Russell Wallace has a great post up at Reform Dem, asking “what’s the purpose of the Democratic Party?” He talks about the lack of consensus between “traditionalists” who believe that the point of the Democratic Party is to elect more Democrats, and the “progressive newbies” who focus more on values and issues as a way to convince people to start voting for more Democrats. He argues:

I’ve come to believe that the lack of consensus on the purpose of the Democratic Party is one of the largest barriers that prevents us from having a unified and successful long-term approach to politics.

And then concludes (emphasis in the original):

The purpose of the Democratic party is to turn the views and values of its members into public policy.

This simple definition encompasses both elections and issues without elevating one above the other. It’s provides a framework to weigh all Party activities against our long-term goals as expressed by our members in our platform and resolutions. And it provides the flexibility to evolve and change tactics as necessary to reach those goals.

I like this, not only because it addresses head-on the main complaint about the Democratic Party, which is that we don’t stand for anything (not true, of course — we do stand for anything…), but because it emphasizes the bottom line of politics, which is to create good policy. Like Russell, I lean towards the “progressive newbie” camp, but I have a lot of sympathy with the traditionalist view as well. If you can’t win elections, the purity of your political values doesn’t mean a damn thing.

The Democratic Party is not a progressive or liberal organization. It’s not supposed to be (*). It’s a tool, and like any tool it can be used in ways that are more or less beneficial. The only thing the tool does is elect Democrats. We use the same organization to elect both the very worst Dems, like William Jefferson, and the very best, like Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone.

The question I am most interested in is how we make sure that the Democratic Party is used in a way that allows us to turn our views and values into public policy?

Partly, this is accomplished by changing the shared set of assumptions and ideals that is common to the party, either through the gradual evolution of the primary process, as old Dems like Lieberman are replaced with up-and-coming Dems who are more in touch with Democratic voters, or through more active challenges to the conventional wisdom of the establishment (such as the one we’re seeing right now through the “netroots”).

A new poll this week suggests that a plurality of the Democratic establishment thinks the greatest risk to the party’s electoral fortunes is “timidity in opposing the war in Iraq”. How many would have argued that way in 2002, or 2004?

The other way to change the how of the Democratic Party is to rebuild it from the ground up, on a local level. Howard Dean’s fifty-state strategy is partly a way to challenge every Republican-held seat, and to make them play defense on a wider scale. But more importantly, it’s a way to rebuild the local and state party infrastructure, which is the only means by which we progressive newbies can become a part of that nebulous “Democratic establishment”, and then begin using the party to elect liberals and progressives who will turn our views and values into public policy.

Building effective local parties with bylaws that are small-d democratic, and more importantly, that have a culture of open and democratic debate and action, is the great challenge for each generation of Democrats. That culture will be drawn upwards to the state and national levels, just like the roots protect the health of the tree. And people who get involved at the local level will carry that culture with them as they move up the cursus honorum.

This rebuilding has to be separate from the campaigns of individual candidates, both for strategic reasons (the party needs to be its own thing with a long-term view of the political landscape, and not an appendage of a presidential campaign), and for tactical reasons (if I’m a presidential candidate, how can I justify plowing time and money into local and state parties in places that won’t help me count to 270? I don’t care about four years or eight years from now, I care about that November.).

In other words, the Democratic Party is what we make of it. As Russell said:

I’ve thought about this problem from many different angles, and for me it always comes back to the reasons that most people join the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in the first place. It usually isn’t to elect Democratic candidates. If that’s their priority they just get involved with individual campaigns. And it usually isn’t issues, because there are issue groups that are far more active and involved in any given issue than the party could ever be.

It almost always comes down to the big picture. The common values that we share as Democrats. And the belief that through joining the party, they can advance those values.

We want the party to be effective because we want to keep the big picture in mind, and the party can do that in a way that individual campaigns and issue advocates can’t. Last year’s bankruptcy bill was a perfect example. In previous years, the bill would have been quietly passed to no great fanfare, because it was too small of an issue to base a campaign on, and because there’s no political lobby for bankrupt people.

But it didn’t pass quietly. Democrats with the big picture in view saw the issue as one of social justice (as indeed it was), and made their voices heard, and in the end most of our politicians voted against it (and those who didn’t have taken a lot of heat for it). Thanks in large part to the views and values of ordinary Democrats, the party as a whole now has a more progressive stance on economic security.

That’s the sort of thing a strong party can do, and it’s great to see the renewed focus on party-building that has taken hold of the Democratic Party in the last few years. We’re going to see the first fruits of those labors in two weeks.

(*) Of course, there are a great many progressive and liberal members in the party, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus is bigger than it’s ever been. But there’s nothing inherently liberal about the mechanics of distributing yard signs, and overseeing ballot access issues, and holding conventions. Those things are going to be used for the benefit of whoever gets the nomination, progressive or not.

Posted by Ben Brothers at 6:27 pm, 24 October 2006 and filed under Uncategorized, Wisconsin News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.