Friday, August 01, 2003
From the WSJ on the state of the Dems:
The Shrinking Democrats
Voters don't trust the party on taxes and security.
Friday, August 1, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT Karl Rove often gets credit for being smart, but it doesn't hurt that President Bush's chief political strategist is lucky. His latest good fortune is the battle between Howard Dean and John Kerry over how much to raise taxes. The scrap is a microcosm of the current Democratic problem.
Consistent with his punch-in-the-gut campaign style, Mr. Dean wants the full monty. In the name of his Vermont "fiscal conservatism," the Democrats' new Presidential front-runner proposes to repeal all three of the Bush tax cuts, right down to the last penny for every taxpayer. In addition, as he recently told NBC's Tim Russert, he'd raise the income threshold on the payroll tax, another huge tax increase on anyone making more than $87,000 a year.
Mr. Kerry, who has lost his New Hampshire lead to Mr. Dean, says this is going too far. "Real Democrats don't walk away from the middle class," he charges, explaining that he'd preserve the Bush tax credits for children and marriage penalty relief. But he'd still repeal the rest of the Bush tax cuts, including the rate cuts on income, dividends and capital gains. (Apparently the Massachusetts Senator thinks no one in the middle class owns stock.) Mr. Dean fired back that this is a sign that Mr. Kerry lacks the courage of Democratic "principles."
Mr. Rove must be wondering what he did to deserve this. In pursuit of Mr. Dean, every Democratic Presidential candidate is now proposing some kind of tax increase, from the humongous (in Mr. Dean's case, $2 trillion over 10 years) to merely the huge. Not being masochists, they must believe this will help them retake the White House. But we'd suggest they all study Mark Penn's latest analysis on the Democrats' shrinking political appeal.
Mr. Penn is the pollster most famous for fashioning Bill Clinton's New Democratic political themes. This week he released a survey, sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, that has ominous news for his party going into an election year. Though he found that Mr. Bush is vulnerable, "the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal." The share of voters who identify themselves as Democrats is down to 33%, lower even than in the GOP landslide year of 1994 and down from 45% as recently as 1968.
Whatever happened to the ballyhooed "emerging Democratic majority?" Mr. Penn finds that it is vanishing along with support for Democrats in the suburbs and among white men and women raising children. "Today only 22% of white men identify themselves as Democrats," he writes, compared with 37% for Republicans.
Among white men age 25 to 49, only 41.5% even have a favorable view of Democrats. More than 70% of that group view the GOP favorably. As for income groups, the nearby table shows how the heart of the tax-paying middle class is abandoning the Democrats.
Mr. Penn attributes this mass defection to "current perceptions that Democrats stand for big government, want to raise taxes too high, are too liberal, and are beholden to special interest groups." They also suffer from what he calls a "security gap," or the "wide chasm" between the parties on keeping America safe after 9/11. "Today, Democrats must be strong on security to be heard on the economy," the strategist writes.
Alas, these days Mr. Penn is a prophet without followers. Democratic candidates are all chasing Mr. Dean's poll numbers in the opposite direction, competing to see who can attack Mr. Bush most aggressively on the war and for his tax cuts.
On taxes, in particular, they are listening too much to the Beltway pundit class. These sages are prodding the Democrats to stand proudly for repealing the Bush tax cuts, on grounds that they benefit mainly "the rich" and have caused the budget deficit. Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who urged Al Gore to assail business in 2000, is also promoting a Democratic tax increase.
These are the same folks who applauded Walter Mondale back in 1984 when he claimed to be brave in proposing to repeal the Reagan tax cuts. Fritz carried Minnesota and the District of Columbia. They look fondly back on 1992, when Bill Clinton won while proposing a tax increase on "the rich." But Mr. Clinton also ran on a tax cut for the middle class, and against a George H. W. Bush who had given the issue away by raising taxes himself. This President Bush has no such credibility problem, and with the economy now beginning to accelerate he'll be able to give the tax cuts much of the credit.
The tax issue is only one of the many signs that the Democratic Party is veering back to the left. Mr. Dean's rise is another, but the trend also shows up in the relentless partisan opposition to the Bush agenda in Congress. Democrats seem to have concluded from their 2002 defeat that their mistake was that they weren't obstructionist enough.
This is all great news for Republicans, though we'd argue not for the country. On the present Democratic course the GOP may have a chance to finally become a governing majority in 2004 and beyond, but sooner or later the Democrats will get their turn again. We'd much prefer a center-left party in the mold of Britain's Tony Blair, one that is tough against terror and recognizes that private markets create wealth. It isn't healthy in our democracy to have a major political party run off the rails.
The Shrinking Democrats
Voters don't trust the party on taxes and security.
Friday, August 1, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT Karl Rove often gets credit for being smart, but it doesn't hurt that President Bush's chief political strategist is lucky. His latest good fortune is the battle between Howard Dean and John Kerry over how much to raise taxes. The scrap is a microcosm of the current Democratic problem.
Consistent with his punch-in-the-gut campaign style, Mr. Dean wants the full monty. In the name of his Vermont "fiscal conservatism," the Democrats' new Presidential front-runner proposes to repeal all three of the Bush tax cuts, right down to the last penny for every taxpayer. In addition, as he recently told NBC's Tim Russert, he'd raise the income threshold on the payroll tax, another huge tax increase on anyone making more than $87,000 a year.
Mr. Kerry, who has lost his New Hampshire lead to Mr. Dean, says this is going too far. "Real Democrats don't walk away from the middle class," he charges, explaining that he'd preserve the Bush tax credits for children and marriage penalty relief. But he'd still repeal the rest of the Bush tax cuts, including the rate cuts on income, dividends and capital gains. (Apparently the Massachusetts Senator thinks no one in the middle class owns stock.) Mr. Dean fired back that this is a sign that Mr. Kerry lacks the courage of Democratic "principles."
Mr. Rove must be wondering what he did to deserve this. In pursuit of Mr. Dean, every Democratic Presidential candidate is now proposing some kind of tax increase, from the humongous (in Mr. Dean's case, $2 trillion over 10 years) to merely the huge. Not being masochists, they must believe this will help them retake the White House. But we'd suggest they all study Mark Penn's latest analysis on the Democrats' shrinking political appeal.
Mr. Penn is the pollster most famous for fashioning Bill Clinton's New Democratic political themes. This week he released a survey, sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, that has ominous news for his party going into an election year. Though he found that Mr. Bush is vulnerable, "the Democratic Party is currently in its weakest position since the dawn of the New Deal." The share of voters who identify themselves as Democrats is down to 33%, lower even than in the GOP landslide year of 1994 and down from 45% as recently as 1968.
Whatever happened to the ballyhooed "emerging Democratic majority?" Mr. Penn finds that it is vanishing along with support for Democrats in the suburbs and among white men and women raising children. "Today only 22% of white men identify themselves as Democrats," he writes, compared with 37% for Republicans.
Among white men age 25 to 49, only 41.5% even have a favorable view of Democrats. More than 70% of that group view the GOP favorably. As for income groups, the nearby table shows how the heart of the tax-paying middle class is abandoning the Democrats.
Mr. Penn attributes this mass defection to "current perceptions that Democrats stand for big government, want to raise taxes too high, are too liberal, and are beholden to special interest groups." They also suffer from what he calls a "security gap," or the "wide chasm" between the parties on keeping America safe after 9/11. "Today, Democrats must be strong on security to be heard on the economy," the strategist writes.
Alas, these days Mr. Penn is a prophet without followers. Democratic candidates are all chasing Mr. Dean's poll numbers in the opposite direction, competing to see who can attack Mr. Bush most aggressively on the war and for his tax cuts.
On taxes, in particular, they are listening too much to the Beltway pundit class. These sages are prodding the Democrats to stand proudly for repealing the Bush tax cuts, on grounds that they benefit mainly "the rich" and have caused the budget deficit. Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who urged Al Gore to assail business in 2000, is also promoting a Democratic tax increase.
These are the same folks who applauded Walter Mondale back in 1984 when he claimed to be brave in proposing to repeal the Reagan tax cuts. Fritz carried Minnesota and the District of Columbia. They look fondly back on 1992, when Bill Clinton won while proposing a tax increase on "the rich." But Mr. Clinton also ran on a tax cut for the middle class, and against a George H. W. Bush who had given the issue away by raising taxes himself. This President Bush has no such credibility problem, and with the economy now beginning to accelerate he'll be able to give the tax cuts much of the credit.
The tax issue is only one of the many signs that the Democratic Party is veering back to the left. Mr. Dean's rise is another, but the trend also shows up in the relentless partisan opposition to the Bush agenda in Congress. Democrats seem to have concluded from their 2002 defeat that their mistake was that they weren't obstructionist enough.
This is all great news for Republicans, though we'd argue not for the country. On the present Democratic course the GOP may have a chance to finally become a governing majority in 2004 and beyond, but sooner or later the Democrats will get their turn again. We'd much prefer a center-left party in the mold of Britain's Tony Blair, one that is tough against terror and recognizes that private markets create wealth. It isn't healthy in our democracy to have a major political party run off the rails.
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