What it means to be a Wellstone Democrat

With the Democratic Party still trying to find an identity and direction in the wake of the humiliating midterm elections, it's amazing and bewildering that a clear course of action — a resonant and resounding theme — has not yet been vocalized by party leaders in Washington, D.C., or Washington state:

Become Paul Wellstone Democrats.

Wellstone — though passionately liberal — was noted for his civility. The Minnesota senator, who died in a plane crash Oct. 25, did not attack or disparage opponents or their ideas; he advanced his beliefs, and would put forth compelling reasons why you should agree with him. That is what politics, in my mind, was always supposed to represent: You vote with your conscience, you stake out territory, and you give what you can while protecting what you must.

Because Wellstone had that kind of conviction, everyone in D.C. got exactly what they saw with him. People respond to "conviction politicians," who prove their words with their very lives. Prove often enough that you care about people, and they'll go to the wall for you at the polls.

Wellstone lived his whole life reaching out to ordinary people. He made it a point to thank and greet the elevator operators, kitchen workers and janitors in the Capitol. He knew them by name, even though they didn't live in Minnesota. People weren't a part of Wellstone's politics; politics was a part of Wellstone's relationships with people.

The first of the two pillars of being a "Wellstone Democrat" is that you must be a conviction politician who lives and associates with ordinary people every day, as a natural extension of your political identity and aspirations.

The second pillar is that you push policy for the poor, meaning that you campaign from the left, as liberals.

Oh, I can hear state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt and Gov. Gary Locke groaning. But they would do well to read the explanation of that intentionally controversial statement.

Wellstone acknowledged you can't win by running solely for the poor. Yet, in the past two elections, the Democratic Party has run decidedly centrist campaigns ... and lost. They might not have lost by much, but they suffered two crushing defeats in the midst of situations — peacetime and prosperity in 2000 for Al Gore; wartime and hardships in 2002 with George Bush — that should have produced substantial Democratic gains.

The idea that you should govern for the poor gains currency when framed in this context: Simply saying you'll govern from the left or center is irrelevant. This is something many Democrats, in both the centrist and liberal camps, agree with.

The issue is: What do you actually do while governing from the center or left?

Wellstone believed "kitchen-table issues" of balancing a family budget, getting a decent job with a living wage, and receiving a fair shake from government in tough times, should dictate the way government functions: to aid the struggling, those who can't attain the American ideal of self-sufficiency.

If you think that kitchen -table philosophy is centrist, fine — that's quality centrism, a grass-roots and non-corporate centrism I will gladly embrace. A "centrist" or "liberal" approach has value not in its outward label, but to the extent it helps the poor. I personally emphasize "campaigning from the left as a liberal" only because liberalism served the poor well — in the New Deal and the 1960s.

The poor are foremost among the struggling, but the struggling also represent those who are extremely suspicious of government and politicians in general. The struggling were and are both Ralph Nader liberals and Pat Buchanan conservatives, those who opposed NAFTA then, who oppose war in Iraq now, and who want a more grass-roots politics that values their working-class concerns. This is the forgotten territory of American politics: ordinary people's difficult lives.

Let's ask this question: Why did Americans never, ever give the Democrats a substantial edge when it came to fixing corporate corruption, something that — given Bush's proximity to Ken Lay and Enron — should have been political gold for the Democrats?

Could it be because Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Leadership Council, and all other centrist forces transformed the Democrats into a mammoth fund-raising machine that strayed from an authentic grass-roots approach?

Paul David Wellstone won election to the U.S. Senate in 1990 by connecting with ordinary people in his typically civil, honest and authentic way. Though outspent 7-to-1 by two-term incumbent Republican Rudy Boschwitz, Wellstone won. He then clobbered Boschwitz by 9 percentage points in 1996, having shown that everything he said to ordinary, struggling people was backed up by his actions.

It's not whether you govern from the left, but how you govern from the left.

It's not whether you win elections — no, the point of politics is that, after winning elections, the subsequent advancement of your ideas improves the lives of hard-hit people.

Isn't that what Democrats used to be? They can be great again ... by becoming Wellstone Democrats.

Matt Zemek is a freelance writer in Seattle and a volunteer with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. He is a parishioner at St. James Cathedral. His e-mail is mzemek@hotmail.com.