Issues create divide among Democrats

March 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

For all the evidence of a divided GOP, the Democratic Party has its own widening cracks that could make a potentially bleak election year even more dour.

In just the past two weeks, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln became the latest Democratic incumbent to attract a primary challenger, anti-abortion Democrats fought hard to derail President Barack Obama’s health-care measure, and civil-rights advocates and environmentalists likened the Democrat to George W. Bush.

Few pieces of the mosaic that is the Democratic Party seem happy.

Labor and gays are restless. Blacks and Hispanics are grumbling. Liberals and moderates are battling. Even some in Hollywood are disappointed.

Obama must bring together — and fire up — the many Democratic coalitions if he hopes to minimize expected losses for his party this fall in his first midterm elections. The risk if he doesn’t is that Democrats could become so disaffected that they stay home in November.

It’s far from too late. Passage of the health-care overhaul would mean a monumental victory for Obama just when he needs one. This president will have accomplished what others before him couldn’t, a triumph that would give the fractured rank-and-file something to rally around.

David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser, isn’t panicking.

“We are a broad party,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s always going to be some degree of tension.”

Axelrod voiced confidence that the vast majority of the party’s loyalists will get behind its candidates this fall because the philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats are so great.

“Whatever divides us,” he said, “that fundamental split is still animating.”

Despite the dissension, 84 percent of Democrats approve of Obama’s job performance in the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.

Republicans are wrestling with their own deep splits. There’s a family feud over whether the GOP should strictly adhere to conservative principles or be more inclusive. That infighting is prominently on display in a slew of contentious primary contests.

But the fissures among Democrats, festering for months, are striking because the party controls both the White House and Congress, and unity was in style just a year ago as Democrats celebrated the first months of Obama’s tenure with bigger majorities on Capitol Hill.

Then, the governing began in earnest — and so did the complaining.

Some of it was expected.

The Democratic Party has always been more of a coalition party than the GOP, bringing together varied factions that include labor, minorities, civil-rights activists, social progressives and anti-war protesters. Each part seldom gets everything it wants.