The 12th anniversary of the Republicans? 1994 “Contract with America” came and went on Wednesday without a 2006 Democratic counterpart. And there won?t be one.
Instead, Democratic House and Senate leaders held yet another news conference to denounce the Republican Congress? “rubberstamping the Bush administration?s misguided agenda.”
Despite repeated urging from various quarters, including from former President Bill Clinton, that the party needs to make clear what it stands for and not just against, Democrats contend that off-year elections are referenda on the party in power and that a Democratic alternative agenda would only provide targets for the GOP to attack.
Still, it?s a fact that then-House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., gathered 337 GOP members and candidates on the West Front of the Capitol on Sept. 27, 1994, and issued a 10-plank platform that included welfare reform, a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, tort reform, defense budget increases, middle-class tax cuts and term limits for members of Congress.
It?s undoubtedly true that the GOP won the election largely because of disgust with Democratic management ? the failure of Clinton?s health care reform plan and congressional scandals ? but the contract did provide a legislative roadmap for the GOP once it won a 52-seat victory and had to help govern the country.
This year, Democrats have issued a two-page positive agenda, “New Direction for America,” but there?s been no Capitol steps rally, and the document has all the earmarks of being just a handout designed to be an answer to the question, “But what do Democrats stand for?”
It calls for “beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2006,” doubling U.S. special forces “to destroy Osama bin Laden and terrorist networks like al-Qaida” and upgrading homeland security.
It pledges to block a congressional pay raise until the nation?s minimum wage is raised, to make college tuition tax-deductible, to foster energy independence, to force Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices and to “enact real pension reform to protect employees? financial security from CEO corruption and mismanagement.”
Separately, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) has co-written a 200-page book, “The Plan,” with a former Clinton White House colleague, Bruce Reed, which does lay out a positive agenda; although it, too, is loaded with anti-Bush invective and is short on bipartisan outreach.
Emanuel is making no public predictions about the outcome in November, just saying, “I?d rather be in our situation than theirs,” and disputing GOP claims that they will have a money and get-out-the-vote advantage.
Emanuel clearly thinks his party needs a positive message this year ? otherwise he would not have written the book ? but he told me that 2006 is still shaping up to be a “normal” off-year “referendum” election.
The exceptions were 1998, when the GOP was set to impeach Clinton and Democrats gained five seats, and the 2002 post-terrorism election, when the GOP picked up eight seats.
The average midterm loss for the party controlling the White House from 1974 through 1994 is nearly 26 seats. Eliminating the GOP?s post-Watergate 49-seat drubbing, the average is 21. Factoring in the post-2000 census gerrymandering of seats, Democrats would seem to be just on the edge of the 15 seats they need to take the House.
A positive message of purpose ?saying where they?d lead instead of just how much trouble they?d inflict on Bush ? could push them over the top. Maybe Democrats don?t need a Contract, but they could use a plan.
Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.
