WASHINGTON — After months of bitter disputes over the direction of the party, top Democratic officials from front-running presidential candidate John Kerry to House and Senate leaders are coalescing around an election-year domestic agenda calling for higher taxes for wealthier Americans to finance an expansion of health care, education and other federal programs.
With Kerry in position to win the Democratic nomination and mold an election-year agenda with input from his colleagues in Congress, Democrats are essentially splitting the ideological difference between the centrist policies of President Clinton in the 1990s and the liberal impulses of many party officials and activists today.
The hybrid ideological approach is reflected in the party’s support for:
In a nod to the party’s more conservative members, especially those in the South, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said there is broad agreement to play down gun control and other cultural issues.
"I cannot recall a time when there was more consensus on the policy direction we should take," Daschle said. "As you go down the list, on virtually every one of these questions, Democrats believe Republicans are ceding the middle, and we are willing to take it."
Kerry said Bush’s strategy of playing to his conservative base to maximize voter turnout among Republicans has brought Democrats together on most issues.
The result is that voters this year likely will be presented with two clear but not dramatically different approaches to solving the nation’s domestic problems, ranging from failing schools to soaring drug costs.
Besides keeping tax cuts for middle-class Americans, Democrats said they do not want to completely undo two other laws of which they have been highly critical, the No Child Left Behind accountability program for schools and educators, and the Medicare prescription drug plan.
But Democrats will promote significant modifications to the education and Medicare laws.
On Medicare, Kerry and congressional Democrats support allowing the government to negotiate lower prices with drug companies and permitting the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other foreign countries.
On education, Kerry and congressional Democrats want to maintain the tough accountability standards of the new law, but also provide states and schools with greater flexibility to meet them and, most significantly, provide a big funding increase.
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