands right into the Democratic heart.

More disheartening from a read of Sirota is his distancing of the Clinton record, which, from a policy outlook, ought to be something of a beginning point for Dems, instead of the "Not" model. Kilgore elaborate:

The Clinton administration championed economic policies that truly "lifted all boats," simultaneously spurring business development, the first mass upper middle class in human history, the first large-scale gains in real middle-class incomes in 30 years, and historic gains in employment and homeownership for the working poor and minority Americans. And when Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 on this record and agenda, he made red-state inroads that today seem astonishing. What's wrong with this picture?

Well, according to Sirota, the Clinton record was blighted by Clinton?s support for a "corporatist" pro-trade agenda, and much of his thesis seems to be based on the idea that Democrats cannot win in red states without decisively opposing any sort of trade expansion, a subject he returns to repeatedly. Indeed, his animus toward the DLC, reflecting a less clearly stated but unmistakable animus toward Clinton, appears based on the assumption that the only possible rationale for being pro-trade is slavish devotion to corporate interests.

Let's remember something here: Support for trade expansion is the oldest continuous policy tradition of the Democratic Party, reaching back at least to the administration of Martin Van Buren. The original populist Democrat, William Jennings Bryan, was more of a free trader than Bill Clinton or anybody in the DLC. Every single Democratic president of the 20th century has been pro-trade. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman insisted on unilateral trade concessions near the end of and after World War II to prop up European economies threatened by communist expansion.

Does that mean that Democrats have to be pro-trade? Of course not. But it does mean the burden of proof among Democrats rests upon those who would demand an abandonment of that tradition -- and with it, the abandonment of the historic mistrust of protectionism as the use of government to pick and choose industries that will be conferred with insulation from competition. And it also means that those of us who maintain this tradition should not be subjected to ad hominem attacks on our integrity.

I'll take my lumps for the sake of simplicity and just reiterate my own view: Sirota is just on the wrong side of history here. Yes, that simplifies a vast wealth of economic theory and leaves out a good deal of my own full outlook. But there are those of us who realize that "freer" is the direction that is worth heading in.

Beyond Kilgore's own analysis, I'll repeat my own refrain: you cannot expect to win (at least on any type of grand scale) if you repeatedly force a false choice to voters that they choose either cultural or economic populist outlooks, voters will ultimately go with the side that pitches both. Similarly, you cannot expect to win (at least on any type of grand scale) if you repeatedly look to voters and tell them: "You stupid crackers, stop thinking about the moral order of the universe and chow down on this prescription drug benefit." Best quote ever.

Now, it'd be one thing if that were all I had to chow down on, but Sirota offers up his own ... ummm ... "response." ( Correcting the DLC) It mostly consists of more ad hominem attacks, wild accusations, and other scurrilous charges. I'll start with my favorite:

CLAIM: "[The DLC has] relentlessly opposed...providing special access for lobbyists who supply campaign contributions."

FACT: The DLC has made its way in Washington, D.C. raising huge amounts of money from business beheamoths like Enron, Philip Morris, Merck and others. As one pundit noted in 2001, a dinner honoring DLC leader Sen. Joe Lieberman and sponsored by DLC-affiliated groups "raised $1.2 million dollars from the likes of Aetna, American Airlines, AT&T, Citicorp and GE." Now, the DLC and the politicians who lead it might claim that they are not giving "special access" to these corporate interests when they are raising money from them, but who really believes that?

OK, let the fun begin. Because, as we all know, Sirota works for the Center for American Progress. Please, Dave ... identify for us what George Soros got for his $3 million check? I mean, who would believe he wouldn't get anything in return for that investment?

Furthermore, let's look at some of Aetna's recipients. As one would expect, there's a few of the moderate stripe Dems on the list (Bayh, Breaux, Lieberman), but there's more: