All three Democratic presidential losses in the Eighties were caused by centrism. [View all]

[Ken Burch]

Last edited Fri May 30, 2014, 11:20 PM - Edit history (6)

1980: Jimmy Carter ran for re-election on an essentially moderate Republican record...he had increased the defense budget, he'd put the Republican/corporate priority of "low inflation" before the progressive Democratic priority of full employment, and he had caused the Iranian hostage crisis by giving the Shah sanctuary in this country after supporting that tyrant against the Iranian people to the bitter end. John Anderson, at one point in the summer of 1980, was leading Carter AND Reagan in the popular vote by running to the left of both of them(his support collapsed after he put Ed Koch's chief strategist David Garth in charge of his campaign and Garth made Anderson positioned Anderson as another bland centrist). Reagan won by using the "misery index" caused by Carter's refusal to work to lower unemployment in the presidential debates AND by trading arms for hostages. The liberal wing of the party had nothing to do with that result, and it would have been just as bad if Teddy Kennedy hadn't run in the primaries, since Carter had appeal to the Democratic base anyway by then.

1984: Mondale, after implying that he'd work to re-industrialize the Upper Midwest, gave in to the Wall Street wing of his advisors and made the right-wing goal of "deficit reduction" his major theme of the fall campaign...a prioirity that guaranteed that he wouldn't restore any of the massive cuts in the social wage made by Reagan, OR re-industrialize the "Rust Belt", or work for Taft-Hartley repeal or any other significant progressive issues. In his acceptance speech at the San Francisco convention, Mondale made it clear that he would run to Carter's right(giving his embarassing "we heard you" pledge to Dems who thought Carter was TOO LIBERAL). Mondale also refused to break with Reagan's essentially fascist Central America policies(he promised a Cuba-style economic blockade of Sandinista Nicaragua, which was the same thing as taking the side of the Contras in the war)and refused to passionately speak out for the nuclear freeze. Mondale dissed and demobilized the base and gained none of the finicky centrists anywhere in doing so. He also refused to listen to Jesse Jackson's advice about making a major effort to increase black, Latino, Native American and working-class white voter registration. Again, liberalism was repudiated by the Democratic Party in 1984, and the blame for that loss lies solely in the lap of the anti-progressive wing of the party(this was still an era in which many old-time Southern congressional committee chairs refused to endorse the Democratic presidential ticket...an choice that, according to party rules, should have cost them their chairmanships).

1988: Michael Dukakis was a centrist technocrat who made homophobia a major part of his campaign(he had become presidential timber by fighting to stop gay people in Massachusetts from adopting children and gays on his campaign staff remained closeted for fear that he'd make them leave the campaign if he discovered their sexual orientation). Dukakis pledged a 6% annual increase in the war budget(at a time when the Cold War was already, for all practical purposes, over and done with) and again, essentially backed Reagan's Central America policies despite the fact that those policies had no popular support. He said nothing about the continuing Contra war, and never mentioned poverty or the suffering of working-class people in his campaign. And, like Mondale before him, Dukakis refused to back Jesse Jackson's call for a major effort to register Rainbow voters. In the fall, Dukakis refused ever to respond to any of the Republican smears on his record or his character or to allow other Democrats to do so...a strategy that made all uncommitted voters think Dukakis was admitting that the smears were true. The one time Dukakis said he was a "liberal&quot he actually wasn't)he cut Bush the First's lead in half in a single day...then he refused ever to say it again. There were massive numbers of people ready to stand up and fight for the idea that liberal/progressive ideas were actually a GOOD thing, but Dukakis wouldn't let THAT kind of a campaign happen.

Three centrist campaigns. Three huge losses. Thus, the Nineties move by the Democratic Party to silence, punish and demonize labor, the poor and progressive activists was built totally on lies. Yet some people still accept the lie-based premise that the party has to treat those groups as the political equivalent of lepers, has to appease big corporate donors rather than fire up and mobilize the base or the millions of new activist types who are looking for a party that speaks to their convictions, and has to treat words like "liberal" and "progressive" as the political equivalents of child pornography. Why?