[Mb-civic] Democrats In Disarray - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Democrats In Disarray

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; Page A23

Democrats and liberals are ecstatic that President Bush has finally 
faced his moment of accountability. The travails of Hurricane Katrina 
followed a bad summer for the president and have called into question 
his leadership style, competence and intense partisanship.

But Democrats are less ecstatic about . . . Democrats. Over the past 
several weeks, it was impossible not to run into Bush critics who would 
shake their heads and complain: "Yes, but where are the Democrats? Who 
are our leaders? What do they have to say?"

The critiques come from the left ("Why can't Democrats stand up and be 
counted?") and from the center ("We'll never win if we look like liberal 
ideologues"). And almost every day Democrats seem to give their critics 
evidence of division. The party splintered over the nomination of John 
Roberts as chief justice. The newspaper Roll Call reported yesterday 
that some House Democrats were opposing the decision by their leader, 
Nancy Pelosi, to boycott a Republican-led investigation of the Katrina 
disaster. Pelosi favors an independent commission. You know the party 
has a problem when even the politics of Katrina divides its members. A 
spokesman for Pelosi confirmed some differences yesterday but said that 
"the vast majority of members support her decision to boycott."

Criticisms of the Democrats are usually personalized: This or that 
leader is said to be inadequate, or the party as a whole is said to lack 
"guts," "gumption" and "clarity." Defenses of the party are also 
personalized: No party can expect to be led by figures from its 
congressional minority, and the 2008 presidential election is too far 
away to produce clear alternative leaders.

But the party's problems are structural and can be explained by three 
numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent 
of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 
percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves 
moderate.

Those numbers mean that liberal-leaning Democrats are far more dependent 
than conservatively inclined Republicans on alliances with the political 
center. Democrats second-guess themselves because they have to.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092601462.html?nav=hcmodule
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