Last Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary results handed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean another loss in his uphill struggle for the Democratic nomination for president. This is a welcome development: it would be a disaster for Dean to become the nominee who runs against Bush in November.
Dean lacks the foreign policy credentials, temperament, and overall experience needed to lead the greatest world power since the Roman Empire.
Nevertheless, Dean’s candidacy has been of huge benefit for the future of the Democratic Party.
In 1964, the Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona to stand against President Johnson. Goldwater advocated policies that stood in stark contrast to the existing Republican consensus of placating entrenched special interests and not challenging stale ideas.
Instead of kowtowing to big business, Goldwater appealed to each individual’s entrepreneurial spirit. Instead of regurgitating ideas of containment of communism, Goldwater refused to rule out dropping the A-bomb to roll the communists back.
Goldwater not only helped change Republican ideals that would come to bear years later, he also redefined the Republican demographic. No longer were Republicans just the moneyed class of Northeastern Protestantism. Southern whites were successfully courted for the first time by the party, as were middle class whites that had had enough of the New Deal and Great Society’s failures.
More than anything, Goldwater energized a fresh crop of young conservatives to do more than just believe in what they thought was right — he brought them into the fold to change the work in accordance with these beliefs.
Just as Goldwater was too extreme for the majority of Americans on foreign policy, and perhaps too ideological in his domestic agenda in 1964, so is Dean 40 years later. Like Goldwater, this disqualifies Dean from the highest office in the land — even if he were to win the Democratic nomination.
Still, Dean’s campaign is a watershed moment for the party. First, Dean has courted groups that will eventually result in the Democrats becoming the nation’s majority party. This demographic is outlined in John Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s book “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” The driving force of this new Democratic demographic falls into three main fields: professionals, service workers, and Hispanics. Dean courted the first two of these groups with great success.
Dean has energized young professionals to a larger degree. These white-collar workers make up the large majority of the countless small donors that have revolutionized campaign finance for the 21st century.
Furthermore, professionals share the main value espoused in Dean’s domestic agenda: fiscal responsibility, a value the Republicans have cast to the wind with excessive tax cuts and spending.
With the early endorsement of the Service Workers International Union, Dean utilized the second category of the new Democratic demographic. Dick Gephardt’s dismal loss in Iowa made clear how dead old labor has become.
The manufacturers’ unions are dinosaurs closing in on extinction, mortally wounded by inevitable changes in America’s economy.
A new phoenix has risen from old labor’s ashes in the form of a new, energized, and politically active group of service unions. SEIU’s intensive organizing efforts have led the charge, and will prove a huge benefit for the party.
Finally, and most importantly, is the changing racial demographic of America. The Hispanic population in the country is flourishing. In addition to their numbers, the relative youth of Hispanic Americans will ensure that they will have a vested interest in the politics of the early 21st century as they will be working disproportionate to the transfer payments of the baby boomer generation. Unfortunately for Dean, this is the demographic he didn’t succeed in rallying.
The greatest thing Goldwater did for his party was to energize the youth of the conservative movement. Dean has done the same thing for the Democratic Party through ingenious use of the internet, organizing youth volunteers and raising money from small donors as required by McCain-Feingold. Furthermore, Dean helped stress the importance of the changing demographics of the coming Democratic majority.
So thank you Howard Dean. Now, please exit stage right.
Dan Adams ([email protected]) is an activist in the Wisconsin Democratic Party.