How to Win

The Nation, in assessing the stabbing death of the Bush anti-Social Security plan, demonstrates the importance of standing on Democratic principles.

The editorial casts the campaign against privatization in clear terms as a victory for Democratic unity in defending the traditions of liberalism.

Bush was defeated because he was challenged from day one by a sophisticated progressive mobilization, spearheaded by the Campaign for America's Future. CAF had begun warning about the right's privatization campaign in 1998, when it mobilized a coalition to challenge President Clinton's flirtation with private accounts, and it took the lead in challenging Bush's Social Security Commission in his first term. So when Bush announced that Social Security "reform" was a top priority, CAF went into action. It used its election day polling to show that Bush had no mandate for privatization. Joining the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org and USAction, it held press conferences in each of the states Bush visited, detailing the costs to citizens of privatization.

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These efforts were buoyed by Democratic House and Senate leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who resisted demands by pundits and New Democrats like Rahm Emanuel and Gene Sperling that the Democrats come up with their own plan. Pelosi and Reid made the wise strategic decision to keep the focus on Bush's plan. The more Bush traveled and spoke about it, the less people liked it and the more they began to question his judgment and priorities. Democrats learned the value of a unified no.

There is a strategy lesson here for every fight from relieving the Bush deficit (maybe we could start by calling it that) to getting out of Iraq. Identify a plan based on the Democratic traditions of liberal democracy and then stick to it at all costs. Stand on principle even when it seems politically risky.

Imagine how much credibility the Democratic party would have today if, during the run-up to the Iraq war, Democrats has voted their consciences rather than capitulate out of the fear of being called cowardly or unpatriotic. If Democrats had stood their ground and refused to give Bush the authorization to go to war without honestly explaining himself, they would be the voice of moral authority today. Instead, the president merely has to say, "well, they voted for it."

The victory in saving Social Security was no anomaly. It was an object lesson in the importance of standing up for what you believe.

The old saying goes, "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." How true. If the Democratic party wants to regain its vitality and its viability, it will have to decide what it stands for and then stand for it, come hell or high water.