by Herman Cain
Two phenomena describe the modern Democratic Party and explain why it has lost touch with the mainstream U.S. electorate, why its candidates have lost the last two presidential elections, and why Republicans since the 1994 elections have kept control and gained seats in the U.S. House and Senate.
First, the Democratic Party is essentially a coalition of people who view themselves as members of a victimized or discriminated-against group, or as advocates for single liberal causes. This coalition includes pro-abortion, anti-war, and environmental activists, the majority of labor and teachers' union leaders, the majority of gays and lesbians, and many members of racial minorities. The coalition also includes liberal college professors, many members of the print, television, and radio media, and employees of various liberal think tank and policy research institutions. The coalition is held together by a shared belief in a more powerful, centralized federal government and an activist federal court system. As the results from the 2004 elections show, the issue positions and ideologies advocated by these radical groups and individuals do not represent the majority of political opinions in the U.S. Radical liberals try to position themselves as representative of the majority of the public, but their rhetoric does not match reality.
The second phenomenon that describes today's Democratic Party is that its support is based primarily on the West Coast, in the Northeast states, and in the urban areas of the nation's largest cities, including Atlanta, Detroit, Miami, and Chicago. The party that just a few years ago twice elected Bill Clinton as president, with 370 and 379 electoral votes respectively, has lost the ability to appeal to voters throughout the entire nation.
The results of the recent presidential, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House elections, shown in the following table, illustrate the regionalism phenomenon. The majority of U.S. Senate Democrats represent the nineteen states won by Senator Kerry, and the majority of U.S. House Democrats represent congressional districts in those states. Republicans clearly enjoy a broader range of support than Democrats. The majority of U.S. Senate Republicans represent the thirty-one states won by President Bush, and the majority of U.S. House Republicans represent congressional districts in the so-called red states (Republican).
The U.S. electorate seems to prefer strong leadership characteristics in their choice for president. The South in particular has preferred conservative presidents, in addition to men who exhibit strong leadership qualities. Ironically, two of our most liberal presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, were sons of the South and former Southern governors. So familiarity, coupled with regionalism, certainly played a role in their election and reelection campaigns, with the exception of the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton was viewed as a stronger leader in 1992 than incumbent George H. W. Bush and a stronger leader than his opponent for reelection, Kansas senator Robert Dole. Since 2000, the South has voted almost solidly Republican in elections for president and U.S. Senate. The Democrat senators who retired in 2004, such as Bob Graham in Florida, Ernest Hollings in South Carolina, John Edwards in North Carolina, and Zell Miller in Georgia, were all replaced by Republicans.
The election results of 2004 may signal the beginning of a period of dominance for the Republican Party at the federal level similar to the forty-year reign the Democrats had in Congress from 1955-1995 (see following table). But this dominance may not be realized if the Republican Party and its leaders do not do a better job of reaching out instead of expecting more people to reach in.
The reason for this shift toward increased public support of Republican candidates is that the federal courts and Congress, under control of the Democrats, took control of our biggest social and economic issues away from the individual states. Those issues that did belong under federal purview, such as the federal tax code and Social Security, were so abused and weakened by congressional Democrats that they are now completely beyond repair. The time to replace them is way past due!
The U.S. electorate has for now decided that the Republican Party better represents their social and economic values and ideologies than does the Democratic Party. The great irony in this situation is that Democrat-controlled House and Senate and liberal federal courts wrestled control of the big issues away from the individual states. For example, in 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court, led by a liberal, activist majority, decided in the famous Roe v. Wade case that women have a constitutional right to abort their unborn children. This ruling took away the power of states to make their own laws concerning abortion and made abortion-on-demand a federally-protected right.
The federal tax code, enacted in 1913, and the Social Security system, enacted in 1935, essentially placed every citizen under the control and watchful eye of the federal government by mandating that a high percentage of the money we earn goes directly to the federal treasury to pay for entitlement programs and federal government spending we can no longer afford.
In 1980 Congress established the U.S. Department of Education, which took control of education policy and curriculums away from local school districts and the states and placed it in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. In 1977 Congress established the U.S. Department of Energy, which took control of decisions concerning development of new and efficient energy sources from the private sector. Because of this, private energy companies are now unable to explore domestic energy sources or build new nuclear power plants.
Finally, Democrats in control of Congress have sought to block the nomination of numerous federal judges proposed by Republican presidents whom they deem too conservative or who base their rulings too much on a strict reading of the Constitution. Instead, they have put in place judges from the Supreme Court on down who actively make law from the bench and who are unaccountable to the voters.
The old saying "If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword" is truly applicable to the reasons the Democrats have lost their tight grip of power in Washington, D.C. The liberal ideology advocated by the Democrat-controlled Congress, which believed in federal rather than state and local control of issues and policy, has failed the Democratic Party. Their arrogance and thirst for power blinded them to the fact that they could be voted out of office if they offended the electorate's common sense values and desire to place decision-making in the hands of local officials.
The liberal political ideology, whether exercised in the former Soviet Union, the current socialistic nations of Western Europe, or in the U.S. since the 1960s, mandates that citizens deny the existence of God, or at least advocate and tolerate the separation of God from secular society, and control of all major policy decisions at the federal level. The liberal ideology is propagated by a relatively few intellectual elites who share a mistrust that the general public is able to make their own decisions.
Liberal leaders fear most what they know in their hearts is true--that left to make their own decisions, voters in a free society will choose individual decision making at the local level, less federal government control of their lives, and let all who will listen know that God plays an important role in their lives. For most of the public, their inspiration comes from heaven, not from Washington, D.C. Voters are not as dumb as Democrats think.
Even though Democrats have been out of power in Congress for more than ten years, they still don't understand the public. The national Democratic leadership has abandoned any notion of centrist, moderate, or even conservative social and fiscal policies and is now solidly to the left of mainstream America's ideologies and values. In a story about the future of the Democratic Party following the 2004 congressional and presidential elections, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, stated, "We need a fresh reassessment of how we communicate with people. How did a party that has been out of power in Washington, D.C., become tagged with the problems of Washington, D.C.? How did a party that is filled with people with values--and I am a person with values--get tagged as the party without values?" (Adam Nagourney, "Baffled in Loss, Democrats Seek Road Forward," New York Times, 7 November 2004).
Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill once famously stated that "All politics is local." In a sense, he was correct. People do not want the federal government to make their decisions for them and control their lives. Since control of the big issues now rests at the federal level, however, the electorate has decided that it supports the party that speaks to their values of individualism and personal responsibility. That party is not the Democrats.
Blacks and Conservative Democrats Have Been Taken for Granted
Since the early 1990s, Republicans have taken their common sense, conservative message to the former strongholds of the Democratic Party--the South, conservative Midwestern Democrats in the Plains and Rust Belt states, racial minorities, and young voters--as the Democrats' ideology embraced an increasingly liberal issue agenda that catered to the desires of its radical groups.
Instead of running toward the center, Democrats took their message to the ideological left in an attempt to keep what they thought was their traditional base of support. Again, the Democrats just don't get it. The majority of former Democratic support is not found in the fractured coalition of union leaders, gays and lesbians, proponents of big government, anti-war activists, pro-abortion activists, and those who wage class warfare. The Republicans cast a wider net than the Democrats in the 2004 elections and caught those in the ideological middle while not abandoning their conservative base.
At their core, members of groups that comprise the Democratic Party do not all share the same values. The elections of 2004 demonstrate that Democrats for years have abandoned their core constituency. Democratic leaders thought the groupthink mentality, forged for decades by the rhetoric of class and racial warfare, applied to all of their previous voters.
The voting patterns discussed above are primarily the voting patterns of Whites, who comprise the majority of the U.S. electorate. Since 1936, Blacks have voted at a rate of at least 60 percent for the Democratic candidate in presidential elections. Black Democrats are not in danger of being taken for granted by the White Democratic Party leaders or the self-appointed, so-called Black leaders. Their votes were taken for granted long ago. The question today is how long will Blacks allow themselves and their votes to be subject to the liberal ideology that dominates today's Democratic Party agenda?
Whites do not align themselves at a rate of nearly 90 percent with any particular party, and neither should Blacks. We do not have White issues, and we do not have Black issues. We have green issues--replacing the federal tax code, restructuring the Social Security system, and reducing the costs associated with the Medicare and health care systems. Whites align themselves with a political party and support candidates based on a sense of shared political ideology, but most Blacks choose to align themselves with one party based on tradition.
The Black electorate will cease to be taken for granted when a new generation of conservative Black leaders emerge who are legitimately and honestly motivated to advocate common sense policy solutions. The Democratic Party will then be forced to defend its liberal policy positions and solutions and explain why it has waited more than forty years to take action. At the same time, the Republican Party will have to continue to offer Black conservatives a seat at the table of policy development and aggressively campaign for the votes of the Black electorate.
What characteristics must the new Black political leaders possess? The first characteristic is trust. Black political leaders cannot be successful if they do not instill trust in the Black electorate that conservative policies will produce economic freedom and that the word "conservative" is not a synonym for "racist." If people feel they can trust you, both intellectually as well as emotionally, they will allow you to lead. Former congressman J. C. Watts wrote in his book What Color Is a Conservative? that "I really believe people want to know whether you share their concerns and values and what you intend to do to help solve their problems."
Instilling trust also requires scrapping the divisive rhetoric utilized for so many years by Democrats. The public demands real-world results, not the sound-bite rhetoric of Washington, D.C., and empty promises. They also demand a positive policy agenda and not more reasons why we should fear the other party.
The second characteristic new leaders must possess is an ability to produce positive results. Blacks will believe in the promise of conservative policy solutions when they see their personal economic situations improve, when schools improve and show dedication to educate every child, and when barriers are removed that prevent them from achieving their American Dreams.
The third characteristic demanded of new Black political leaders is an ability to speak frankly with people but to inspire them at the same time. A person's determination can be inspired to a higher level. Their belief in something can be inspired, their inner energy can be inspired, their faith can be inspired, and their motivation can be inspired. A leader's ability to inspire is determined most by the ability to communicate with words and symbolic actions. Words, phrases, and sentences delivered convincingly or with convincing passion inspire people. If done appropriately, actions can inspire as well as words. The most obvious action that can inspire occurs when the leader accomplishes what he or she determines to achieve or when the leader reaches a predetermined benchmark. An effective leader will then inspire people to set and achieve their own goals. As the late Morehouse College president Dr. Benjamin E. Mays used to tell us, "It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goals. The tragedy lies in not having any goals to reach for."
The Democratic Party has also taken the Hispanic electorate for granted. Increasing numbers of Hispanics are aware of that fact and have shown a willingness to support the Republican policy agenda. Hispanics represented 7 percent of the vote in the 2000 presidential election, and 62 percent voted for then vice president Al Gore. President Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000. By 2004, Hispanics represented 8 percent of the vote, but President Bush increased his support among Hispanics by nine percentage points. Democratic candidate John Kerry received 53 percent of the Hispanic vote. Hispanics now slightly outnumber Blacks as a percentage of the U.S. population. As more and more Hispanic voters achieve economic success and begin to leave the Democratic plantation, they can expect to be subject to the same divisive and fear-based rhetoric currently targeted at conservative Black voters.
Though they have lost significant percentages of their traditional base, Democratic Party leaders still show an unwillingness to acknowledge that their radical liberal ideology does not match the values of the majority of U.S. citizens. U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, admitted after election day in 2004 that "We were on a tough playing field." She went on to blame Democratic losses in key races on the fact that Republicans appealed more to socially and economically conservative former Democrats by emphasizing what she referred to as the "wedge issues" of same-sex marriage and abortion.
Is throwing more money at a broken Social Security system a wedge issue? No, it is simply stupid. Are raising taxes and taking more of peoples' hard-earned money to fund inefficient government programs wedge issues? No, it is insane, and people are sick and tired of i
t.
What Congresswoman Pelosi means by the term "wedge issues" is that these issues are simply distractions used by Republicans to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and its former base. She does not think the electorate is intelligent enough to look at the entire policy agendas and issue positions of both parties and make a sound, informed decision. Democratic leaders still believe that the public only disagrees with them on one or two issues and agrees with them on most other issues. Wrong!
As my grandmother used to say, "Wishing doesn't make it so." People do not leave the political party they grew up with because of a disagreement over one issue. They leave when their party abandons its fundamental principles on the biggest issues and offers the wrong solutions to fix them. By labeling the biggest issues for many voters as wedge issues, the Democratic leaders show that they do not understand and therefore cannot address the biggest problems.
The fact that Democrats call such fundamental issues "wedge issues" demonstrates how out of touch they are with mainstream America. We live in a nation where most people have conservative social and economic values and where most people try to live their lives according to the morals and values taught to them in their church and by their parents. Most people do not think it is acceptable to abort unborn children or for people of the same sex to marry each other or to continue to waste taxpayers' money.
The majority of the public does not support removing the words "one nation under God" from our Pledge of Allegiance. They do not support removing the words "in God we trust" from our currency. They do not support presidents who carry on extra-martial affairs with interns in the Oval Office of the White House. Democrats simply cannot understand why most people involve their faith in making the big decisions in their lives. They cannot understand why people do not and cannot switch their faith on and off because of a notion of "separation between church and state"--a phrase that does not even appear in our Constitution! For most people, their religious faith, their personal and business lives, and their political views are inextricably intertwined.