Just how liberal are the Democrats?

In the wake of the Iowa Brown and Black debate, Andrew Sullivan despairs about the Democratic shift to the left on race and in general:

There wasn’t a nano-second in which any candidate said anything to suggest that minorities can do anything to benefit themselves without more government help, more money and more white condescension. The crowd lapped it up. Joe Lieberman couldn’t even bring himself to oppose reparations. Not affirmative action. Reparations! You’ve come a long way, Joe. Long gone is the Clintonian art of giving a damn about race without resorting to paleo notions that all whites are at fault and all blacks are victims. In that kind of context, it’s no accident that Al Sharpton becomes the moral arbiter…. One thing we have learned from this campaign is that the Clinton policy make-over of the Democrats now has only one standard-bearer: his wife. For the rest, it’s that ’70s Show, with post-industrial populism thrown in. (emphasis added)

Mickey Kaus has an interesting rejoinder to Sullivan on racial issues:

To some extent, Clinton’s welfare reform–and the (not unrelated!) slow-but-perceptible improvement in inner-city crime and the black family structure have had the perverse effect of freeing Democrats to be paleoliberals on race again…. But something is missing when you compare this year’s humiliating panderfest with previous humiliating panderfests: There’s no more talk of sinking vast sums of money into Model Cities and UDAGs and CDBGs and all the other sinkholes and mayoral slush funds of the Democratic antipoverty apparatus. Even relatively non-left Democrats like Carter and Dukakis eagerly embraced such programs, but they don’t get defended anymore. (emphases in original)

On Sullivan’s general point, I’d also dissent somewhat. Undoubtedly, on some issues, the party has lurched leftwards. This is certainly true on trade matters, and it’s true about race to some extent. On the other hand, compared to 2000, the Democrats have shifted to the right on national security issues — just not as quickly or as far as Bush. The Dems certainly haven’t abandoned the Clintonian emphasis on balanced budgets. They’ve also moved to the right on gun control, as the Chicago Tribune observes:

All of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination say they oppose new federal initiatives to license gun owners or to require the registration of handguns — the principal gun-control measures Al Gore and Bill Bradley offered when they were running for the nomination in 2000.

I care about foreign economic policy a lot, which is why I harp on it. But I’m not sure if the general claim can be made that the Democratic party has shifted to the left. I have no doubt Democrats will weigh in on this matter themselves.