How The Democrats Lost Dixie, Part 6:The Democrats Find A New Direction in the 1980s And The Left By And Large Goes The Opposite Way

 

If one reads enough material from the typical progressive article, whether from Daily Kos or another website, one knows all too well exactly what the Republicans were doing throughout the 1980s when Reagan came to power. I'm going to spend this article talking about two things they generally omit from their descriptions of that decade: what the Democratic Party was doing and what those who come to call themselves progressive were doing.

Considering that Reagan is the biggest villain the left can come up with up to this day, there's something ironic that their behavior during this critical decade so much resembles his most famous statement in his inaugural: "Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." Because when one looks at the history of the various members of what was once called the coalition of liberals you see them basically all as one doing everything but in that to work against everything Reagan was supposedly tearing down.

Because we know what the left wasn't doing: they were not forming think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, they weren't creating groups like the Federalist Society and when the Fairness Doctrine was repealed they didn't come up with an equivalent to Rush Limbaugh or start doing the work for a progressive equivalent of Fox News. All of those methods that they will attack the conservatives for doing, those who called themselves left-wing were not. And they certainly weren't running for elected office to come up with their own Newt Gingrich to work inside Congress destroying the order of civility for Democrats the same way he was.

What they were doing, as far as I can tell, was playing to their base. That meant lots of books from Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn and other academics, filmmakers both fictional (Oliver Stone) and documentarian (Michael Moore) arguing America had lost its way, an increasing number of demonstrations and activist movements from members of the African-American, female and what was then know as the gay community all expressing outrage at America for leaving them behind. And as voter turnout records from that decade clearly demonstrate,  an increasingly refusal to turn out to vote even though they would later acknowledge low turnout only helped Republican lawmakers.

And what they chose to increasingly do as their approach to bringing about change (if one stretches that definition as far as it could go) was increasingly take the position that all institutions were fundamentally broken and that anyone who tried to bring about reform was wasting its time. They would even turn on some their former heroes for the crime of selling out. Whether it was Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago 7 attempting to run for office in California or Gary Hart, one of McGovern's top campaign officials campaigning for the Presidency as an 'Atari liberal' (more on that below) by and large the members of the left increasingly didn't think one could change the system from within. But they weren't willing to do much more than make a spectacle for the cameras and then go home. To paraphrase Malcom X's famous statement, they had rejected the ballot and were too lazy to use the bullet – and had little regard for those who did either.

So by and large the more left wing members of the liberal coalition were almost completely absent from politics one way or the other during the 1980s. The one exception was Jesse Jackson's two attempts to obtain the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 1984 and 1988.

Jackson's campaign was historic for being the first African-American man to run for the Presidency and achieve some electoral success. This does not change the fact that Jackson had no real qualifications to be President; he'd never held elected office before, was famous for fiery and frequently offense rhetoric while advocating for civil rights and had done much to isolate other members of the Democratic coalition even before he ran for office. What he had was an ability to turn a phrase and eloquence from speechmaking. That was it.

And in truth it was only because the field was so relatively sparse in 1988 (it was referred to somewhat derogatorily by the media as 'the 7 dwarves' that Jackson had something resembling a creditable showing. His best day was Super Tuesday when he managed to win five primaries: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, all South states where he primarily managed to win based on the African-American turnout. He and Al Gore, then the Senator from Tennessee (we'll deal with him later) essentially divided the South while Michael Dukakis took the north. Jackson managed to do well in the caucus states (including Michigan) but the only other primary he won was South Carolina. After moving within one delegate of Dukakis after the Michigan caucus, the rest of the voters lined up behind the Massachusetts governor. One could argue Jackson didn't get the nomination because race was a factor, but one could also point out if he wasn't African-American he wouldn't have gotten as many votes as he did in the first place.

Aside from this by and large almost every coalition of the left began to have their belief calcify in a kind of dogma that holds true to this day. Much of it was based on beliefs that had existed for decades and some of it had mirror images among conservative doctrine that was forming at the same time. But the most bizarre and dangerous thinking was a kind of odd election denialism.

Basically the left chose to argue that in the period between 1968 and 1988 when the Republican Presidential candidates won five out of six elections, four of them with Republican candidates getting more than 400 electoral votes and two where the Republican candidate carried 49 of 50 states, were proof that democracy was a failed experiment.  Their role in the conservative movement starting with the anti-war protests in the Vietnam War, was erased from the narrative of the 1960s. Instead they chose to argue that what these elections 'proved' was what they had always believed: America was a racist country in the hands of corporate interests and the military and that voting or running for an office to try and change the system was a waste of time. Conversely they chose to read the voter apathy in the 1970s and 1980s as a sign that people wanted the policies of liberalism but no one was truly offering it. That much of this was no doubt a product of the conditions of the Vietnam War and Watergate was ignored; that millions of people were embracing conservatism – which they equated to fascism – was explained by the general ignorance of the masses which the left tends to believe.

And the Democrats could not be trusted because they accepted the results of elections and chose to work with Republican Presidents. That this was how Congress had basically worked throughout the 20^th century and was always supposed to work was something the left chose to ignore. That the results of both the popular and electoral results had given these Republicans a mandate for their agenda was also ignored. This basic concept would not begin to breakdown until Newt Gingrich took over the House in the 1994 midterms but the Democrats basically chose to follow those standards until relatively recently.

This denies the very real fact of those electoral realities. While Watergate had done much to give lie to the idea of America's shift to the right, Reagan's landslide victor in 1980 was one the Democratic Party could not ignore if they hope to be a viable alternative.  They continued to learn this the hard way in the next two Presidential elections, first when the nominated Walter Mondale in 1984 and then when they nominated Michael Dukakis in 1988. Both of these men were liberals in what was very much the definition of the term from the New Deal onward (Dukakis somewhat less so) and both were effectively crushed in electoral landslides. Mondale would carry only his home state of Minnesota and receive just 40 percent of the popular vote; Dukakis did somewhat better against George H.W. Bush but he still lost with only 111 electoral votes to Bush's 426. The Democrats had sent candidates with strong liberal candidates and both times America had overwhelmingly chosen Republicans. The fact that the voter turnout in both these elections was little more than 50 percent of registered voters did nothing to change the fact that the electorate seemed to want the vision of Republicans over liberal Democrats.

And it's worth noting for those who argue about the horrors of Reagan as a Republican and what he chose to do the liberal order during this period, there was very little Congressional Democrats could have done to stop him. While they still controlled the House of Representatives by a healthy majority throughout his entire term, the Republicans would control the Senate during all of Reagan's first term and not lose control until the 1986 midterms. The idea of being obstructionists was not in the Democratic mindset any more then than it really is today and while Republican senators and congressmen were starting to become more combative, the idea of civility was still prevalent.

So during this period the Democratic Party began to slowly and reluctantly absent what was necessary for their survival, particularly in the Senate. They had to go where the voters were and if that meant going to the right, so be it. The left never accepted this betrayal, labeled those Democrats like Bob Kerrey and Paul Tsongas who did so 'neoliberals' because they were trying to win elections.

This success did not come overnight. While the Democrats managed to gain 26 seats in the House during the 1982 midterms (in large part because of the recession) the Senate didn't reflect those changes with the Democrats only gaining a single seat. In part this was because Harry Byrd retired and Republican Paul Trible narrowly won election in Virginia.

In 1984 despite Reagan's landslide the Democrats actually managed to gain two seats in the Senate. One of their major gains occurred in Tennessee. Howard Baker retired that year and his seat would be filled by Al Gore Jr, the son of a former Tennessee Senator. Most of the South held in both these elections except in Kentucky when two term incumbent Walter Huddleston narrowly lost to a relatively unknown Mitch McConnell.

1986 was a disaster for the Republicans in the Senate as the Democrats gained eight seats. Almost all of the gains were in the South, including a special election in North Carolina. Jim Broyhill had been an interim appointee that hear but he narrowly lost reelection to the former governor and one of the original members of the New South, Terry Sanford. Richard Shelby narrowly won election in Alabama, Paula Hawkins of Florida was defeated by Bob Graham in a landslide. Mick Mattingly who'd been elected in Reagan's original landslide, narrowly lost to Wyche Fowler in Georgia. After Russell Long stepped down after six terms serving Louisiana, John Breaux was elected to fill his seat that year. And Barbara Mikulski became the first woman to represent Maryland in the Senate that year. Only in Missouri after Thomas Eagleton retired this Republicans make a gain as every other Southern Democrat won reelection.

There were signs of change in the 1988 election even as the Democrats gained another Senate seat. Trent Lott would come to power in Mississippi and when Lawton Chiles retired Connie Mack III would take his seat for the Republicans in Florida. But by and large the South held with Democrat Chuck Robb defeating Paul Trible and taking back the seat in Virginia Republicans had gained.

Even though George H.W. Bush had been elected with the opposite of a mandate (the Democrats had gained seats in both houses of Congress that year) and though he was considered a moderate going against the direction of his party by and large the Democrats chose to work with during that term to a point that actually displeased many of the more extreme members of it. By and large the 1990 elections represented relative stability with the smallest seat change since direct election of Senators became enshrined as in the Constitution with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment.

Some believed a chance for a pickup was lost in North Carolina when Jesse Helms won reelection to his fourth term and Harvey Gantt, the African-American Mayor of Charlotte. Factors would retroactively be raised such as his famous 'Hands' ad as well as Michael Jordan's refusal to endorse Gantt, saying "Republicans by sneakers too." But in fact Helms won reelection by a slightly wider margin then he had in 1984 when he had run against the Democrat governor Jim Hunt where over $26 million was spent and Helms only managed to win due to the appearance of Ronald Reagan campaigning for him in the leadup to election day.

Helms was a despicable figure to be sure but by nominating an African-American to try and unseat him in 1990 the Democratic Party lost votes compared to when a white politician six years earlier. But it is because of the belief of how Helms chose to win that leads many to dismiss the electoral relevance of his defeat.

To be fair most of America was distracted by what was happening in international news and there was a lot going on during this period. The Berlin Wall had come down in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself would collapsed by the winter of 1991. During this same period Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the first Gulf War took place. When it ended in a speedy conclusion, Bush's approval ratings were at the highest recording in presidential approval history well into the high eighties. In the leadup to the 1992 elections prominent Democrats were going out of their way to announce they were not going to run for President as Bush's reelection in the spring of 1991 seemed all but assured. And the few who did were not being taken seriously by anyone.

It was not until April of 1991 that things began to change and would start a path for how the Democratic Party was going to find its way out of the wilderness after 12 years.  In the next article I will deal with the circumstances that led to the unlikely rise of Bill Clinton from long-shot candidate to the unlikely Democratic nominee.