Liberal Democrats 'discover' states' rights

The 2004 presidential election was not only one of the closest and most hotly-contested in recent history, it was also one of the longest in recent history. Given the length and bitterness of the campaign that just ended, Virginia voters can be forgiven for wishing to avoid being plunged into a brand new political race right away.

Virginia Republicans could be particularly susceptible to the temptation to sit back and rest. They must not succumb to the temptation. In the wake of the Republican sweep in the 2004 elections, the next few years will underline in bolder lines than usual the truth of former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s dictum that “all politics is local.” For as Democrats seek to pick up the pieces from their devastating defeat last month, they have made what is, for them, a startling discovery: the states.

In 1962, then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed shock that his good friend John Connolly was resigning from the Kennedy Cabinet to run for governor of Texas. Johnson tried to persuade Connolly to remain in Washington, D.C., because “this is where the power is.” But with the avenues of power closed to them in Washington for at least the next four years, Democrats are sounding a different note in their autopsies of the 2004 campaign.

In the Nov. 16 edition of The Nation, a liberal magazine of news and opinion, there is an editorial entitled, “Take it to the Blue States.” The author asserts that “Progressives” should give up on D.C. “Let’s govern from the Blue States,” he says, “Use state law as much as possible to set up the kind of social democracy we would like to see for the country as a whole.” He suggests that liberal state legislatures could be persuaded to pass laws requiring employers to pay for more vacation days, pay a higher minimum wage, and perhaps even paid maternity leave. Once the benighted red state voters see how the enlightened half lives, the pressure for similarly “progressive” national policies will grow.

In a December editorial page discussion among Democrats in the Washington Post, Washington Gov. Gary Locke makes a plea for more influence from governors and state and local elected officials in the councils of the national Democratic Party. His article is revealingly entitled, “Can You Hear Us Now?” And perhaps most famous of all was Democrat strategist Lawrence O’Donnell’s diatribe on the McLaughlin Group in which he said the Kerry states should seriously consider secession.

It would be tempting to give liberals some credit for grasping the intelligence of American’s federalist Constitution after only 217 years, if it were not so plain that they do not mean it. The author of The Nation’s editorial said, “Now some will say, ‘Come on, the state governments are awful.’ And it’s true; they are.” So, only a couple of sentences after presenting them as liberals’ best hope, the author insults them.

But for all their insincerity, Democrats are making it plain that they see places like Richmond and Raleigh and Charleston as their next battlegrounds, and Republicans would be derelict in their duty to cede any of these fields to the other side. After all, Tip O’Neill was right, in the sense that local issues have an immediate and noticeable impact on people’s lives. Indeed, thanks to the Founders’ design, state politics is inseparable from presidential politics. As I write these words, presidential electors from all 50 states are gathering in state capitals to officially re-elect President Bush.

Few places in the United States have demonstrated the importance, and the difficulty, of local issues better than our own Roanoke Valley. As excited as people were over the contest between Bush and Kerry, there were much higher levels of excitement and even anger over such issues as proposed methadone clinics, drinks at Vinton’s off-track betting establishment and, of course, the future of Victory Stadium. In a month, the Virginia legislature will be back in session. The delegates’ and senators’ discussions about transportation, public education and taxes will directly effect where we drive, where children attend school and how much we have left over after taxes for ourselves.

Should the Democrats follow through on their promise (or threat) to focus on the states, we can expect Virginia to be an early test case. Virginians will elect a governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general next year, along with a new House of Delegates. The nation will look to Virginia to see if the states hold any real promise for a Democratic resurgence.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once referred to the states as the “laboratories of democracy.” Given the prominence of state and local governments today, it would be more accurate to think of them as the “factory floor” of democracy. With the Democrats’ new focus on the states, they are about to become the battlefields of democracy.

If John Connolly and Lyndon Johnson were talking today, their roles would be reversed.