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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:17
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Everyone's second choice (and a lot of peoples' favorite choice) for DNC chair, Simon Rosenberg:
quote:
I have no doubt that in the coming weeks, the conversation about where Democrats need to go and how to get there will grow in intensity - as it should. It is a vital conversation that is essential to our party's future.
For the conversation to succeed in helping us tackle the challenges in front of us, it is crucial that we start first with an accurate assessment of where things stand today.
In the spirit of NDN's continuing mission to help build a better, stronger, winning Democratic party, here is our analysis of where we are. In coming days, we will outline our ideas for a path forward.
Our Challenge: Republicans Ascendant
1. The Republicans have become the dominant national party. They control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. They now also control more governorships, more state legislative chambers and more state legislative seats than the Democrats. They have more political power than any time since the 1920s. Our 62-year run as the dominant Party in America - from 1932 to 1994 - has come to an end. What worked for Democrats for so long is no longer working. We need a new modern strategy that faces squarely where we are, and understands how to craft a new Democratic Majority for the 21st century.
2. The Republican/conservative alliance has built a superior information-age political machine. By investing billions of dollars over 40 years in a vast array of powerful institutions and capacities, the Republicans have changed the national political playing field. Their combination of mature and modern intellectual, political and media capacities is simply bigger, better, more coordinated and more strategic than the arrayed set of institutions on the progressive side. We like to think of it as an information-age Tammany Hall.
Even at the campaign level they have a much more modern model for reaching voters. They began investing heavily in databases and direct one-to-one marketing in the 1970s, and have built a campaign communications system that has much greater ability for "smart" narrowcasting - personalizing messages to specific groups and individual voters and reaching them through specialized communication. Though we made great strides in the last two years, our campaigns are still built around an aging "dumb" broadcast model that blasts a more generalized message to a larger and much less differentiated audience - which in an era of Blackberrys, Amazon.com, Tivo, hundreds of television channels and even radio simply cannot compete with the personal, increasingly iterative, segmented "smart" model used by the other side.
3. As an intellectually-based movement born when the Republicans were a true minority Party, their infrastructure is built on a foundation on the need to persuade. At the very core of their collective institutional ethic is that they must persuade, persuade, persuade. The institutions and leaders were born and grew when few listened to them, let alone agreed. In a recent Washington Post piece, incoming RNC Chair Ken Mehlman talks about their plan to persuade - through issues and message - Republican voters to vote for the President. All of their infrastructure, talk radio, direct mail, and television ads are built around a modern argument about where they want to take the country. Our politics must become much more about sophisticated communication of a compelling message. We cannot assume voters know what we are talking about.
4. 9/11 gave the Republicans an opening that they have adroitly exploited. The recent Republican gains have been much more pronounced at the federal level, than at the state level, where Democrats have gained ground. While there are many issues that play differently at the Federal level, the basket of issues around security are the most electorally salient, and the area of the greatest Republican advantage. Democrats must look hard at the new post-9/11 security environment as a major cause of the recent Republican surge. Particularly study should be made of how these issues may have created their big gains with white women.
5. Bush's brand of conservatism has had a particularly big impact in the South. Often overlooked in the press is that George Bush is the first truly southern Republican incumbent president Democrats have ever faced. While national polling numbers have never shown great strength for Bush, he has helped his party gain disproportionately in areas with high level of social conservatives, particularly the South. Much of the gains Democrats made after 1994 in the South have been reversed. Our Senate losses in 2002 and 2004 were largely in areas of high concentrations of social conservatives. Reversing the very strong gains made by Republicans in the South during the Bush years has to be one of the Democrats' highest priorities.
Bush's politics has been less transformative in the more libertarian Mountain West, where even under Bush we've seen Democrats score significant wins in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and hold strong along the West Coast. In 2004, Bush saw his winning margin decrease in 10 states that he also won in 2000 - 8 of them were the western states Montana, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming.
6. The new Republican momentum with Hispanics is a grave threat. With Hispanics projected to become a quarter of all voters in our lifetimes, Democrats must make reversing the Bush gains with Hispanics one of our highest strategic priorities. In the last two elections, Bush has more than doubled the GOP share of the Hispanic vote, taking Dole's 21 percent in 1996 to 35 percent in 2000 and 40 to 44 percent in 2004. If the Republicans can consolidate Bush's gains, and keep the Hispanic vote in the high 30 to low 40 percent range, Democrats will have a very hard time winning national elections.
However, with NDN's historic $6 million, multi-state Hispanic Project, we also learned in 2004 that when Democrats communicate directly and specifically to Hispanics, we gain ground. With Hispanics only continuing to grow as a percentage of the population, the number of Asian-Americans growing nearly as fast, and African-Americans always remaining an essential part of the winning Democratic coalition, it is clear that NDN's Hispanic Project needs to be replicated across the party as a way of communicating persuasively with minority voters, particularly African-Americans.
Reasons for Optimism
1. Democrats have kept it close in recent presidential elections. Elections may be about winning, but not all losses are the same. Our loss in 2004 was narrow, not a wipeout. A few breaks in Ohio, a few more votes in NM and NV and we have a very different national narrative. We've received 48% or more in the last three Presidential elections, 250-plus Electoral College votes in the last two, and have won more votes in three of the last four. These numbers are not the numbers of a Party deeply out of touch with America, or that far away from the road back.
2. The Democratic brand remains strong. In a poll taken in mid-November, the Democratic Party had a 54%/39% favorable/unfavorable rating, a net positive of 15 points The Republican Party, on the heals of its strong showing, had only a 49%/46% rating, a net positive of 3 points. Despite losing, Kerry won independent voters, 49%/48%, and moderates 54%/45%.
3. While the Washington party was weakened, the Democratic Party's national infrastructure became stronger. As NDN has been arguing for the last two years, we suffer from a capacity gap on our side. Billions of dollars of investment, intrepid entrepreneurs and a forward looking-strategy has given the Republican/Conservatives a superior mechanism to develop and bring their ideas, values and politics to the American people.
In the last two years we've seen progressive investors and our own entrepreneurs working successfully to close the capacity gap. New voices like Air America, Center for American Progress, Media Matters, Democracy for America, the Democracy Alliance, JohnKerry.com, MoveOn, ACT, America Votes, Democracy Radio, a revamped NDN, the influential blogosphere, and a revived and smarter DNC and state parties have given us a much greater capacity to bring our ideas and values to the American people, helping counter the vast message machine on the right.
4. We have the resources we need to compete. Thanks in large part to the leadership of Chair Terry McAuliffe, who worked tirelessly to turn a moribund infrastructure into one that can sustain the party for the 21st century, the DNC outraised the RNC in 2004 for the first time on record. Defying predictions of a fundraising blowout for Bush and the Republicans after the passage of McCain-Feingold, Democrats actually raised and spent $925 million to the Republicans' $822 million in the presidential election. The party and our presidential candidates adapted to the new fundraising reality, capitalized on Internet fundraising, and added millions of new small-dollar donors across the country. We've built a strong and growing donor base to keep our party on solid fiscal ground.
5. Our ground game is the most sophisticated it's ever been. The DNC and the state parties, America Coming Together, the America Votes partner organizations, the labor unions, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign combined in 2004 to create the strongest ground game our side has ever seen. Nearly six million more voters turned out for Kerry in '04 than did for Gore in '02 - 554,000 more in Ohio alone. Our ground operations contacted more voters, in more sophisticated and personalized ways, than ever before. We know how to identify our voters, and how to get them to the polls.
6. We can win back key Bush voters. Bush won in 2004 in part by making gains with white women (particularly married women) and Hispanics - groups that have traditionally been strong sources of Democratic support. Still, he did not win with insurmountable margins, and we still have the opportunity to prevent the Republicans from creating a solid, long-lasting majority. We have won these groups before and we can win them again if we do not take their votes for granted, and instead make a smart, concerted effort to persuade them. Moreover, with a strong message on national security, Democrats can close the gap among white male voters, including those in the South.
7. Democrats are gaining ground at the state level in all regions of the country. The red state/blue state maps that show the 18 states Kerry won in the presidential election only tell part of the story. Despite losses at the Federal level in 2002 and 2004, we won elections at the state and local level in tough places at the same time, with strong candidates and state parties. We flipped governorships to Democratic control in NJ and VA in 2001; in AZ, IL, KS, ME, MI, NM, PA, OK, and WY in 2002; in LA in 2003; and in NH and MT in 2004. We held on to governorships in IA in '02 and WV and NC in `04, despite Bush's wins there, and had encouraging wins in the statehouses in Colorado and Montana. Moreover, we protected Senate seats in IA, LA, and SD in '02 and ND in `04, and won Republican-held seats in AR in '02 and CO in '04. Add all of these recent gains at the state level to Kerry's states in '04, and you see 33 "blue states" (including DC.)
8. The Republicans are not a permanent majority party yet, and they're not proving to the country that they should be. The numbers at the state level show convincingly that while the Republicans have built a sophisticated operation that is winning elections, they have not achieved permanent majority status yet. Nor are they proving to the country that they deserve it. Americans are less prosperous, our country is less safe, and our government is significantly less fiscally responsible than when Bush took office. Iraq has become a massive foreign policy disaster, and the Republican majority in Congress has succumbed to DeLay-style excess. With complete control in their hands, Bush and the Republicans have no one to blame for the results but themselves. By failing to govern successfully, they're leaving the door open for us to present a stark contrast and a winning message to the American people. It's an opportunity for us to win in the near term, not just the long haul.
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He's another centrist reformer, like Dean, but he's not seen as being from the far left by some, and has stronger connections with the Party elites. So, he's seen as acceptable by both camps. I think he'd be a great choice, personally, though not as good as Dean.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:17
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quote:
Originally posted by DanS
34% of the voting public considered themselves conservatives versus 21% liberal. 34% of the vote is a very strong core. |
I've seen this figure alot, and it's misleading. 34% label themselves "conservative" but, when asked about specific programs and policies, many more people favor classic liberal programs than conservative ones.
In other words, what you've got is a significant percentage of the voting public that favors health care reform, campaign finance reform, cutting military spending in peacetime, expanding spending on education, keeping at least some forms of abortion legal, and erecting trade barriers if it means saving American jobs -- and yet calls itself "conservative." 
What that indicates is just what MoveOn suggests -- conservatives and the GOP have been very effective at controlling the discourse, very effective at convincing people that "conservative" is a code word for their own ideology -- when, in fact, that seems not to be the case. I've said it elsewhere: the Dems need to stop playing defense and start defining the terms of the debate -- and defining themselves.
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Shi Huangdi
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Pittsburgh, PA
Apr 1999
time: 00:17
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I think the elections of 2000 and 2004 underestimate the current strength of the GOP. Yes, both elections were close, but the thing people miss is the GOP outperformed how you expect it would do given the circumstances.
In 2000, Gore had the advantage of 8 years of peace and propserity behind. The economy was so good that there should have been a strong advantage for the incumbent party; instead a virtual tie was seen. In 2004, the opposite was true. The economy was widely percieved as being poor, and we were in a bloody war based on questionable pretenses. And yet Bush was able to prevail. The Republicans winning in spit of an adverse political climiate is indicative of their strength as a party.
Ohio is perhaps best demonstrative of this. The Economic circumstance in this were particularly dire, Kerry campaigned on a message of economic populism and of reviving the State's economy. The Democrats had a strong turnout effort in Ohio's cities. And yet, the Republicans were able to prevail in that State nonetheless.
Democrats should also be careful in thinking that they simply need to focus more on populism and communicating that message. Gore in 2000 ran on a populist campaign "The People, not the Powerful" Kerry in 2004 did the same thing, going after Bush heavily on his tax cuts, on health care, and unemployment, even trying to tie in values and patriotism with his populism, saying tax cuts led to underfunded homeland security.
I think the Democratic problem is in many ways a geographic one, the problem of "Red America". It's not that nobody believes in Democratic values and in liberalism. There is a strong core of support for them in the Northeast and on the West coast. But if you look at the States that Bush won, they are all pretty much socially conservative, and for the most part States you would normally expect to go Republican. In addition a number of Kerry's states: MN, MI, WI, PA were close and might have gone to the Republicans under less favorable circumstances for them. Kerry was helped by the fact that the region with the greatest number of swing states, the Great Lakes Region, suffered a particularly bad regional economy this election.
Right now, a Democrat needs to consolidate his own states and pick off a few GOP-leaning states to win. Long term, they will need to find a way to swing some GOP areas towards favoring Democrats.
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Zkribbler
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Los Angeles, CA, USA
Feb 1999
time: 21:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Right now, a Democrat needs to consolidate his own states and pick off a few GOP-leaning states to win. Long term, they will need to find a way to swing some GOP areas towards favoring Democrats. |
Too right.  I've been advocating the Dems concentrate on their issues that are important to White working class voters (55% of the electorate), sometimes known as "Reagan Democrats:" (a) an honest day's pay for an honest day's work, (b) quality public education, (c) affordable health care, (d) secure retirement and (e) a clean environment.
It's also misleading to look a "blue states and red states." The real dividing line is blue counties and red counties. Last election, of the U.S.'s 3,000 counties, Bush won 2,500 and the Dems won 500. But the Dems do well in the cities; the Reps do well in the country, so the total numbers of votes in each are about the same. The Dems need to get more "countrified" ... but I'm not sure how we do that. 
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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Here's the deal with the center: "center" is not an ideology, like left or right. People in the center tend to want things off both the right and left menu -- for example, they tend to want lower taxes, but also to want fairly extensive government services. |
If you want to boil it down even more, it comes to this: Centrists tend to believe that *both* the left-wingers and right-wingers have good ideas. It's just that they don't have *all* the good ideas. IOW, pick and choose, combine and govern. It's that old adage — everyone gets a little bit of something, but nobody gets the whole cake. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, a certain number of folks want the whole cake and, by gosh, if they have to steamroll everyone in their way to get, then so be it.
Gatekeeper
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11-12-2004 01:12
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