Democrats can be assured that Republicans will attack them, regardless of what they do. Democrats could eliminate the estate tax permanently, slash the capital gains tax, repeal the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, invade Iran, and pass a Constitutional Amendment outlawing abortion, and Republicans would still attack them -- with exactly the same vehemence and vigor that Republicans have now. That's politics. It's how partisan politics is played. It is absolutely impossible to avoid attacks from one's opponents; nothing you do gives them license to attack, because they will attack whatever you do.
Bernstein's basic point can be summed up as follows: ignore the attacks because they will attack you no matter what.
Now, if we're referring to the current political situation in Washington today, I can't really find a simple example of Republican attacks that would refute Bernstein's argument. But that's more because Republican attacks have been largely fabricated media operas (death panels, Harry Reid's "negro dialect" comment, and bad-bad stimulus "pork" like creating jobs to clean up historical monuments). There is no excuse for Democrats failing to destroy these attacks right where they stand and I think makes a largely-correct-on-the-merits argument like Bernstein's very tempting.
But in absolute terms I think it's wrong. Republicans larger attack against Democrats--that they are both for Big Government and Big Business--is an argument that has resonance with the American public. And I would argue that it does because 1) it rings true given how the administration chose to handle the banking crisis, and 2) because, as Rauch himself argues, it is bad policy on the merits. If the Republicans had more of a coherent governing platform of their own I think this would be more clear. As it currently stands, Bernstein can simply dismiss every Republican attack as hypocritical because they don't have a real governing platform. But just because they aren't any better, doesn't mean that what they're saying doesn't have some truth. I wouldn't frame it the way Republicans frame it. But over this past year it's become very hard for me, as a Democrat, defend it against the charge that it is not just halfway beholden to corporate interests (which I always knew), but that it is ENTIRELY beholden to them when all is said and done. And, yes, it's bad policy. But it's also terrible politics and the Democrats have not paid nearly enough attention to their image as a party in bed with corporate interests. They assume that since the Republicans aren't any less beholden to corporations that voters will dismiss Republican attacks as hypocritical, or at the very least, view Democrats as the lesser of two evils. Both visions display a fundamental poverty of imagination.
Rick Perlstein put it well back in 2004:
For a party whose major competitive advantage over the opposition is its credibility in protecting ordinary people from economic insecurity, anything that compromises that credibility is disastrous.
If Democrats can't embrace being the party of the little man at the expense of their corporate support I don't really know what reason their party has for existing. All of this is to say that, in terms of Bernstein's argument, I think that some attacks really SHOULD be paid attention to. For example, if Democrats had listened more to criticism from their progressive members about their complicity with Wall Street, it's unlikely any of would ever know who Scott Brown was.
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