Friday, November 26, 2004

The rise of the local parties

Dan Balz has a good article in this morning's Washington Post (link) on the maneuvering going on in the Democratic party with regard to the DNC chairmanship. There are several points in this article that are noteworthy, but I was particularly drawn to the following section:

But there is disgruntlement among some, particularly the heads of the state parties, many of whom feel neglected after a presidential campaign cycle in which just a dozen or so states were targeted by the Kerry campaign. "There is huge frustration that the party broadly defined was not well served," one longtime DNC member said. "The presidential candidate was well served, but in states not targeted by the presidential [candidate], we were completely shut out."

Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party and the leader of the Association of Democratic State Chairs, said: "We're looking for a much more cooperative relationship with the DNC, with much more focus on state parties and on races down the ballot [below the presidential contest]. I'm the chair of a targeted state and I feel that way. Michigan got plenty of attention from the DNC and we're grateful for the financial support, but there's no question we've targeted ourselves into a corner. When you write off states in election after election, you make it harder and harder to win."

Brewer has asked his fellow state leaders to remain neutral for now in the contest to elect a new DNC chairman, in the hope that they ultimately could become the power brokers in deciding who succeeds McAuliffe. The state chairs have begun to invite candidates for the DNC chairmanship to meet in Orlando on Dec. 12 in what will be a potentially pivotal tryout before the February vote. "Together we can have quite an impact, if we choose," Brewer said.

We may be on the cusp of a fundamental power shift in the structure of the Democratic party. Since at least the election of Bill Clinton, the party has been run by a small nexus of power brokers within the Democratic Washington establishment. This nexus' political philosophy was to focus energy and resources on a narrow band of races with the idea of breaking the back of the Republicans at their heart. It was a plan that worked for Bill Clinton, but it has failed pretty much every else it has been tried.

In the process of feeding this national beast, the local parties fell into disrepair. They no longer had the money or the talent to keep their political prospects alive. The money was sucked up by the focus races and the talent was siphoned off by the nexus power brokers.

But this year the local parties have started to wake up and, with a new infusion of grassroots activists, have produced some of the few good stories to come out of this past election. It was at this level that Democrats had the most success, taking back several state houses and winning surprising gubernatorial races (most notably, in Montana).

I take the comments from Mark Brewer as an indication that the state parties have become aware of their power. They may be seeking to play the role of kingmaker in the selection of the new DNC chair. The Dec. 12th meeting with the state party leaders could give us the first indication of how much influence they have and who among the potentials have the best prospect.

This is a positive sign for Dean. One, because Dean was and is the focal point of the rising grassroots/state-party movement. And second, because Dean has a proven ability to win people over to his side in these kind of situations. Recall that Dean was the guy who managed to get both the SEIU and AFSCME heads to endorse him, despite the fact that they had a history of NOT cooperating with each other.

I've always had the sense that Dean was a great coalition builder. The Dec. 12th meeting could be his first opportunity to demonstrate it to the party leaders.

Smearing Dean Supporters

Jonathan Chait in today's LA Times (link):

Let's begin with Howard Dean. Most of us thought that Dean's spectacular defeat in the Iowa caucuses last January meant the end of him and his movement. Instead, it was more like the ending to "Terminator 2," where the evil robot is blasted to smithereens and presumed dead, then the fragments slowly regroup and come to life. As we speak, Deaniacs are reconstituting in their yoga studios and organic juice bars, plotting — in their benevolent, cheerful but fundamentally misguided way — to make Dean the leader of the Democratic Party.

Why would this be such a disaster? Because, remember, the Dean campaign advanced two novel theories about national politics. The first was that Democrats paid too much attention to winning over the center. What they really needed to do was mobilize the base by nominating a candidate like Dean who'd fire up liberals. This turned out to be doubly wrong. Democrats were fired up enough that they didn't need a Howard Dean to inspire them to unprecedented enthusiasm. And a fired-up Democratic base, volunteering and donating at unprecedented levels, was not enough to win.

Second, Dean argued that Democrats didn't really need to engage the cultural issues that Republicans had long used to win white, working-class voters. Instead, Dean argued, it would be better to persuade culturally traditional whites to vote their economic self-interest. But of course, a candidate can't always decide for the voters what issues they should pay attention to. Economics is complicated. Cultural issues are visceral. The presidential election showed pretty decisively that Democrats can't get a hearing on their more popular economic platform if voters don't think their values are in the right place. A secular Yankee like Dean is about the worst possible candidate.

This garbage just makes me livid. Where to start?

  • Anyone who characterizes Dean supporters as attendees of "yoga studios and organic juice bars" demonstrates right from the start that they haven't any idea what the Dean movement was about. I have never gone to a yoga studio and organic juice makes me gag. I don't know any Dean supporter who does either and I was heavily involved in the organization effort here in the Portland area. This "yoga studio and organic juice bar" shit harkens back to the "latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading" crap perpetrated by the Club For Growth's "Back To Vermont" ad (link). That Mr. Chait chooses to buy into Republican stereotypes of Democratic candidates indicates that he is part of the problem, not the solution. How can anyone trust his judgment of the qualifications of Howard Dean when he himself fails the first test in understanding the man and the movement?
  • Chait propagates yet another myth when he said that Dean advocated for a campaign that appealed only to the left. This is yet another fallacious misreading of Dean's campaign. Dean didn't say we shouldn't appeal to the center. He said we should appeal to it by standing up for what we believe in! Dean understood better than any other Democratic candidate that you don't appeal to the center by adopting any particular ideology. You appeal to the center by demonstrating that you believe in your own positions strongly enough to win them over to your side. Does George Bush soften his stances and adopt more left-wing approaches in order to "appeal to the center"? Of course not! He stands proudly on what he believes in and many people in the center reward him for that even if they personally disagree with his position!
  • Dean was one of the first advocates of the idea of appealing to people's values and not just their pocketbook. So for Chait to suggest that it is Dean that is promoting the idea that you can win the middle through an "economic self-interest" argument is the height of absurdity!

Dean is a moderate. Dean's supporters are moderates (as well as leftists). Dean is an advocate for the Democratic program, as opposed to many other Democrats who are advocates for hiding from the Democratic program because doing otherwise would require them to defend it. Dean is an early adopter of Lakoff-style values framing.

Mr. Chait thinks that Dean and his movement are the last gasp of the old left wing of the Democratic party.

Sorry Mr. Chait, but we're already miles ahead of you in this debate. Perhaps it is time you caught up to us?

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Redistrict Illinois

AMERICAblog makes the case.

Visualize a congress without Dennis Hastert and Henry Hyde.

All it would take is Democratic leaders with guts..

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Words

Fail

Voters are the consumers. Politicians are the producers.

There's a fascinating discussion over on MyDD (link) about an article in The New Republic by Christopher Hayes about the undecided voter (link). Hayes explodes several myths about the undecided voter, but one of the biggest is the idea that undecided voters care about issues:

Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the "issues." That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs. Occasionally I did encounter undecided voters who were genuinely cross-pressured--a couple who was fiercely pro-life, antiwar, and pro-environment for example--but such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I'd just asked them to name their favorite prime number.

The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. Think about it: The "issue" is the basic unit of political analysis for campaigns, candidates, journalists, and other members of the chattering classes. It's what makes up the subheadings on a candidate's website, it's what sober, serious people wish election outcomes hinged on, it's what every candidate pledges to run his campaign on, and it's what we always complain we don't see enough coverage of.

But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to.

I developed the theory a few years back that undecided voters are undecided voters because they just don't know what their issues are. Or, as Hayes puts it, they don't have any issues that they think of in political terms. To such a person, politicians who approach them with a laundry list of issues are the ultimate snooze.

I came to the conclusion that politicians can't win over undecided voters by simply determining what they want and then giving it to them. What works better is to simply tell them what they want and to do it in a convincing enough fashion that they will respond, "Yeah, that is what I want!"

Democrats have been making the mistake for years of thinking that if they just find the right hot button issues to push they can get these people to come over to their side. You see them making the same mistake in thinking that all they have to do is use the right code words on issues like abortion and homosexuality.

Democrats have been using focus groups to determine what issues motivate people. Republicans, on the other hand, use focus groups to figure out what messages motivate people. This is perhaps the fundamental reason why Democrats come off as confusing to the indecisive and wishy-washy to the decisive while Republicans appear steadfast and resolved even to those who ultimately disagree with their stance on particular issues.

Put another way: a winner in politics is not someone who figures out what the people want. A winner in politics is someone who can make the people want what the winner already has.

Democrats, in order to win, have to start seeing the voters as the consumers of a political message, not the producers of a political opinion.

Defining victory down

In Deal, Reid's Aide Named to NRC

"In a deal to let 175 of President Bush's nominees take office, an adviser to new Democratic leader Harry M. Reid, the Senate's staunchest opponent of a nuclear waste dump in his home state of Nevada, will be named to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the Washington Post reports.

Roll Call calls it Reid's "first major political victory" as the new Democratic leader.

Hmmm.

Bush gets 175 of his nominees through. Reid gets one of his toadiesadvisers in at NRC. Sounds like a great victory doesn't it?</sarcasm>

It's interesting how our new leaders "first major political victory" is a victory only for the leader and not much else for the rest of the party. Is this why he wanted the Minority Leader job?

My Soldier

This sounds like a worthy effort

Monday, November 22, 2004

More thoughts...

There's been much talk about a Rosenberg/Dean co-chair for DNC, with Simon Rosenberg being the behind the scenes organizer and Howard Dean being the before-the-cameras spokesman. There are good arguments for this, not the least being that Rosenberg is less likely to antagonize the establishment Dems while Dean has more of the public street cred needed to sell the party message.

But I am concerned that such an arrangement would lead struggle between Dean and Rosenberg over just who really is in charge. I understand that the two like each other, but that won't count for much if they start stepping on each others toes or can't work out a mechanism for shared power that will benefit everyone.

I think it would be best for the Dems if they had one person at the top. Whoever that person is has to have the power to do some housecleaning and a split chair might prevent that from happening. That may be the reason this idea is being proposed. A lot of establishment Dems fear that a Dean chairmanship would lead to their losing their position within the party power structure. They may be pushing this split-chair idea out of a simple desire to protect their turf.

When the idea of Dean for DNC chair first came up, I said that Dean should not accept the position unless he is granted the real authority to make real changes. I still hold to that position and thus would recommend against him joining in a power-sharing agreement of this sort. Rosenberg would be a good person to have on board to help Dean re-organize the Democrats. But it should be Dean who holds the ultimate position of authority.

Musings on the Democratic future

What I would like to see is a partnership between Dean and Kerry. Dean as head of the party organizational system, Kerry has head of the party legislative system, but both working with each other to coordinate efforts towards a single unified response to the Republican juggernaut. Dean has the grassroots strength and the proven fundraising skill, but is still lacking in the skills necessary to run the policy apparatus of government. Kerry has proven his fundraising prowess as well (albeit on the backs of former Deaners) and certainly understands the ins-and-outs of running the government from the inside, but he lacks the kind of grassroots organizational capability that Dean has demonstrated.

Dean also trumps Kerry when it comes to promoting the Democratic message.

A Dean and Kerry partnership would allow them to compensate for each others weaknesses. The only problem with such a partnership is that it would give neither of them a clear advantage going into the 2008 race. Such a partnership would require both of them to put party ahead of personal political ambition. I know Dean can do this, he has demonstrated as much during the general election. There is no more loyal Democrat alive today then Howard Dean.

I don't know yet whether Kerry is capable of similar selflessness. But I'd certainly like to see it.

Vilsack Out!

Vilsack won't seek the DNC chair position (link)

DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that he will not seek the chairmanship of the Democratic Party.

"These challenges and opportunities require more time than I felt I could share," Vilsack said in a statement. "As a result I will not be a candidate for DNC chairman."

Well this certainly opens things up doesn't it? As of now it sounds like there are two prominent candidates left for the post. The first is Howard Dean. The second is Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Democrat Network (link). Rosenberg might be an acceptable compromise candidate. He is not viewed by the establishment Dems as being as maverick as Dean and he has a lot of close ties with the progressive forces that have coalesced around Dean (Rosenberg was an early critic of those Democrats who hammered on Dean as being to outside the mainstream). I suspect the Vilsack/Anybody-But-Dean forces will move to Rosenberg now.

Rosenberg at least has the advantage over other alternative candidates in that he himself is not an Anybody-But-Deaner.

If Rosenberg withdraws his name, I don't know who is left who could oppose Dean.

Latest info on DNC chair

A commentator on the DailyKos (link) brings us this bit of reporting from 'The Hotline' (no direct link):

Looking For Clarity At The DNC?

Well, you may not find it via the results of The Hotline's exclusive non-scientific poll of DNC members, conducted 11/15-19.

  • Because of the fluid nature of this DNC Chair campaign, we were careful to start the survey with an open-ended question (i.e. sans candidates). Of the more than 150 DNC members who participated, just two candidates received double-digit support in the open-ended question: Howard Dean and Tom Vilsack, with Dean ahead 17 mentions to 11 for Vilsack.
  • In our 2nd question, we read a list of 12 names and, again, Dean and Vilsack were 1-2 with Dean garnering 45 mentions to Vilsack's 37.
  • Finally, in our 3rd question, we matched up Vilack and Dean in a 2-way and this is where the story changed. Vilsack led Dean 54-46.
While we caution from drawing too many conclusions from our survey (since another 250+ voters did not respond), the trend for Dean is certainly worth noting, i.e., there's clearly an "anybody but Dean" contingent in the party that can be coalesced.

This is deja vu all over again for those of us who went through the Democratic primary season. Dean once again leads in the individual candidate numbers. But on the sentiment of the leadership as a whole, there is still a tough, but not insurmountable opposition to the man.

I say not insurmountable because the fact that a maverick like Dean holds the individual candidate lead is significant. The desire for change in the party is not just at the grassroots level. We have a lot of allies within the leadership itself. I will continue to berate the leadership as long as it continues to demonstrate a feckless nature. But I will remain mindful of the fact that not everyone at the top of the Democratic party is opposed to change.