Sound Politics: Locke's Tepid Course For The DNC

December 09, 2004

Locke's Tepid Course For The DNC

Is outgoing Washington Gov. Gary Locke auditioning for DNC Chairman in yesterday's New York Times? I dunno, but here's some rote, half-hearted shtik from Locke on the op-ed pages (free reg. req.) about what the next DNC chairman needs to do. In fairness to Locke, here is the full, five-paragraph epistle. Whaddaya think?

There has been a lot of talk lately about "starting over" with the Democratic National Committee. As a Democratic governor, co-chairman of the committee's Asian Pacific Islander Leadership Council, and former chairman of the Democratic Governors' Association, I believe it's about starting with a unified vision.
The next generation of leaders at the committee must take the initiative to begin a dialogue with, and perhaps more important, listen to what governors and state and local elected officials have to say. We know our states and the concerns and hopes of the people who elected us. We can provide the fundamental ingredients for moving forward with a collective agenda and cohesive messages that reflect voters' priorities from state to state .

The Democratic Party has long been the champion of working people everywhere. We are the party that fights for economic, educational and social opportunities and fairness for everyone, whether farmers, blue-collar workers, the elderly, women or minorities. We have always embraced rural values - family, community, hard work, love of country, respect and trust.

Our next committee chairman must reach out and reconnect on those core values. The Democratic Party must continue to invest resources in rural communities and talk with, and listen to, the people who live there. We must involve them in discussions about the policy decisions that affect their lives - families, jobs, environment, health care and the economy.

The next leaders of the Democratic Party must be stewards of the values and principles that made our nation strong and prosperous. We need to articulate this message, state to state, city to city, so that it has real meaning for the people of this country.

My take: process-driven, soporific and imprecise, at best. Locke misses the mark badly in focusing on "rural" voters. It is the ex-urban "Edge City" and suburban voters the Dems need to woo in national and state-wide contests, as is abundantly clear from the presidential election, and Democrat Christine Gregoire's miserable showing in the Washington gubernatorial race.

A lot of smart people have had a lot to say lately about how the Democratic Party must re-define itself. Such as New Republic Editor Peter Beinart, the noted demographer/scholar/author Joel Kotkin, Seattle poet/writer/musician/Tough Love Democrat Doug Anderson of Mount Baker, and this panel of experts convened by The Washington Monthly.

Take a read Gov., and then draft another op-ed, with some bite, say for the WaPo. For starters, address head on topics such as national defense; the recent shrillness of your party; individual initiative and personal responsibility (you know, sorta like your family's, and your own story); and oh, say, the federal deficit. Trot out some analogies to your favorite hobbies, like putting new electrical wiring or plumbing in an old fixer-upper. That kinda stuff.

And good luck in landing your next job. Whatever it turns out to be.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 09, 2004 05:23 PM | Email This

Comments

1. He wouldn't be a very good DNC chairman. He's never been a very effective bomb thrower. All the chair does is yell and raise money.

Posted by: Kyle on December 9, 2004 07:06 PM

2. Not that I necessarily want to help the Democrat party, but I don't think Gary Locke would be a good choice for DNC chairman. How does that joke go---"What's more exciting....listening to Gary Locke, or watching paint dry?"

Besides, why have a boring guy with the worst haircut in politics, when you can have Howard the Scream?

Posted by: Michele S. on December 9, 2004 10:54 PM

3. Gary Locke would be an awesome DNC Chairman. Why with Gary as Chair and Gay Marriage the cornerstone of the Democratic Party...who could ask for more? Did I say ask for more..or Moore? That's it Gary Locke and Michael Moore, as Vice Chair. The dynamic duo...like Batman and Robin. Picture them both in tights!!!

Posted by: Mr. Cynical on December 10, 2004 01:00 AM

The Democratic Party has long been the champion of working people everywhere.

No, the Democratic party is the champion of confiscating the wages of people who do work to pay people who don't work.

The Democratic party is also the champion of raising working people's taxes, but not giving working peoples' childred the same opportunity to opt out of public schools... like Democratic elites do.

The Democratic party is also the champion of the ACLU and liberal judges, who want to make sure that the religious values of working people are verboten anywhere except the confines of the church.

The Democratic party is also the champion of irrational, overzealous government regulations, that cause working peoples' jobs to be shipped off to Asia and Mexico.

The Democratic party is also the party of unrestricted illegal immigration... a flood of unskilled workers who cause downward pressure on the wages of working people.

Posted by: Matt J Kurlander on December 10, 2004 06:31 AM

5. What a big pile of nothing. It's almost unreadable. And is there a cliche' he missed there? Good to see Locke's writers have kept their sharp edge after all these years. Good to luck to them in their next jobs.

Posted by: J.A. on December 10, 2004 11:11 AM

6. Strangely, I find myself agreeing with Matt, at least about Locke's say nothing tepidity, and his less-than-rousing call for further (endless?) intra-party process to work on crafting an even more bland set of Dem policy ideas. The Democratic party doesn't need more, or better, policy nostrums to combat its malaise. Wonkery doesn't win elections, no matter how subtle or refined; vision and message does.
But I'm right back to disagreeing with Matt (thankfully -- I was beginning to question my liberal identity) about his prescription for a Democratic comeback. As a conservative, Matt appears to yearn for a Republican Lite Democratic Party. That might be good for him, but it would ill serve the American people. There is another, more quintessentially Democratic, approach: the Dems can win in red states with a combination of personality and populism, combined with a tough critique of Republican plutocracy. The Montana gubernatorial race is a perfect example; in fact, there's an excellent piece on how Schweitzer won in that reddest-of-red states in the current Washington Monthly. More locally, Maria Cantwell is raising her profile, and not coincidentally bolstering her reelection prospects, by championing locals -- the Snohomish PUD -- against the unholy alliance of Enron and the wink-at-corruption D.C. Republicans who emasculated FERC. And that fits neatly with the blue state investor-class populism championed by the Eliot Spitzer, who is very possibly the next NY governor (and down the line, a plausible Dem presidential candidate).
On foreign policy, I've given some thought to what Beinart wrote in the New Republic. His critique of the "soft" left -- too relativist, too reflexively anti-American -- has more than a little cogency. But Beinert seems to elide a strong stance against Islamic fundamentalism with support for the Bush adventure in Iraq (which he and his magazine naively supported, and which he appears to still support long after most liberal hawks have offered their mea culpas). That gives me pause. The Democratic Party must not be simplistically anti-war, but neither should it be simplistically pro-war (we already have a political party for that). There are smart and necessary wars (Afghanistan) and dumb and misguided wars, and Iraq falls into the latter category. In my opinion that was evident from the get-go. Now that we're there, I agree that we have to keep trying to salvage the mess that has resulted, but that doesn't alter the fact that we are quite possibly heading (not soon, but eventually) for a painful Saigon '75 exit from Iraq. I say that because we're fighting what has become a nationalist (or multi-nationalist) movement there, as much, or more, than a fundamentalist one. This was all too predictable (For instance, Bush I consigliere Brent Scowcroft, among others, predicted just that, if I recall correctly).
As for the Dems being shrill, that may be true, but no more so than the Republicans (ever listen to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh?). So when Beinert calls for Dems to conduct a unilateral purge of the softs, as embodied by MoveOn and Michael Moore, I say right on, so long as the Republicans simultaneously purge the know nothing nativists ("I'm outraged by the outrage") and the outright bigots (how about a fatwa on candidate pilgrimages to Bob Jones University?). But then, I always was a multilateralist...

Posted by: Sandeep on December 10, 2004 11:58 AM

7. I don't like Gary Locke because he was arrogant when he built our baseball stadium against the will of citizens who voted it down.

I don't like Cantwell because she financed her campaign on her millions in RealNetworks stock. The stock dived and she couldn't pay her bills after the election. So, Hillary came to rescue Cantwell from her Bill. (No, Cantwell was not an intern!!).

Call me a single issue guy, but all it takes is some audacious arrogance like this and my trust is entirely lost.

I think Locke's NYT op-ed is on par with the quality of his 2003 State of Union rebuttal for the DNC.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/locke.democrats/index.html

Locke is definately absent of more than just leadership. Sadly, the DNC will "use" him to pander to the minority vote.

Posted by: Mike on December 10, 2004 01:22 PM

8. Here's how the NY Times could publish such a painfully dull, but politically-correct, column: Gary Locke is a Yale grad, and so is the Times' Op-ed page editor David Shipley (who is married, by the way, to yet another Yale grad, feminazi Naomi Wolf).

They're all brainwashed, effete PC snobs.

Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 10, 2004 05:02 PM

9. Thanks Matt for clean critique of Lock's speech. What I see you getting at is that, like it or not, the conservative movement would benefit from some competition from the likes of the (perceived) old Democrat party of and for America rather than the communist-democrats we have today. If they could field some candidates that could stand on the issues (no matter whether they stand on the right or left of them) and would argue their core beliefs rather aiming for personal and political destruction of their opponent, everyone would benefit. These people are too busy playing 'gotcha' politics to look at the big picture.

Posted by: PaleAle on January 12, 2005 01:23 PM