The Virginia Reel

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The Virginia Reel

With the election on Nov. 6 of Mark Warner (governor) and Tim Kaine (lieutenant governor) Virginia apparently has joined a growing number of southern states which have returned Democrats to their statehouses. On the other hand, progressives can take little hope in these victories, since the price paid for them is steep, and indeed so steep that the ideological division between the two major parties has been almost completely lost. In fact, what we’re dealing with in the South these days is not New Democrats, but Newer Democrats, who are barely distinguishable from Older Republicans.

While the victories of Warner and Kaine in Virginia gave Democrats in the state a much needed shot in the arm, there is little doubt that the Democratic Party and its agenda of social progressivity is, for all practical purposes, dead in the South. Gone is the advocacy for civil rights for women, blacks, gays, and the poor. Gone too is the pride that Democrats used to take in programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, and the rights of workers to make a decent wage under acceptable conditions. In fact, in none of their speeches or debates would Warner or Kaine deign to mention such things as gun control or abortion. Nor was much said about stricter environmental controls for Virginia’s devastated wetlands or the much needed cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay.

No, the Newer Democrats will have none of this, can have none of this, if they are to win elections in the South. Rather, what was unfortunately clear to all who listened to the political debates in Virginia this year was that there is no discernable difference at all in the candidates’ views on such things as education, budgetary concerns, health care, the environment, civil rights or any number of other issues. The sad fact is that Democrats have appropriated Republican stances in all these areas. The opposition represented by the progressive left has disappeared completely, thus depriving the state of an important point of view relative to the grave political, economic and social issues that confront it.

.And yet, by a slimmer majority than the polls would have had us believe, the Democrats did manage to win. But one indeed wonders whether the Democratic organizations throughout the state are so deliriously delighted that a rightist Warner garnered only four more percentage points in this election than the openly liberal Chuck Robb did in his bid for the Senate seat against George Allen that they are willing to eschew completely the principles and issues that have formed the core of Democratic ideology. Apparently they are.

In fact many local Democratic leaders see no problem with Republican attempts to tighten abortion laws or to introduce a “moment of silence” (i.e., prayer) into the regimen of the public schools. Nor do they sing out against allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon into a bar, a church or just about any other place where the public gathers. And the word “gay” is about as anathematic to Newer Democrats as it is to the Reverends Falwell and Robertson. In fact, Warner fell all over himself proclaiming his opposition to gay civil unions and chose not to discuss at all the state’s antiquated laws which make a felon of anyone, gay or straight, who has anything but procreative sex or who “cohabits” with a member of the opposite sex without benefit of legal marriage.

Indeed, the outlook for moving any progressive measures in the South is bleak, to say the least. One need only look at the whopping majority voters in Virginia gave to Republicans in the House of Delegates to see that, despite their budgetary bungling and their evisceration of public and higher education, they are the party of preference for most residents in the state. Hence, if a Democrat is to win in the South, he or she must move beyond the center to the right and cater not to the working class or the civil rights crowd, but rather to the advocates of “no new taxes.” Bipartisanship, says Warner, is what he will strive for. Unfortunately, it will inevitably turn out to be a bipartisanship that includes only the Right and the Far Right.

April 5, 2002