Anti-Trade Route Is Loser for Democrats

In the wake of the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, leftover 1960s leftists are storming the barricades of punditry everywhere. But it’s unlikely that the politics of radical nostalgia will prevail in a country where the most popular TV show is “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” And so the Democratic presidential nominee next year will face the daunting challenge of balancing both anti-trade protest and the prosperity such trade provides.

Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven who was tried for conspiring to disrupt the 1968 Democratic convention, hauled his 59-year-old bones yet again toward the sound of bullhorns and the smell of tear gas. “I am glad to have lived long enough to see a new generation of rebels accomplish something bigger in 1999 than we accomplished in Chicago in 1968,” he wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post.

A deeper analysis comes from Georgetown University’s Michael Kazin, who compared the WTO protests to the populist ferment of a century ago, in the 1890s. “Then as now,” Kazin wrote in the New York Times, “Americans of different backgrounds and ideologies could agree that big business had gained sway over national governments.”

The Seattle demonstrations were a remarkable fusion of Old Left and New Left, of unionists and environmentalists, all come together for an anti-capitalist carnival. But Bill Clinton was a target, too. His free-trade policies have played well with the economy, and well with Republicans, but not so well with his fellow Democrats, particularly party activists. It is those activists who will shape the upcoming presidential nomination process.

If the history that Hayden and Kazin cite is any guide, the Democrats will likely lose next year as they pursue political purity and thereby forfeit political viability.

Consider the similarities: In 1896, Democrat Grover Cleveland was finishing his second term in the White House. Cleveland was a crypto-Republican; party regulars grew restive under his tight-money, anti-union rule. They repudiated their president and veered sharply to the left, nominating populist William Jennings Bryan, who was easily defeated by Republican William McKinley.

Similarly, in 1968, Democrats, including Hayden, grew alienated from their president, Lyndon Johnson, over the Vietnam War. After pushing Johnson into retirement and flirting with various left-wing candidates, Democrats unenthusiastically nominated Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey; activists yawned as he lost to Richard Nixon.

The common thread running through 1896, 1968 and today is the difficulty of managing a majority coalition after years in power. Clinton has lost his knack for pushing free trade and simultaneously propitiating the anti-free traders. He increasingly resembles Cleveland and Johnson, skilled politicians who ultimately failed in their efforts to keep their fellow Democrats on a centrist, victorious course.

The problem for Democrats today is that the protesters in Seattle and elsewhere have far more leverage inside the party than outside of it. That is, they can affect the nomination process, but they can’t deliver an electoral college majority for the nominee next year.

Oddly, the two Democratic presidential hopefuls, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, have sided, so far at least, with Clinton. That could change, of course; as the nomination battle heats up, both men will be sorely tempted to break ranks with the pro-trade corporatists and break bread with the anti-trade activists.

But any Democrat who goes the anti-trade route must convince general election voters to kill the goose of free trade that has laid so many golden eggs. Two decades ago, the Dow Jones was below 800; now it’s above 11,000. Even Americans whose hearts bleed for blue-collar workers and sea turtles will think twice before they vote out the expansionist economic policies that have made Seattle, to cite just one shining example, a gilded boom town.

In 1896 and 1968 the Democrats jerked themselves out of the mainstream; the country responded by electing Republicans who promised normalcy and prosperity. Probably not many of the Seattle protesters would prefer a GOPer in the White House, but the lesson of history is that after enough years of being in power, the true believers forsake the discipline of pragmatism. Next year could see a repeat of this cycle, but the activists in the streets won’t wake up to that reality until after their side loses.