Shocking the Donkey ... Again

All Howard Dean's energy and enthusiasm won't bring the Democrats back to life.
What we need is a Labor Party.

Howard Dean's election as new chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) brings a number of refreshing changes. For starters, we won't be subjected to the ravings of departing chair Terry McAuliffe anymore. Bill Clinton hand-picked McAuliffe for the job because because he was good at raising money from big business and rich people. Building a grassroots party was not on his "to-do" list, and Democrats didn't do too well at the polls during his tenure, either.

Howard Dean now takes the helm. The former Vermont governor has muscled his way onto the national political scene over the past couple of years, and I have to commend his energy and enthusiasm. Lord knows, the Democratic Party is in dire need of a good shot of adrenaline. A rejuvenated and energetic Democratic Party would be a healthy addition to a nationwide political scene. But, at this point, it behooves us to review a bit of forgotten history.

Howard Dean represents a recurrent trend in the political experience of the U.S. labor movement. For the past 35 years, the labor movement has plowed its time, money, and energy almost exclusively into the Democrats at election time. And between elections, significant chunks of the labor movement have spent enormous amounts of time and resources trying desperately to build something like a real party structure in the Democrats, one that would actually involve the masses of working people -- a Labor Party in all but the name.

So, while Dean brings unquestioned passion and some new ideas, we have been down this road before. When I was just a teenager, I recall progressive stalwart Michael Harrington's many efforts to "reform" or "influence" the Democratic Party. Mike Harrington was as decent and genuine a man as one will meet; but his decades of effort to get the Democrats to vigorously promote the interests of working people largely came to naught.

WASTED YEARS
Harrington organized significant, well-attended conferences of unionists, liberals, and activists that came to be known as the "Democratic Agenda." They were a focal point for those who were trying to keep the Democrats from abandoning the very base -- working people -- that provided its most loyal support. Massive energy and resources were expended to prop up the Democratic Party by electing Jimmy Carter. But in our first bitter taste of the "New Democrat" phenomenon, only two years after Nixon was driven out of office in disgrace, Carter could barely defeat the hapless and uninspiring Gerald Ford.

Four timid and stagnant years of Carter led to the triumph of Ronald Reagan, and even more frantic efforts by labor to prop up the Democrats. Jesse Jackson spent a great deal of time and energy trying to do something with the Democratic Party in the middle 1980s. But again, little concrete progress was made. By the early 1990s, we gave up on any real changes in the Democratic Party and did whatever we could to get out from under the first Bush regime. Ross Perot thankfully siphoned enough Republican votes to end those twelve long years of Reagan/Bush.

You know the rest: eight wasted years under Clinton-Gore, with the Democrats finally losing the House in 1994, the White House in 2000, and the Senate in 2002. Over the past decade, organized labor has contributed several billion -- yes, billion -- dollars to Democrats and delivered countless millions of votes. Indeed, most "Democratic Party" activity during the recent elections did not come from the actual party. It came from unions and other groups of every imaginable sort, all determined to stop Bush. More than ever, activists like us were drawn to prop up the Democratic Party with resources and votes it could never have won on its own. In effect, we were giving CPR to a dying donkey instead of saddling up a war horse we could ride to a real win.

Many within the labor movement seem satisfied with this profoundly bad bargain. They apparently don't mind continuing to support a Democratic Party that by all indications has evaporated from entire regions of our country -- a Democratic Party that has not taken up the struggle to solve a single crisis affecting working people for more than a quarter century. Just how popular would the Democrats be today if it were not simply for widespread and deserved hostility towards George W. Bush? Can a national political party rebuild itself when a major basis for its unity appears to be dislike for the one man who won't even be on the ballot next time?

TALK IS CHEAP
Dean has laid out an ambitious plan to construct permanent party structures at the state level. But the likely participants in this endeavor will be the same consultants and political "professionals" who have led the party to this nadir in the first place. And I see nothing in the Dean program to indicate that he intends to put this new, grassroots Democratic Party into the long overdue struggle to organize unions.

We must be careful not to believe that because Dean was able to out-organize his opponents -- most of whom were political nobodies -- that the Democratic Party is now somehow unified around his ambitious program. Former President Clinton sure isn't on board. And Clinton is just one of many "New Democrats," corporate Democrats, who want nothing to do with the Dean scheme.

The current Democratic Party is a non-party that increasingly competes for power on the basis of purely rhetorical opposition to a regressive Republican program. But talk is cheap. Instead of advocating bold and decisive solutions to the problems pummeling working people, the party advocates incomprehensible tinkering and fine-tuning. I am convinced that efforts to resuscitate the Democratic Party, via e-mail or otherwise, will not succeed.

It's time to abandon our delusions, once and for all. And I am more than happy to abandon the delusion that somehow the Democratic Party can be refashioned into a reliable progressive force. I have no intention of getting fooled again. Instead, my energy now goes to building a true party of the people -- a Labor Party by that name in particular.

Chris Townsend is the Political Action Director of the
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

February 2005