In Distress: The Battle Within the Democratic Party

Things are not going well for Democrats. Riding high just weeks ago after Republicans shut down the government, the party now finds itself in a swoon: President Obama’s ratings have hit an all-time low. The implementation of healthcare reform remains a mess. Vulnerable Democrats are scrambling to distance themselves from the White House, and the party is on track to lose seats in the House and Senate next year.

Parties in distress tend to fall to bickering, and today’s Democrats are no exception. On one side, liberals calling for a muscular agenda of government expansion and progressive taxation; on the other, centrists who believe restraint is necessary in both policy and politics. Progressives have been emboldened by liberal victories like that of the new mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. Centrists fear that liberals will drive the party out of the American mainstream with their talk of income redistribution and political correctness.

In the post-Obama era and without an incumbent on the ticket, “Where does the party go?” Jon Cowan, president of the centrist think tank Third Way, asked me. “I think that is going to be an incredibly heated debate.”

No one is saying Democrats are tipping into the kind of civil war that has riven the GOP. But the split is likely to worsen as the party confronts its future, complicating Democratic prospects in the 2014 midterm elections and coming to the fore in the 2016 primaries.

“When we focus on economic mobility, that’s a conversation that unites us,” Jack Markell, the popular two-term Delaware governor and a self-styled centrist, told me. “If it’s about inequality, it’s a conversation that has the potential of dividing us.” Markell says that middle-class voters hear in the crusade against “inequality” a desire to equalize people rather than make everyone better off.

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