Former congressman Paul Hodes has written that Democrats are stuck, rudderless and adrift. Many, many others complain that Democrats don’t stand for anything. A comparison of the New Hampshire 2016 Democratic and Republican platforms provides clear confirmation of these observations.
The Republican offering lets one know exactly where they stand: taxes, contraception, government regulation, Democrats and the Obama administration, labor unions and Obamacare are bad; guns, vouchers, prayer, fetal personhood, border control are good. The GOP document is written in strong, clear language with short, declarative bullet points in the active voice.
Contrast the 2016 Democratic platform’s long, meandering conditional sentences, many written in the passive voice with an appalling lack of specificity. Our position on taxes is GOP lite. The best we can do on guns is the generic belief that policies should appropriately balance rights and responsibility. The long, wandering statement on education provides woefully little that differentiates Democrats and lots of boilerplate platitudes.
Most of our positions are so general and noncontroversial that they are meaningless. Ninety percent of Republicans will agree with the opening 19 key points – who can object to making New Hampshire an attractive home for the next generation? Finding something anywhere in the document that defines and differentiates us as Democrats is very hard to do.
Why are we so afraid to say what we mean? Why do children in Florida speak more directly and with more passion than we do? Why can’t we clearly say that all students over 18 have the right to vote, that public money should be used for public education, that assault rifles don’t belong in schools, that LGBTQ citizens deserve respect, that we strongly support unions and the “Fight for 15,” that we overwhelmingly want to repeal specific laws passed by the Republicans this year and last.
Democrats and progressive know what we believe in. Why does our party have such a hard time clearly stating what it believes in? What are they afraid of? The timidity and lack of conviction of the 2016 platform surely contributed to Republican dominance in the state Legislature. Let’s not make the same mistake in 2018.
(Robert D. Claflin lives in Concord.)