History Repeats Itself

History Repeats Itself
By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet. Posted December 1, 2004.

The reclamation project doesn't have to be a long one for the Democratic Party – we need merely to look at recent political history. You can't get two Democrats together these days without a debate breaking out over what needs to be done to rescue, resuscitate, reanimate, remake, rebrand and redeem the Democratic Party.

The answers thrashed out in the nation's living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms, as well as on the nation's op-ed pages, are far-ranging: move to the center, shift to the left, become class warriors, reclaim moral values, go negative, stay positive, figure out how to better sell the brand. But the underlying premise is the same: Democrats are in a world of trouble, teetering on the verge of what a University of Maryland political scientist recently predicted would be "permanent minority status for a generation or two."

To which I say: poppycock.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Democratic Party is undoubtedly in need of a major overhaul. But for proof that the reclamation project doesn't have to be a long one, we need merely to look at recent political history.

In 1992, the Republican Party found itself in very much the same position as Democrats do today: out of power (with the opposition controlling the White House and both houses of Congress), lacking a compelling core message, and facing the prospect of becoming what any number of pundits at the time deemed – all together now – "a permanent minority party."