I know how the Democrats can retake control of Congress. In spite of gerrymandering. In spite of voter restrictions. In spite of the post-Citizens United flow of mystery money.
How?
By doing what they should have done years ago. Run to the left, to energize their base. And argue like hell, at the same time, that they are really running toward the center.
I know what you're thinking. They can do this now because, over the past five years, what's left of the Republican Party has engaged in a public free-fall toward total insanity. But the truth of the matter is that they should have done it years ago. Thirty-four, to be exact. Just as Saint Ronnie was getting elected and preparing to charm the rest of us into bankruptcy.
Because, after all, that's how he did it. By running hard to the right, to energize his base, and argue like hell (or heck, at least), that he was running toward the center.
Whether he was busting unions, or regressing tax rates, he always painted a verbal portrait of his actions that were meant to invoke not a brave new world, but a nostalgic old one. He wasn't taking America in some unfamiliar, evil direction. No, he was simply restoring its long lost past. And not even the actual past that we had, but the Hollywood version of that past--the version that we, filled with glamorized images of our 20th-century rise to power, pretended had actually happened. So there was nothing to fear. Not even fear itself. All we had to do was trust that Reagan's actions were not sinister when his words were so appealing, and we would all be living in the "great, big, beautiful tomorrow" that his former corporate patron, General Electric, promised America at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.
Of course, more than three decades later, we should know better--and do, for the most part. We should have known better from the beginning. But we Americans have always believed in a future in which everyone joined together for the common good, giving up a little of themselves for the sake of everyone. In the political world, defined by a system with two major parties, the cliche for this process is "finding the vital center."
Well, that's exactly what the Democrats should offer the American people, now and all the way into next fall.
Finding the vital center, by adjusting the minimum wage so that it regains the purchasing power it had in the 1960s.
Finding the vital center, by returning to workers the power to collectively bargain for its interests, and thus the power to gain all the rights we now take for granted, including a 40-hour work week.
Finding the vital center, by ending the practice of using public and private pensions (including and especially Social Security) to fund the egomaniacal fantasies of hedge-fund managers and other riverboat gamblers on Wall Street.
Finding the vital center, by returning to a world in which investment and commercial banks are separated.
Finding the vital center, in which mergers are not funded with debt, the way stock-buying was funded during the Roaring '20s.
Finding the vital center, by accepting the central role of scientific fact in our policy-making for the present, and our planning for tomorrow, as we once did in traveling to the moon and connecting the world through the Internet.
Finding the vital center, by once again accepting immigrants not as nation-destroyers but as nation-builders, and always remembering that the central icon in our national culture, after the Stars and Stripes, is a statue built to exemplify that view of new arrivals to our shores.
Finding the vital center, by once again placing at the center of our economy policy the interests of the consumer, the true leader in our financial empire, whose needs and desires create the opportunities that capitalists then exploit.
Finding the vital center, by ending the demonizing of government and recognizing that government in a democracy is "We The People," acting together for the common good, not "Them The One Percent" buying bureaucrats and politicians for self-serving purposes.
And finally, finding the vital center by returning to our post-World War II role in world affairs, not as a lone gunslinger, but as first among equals in a nation where cooperation is the first choice, and conflict is almost always a choice to be avoided.
I believe that the Democrats have to show Americans next year, for the sake of the party and the nation, that the road to the left is not a road to a foreign land, but rather a bridge to the kind of America they basically believe in, an America that existed within their own lifetimes, and that can exist again.
Because if they don't do it, they, and we, may never get another chance to find that vital center. We may be stuck on a downward slide toward a Fascism from which we can never recover. But if they can run to the left, and show the nation that doing so really is a run to the center, we may really become a shining city on a hill after all.
UPDATE, 9/19/13: The Democrats' job may be easier than people think. Here's someone else who agrees.
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