DEMOCRATIC DIVISIONS

Story after story appears on the divisions in the Republican party; and divisions there are. But majority-seeking parties in a continental democracy are usually divided — “faction,” as James Madison warned us, being a natural feature of our politics. And while it is certainly worth looking at divisions in the Republican party, it is also useful to look at those in the Democratic party, which may make a greater difference on important issues in the coming two years.

The obvious division — with players sometimes shifting over the lines, depending on the issue — is between From’s New Democrats and Gephardt’s Old Democrats; between those who want to expand government only a little bit, and with a genuine regard for traditional values, and those who want to expand government as much as they can get away with, with an eye toward “liberation”-minded values.

The Clinton administration wobbles from one side to the other: Hillary-led health care one year, Republican-led welfare reform the next. Clinton backed NAFTA and got it confirmed in 1994; but House Democrats squelched fast track in 1997 and 1998. Indeed, even the DLC took the line that Republicans were bringing up fast track a second time only to highlight Democratic divisions. In 1993-94, the Clintonites ditched the minimum wage in favor of the DLC-backed Earned Income Tax Credit. But in 1995-96, Ted Kennedy resurrected the minimum-wage increase, and for 1999 Gephardt promises the Democrats will get enough Republican votes to increase it again.

The minimum wage, though, is small potatoes — in many parts of the country, market wages have risen above it faster than the Democrats can boost it. Social Security is the big enchilada. There, the split among Democrats is deep. Serious Democrats have come forward with proposals to devote part of the payroll tax to individual retirement accounts — senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Bob Kerrey, and John Breaux — and the DLC supports the idea. The White House has emitted encouraging noises; the president, it is said, sees this as an opportunity to set his place in history.

But in 1998, as in the 1980s, Democratic rhetoric held that Democrats wanted to save the system from evil Republican attempts to destroy it. Gephardt certainly seems less than enthusiastic about private-investment proposals, which he caricatures as allowing “individuals to invest in anything they want.” He appears more favorable to economist Henry Aaron’s proposal that the government set aside funds and invest them, something that Moynihan, for one, rejects out of hand.

There is a window of opportunity for Social Security reform. It’s the kind of thing that requires a bipartisan consensus, which is unlikely after 2000, when one party or the other seems likely to control both the White House and Congress. A Gore administration would probably not back reform, and a George W. Bush administration would be unlikely to achieve it over Democratic opposition. Clinton has an opportunity to make a strong commitment to reform at the White House Social Security conference in early December. But absent such a commitment, Republicans are unlikely to move reform proposals forward. The window may be open, but they fear that if they go through, Clinton and the Democrats will slam it shut on them. How Democrats resolve their intra-party divisions will probably make all the difference on Social Security reform.

And so with Medicare. The bipartisan Medicare advisory commission is scheduled to report in March. Its co-chairmen, Democrat John Breaux and Republican Bill Thomas, may agree on a plan that switches the system from a government entitlement to a system resembling the federal employees’ health plan, which gives beneficiaries the choice of several forms of insurance. But many Democrats want to retain the current open-ended spending program, loath to give up what they believe is a great political issue. Again, how divisions in the Clinton administration and among congressional Democrats are resolved will probably determine whether Medicare is reformed or left as is: an ever-ballooning claim on the taxpayers.

But not all politics, or policy, is federal. Republicans hold eight of the largest states’ governorships, but in the very largest, California, Democrat Gray Davis has won a big victory and has big Democratic majorities in the legislature. Davis campaigned as a moderate, someone who would avoid the hard-edged choices sought by Republican governor Pete Wilson on issues like aid to illegal immigrants, and racial quotas and preferences. Davis says he will call the legislature into session and ask it to pass his education reforms, which are actually serious measures, though crafted to be minimally obnoxious to the teachers’ unions.

But Democratic legislators in California, such as Senate president John Burton, are ginning up to pass measures sought by unions: one requiring overtime pay after eight-hour days rather than 40-hour weeks (“So much for flextime,” says former Wilson press secretary Dan Schnur); another committing nearly half the budget surplus to a pay increase for state employees. These Democrats also want to revise workman’s-comp rules, which will hit hard at the small businesses that generate most of California’s jobs. And the trial lawyers — hungry to feast on Silicon Valley startups — expect favorable legislation and favorable judges. Davis has said he will enforce the referenda (passed over his objection) on racial quotas and bilingual education; but there are plenty of Democratic bureaucrats and staffers who are working to undermine them. How Davis will respond to this is unclear. He seems genuinely to understand the need for reform. But he has made a career of tending closely to the interests of every Democratic constituency.

Over the past few years, the splits in the Democratic party have gone largely unremarked, except for the wibbles and wobbles of the Clinton administration. But now Democrats have significant leverage in Congress; Gephardt speaks of his party’s prevailing on campaign-finance reform, HMO regulation, tobacco taxes. And they have almost complete control in the nation’s largest state. Voters, who like divided government but have been voting straight tickets increasingly in the 1990s, may have to choose in 2000 between a Republican government and a Democratic government. Watching how each party resolves its differences and deals with its divisions may help them decide.

Michael Barone is senior staff editor at Reader’s Digest and the co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.