As we begin the year two of the Obama Administration with the sour results of the Massachusetts Senate race, it is helpful to remember back to Innaguration Day, January 20, 2009 and the massive crowds stretched out across the National Mall as far as the eye could see. Many of us watched on TV with friends or coworkers and felt a connection to that event that went far beyong simply watching the swearing in of the 44th President of the United States. The Obama Presidential Campaign set forth a movement that was not just against the policies of the previous administration; it openly embraced the core values of the Democratic base, as it proclaimed to work towards healthcare coverage for Americans without it and to decrease costs for businesses and workers struggling with paying for their existing plans; hold financial institutions accountable and end risky practices caused by deregulation; end discriminitory practices such as "don't-ask, don't tell" and provide greater access to educational opportunies for higher education, among others. Supporters voted, volunteered and contributed financially in record numbers becuase in Barack Obama they found a candidate they believed would sincerely set forth a progressive agenda once he landed in the Oval Office.
After an agonizing half-year of moving through the legislative process, reform stood on Tuesday morning as at best offering only small remains of anything that had been coveted by progressives when the course began. Now Tuesday night with the victory of Scott Brown over what was certainly a poorly run campaign by Martha Coakley, even the passage of the severely weakened legislation that has become healthcare "reform" appears in doubt. The issues of Coakley and her campaign's mistakes aside, it is clear Democrats must begin to embrace the core values that got them elected, not run from them to a mythical center.
While pundits and conservatives will claim that Tuesday was a sign of outrage against Democratic policies and that the party must strike a more moderate tone, one must ask: what would the Democratic Party stand for if it were to further compromise its stated platform and why would anyone continue to support it? It is very difficult to imagine what the "centrist" version of healthcare reform would be if what we have on the table right now is considered to be too far to the left and even more impossible to guess what voters would be enthusiastically turned onto the party based on such a trivial shift. Consider alternatively what might have been possible, given the nature of negotions, had the Democrats started from a healthcare proposal further to the left and where the middle-ground might have ended up. All that seems clear from the lessons learned over the past year is that many core Democrats are becoming increasingly disillusioned as the anticipated progress for the country envisioned on Innauguration Day has slowly faded into the realities of a muddled legislative nightmare.
The Democrats may have lost their tenuous filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and face a cloudy landscape presently, but the certain path to defeat in the mid-term elections would be to move further to the center. Instead Democrats must remember that for all the criticism they have received from a vocal, uncompromising opposition, in 2008 a far larger majority of Americans responded at the polls, the grassroots level and financially to their stated vision for the country. Democrats will be judged by voters as the incumbent party now that they control all 3 branches of government and the choice they face is between promoting reforms that clearly articulate to their base and independents where they intend to change America for the better, or seeking to compromise with all likelyhood of marginalizing core supporters and presenting a blurry message to swing voters about what the party stands for.
No doubt Republicans would oppose a more progressive agenda, but they have little room to increase their level of obstruction, given that not a single vote was gained from compromising on healthcare, the budget or the stimulus package and the right wing echo chamber maintains we're already on the path to Communism, or Socialism or Fascism. By advancing more progressive policies over the next year Democrats have little to lose and have the opportunity to motivate the base that swept them into large majorities in 2008 and to garner public support and political capital to help enact legislation.