The New Contract With America? (Nosey Online)

Nick Confessore lets us know that the Democrats are preparing their own Contract With America. I tend to agree with his take. (Via Charles)

Roll Call reports that congressional Democrats:
[A]re in the conceptual stages of putting together their version of the "contract," crafted a decade ago by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The GOP's plan laid out a series of promised changes they pledged to enact if elected to the majority and was the centerpiece of a campaign in which Republicans rode a wave of voter discontent to their first House majority in 40 years.
Democratic sources say in their version leaders will unveil a "palm card" with a handful of themes designed to define the party and explain why it would provide a better alternative to the current majority. Unlike the original contract, which laid out specifics such as support for Congressional term limits and applying workplace laws to Congress, this version is expected to shy away from detailing policies.

This is kind of a silly, on many levels. I mean, so they're gonna have palm cards with a handful of themes to define the party? Fine. But that's not exactly a new thing. And it's not exactly analogous to the Contract With America. The more important point, however, is that the Contract With America itself wasn't what the Democrats, Roll Call, and a lot of other people seem to think it was.

An effective weapon the GOP uses is to constantly label Democrats as lame and out of touch. The palm card idea is lame. Are we really in need of a Cliff Notes version of Democratic Party ideals? The biggest hit the Democratic Party has taken is over Iraq. The President was able to steamroll over the party by getting legislators to vote for the war. I'm sure there are many Democratic members who still whole heartedly support the war, but many of those who voted for the war are now against it. Case in point, John Kerry. (I believe that circumstances can allow for a politician to change positions without being called a "flip-flopper." My point is that Kerry should have just made the right decision the first time around.)

At the time of the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, it was generally accepted that to dissent was to sign your own ticket out of Congress. Now that things have turned south in Iraq, those who squeamishly voted yes are out daily calling for the Bush administration's head. This is the conundrum. If the Democrats could have just stood together unified in the first place, we wouldn't be having to worry about palm cards now. If I could only get one political wish, it would be to have the Democrats in Congress stick together from the beginning. But alas, I digress.

Nick informs us that the GOP Contract with America really wasn't all that effective anyway.

Put simply, the Contract with America was not remotely important in helping the GOP win back Congress in 1994. As Christopher Caldwell reveals in this fascinating -- and, I think, still prescient in many ways -- Atlantic article from 1998, the Contract was a:

[L]ist of ten propositions -- tax cuts, social-service cuts, and such government reforms as term limits -- announced as a manifesto six weeks before the 104th Congress was voted into office. There were two problems with the contract. First, two thirds of Americans didn't know it existed. Second, Republican polling, done by Frank Luntz, had been fraudulently presented to the public as showing that the contract commanded 60 percent support in all its particulars. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, in fact, found that people disagreed, by 45 to 35 percent, "with most of what the GOP House is proposing to do."

In practice, the Contract served more as an organizing agenda for the new House majority.

The truth is, I'm not sure if there are many lessons the Democrats can learn from the 1994 elections specifically, which was an anti-Democrat perfect storm that makes President Bush's troubles look like a minor squall.

Quite honestly, the GOP effort in '94 was nothing short of political genius. Republicans are only now starting to see the side effects of such a masterful power play. As soon as Bush got into power, he used the majority rule for political gain, laying waste to some of the most sacred Republican beliefs. So forget about palm cards and contracts, just unify behind party ideals and let's move forwards. Cause man, it can't get any worse.

Can it?