NYT Op-eds: "How the Democrats Can Win"

Competence Sells
Republicans have declared Iraq the central front on the war on terrorism. Yet Republicans in Congress ignored warnings that the invasion lacked sufficient troops; did not ask about the plan to secure the postwar environment (as it turns out, there wasn’t one); and went into denial as Baghdad descended into chaos.

Congressional Republicans asked no questions when the administration staffed the Coalition Provisional Authority with cronies rather than experienced professionals, or when the authority lost track of $8.8 billion in reconstruction money.

Similar Republican negligence and incompetence have led to the failure to secure Afghanistan, to apprehend Osama bin Laden, to address the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea — even to rebuild the Gulf Coast, where, a year after the inept response to Hurricane Katrina, families still live in trailers and billions in relief funds are unaccounted for.

Our nation confronts very real dangers at home and abroad. Will voters feel safer sticking with a Republican Congress that sent our troops into battle without a plan, cut aid to local law enforcement and allowed cronyism to undermine our emergency response system, or will they want a Democratic Congress that will demand real accountability and oversight?

If Republicans want to make national security the fulcrum of the debate this election, Democrats should echo President Bush’s immortal words: “Bring it on.”

— RAHM EMANUEL, Democratic representative from Illinois and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Try Truth
Karl Rove is telling Republicans that they should campaign on the American economy, virtually the “strongest in the world,” and on the Iraq war because Republicans will be there for “the last tough battles,” while Democrats “fall back on the party’s old platform of cutting and running.”

Well, do you want to know what I am telling Democrats? Run on the economy and Iraq. We want this battle. This is indeed the strongest economy in the world for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. But there has been so little income growth for so many years that the great majority of citizens face stagnant incomes, growing financial pressures, high health care and gas prices, and jobs with fewer and fewer benefits.

The more Republicans talk about great times, the more they fuel voter frustration with a party out of touch with people’s financial worries. And the more Republicans talk about “cut and run,” the more voters focus on the ugliness of today’s Baghdad. It is as though a smug conservative debate team were so busy winning the argument over setting a withdrawal deadline that it completely missed the consuming national anxiety and anger over the deception and incompetence, the misplaced priorities, the spread of violence and the failure to keep America safe.

So, Karl, thank you.

— STANLEY B. GREENBERG, author of “The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It” and former adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq
Democrats face the hard necessity of conducting a debate about the war in Iraq — and about ending it well short of victory, even as young Americans continue to fight and die. Debate now will not substitute for the honest, consensus-building discussion that should have happened before we sent our soldiers into battle, nor for the Congressional oversight that might have kept the hole from being dug deeper. Still, it needs to happen in the name of accountability, if for no other reason.

The challenge is to maintain a level of discourse that rises above the glib sloganeering that has typified the administration’s defense of its behavior, but that also transcends disgust and anger. Many Americans of my generation inevitably recall the 1960’s and 70’s, when the repugnant rhetoric and behavior of some war protesters repelled many Americans and thus helped prolong the war in Vietnam.

Today the evidence of arrogance, deceit, and miscalculation has grown so decisive that rhetorical excess will serve only to distract from it. America deserves, and I believe will reward, a level of debate that befits the sad and solemn circumstances that make it necessary.

— JODY POWELL, press secretary to President Jimmy Carter and chief executive of a public relations firm.

Take a Risk
Democrats face a danger as well as an incredible opportunity this fall. The danger is they will run a safe, “We’re not as bad as they are” campaign. To be sure, the Republican leadership under George Bush is so bad that Democrats might be able to win majorities in both the House and the Senate with nothing more than this simple refrain. But such a victory would be hollow and short-lived.

The incredible opportunity before us is to build a new majority for change. This is not a matter of pushing the party to the left or right so much as it is one of embracing the evident hunger among the American people to set the nation on a new course. President Bush and the Republicans represent staying the course; Democrats represent changing the course.

Bold change on Iraq, energy policy and health care will carry the day for Democrats in November. To carry the day beyond November, we must be the party that empowers and challenges the American people to participate in the hard work of charting a new course.

— JOE TRIPPI, manager of Howard Dean’s campaign for president and the author of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything.”

Health Care First
In 1994, Republicans took advantage of the dissatisfaction Americans felt with the Democratic Party. They didn’t win Congress just by saying, “We’re not them.” Rather, they offered an alternative worldview: the Contract With America. Democrats haven’t yet offered that alternative vision.

Time is too short for a comprehensive agenda, so I suggest we concentrate on a single issue: health care. Imagine a November in which Americans are not only unhappy with the Republicans, but when we in our turn hold out clear and believable hope to nearly 50 million uninsured Americans and many more insured but worried ones. Surely my party — the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, of Social Security and Medicare — still has in it the vigor to offer another plain-spoken, big vision for America.

Americans are sensible. They won’t put their faith in us for who we’re not, but they might for who we are.

— PHIL BREDESEN, Governor of Tennessee

Start Making Sense
The American public loathes the bickering, deadlocked 109th Congress. Its approval rating was a subterranean 25 percent in September’s New York Times/CBS poll. That makes this year’s Democratic strategy simple: make sure the public knows exactly who’s in charge of this wretched assemblage. Not a speech should go by without the phrase “Republican Congress” being repeated at least a dozen times. Two dozen would be even better.

So that’s that. But Democrats also have an opportunity to do something more constructive in this fall’s campaign: they should package a common-sense foreign policy so that it sounds like the common sense it is.

That means taking seriously the idea that our national interest is served by easing tensions and reducing hatred of the United States. This in turn means remaking the United States military so it can fight insurgencies and conduct peacekeeping missions more effectively; making serious use of multilateral institutions instead of deriding them; once again acting as an honest broker in the Middle East; and using economic engagement to help bring the Muslim world into the global community.

Democrats need to learn how to make this case convincingly, because it’s the only way we’re going to win the war against militant Islamic jihadism. It might help the party win an election or two as well.

— KEVIN DRUM, writer of the blog “Political Animal.”

A Spinal Transplant
If Democrats want to win Congress in November, they’ve got to stop hating themselves and come out of the liberal closet. They learned self-hate from being beaten by Republicans who painted them as un-American wimps, soft on crime, the social pathologies of poverty and eventually terror. Some Democrats responded by masquerading as moderate Republicans and dropping their liberal commitments: advocacy for the poor, for raising the minimum wage and against war.

American voters are fed up with gutless Democrats long on spin but short on spine. Democrats must tell the truth: the war is bad; our government, as the response to Hurricane Katrina showed, is incompetent and uncaring; and our working classes are over-burdened.

Senator Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut Democratic primary suggests that Democrats must stop hating who they are when they are at their best: politicians who help the vulnerable and the marginalized. The Democrats should adopt the hip-hop mantra of authenticity: “Do you.”

— MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster.”

What Women Want
In 1994, 16 million women who had voted in the 1992 presidential election stayed home. The campaigning was nasty and negative, and these “drop-off” women — women with jobs, children, aging parents, busy lives — found no compelling reason to cast ballots.

The unanswered question for 2006 is whether such drop-off women will vote. Since women disproportionately vote for Democrats, their decision could determine which party will control the next Congress.

Getting women to the polls won’t be easy. The demands on their time and the pressures on their families can overwhelm any interest in politics. But we can convince them to vote by talking about issues that directly affect their families and showing them how voting for Democrats — especially women candidates — can make a difference. They’ll be receptive to Democratic policies like protecting Social Security, making college affordable and finding an end to the morass in Iraq.

If Democrats — party leaders, candidates and progressive allies — communicate with enough women, we can counter negative Republican campaigns that aim to get women to stay home. Women will find a reason to vote. And when women vote, Democrats win.

— ELLEN R. MALCOLM, president of Emily’s List.

Fight on All Fronts
We live in dangerous times that demand real leadership. The president’s foreign policies have failed. Recent polls show that a plurality of Americans trust Democrats over Republicans to handle the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, and two-thirds of Americans want a new direction for our country.

Democrats will answer this call by standing up for change with a unified agenda, including a defense policy that’s tough and smart. That’s a policy for tracking down terrorists, providing our troops and agencies with the tools they need to stop future attacks and following the 9/11 commission recommendations to close the gaps in our security.

Democrats will stand up to Republican attempts to once again use fear to win elections in November. We will make sure voters know that a Democratic Congress will not rubber-stamp the administration’s policies, which put the agenda of the far right ahead of what’s good for America. We offer a new direction that will restore to Congress the competence, efficiency and fairness that Americans deserve.

— HOWARD DEAN, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

LSB: Lots of good advice, but does anyone know how to stop the wingnuts from hijacking the voting machines!