Chris Matthews ended yesterday’s Hardball show with a rant about Hillary Clinton’s lack of any agenda that might inspire voters. “Having the first woman president would be the icing on the cake…but where’s the cake?” he asked. Clinton’s pointed avoidance of any new, dramatic initiatives seems almost calculated to inspire yawns among undecided voters.
Opposing her is Bernie Sanders, regularly dismissed as a wild-eyed idealist whose signature programs have zero chance of being enacted. And yet he inspires an intensity of support that Clinton can only dream of.
In many ways, it’s the same old story, which is why I keep going back to an article by Ted Halstead in the Jan/Feb 2004 Atlantic Monthly. While some of it is dated, it’s well worth a look because the fundamental tension between Republicans and Democrats hasn’t changed that much. In particular, this (my emphasis):
This inability to advance creative policy solutions hints at yet another problem for the Democrats: the [Democratic Party] is so busy playing defense that it has forgotten how to play offense. When the Republicans were in the minority during the early Clinton years, they introduced one bold proposal after another—never expecting that these would pass in the short run, but hoping to galvanize the party and set precedents for the future. To a considerable degree this worked.
These days, Republicans are more focused on obstruction than on proposing any new measures, but when in the modern era have we ever seen Democrats, in the role of the opposition, proposing anything significant, much less bold or galvanizing? Their standard mode has been to run, tail between legs, from anything that could be characterized as “liberal”, while stressing how much they agree with Republican talking points.
While this may have been the obvious (if cowardly) defensive strategy in a country that appeared to be moving rightward, it had the unintended consequence of moving the Overton Window further and further in favor of Republicans. Until very recently, the Right has almost completely dictated the terms of the national discussion.
That began to change with the Occupy movement, and has been dramatically escalated by the Sanders candidacy. Proclaiming himself a socialist, Sanders drove a stake in the ground far to the left of the prevailing Overton Window, and discovered, to everyone’s surprise, that there was a lot of latent support for a truly progressive agenda. Sometimes a courageous stand will reveal things you never knew existed. Republicans know this; Democrats need to embrace it.
Even if Hillary is the eventual nominee, she will benefit from the progressive passion Bernie has revealed and nurtured. And perhaps the Overton Window will shift to a position that reflects the interests of the 99% more than the 1%.
Who said it? “Go big or go home!”