Sustainable Democracy

2004 was a painful year to be a democrat. Despite what many on the left saw as a prime opportunity to oust a president weakened by an increasingly unpopular war, the party went down in ignimonious defeat. The democratic nominee, Mass. Senator John Kerry, spent the majority of his campaign bouncing between launching attacks at the Bush White House and defending himself against trumped up charges about his war record. As a result, he was never able to connect with voters in any meaningful way, and the final choice effectively became a vote for or against George Bush.

Fast forward to 2008, with a re-invigorated democratic party hoping to ride a wave of economic nervousness and anti-war resentment to a big November victory. The hype is much the same as it was leading into the 04 race; young voters will turn out in big numbers, people are sick of Bush and the War, Americans want change, etc.

Yet no matter how good things are looking for the Democrats at this early juncture, whether or not they can actually take advantage this time around depends largely on how they communicate their agenda to the voting public. After all, they seemed to have everything working in their favor in 04, and they still couldn’t seal the deal on election night. They won’t have Bush to beat up on any more, and regardless, that hardly worked the last time around. To win the presidency, being not as bad as the other guy won’t be enough; they will need a nominee that can convince voters that their goals and ideas are a better way forward for the country.

Enter: Barak Obama. The junior senator from Illinois is seemingly everything that John Kerry was not; an electric public speaker who stays away from negative politics, choosing to paint a hopeful picture of the future rather than disparaging the past. He speaks in broad generalities that make for great twenty-second clips on the evening news; evincing an easily-digestible message of “post-partisanship” that makes people feel good about voting for him.

He’s easy to like and hard to attack; his short record and ability to deflect divisive issues makes him somewhat of a new-age Teflon man. His campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in”, is perfectly crafted to reflect the sort of campaign he’s running. It allows him to distance himself from an unpopular government without actually attacking it, promising a new tomorrow without actually saying what was wrong with yesterday.

In this way, he is able to build a broad coalition of democrats, independents and first-time voters; promising them change while downplaying any actual policy positions that might divide his “new majority”. He is an everyman; a smiling face that appeals to many and angers few. As a result, he is extremely electable.

Does this make his candidacy feel a little vapid and light-weight; lacking the concrete policy substance of a John Edwards or John McCain? Does this make him harder to pin down on real issues? Certainly, but George Bush’s pre-election proposals weren’t exactly fleshed out, and he won at least one election in the last eight years. Which is more than any Democrat can say.