Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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I’m sure Republicans are hoping against hope that they get at least another year, if not another election cycle, against DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, the Rich Kotite of political party leadership.

But there’s something disturbing about the latest reports that:

The Democrats trying to get him to extend his tour of duty fear that the large current crop of candidates for chair has not sufficiently inspired the 440-odd voting members of the national committee, and that a chair without a solid mandate would destabilize the party at the very moment when it most needs a steady hand. McAuliffe, they say, could build on his successes and incorporate many of the ideas being proposed by those who want to replace him.

Others worry that no current aspirant for the job has galvanized enough support to prevent former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean from being voted into the chairman's spot at the party meeting, a scenario that some in the party who find the former presidential candidate too polarizing.

In my humble opinion, this sounds too much like, “We think the DNC election could show some serious disagreements within the party, so we want to sweep this under the rug.”

The DNC Chair race is just one part of a long and evolving conversation that the Democratic Party has to have with itself.

The Democrats are in a hole. For about half a century, they became very used to being the majority party in America, defining their identify in the immense political power of their congressional majorities, even when the GOP held the White House.

Then came 1994, which many Democrats thought was a fluke. But then they failed to retake the House and Senate year after year (aside from the brief interlude after Jim Jeffords’ flip). The last three years have been, arguably, the worst for the party since the days of Calvin Coolidge.

Democrats are not used to being the minority party. Unfortunately, the margin in the House isn’t getting any closer, and the Senate races at stake in 2006 don’t currently offer the party many easy opportunities to pick up seats. (Perhaps there will be some retirements.)

Not only do Democrats need to figure out how to win, they need to more clearly define what they stand for. One could argue the party hasn’t had a serious internal debate about its policy stands since 1992. During the Clinton presidency, the greatest Democratic politician of his generation helped set the party’s course, convincing (at least part of) his party to accept welfare reform, NAFTA, and military interventions in Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo. Few Democrats took Bill Bradley’s calls for a more liberal direction seriously in 2000, as Gore was the heir apparent. Last year Democrats - okay, Iowa and New Hampshire Dems - quickly chose John Kerry’s flexible and sometimes muddy anti-Bush rhetoric and biography over Lieberman’s centrism and the more liberal course charted by Dean and the folks left of the Vermont Governor.

But internal debates are good for parties, at least in the long run. The Democratic party needs to determine if they’re the party who would pull out of Iraq, the one that would send in more troops, or one that would stick to Kosovo-style high-altitude bombing in future military conflicts. If they don’t like the Patriot Act, just what domestic security initiatives would they support? Are they Clinton’s party of NAFTA and free trade, or are they the protectionist party of America’s unions? Just what does the Democratic party think is the proper role of faith in public life? Will it reject the “red state voters are hicks” snobbery of certain liberal columnists, or will it embrace it?

The Democratic party is going to have to have this fight — particularly the spat between the Lieberman/Beinart hawks and the Moore/MoveOn.org doves — sooner or later. They might as well start now. The sooner they have a full-throated and honest debate, the sooner one side or the other will win over a majority and build a consensus.

Keeping McAuliffe for another year or two will postpone the DNC chair aspect of this internal fight. But the internal disagreements can’t be kept bottled up forever.

[Posted 01/06 03:49 PM]