by Marc Dunkelman

Republican vitriol aside, it is no time to stop reaching out to the GOP and to swing voters

Marc Dunkelman is vice president of the Democratic Leadership Council.

For President Obama, healthcare reform was, by any standard, a big deal. The administration and the leadership in both houses of Congress managed to herd cats, forging the support necessary to win over members across the broad ideological expanse of the Democratic Party. But even as the substance of the bill was largely bipartisan (Speaker Nancy Pelosi cited 200 GOP amendments included in the final package), the legislation was made into law with Democratic votes alone. And the vitriol that marked the aftermath, including the threats and vile behavior by some of those most adamantly opposed to the president's plan, will soon reopen what has become a real bone of contention among the ranks of those who want the president to succeed. Should we abandon, or embrace, the spirit of bipartisanship?

For many on the left, a glance over the political battlefield makes the answer plain. As demonstrated by their obstinacy in the face of health reform, few Republicans have any intention of working with us constructively. So why continue to reach out? What was the point of waiting the summer for Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi to help craft a bill they later refused to endorse? What is the upside of negotiating with Republican senators who voted against the fiscal commission bill they coauthored? [Full disclosure: My boss, Bruce Reed, was recently tapped to serve as executive director of the commission Obama created by executive order.] It is time, many argue, for Democrats to stop negotiating against themselves.

And truth be told, that assessment of the political landscape has a lot to recommend it. Notwithstanding the bits of bipartisanship to emerge over the last year -- limited Republican support for the recovery act, Sen. Olympia Snowe's initial support for the Senate health reform package, the passage of a $15 billion jobs bill -- conservatives have remained largely unwilling to forge compromise. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina showed his hand entirely when, several months ago, he told a reporter: "If we're able to stop Obama on [healthcare reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

But bipartisanship's critics miss the larger point. The reason to reach out to the Republican establishment is not to steal their votes in Washington -- it is to win over their voters across the country. The question is not whether there is a way to get John Boehner or Mitch McConnell to support the president's agenda. It is whether the nation's swing voters, the Obama voters who subsequently cast ballots for Scott Brown and the moderates who voted for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, stick with the president in the long term.

If progressives are not able to hold onto the mainstream electorate, largely suburban and exurban voters, many whom have earned high school but not college degrees, we will find it terribly difficult to maintain our majorities on Capitol Hill. That is why Obama was so smart to pivot from the momentous signing of the bill to a new campaign, begun at a speech in Iowa, explaining how the bill will benefit small business.

No matter what sort of vitriolic rhetoric Republicans use to paint the administration, there is ample enough reason to maintain a fealty to the cause of bipartisanship. Voters believe moderate approaches that balance the interests of businesses and individuals present the best solutions to the nation's problems. We ought not to worry about winning over the Republicans. Our goal should be to bleed them of the political capital they will build if Democrats are framed as out-of-touch.

Which brings us to the final point. The nation is not interested in bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake. Theoretically, legislation that privatized Social Security (as conservatives might prefer) and simultaneously restored the failed old welfare system (as some liberals might like) might well pass muster as a "bipartisan" bill. But it would be a dead bill walking.

For swing voters, the appeal of bipartisanship is that, in theory, a bill endorsed across the spectrum will balance the party's two animating creeds. In their guts, most moderates understand that the spirit of free enterprise animates American dynamism and that red tape too frequently gets in the way. But they also know that the market, left unhinged, is akin to a class of 3-year-olds left alone with a jar of cookies. The strong will gorge, the weak will suffer, and when the teacher returns, the classroom will be entirely dysfunctional.

A bipartisan bill, voters presume, balances the two dogmas for the better. While health reform, shrouded in the simplistic, hyperbolic rhetoric of its opponents, was frequently controversial, its constituent parts, supported in a variety of cases by both progressives and conservatives, rarely were. As its effects become real, shattering the fantastic visions of the Marxist regime some conservatives believed would emerge, the public will come to see that the package was bipartisan in substance, if not in the vote tally on Capitol Hill. And for that reason, the plan will eventually be a boon to many more Democrats.

In the end, the real fight in Washington is not whether to reach across the aisle. It is which of the parties can better build an agenda that reflects the vital center. Republican indolence, for whatever reason, is not sufficient reason to abandon the progressive pursuit of bipartisanship. Our political capital will grow if we reassure swing voters that we are committed to the type of agenda bipartisanship engenders. If progressives want to keep their hands on the levers of power, we ought to keep our eye on the electorate's broad middle, and pursue a policy agenda that reflects their understanding of Washington.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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Why Democrats Should Try Bipartisanship | Marc Dunkelman

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