VALUES, the Democrats say, remember those values if we are to win in this election year. Democratic supporters and candidates, however, are concluding that the values they remember are just not vibrating among new voters. Democrats have trouble
reaching youthAs the saying goes: "Nostalgia ain't what it used to to be."
Here's what Democrats say is the problem in this election year:
They are unable to reach the voters because the voters neither care about nor understand the struggles of the Democratic Party.
Hawaii's Democrats have dined for decades at the table set in 1954. The Americans of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II, returned to Hawaii and got involved in politics are now mostly legend.
The labor leaders who stood alongside those AJA politicians are also mostly gone.
The next generation of political leaders has come and is also mostly gone. If Tadao Beppu and George Ariyoshi gave way to Dennis O'Connor and Elmer Cravalho, then the current crop in the Democratic firmament gives us John Waihee and Jeremy Harris.
Democrats contend that voters today are far removed from the party's roots and that the party has not moved to catch up to the reality of today.
Candidates say that the break between today's voters and the Democratic Party of the past means there is little loyalty from voters.
Current political measures have the independent voter base at about 40 percent of the total voting population, but it gets larger with the younger voters.
If sons and daughters check out at the first symbols of the "I had it harder than you ever did" speech, imagine how they react to politicians telling them how hard it was on the docks, in the cane fields or the pineapple plantations.
Democratic candidates will freely tell you, off the record, that their greatest struggle is to keep the party relevant.
State Sen. Mike McCartney, 38, has been one of the Democratic Party's bright young leaders, but he is retiring this year.
He moves the nostalgia lever a little closer by recalling how the public school teachers employed today don't remember the HSTA strike of the early '70s and don't have the same feeling of unity and discipline.
As a cultural aside, McCartney points out that this is the first year since John Burns ran for re-election in 1970 that the Democratic gubernatorial incumbent has not produced a half-hour television biography.
"No one would watch a half-hour on politics anymore," McCartney said.
Others say that as young voters move further away from the immigrant experience, they become less likely to listen sympathetically to speeches on social justice.
"They want to know about what is in it for them," one veteran neighbor island Democratic leader grumbled to me this week.
HOWEVER, Walter Heen, the state Democratic Party chairman, sees the values of social reform and welfare as being just as important today as they were at the party's first successful election 44 years ago.
"Our message is not just nostalgia," Heen argues.
"What the party is trying to impress upon young people...is that the basic problems are still the same."
Whether the Democrats this year can accomplish that in the face of the Republican Party preaching change will define the Democrats for many elections to come.
Richard Borreca reports on Hawaii's politics every Wednesday.
He can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@pixi.com