For decades, moderates have been the cowardly lions of American
politics. You'd see them quivering in the corner as the
anti-establishment left exchanged culture war mortar fire with the
anti-establishment right. You'd see them passed over and dissed as the
parties mobilized their bases and played to their primary voters.
Well, somebody's been on steroids, because on Tuesday the muscular
middle took control of America. Say goodbye to the era of Rovian base
mobilization. Say goodbye to the era of conservative dominance that
began in 1980. On Tuesday, 47 percent of the voters were self-described
moderates, according to exit polls, and they asserted their power by
voting for the Democrats in landslide proportions.
About a year ago, these angry moderates lost confidence in Republican
rule. The tens of millions of dollars spent since then - the ads, the
robocalls, the microtargeting - did nothing to change that basic
decision.
Their disaffection with the GOP was not philosophical. It was about
competence and accountability. It was about the accumulation of
Rumsfeld, Katrina, Abramoff, the bridge to nowhere and the failure to
quarantine Mark Foley. Bill Clinton captured the electorate's central
complaint about the GOP: "They can't run anything right."
So voters kicked out Republicans but did not swing to the left. For the
most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative
Democrats. It was a great day for the centrist Joe Lieberman, who
defeated the scion of the Daily Kos net roots, Ned Lamont. It was a
great day for anti-abortion Democrats like Bob Casey and probably for
pro-gun Democrats like Jim Webb. It was a great day for conservative
Democrats like Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in
Indiana.
It was even a good day for some moderate Republicans, like Chris Shays
in Connecticut, Deborah Pryce in Ohio and Arnold Schwarzenegger in
California, who held on because they are independent.
It was a terrible day for anti-immigration restrictionists on the right
of the GOP, like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf in Arizona.
If you wanted to pick out a stereotypical swing voter in this election,
it would be a white evangelical suburban office park mom in a blue
state suburb. She's part of the one-third of white evangelicals who
voted Democratic this year, as did 20 percent of self-described
conservatives. She supported the Iraq war once but believes it has been
conducted terribly. She doesn't have a lot of faith in government
generally - 54 percent of voters believe government interferes too
much, while only 37 percent want it to do more, according to a recent
CNN survey - but she does think government should be able to accomplish
its core missions.
She embodies the message of E.J. Dionne's 1991 book, <I>Why Americans
Hate Politics</I>, which argues that Americans are sick of symbolic
politics, dying ideologies and false choices. Most of all, she's angry
that politicians behave in ways that would be unacceptable in every
realm of her life, and she thinks they're endangering her country.
In some ways, this election reminds me of the 1974 Democratic sweep.
The Republicans have screwed up. Democrats have surged in. But the
result leads not to a liberal tide but to Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 ran
as a conservative anti-political reformer who won on fiscal discipline
and with the support of Pat Robertson.
This election didn't define a new era, but it marks the end of an old
one. If Democrats are going to take advantage of their victory, they
will have to do two things. They will have to show they have not been
taken over by their bloggers or their economic nationalists, who will
alienate them from the suburban office park moms. Second, they'll have
to come up with ideas as big as the problems we face. Their current
platform consists of small-bore tax credits and foreign policy vagaries
about, say, "redoubling" our efforts to get Osama bin Laden. (Why not
retripling or requadrupling?)
Realignments are achieved by parties that define big new approaches to
problems, and neither party has done that yet. In the meantime, if I
were a Democrat I'd be like Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana
congressman and serial commission member.
The country is hungering for leaders like him: open-minded, unassuming
centrists who are interested in government more than politics. If the
Democrats are smart, this could be the beginning of a new Hamiltonian
age.
David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times.
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