Balancing principle and politics: Can the Dems do it?

[thatcrazycajun]

Ruben Navarrette, CNN's go-to guy on Hispanic issues, opines today here that his ethnic group will not be any better served by a Democratic-controlled Congress than they were by the current Republican-run one. He asserts that the Dems will be too timid to take a stand against the current "throw 'em in jail or send 'em home" crowd because they won't want to turn off the voters in the middle (which is a majority of the population) that they'll need to stay in power once they get it.

Sad to say, I very much fear he's right. My party's leadership has, until very recently, run like sixty from any firm, committed positions on issues that might even conceivably be characterized as "liberal" for fear of (a) alienating non-base voters and (b) giving the other side attack-ad fodder. So how do the Dems strike a balance between being principled enough to satisfy their base and flexible enough to attract and keep the "mushy middle"? Opinions?

Comments

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

I'm voting Green in the next election.
I don't believe the Democrats can go back to core, liberal values.
But for now, they have my vote.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

So complicated.

1) The power of Hispanics as a special interest group can only rise over time. The Dems made a decision this spring to court them -- in opposition to the Rs.

Curiously, the special interest group within the D tent most opposed to the ascendancy of Hispanics as a lobbying force is traditional African American civil rights advocates and labor unions. There is a huge split in these groups. Labor unions can't decide whether to embrace new immigrants as the most likely new recruits for labor (SEIU position), or whether to maintain the traditional position that an influx of immigrants depresses wages. African Americans civil rights leaders are torn between embracing a fellow civil rights group and a fear of being displaced from the leadership structure of the civil rights movement.

How all this plays out internally will influence policy.

2) The immigration issue is not the only issue in the Hispanic Community. It is the big issue de jure. But issues of importance to legal immigrants and first and second generation Latinos are also important.

And there is considerable diversity within the Hispanic community. This is a broad base of people from diverse geographic locations. What issues should take prominence and how has not even been worked out in the Hispanic community.

3) I am uncertain how much immigration will dominate as an issue in '07. But part of the cold-blooded D calculation will be who turns out to vote and what are the demographic trends for '08. In '04, the "Hispanic vote" was not uniformly D, and Republicans gave serious consideration to how to court socially conservative Hispanics (especially by portraying the Ds as entirely too beholden to the African American civil rights structure to create opportunities for Hispanic leaders). That fell apart when a number of Rs began flogging immigration reform because it was a real concern in their particular districts.

None of this answers the actual question you asked. It merely suggests that the cynical political calculations are far more complex.

The real answer to your question lies in who dominates the Democratic party. To the extent the traditional D leadership continues to exert authority, it will stay mushy. If this election brings in a new generation of Ds who insist on maintaining their principles, then it will be different.