Democrats: Bad image, lackluster response

E.J. Dionne, Jr. wrote a column in Friday's Washington Post (registration required) arguing. in essence, the the Bush campaign showed "sheer negative genius" and that "Liberals and Democrats are way too sensitive to elite editorial page opinion." I wrote the following to him yesterday:

There are two points I'd like to make. First, much of the problem that the Democrats had in 2004 stems from a cultural problem that they have. I wouldn't have thought this, but I am fortunate to work among a group of twenty-something guys (mostly) who are fairly conservative--they are veterans mostly, and many of them are still reservists. The picture that many of them have of Democrats has a group of well-dressed snobs sitting around a mansion eating brie and drinking wine. Strong support from "elitists" in Hollywood and elsewhere feeds this image. So did much of what Kerry did also fed this image (wind surfing? His late-campaign introduction to hunting?). Bush, in contrast, who I suspect prefers white wine to Bud, doesn't come across this way. Just as his father professed to like pork rinds (at least Lee Atwater said he did). I suspect that the Democrats would benefit from an image closer to that of George Meany (or Bill Clinton) than to George Clooney.

Second, on the President's plan for social security. I'm not certain that the Social Security privatization scheme is shaky. But that is because we do not have the details yet. After all, Laurence Kotlikoff, who does seem to be overly conservative. proposed something similar (see The Coming Generational Storm, which he wrote with Scott Burns). What is shaky is the scheme for financing it. And what is least clear are the benefits that those now young will receive from it. In my view, taxes must rise and benefits must fall, but no one wants to address either, separately or together. The response of the Democrats has been, to say the least, lackluster. That may well change as the details come it. But there is tendency to say that there is no problem and to focus on the privatization scheme without examining alternatives. The president will argue that there is no alternative to the privatization scheme if Social Security is to be fixed. That is nonsense, of course, but will not seem so if there is no Democratic alternative.

Arguing that there is no problem in essence cedes the ground to Bush. The Post's article on the problem in this morning's paper seems at first glance to bolster that argument. But a closer reading suggests that there is a consensus that, ceteris paribus (as economists like to say), the system will be in big trouble by 2020. The way out, people cited in article suggest, is economic growth, as if that is a change that we can count on, despite the current lack of investment and the future shortage of workers and surplus of retirees.