Where is the Democratic pro-growth message?

Two Democrats take a look today at the electoral catastrophe of the midterms and ask a good question of their compatriots.  Jay Eisenhofer serves on the DSCC Majority Trust and Richard Schiffrin chaired Hillary Clinton’s finance committee in Pennsylvania, and partner on an essay at AOL’s Politics Daily that warns their party that they have lost the mainstream of political thought by focusing on redistributive policies and social engineering to impose their concept of fairness on Americans.  If the party doesn’t rethink its policy and public-relations approach, it risks long-term marginalization:

With President Barack Obama facing an outpouring of criticism from his party base following the tax-and-spending deal cut with congressional Republicans, it is time for the base to face reality: The Democrats’ message on the economy is not working.

Voters are not misguided or confused or too angry and upset to think clearly. And if Democrats persist in telling themselves that this is the message of 2010, their long-term viability will suffer no matter what happens in 2012.

Schiffrin and Eisenhofer write that Democrats have to create pro-growth policies, arguing that fairness relies on economic power and the ability to produce.  Instead of approaching the goal of fairness through economic growth, Democrats have allowed social engineers and the labor movement to derail the party:

The electorate knows the difference between policies that promote public investment — rebuilding bridges, highways, ports and water systems, modernizing the electricity grid, expanding educational access — versus policies that are simply transfers via tax payments to favored constituencies.

Improvements in education cannot mean only increased payments to teachers. Physical improvements and sound educational policies cannot take a back seat to increases in public-sector salaries and pensions. Our corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world. Tax reductions should promote competitiveness and corporate investment.

Democrats must fight for these policies so that they don’t become a party only of people dependent on the government. That’s not healthy for the party, and it’s not healthy for the country.

Unfortunately for Democrats and the two authors of this piece, the party mainly relies on just that constituency.  Whether it’s the public-sector unions like AFSCME, SEIU, and the NEA, or the attempt to draft millions upon millions into entitlement dependency, Democrats have created the party about which Eisenhofer and Schiffrin warn.  Any attempt to solve the problems created by 40 years of marching in this direction will result in a power play among those constituencies that will divide the party and diminish its power even further, at least in the short run.  And it will take more than a short run for pro-growth voters to trust Democratic leadership, especially when the party hangs onto Nancy Pelosi as its minority caucus leader after the debacle of the past midterms.

The essay has some value for Republicans as well.  Too often we tend to sound as though all government is a bad idea, or an evil to be opposed.  That message needs to be leavened by focusing on what government does well and where it is necessary as a way to explain why the rest of it needs to be cut, or its missions transferred to the states along with the funds the federal government raids from them for redistribution.  Without a doubt, we need to marry tax-cutting policies (or in the current environment, tax-freezing policies) with spending cuts that outstrip them.  If Democrats became the party of tax-and-spend over the last 50 years, then any honest assessment of Republican majority governance from 2001-6 has to acknowledge that the GOP became the party of spend-and-spend, although not anywhere near the level that Democrats have demonstrated from 2007 forward.

If the Republicans can successfully transform themselves into a real spending-reduction, limited-government party and the Democrats transform themselves into a pro-growth party, then we will truly have a two-party system that can work together.  We’ll see which one gets there first.