Path To Victory
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CC: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Al Gore, John Kerry, Wes Clark, Russ Feingold, Joe Biden
Once again, the Democratic party is digging into their numbers, attempting to divine the mythical consensus of what it is Americans believe and want from their political leaders, and using this data the Democrats plan to cobble together a list of issues that people generally agree with and get their asses kicked again.
What the hell is wrong with you? The solution to what ails the Democratic party is not lurching left or right on issues. Here’s a piece of information I’ve uncovered: people don’t vote on issues. Let me refine that – aside from partisans, Americans don’t vote on issues. On the right, you will roast if you don’t march with Dobson and the Chamber of Commerce. On the left, your goose is cooked if you don’t support Choice and worker’s rights. But beyond that, we as a nation don’t pick our presidents (or other leaders, for that matter) by stacking up the positions and choosing from “A” and “B” and adding it all up. We pick the entire package, and the winning campaign is the one who presents the best person.
The last two Democratic campaigns have failed (I say failure in the case of Gore because it should never have been close enough for the shenanigans in Florida to work) because both candidates listened to the beltway crowd and whizzed around from issue to issue. Bush won because he picked four points and repeated them until he was blue in the face and then said them again. He didn’t win because people necessarily agreed with all of those points, but because he communicated an image of control and sympathy within the box he had created for himself. If you care to go back to 1992, President Clinton did just that – relentless in his critique of the failing Bush economy and never forgetting to tell the American people that that was why they should choose him over George H. W. Bush.
Democrats keep looking to the politics of 1996 as their template, but forget that the GOP had nominated such a weak candidate (savaged by Clinton early in the race – another hint is to be the first to go negative) and that Clinton simply had to slice off a percent here or a percent there. That wasn’t the case in ’00, ’04 and it won’t be in ’08.
I recently read Howard Kurtz’s book, Spin Cycle, and an interesting nugget I learned was that President Clinton was most concerned how USA Today was prioritizing the issues of the day. It isn’t the NY Times or Washington Post that you should care about, because one caters to the Manhattan elite while the Post is for the Beltway crowd who cares about who’s consulting for who and who is leading on the mythical scoreboard. The Bush campaign froze out the press, while the Kerry campaign tried to make nice with the MSM. Treat the animals like the beasts they are and use them when necessary and screw ‘em otherwise. You don’t have to be a right-winger to play in Peoria (Kerry won Peoria, by the way) but you do need to be more than a list of issues.
ALSO: Don’t go windsurfing. It is simply the worst sport you could be photographed doing. Go bowling or something, anything normal people do – but not windsurfing.
18 Responses to “Path To Victory”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
I don’t personally discount Perot, but I don’t think Clinton would have run his race significantly differently if he wasn’t around and I think Clinton would have won anyhow. The traditional caluclations say Perots voters would have gone to Bush, but I think a lot of them would simply have stayed home and split the difference between Bush and Clinton.
I do think your choice between New Deal and NAFTA is a false one, however. I personally am in favor of global trade with rules and regulations that ensure protections for small business and workers. We are in a global economy, there’s no use pushing back on that. The work to be done now is ensuring fairness and morality in the global marketplace. Clintonian Democrats and Kennedy Democrats and Roosevelt Democrats can all win races in 2006 and 2008 and beyond if they simply cut out the bulls**t and fight right.
OW, I’m way more of a liberal bomb trower than you. You’ve made clear — today’s posts especially — you’re a mainstream moderate Democrat with strong opinions. So I’m often wishing you would steer a little more to the left. Pro-deah penalty? Come on!
BUT, more than any other blog entry I’ve ever read in the last five PAINFUL years, you’ve hit the nail on the goddam head this time. As much as you or I know about and care about and would argue about the issues, that is not what wins elections. Most folks DON”T KNOW THE ISSUES. (Even if they think they do.) What you’ve said in this post is: Be plain-spoken and say something! K-I-S-S. Don’t relent.
btw, the rethugs can only win the south playing the race card. Plain-spoken democrats can win by being for the average citizen, even in the south. I believe even Bobby Kennedy would have won the South because he knew how to talk to people. (I don’t have enough internet credibility to lose it by believing that, anyway.)
I think you’re touching on something really valuable here, OW. I agree with what you’re saying, in that the U.S. electorate– I daresay especially the conservative voters– likes things tied up in simple, easy-to-carry packages. (I could quote John Stuart Mill here, but I digress.)
However, I think there are a couple of things you might want to consider about the ’92 and ’96 elections. First, you are correct about Bush and Dole. Bush goaded Saddam into the turkey shoot a.k.a. Gulf War I, thinking that would rally his base and make them forget what an awful mess the Reaganites had made of the economy. Overwhelming victory that it was, it was utterly pointless except as an exercise in post-Cold War chest thumping (oh, and in parking U.S. forces squarely in the middle of Islam Central– good move that…). Not enough people were fooled.
Still, I don’t think you’re considering the huge X factor of the ’92 election: Ross Perot. Though he didn’t score a single electoral college vote, Perot grabbed almost 19% of the popular vote. I sincerely doubt that Perot’s supporters were overwhelmingly liberal or progressive. Considering that Clinton defeated Bush by only 6% of the popular vote– well, you do the math.
Regarding ’96, I think you are spot on. The economy was booming, and the Republicans– who had directed their energies into hoodwinking their base at the congressional level– didn’t bother to field a serious candidate. Even Ross Perot was marginalized by Clinton’s star power. Instead of defeating Clinton at the voting booth, they eventually focused on sullying him in the court of public opinion. Whitewater, Monicagate, the whole shot– it was all part of their general plan to muddy the waters for the Dems in 2000. Toss in a cup of Joe Stalin and a pinch of Jim Crow at the polls Florida, and the whole thing worked well enough (9/11 smothered most lingering doubts, too; how convenient!).
If the Dems are going to make a serious run, I agree with you wholeheartedly: they’re going to have shorten the playbook and start playing smashmouth. More importantly, though, I think they’re going to have to change the perception that they are still Clintonian Democrats. That is, they will have to be more than just gay- and choice-friendly shills for corporate interests. More New Deal, less NAFTA.
I personally am in favor of global trade with rules and regulations that ensure protections for small business and workers.
Ah, but there’s the rub, OW. Who’s writing the rules for global trade? Who’s got the cash to lobby our senators and reps (both parties) to get them approved? If you’ve never read Thomas Frank’s book (“What’s the Matter With Kansas?”), I highly recommend it. One of the most salient points he makes is that many of the working-class white voters who fled the Dems in the 60s (mostly because of the Civil Rights Act) might come back if they thought the Dems were working in their interest economically. That’s where NAFTA put the Dems behind the 8-ball. With the Dems throwing their lot in with Big Business (at the expense of the little guy) the Rethugs didn’t have to put up a pretense of looking out for that little guy; absent anyone looking out for the little guy, the Rethugs were free to focus on wedge social issues (a la Nixon’s Southern Strategy).
The work to be done now is ensuring fairness and morality in the global marketplace.
There is no fairness in the global marketplace. In fact, for the past century or so our foreign policy has been carried out to make sure that remains the status quo. Even the most ignorant, backwater Bush supporter knows that the bulk of good-paying factory jobs have been shipped to beaten-down, U.S.-friendly-dictator-run Third World countries, and they haven’t seen the Dems fighting against that.
Unless the Dems speak plainly to that issue– and I’m not holding my breath– they’ll have nothing to distinguish themselves other than Not Being Republicans. The wedge issues, plus the fear of terrorism, will continue to work their magic on the Republican base, and millions of voters will continue to stay at home.
I read Frank’s book, and the mistake he makes – and the one you do – is this: the factory is dead. Democrats think if we just appeal to factory workers and unions we can recapture the glory days and get all those voters. That’s as deadend a strategy as simply trying to GOTV in urban areas instead of also converting suburbanites to vote Democratic. We are increasingly a white collar nation, and the white collar worker is the future of America – and the Democratic party.
Small businesses want global trade as much as MegaCorp, and stand to gain from it as well. A business in Kansas can sell a product to Tokyo as well as one in New York or L.A. nowadays, and that isn’t changing. Simply aligning ourselves with traditional Dem constituencies and hoping that will fix the problem is a losing strategy. We need to create new Democrats, not unearth old ones.
Giving away the store piece by piece does not equal sales.
The US (not just under Bush) has been too eager to overlook trade imbalances in countries that restrict imports.(The flip side of protectionism)
for the sake of foreign relations. Those countries who continue to have it both ways will exploit the advantage as long as we allow it. Something that could be done for american workers who have not heeded the 40-years of warnings of these events could be student loans t for training in a profession that has a future. Widget building in the US by human hands is no longer affordable.
This trackback to a NYtimes article 10/04 is like Susskind had a scrying mirror. Especially the part that looks at Bush’s ‘Burning Bush’ decision making process.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=890a96189e162076&ex=1255665600&partner=rssuserland
Ashas has been said elsewhere: Bruce Bartlett. ‘Nuff said.
Carville may have an answer: The Simian Strategy
Bruce Bartlett is known by people on the right (such as myself) to be no friend of GWB.
As you can tell from the article, he is particularly offput by Bush’s religiosity.
Many conservatives have grave doubts about the connection between religion and politics (unlike myself), but they held their noses and voted for Bush, anyway.
I thought you knew there was no love lost between Bartlett and Bush
Ashas has been said elsewhere: Bruce Bartlett. Nuff said.
?
Frank;
You are truly an enigma. Why would I know or care if there is any love between Bartlett and Bush?
I didn’t say you should; I said I thought you knew. Incidentally, “no love lost” is an idiom.
I read Frank s book, and the mistake he makes – and the one you do – is this: the factory is dead.
True, and Frank’s work embraces a union-based model that never really existed to begin with. But the idea that blue-collar has been replaced by white-collar is also fiction. It’s been replaced by uniforms and service-sector dress codes.
My guess is that is has been replaced, as well, by a less regulated, and ceaper world – wide work force.
Increase the price (wages + benefits), and you lower the demand (for union workers).
Economics 101
We are increasingly a white collar nation, and the white collar worker is the future of America – and the Democratic party.
Interesting. Let me just ask:
WHAT WHITE COLLAR WORKERS???
We are losing white-collar and middle management jobs hand over fist. (Delphi just went bankrupt because they couldn’t cut salaries in half.) The only jobs that are relatively safe are those that can’t be outsourced, those that depend on face-to-face contact — nurses, janitors, teachers, clerks — service jobs. And you can’t live on what a service job pays. (cf. Nickel and Dimed.)
Now I don’t know what the answer is, but I feel we need to take these things into account:
High gas prices and oil rigs down will mean it costs more to ship goods and services. There could be opportunities here for smaller factories (see FAB) in local areas (see Relocalize Now!). But that takes a huge investment of time and money. It may not be possible at this date.
Somebody once said there are never enough jobs, but there’s always plenty of work. The trick is to make that work pay off.
Nickel and Dimed
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805063897/qid=1129217379/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8260522-3458449?v=glance&s=books
FAB
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465027458/qid=1129217591/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8260522-3458449?v=glance&s=books
Relocalize Now
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0865715459/qid=1129217656/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-8260522-3458449?v=glance&s=books
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