the party apparatus exploits and exacerbates these fraidy-<u+2019>crat jitters. whenever something major looms<u+2014>an election, a state of the union address, a major senate vote, a gravitational ripple<u+2014>my e-mail box turns into a wailing wall of democratic fund-raising messages bearing subject lines such as <u+201c>worried,<u+201d> <u+201c>be afraid,<u+201d> <u+201c>why haven<u+2019>t we heard from you?,<u+201d> <u+201c>all hope is lost,<u+201d> and <u+201c>doomed,<u+201d> which isn<u+2019>t how general patton would have fired up the troops. the heebie-jeebie-ing is even worse on social media during the election cycle; social media make everything worse if you open up the sluices, turning even stoics into headless chickens. a few years ago such aunt pittypat palpitations inspired a viral poster that showed president obama making a bold gesture with the message everyone chill the fuck out, i got this! and yet, after nearly two terms of obama<u+2019>s unruffled, unrattled mastery of the long game, his confidence doesn<u+2019>t seem to have energized democrats en masse with a <u+201c>forward march!<u+201d> spirit. when democrats contemplate their navel, they still see a panic button.









<u+2018>republicans are from mars, democrats are from venus<u+201d> goes an adage much beloved by pundits always looking for a convenient platitude to rest their elbows on. (or chins.) caricatured another way, republicans are cast as the daddy party (jaw-jutting, decisive, disciplinarian, financially prudent, militarily assertive: meat), democrats are the mommy party (huggy, permissive, socially concerned, globally cooperative: veggies). such gender stereotypes may have outlived whatever hinky usefulness they ever had, as stereotypes are wont to do, but beneath the sexual cosplay of republican executive blue suits versus democratic mom jeans (which president obama was accused of fancying by no less a fashion arbiter than sarah palin) is a forked dynamic deeper than any policy differences or identity politics. republicans are driven by anger; democrats, riven by anxiety. anger stokes republicans to lash out, their grievances, real and imaginary, kept at a raging boil by fox news, matt drudge , radio talk-show hosts, and similar mayhem artists. anxiety pincushions democrats into a defensive crouch waiting for the ceiling to cave, their blood pressure spiking with every alarming headline in the new york times, of which there is never a shortage.









not all democrats, naturally, otherwise the party would have gone the way of the pony express, political architect karl rove<u+2019>s vision of a permanent republican majority having come to pass. yet there does seem to be an intestinal queasiness in the institutional identity that<u+2019>s chronic and unworthy of its ancestors. when i was a stripling in the never dull 60s, democrats didn<u+2019>t quaver as if a wagon-train attack lurked around every bend. activated by adversity, they appeared outgoing, future-striding, and firm-resolved: dashing john f. kennedy, happy warrior hubert h. humphrey, steer-wrangling lyndon baines johnson, and, radiating in the background, the chromo image of franklin delano roosevelt<u+2014>the greatest president, and perhaps the greatest figure, of the 20th century. the republican adults in charge came across as somberly dour (richard nixon) or apocalyptically dire (barry goldwater). the bloody morass of vietnam, the urban riots and campus upheavals, the assassinations of j.f.k., his brother robert, and martin luther king jr., and the druggy saturnalia of the decade eroded the faith in liberal progress and took the bright shine off social engineering. when nixon swept the board in his re-election victory of 1972 over george mcgovern, winning 49 states, it was as if a dark visor had been lowered over the future for liberal democrats, nothing ahead but charred landscape. undone by hubris and thirsty vengeance, nixon did the country a favor by befouling himself over watergate, opening a respite of hope for democrats (the improbable success of jimmy carter in time for the bicentennial), only to have it smushed beneath the golden hammer of ronald reagan, with whose two-term presidency the democrats are still reckoning.









it wasn<u+2019>t only that reagan was popular, racking up a second-term victory that equaled nixon<u+2019>s 49-state total and scored the highest electoral-college vote in history (525 out of a possible 538), leaving liberals thunderstruck. it wasn<u+2019>t only that he was the first pontiff of the unfettered free-market capitalism that has become the economic dogma of our time (even if the actual record of his administration wouldn<u+2019>t pass ayn rand<u+2019>s inspection). reagan<u+2019>s dandiest trick was inverting the personae of liberal democrats and conservative republicans, turning the character roles inside out. optimistic, affable, rhetorically broad-gestured and bold-colored, a mega-dose of vitamin d, the former movie star opened a picture window on the majestic vista of <u+201c>morning in america,<u+201d> where the skies were big and blue and the hills alive with the sound of jingle-jangle spurs. in political, media, and public awareness, perceptions turned topsy-turvy, placing republicans high in the saddle and challenging the horizon while nit-picking, nay-saying democrats clung to the status quo as if it were the schoolmarm<u+2019>s apron strings. a gross caricature, but gross caricatures are what the beltway press eats for brunch, and, apart from a leonine few, democrats became gun-shy of proposing any f.d.r./l.b.j.-scaled domestic programs or making anything resembling dovish cries. the party lost labor muscle<u+2014>reagan<u+2019>s crackdown on the air-traffic controllers<u+2019> union in 1981, when his threat to fire more than 11,000 striking controllers carried the day, was a crippling defeat from which unions never recovered<u+2014>and shifted attention to knowledge workers, who didn<u+2019>t have the same organizational strength and loyalty in the non-unionized, neoliberal economy. <u+201c>though [michael dukakis] lost the [1988] election after being defamed in the infamous willie horton ad <u+2026> , his platform won him a following among white-collar professionals in the metropolitan areas of the sunbelt, west, and northeast,<u+201d> historian and political analyst lily geismer wrote in the winter 2016 issue of jacobin magazine. <u+201c>four years later, the [democratic leadership council]<u+2019>s golden boy, bill clinton, placed high-tech growth and suburban professionals at the forefront of his policy vision in his own presidential bid.<u+201d> the <u+201c>triangulation<u+201d> strategy and small-ball initiatives (school uniforms, etc.) practiced and proposed by clinton once he was in office weren<u+2019>t just wily poker tricks but a recognition of the political realities of the post-reagan era. expansive, ebullient, and popular, clinton was finely tuned to the public<u+2019>s mood, sensed just how far to push. fat lot of good it did him. oh, sure, he made mistakes, some of them beauts<u+2014>such is the frailty of man, especially one with a hearty appetite<u+2014>but the telenovela that unfolded was an orchestrated takedown that nearly succeeded. whitewater, the monica lewinsky uproar, the starr report, the nightly kangaroo courts of cable-news panels, the impeachment debate and vote<u+2014>all were a preview of coming distractions. the rabid harrying of clinton was a dress rehearsal for the swift boating swarm-attack mode that would be mounted against even the most mainstream, dry-cleaned, neatly pressed democratic candidate, often with the sneering assistance of putative liberals giving their class snobbery some exercise. when we consider the barrage of racism, paranoia (rumors of fema camps), derangement (the <u+201c>birther<u+201d> conspiracies, the rise of glenn beck), and unprecedented insults delivered by the republican-held congress that barack obama has jedi-deflected, we will look back on his presidency as a marvel of levitation as so much of the country seemed intent on plunging into the mire. if hillary clinton is the nominee, as looks likely, the swift boating will return in armada force and be crewed by insane clown posses. factor into that the fear of an <u+201c>enthusiasm gap<u+201d> (the republicans have so far pulled far more people to their caucuses and primaries than have democrats); the tasty prospect of bill clinton, feeling a little frisky or blabby, upstaging and embarrassing the hillary campaign; the as yet unplumbed depths of the political and popular culture<u+2019>s misogyny, especially against older women, doubtless reviving the mommy party business with a vengeance; and television<u+2019>s slavish royal-carpet lay-down for donald trump (assuming he<u+2019>s the nominee, with ideally marco rubio as his howdy doody running mate). it<u+2019>s been a helluva arc from jefferson, lincoln, and roosevelt to this.
when did the democratic party become such a nervous wreck?
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