It's interesting that U.S. President George W. Bush's approval rating is eroding among those he calls his base.
Recently the Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support over the past few weeks. According to The Washington Post: "These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and, more generally, an abandonment of core conservative principles."
In order to stop the hemorrhaging of support among Bush supporters, the President's chief political advisor Karl Rove is planning a revival of a tired old melody entitled "The Democrats are soft on terror." How far Rove will go with this tune, as the mid-term elections approach, is anybody's guess. But it could dampen the vital national debate necessary on the war in Iraq, climate change, tax policy, globalization, immigration, and Social Security.
On the other hand, the Democrats are not helping themselves by refusing to include in their recent policy platform "Real Security" a specific date calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Instead they're still running scared --afraid of being painted weak on defence and terror.
It doesn't stop there either. The Democrats are backing off other key issues. For example: Nowhere in their new policy document do they mention cutting the military budget. That budget could reach $600 billion this year if you include the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As William D. Hartung of the World Policy Institute at the New School writes: "There are tens of billions of dollars' worth of cold war-era relics in the military budget that have no legitimate strategic purpose and are ripe for elimination."
Perhaps the critical issue here is where the Democratic Party establishment itself is heading. In their book Crashing The Gate, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Zuniga remind us that Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign collapsed in Iowa, mainly because his new campaign threatened so many powerful people, including rich donors and media advisors. Some television ads that ran during that early primary season showed the face of Osama bin Laden, in order to sell the idea that: "Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy."
Who financed these ads? Financial reports revealed the monies came from supporters of John Kerry and Richard Gephardt. As Bill McKibben writes in a recent review of Crashing The Gate in The New York Review of Books: "Dean made plenty of political gaffes on his own but he had been eliminated by powerful Democrats."
It's worth remembering that Karl Rove feared Howard Dean as the Democratic nominee for President more than he did Senator Kerry. That's because Dean was unafraid to be clear about his positions. In 2003 Dean exclaimed, "What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?" Many suggest he sparked a populist resurgence that hasn't stopped growing.
If the Democrats are serious about projecting an authentic populist message, they will have to develop more of a backbone. They'll also have to confront the reality of a corporate investor class continually cutting themselves off from the country's social contract. Is the party willing to take the risk of standing up to these multinational corporations? Are they ready to speak vibrantly about social justice and the country's future? Time will tell. But if they continue on their current pathway, Karl Rove will frame the national debate in narrow and divisive ways. And the Democrats will find themselves back in opposition.
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