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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: October 2007

Lessons From MA-5

E.J. Dionne has a nice wrap-up of the buzz coming out of Tuesday’s special congressional election in Massachussets, in which Democrat Niki Tsongas won a less-than-overwhelming victory over Republican Jim Ogonowski.
The “surprise issue” of the election, says Dionne, was illegal immigration, with Ogonowski getting some traction from attacks on Tsongas for supporting in-state college tuition rates for the children of illegals. More generally, Ogonowski’s efforts to separate himself from Bush and congressional Republicans by posing as an anti-Washington “outsider” are likely to provide a template for Republican challengers next year.
But in the end, Dionne suggests, the Republican could not distance himself from the profoundly unpopular Iraq War and Bush’s S-CHIP veto, and those two issues gave Tsongas her crucial advantage.


Rattling the Cup For a Good Cause

I have no idea how many of the readers of this site also read The Washington Monthly magazine, or at least read the blog they sponsor, Kevin Drum”s Political Animal. But they are both special to me
During my first interview for a Washington political job back in the late 1980s, I was asked to define myself ideologically, and replied that I was a “Washington Monthly Neo-Liberal.” My interviewer looked at me as though I had just identified myself with the Rosicrusians or something, but the term did mean something. The Monthly was known as a very effective incubator of young journalistic talent (just look at the alumni list represented by their Contributing Editors, whose current output is continuously displayed on the left side of the magazine’s site), and also as the seedbed of an ideas-based reform movement in the Democratic Party that combined cultural liberalism with a healthy disrespect for the totems of the New Deal programmatic legacy, and a particular focus on civic engagement and government reform. If Gary Hart’s seminal 1984 presidential campaign, which came up a couple of states short of winning the Democratic nomination, had any real home, it was The Monthly.
More recently, under the editorship of Paul Glastris, the Monthly has continued its tradition of attracting good young talent, who have produced some truly important in-depth articles on the underpinnings of the politics of the new century (e.g., Nick Confessore’s definitive analysis of the K Street Project). And I’m very proud that I’ve gotten to do some work for the magazine, on subjects ranging from William Jennings Bryan to Ralph Reed.
And in Kevin Drum, the Monthly is sponsoring one of the best, and definitely one of the most intellectually rigorous, progressive bloggers.
Throughout most of its history, like most political magazines, the Monthly has struggled financially, and that’s why Kevin’s encouraging direct contributions to keep Political Animal alive.
Maybe Paul Glastris’ appearance earlier this week on the Colbert Report will get the nickel and dimes flowing, but I encourage everyone to dig under the sofa cushions and pitch in. The Monthly is one of the few Washington institutions that is never arrogant or conventional, and is always underappreciated.


Disliking Mike

So here’s the best evidence yet of the much-discussed possibility that Mike Huckabee could, despite his money problems, emerge as a viable Republican presidential candidate: he’s getting blasted from the Right. The legendary hard-right activist and direct mail wizard Richard Viguerie has issued a fatwah attacking Huckabee as a “wishy-washy Republican”‘ who is unreliable on both economic and cultural issues.
This is interesting in part because Viguerie might have been expected to Like Mike. Viguerie published an article in The Washington Monthly a year ago that advocated a Republican defeat in 2006 as the best possible tonic for the conservative troops that had been ignored in the Bush-DeLay Washington Republican Establishment. As the only presidential candidate (this side of Ron Paul) willing and able to challenge that establishment, Huckabee has some real conservative insurgent street cred. But his sins of omission and commission as Governor of Arkansas–particularly his “compassionate conservative” tendencies–apparently make him unacceptable, to Viguerie at least, as a vehicle for a resurgance of the heartland Right.


New GOP Dynamics in Iowa

Sam Brownback, whose campaign has generally been considered doomed since his poor finish in the Iowa GOP Straw Poll in August, is reportedly dropping out of the race tomorrow, citing money problems.
This is probably good news for fellow-social-conservative Mike Huckabee, and perhaps even for Mitt Romney.
A new Rasmussen poll of Iowa shows Huckabee at 18% of likely Caucus-goers, one point behind Fred Thompson, and seven points behind Romney.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is doing a quick trip to Iowa, which is spurring all sorts of speculation as to whether he’s modifying his earlier decision to write off the Caucuses. The consensus take seems to be that he thinks it would look bad to finish fourth in IA, and could perhaps sneak into second place with a minimal effort.


A Reminder

Every now and then, all of us political types need to be reminded that we’re not exactly experiencing current events in the same way as most Americans.
A couple of weeks ago, I made a big deal out of three posts on John Edwards by Markos Moulitsas that drew a total of 2400 comments.
Well, earlier this week, Ellen Degeneris’ web site posted a note and a video about her now-famous confrontation with a local animal rescue league over the fate of a small dog named Iggy. Virtually overnight, it attracted 14,971 comments, most of them, naturally, taking Ellen’s side in the dispute.
I guess you could say that Ellen really energized her base, eh?


Partisanship and “Moderates”

In the course of a series of posts about the alleged lack of appeal among Democrats of Barack Obama’s frequent calls for bipartisanship at the new TNR campaign blog “The Stump,” Noam Scheiber poses an interesting question: “Can You Be a Partisan Moderate?”
He answers the question affirmatively, citing Hillary Clinton as an example, but that the question even needs to be asked reflects a common assumption that partisanship is essentially, or at least primarily, a function of sharp ideological differentiation between the parties. And that, historically and empirically, is not necessarily borne out by the evidence.
By most standards, the most viciously partisan presidential elections in our history were during the period between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Populist uprising (1880-1892). By and large, the main issue dividing the parties in those elections was tariff policy. And lest anyone suggest these largely non-ideological contests failed to energize voters, it should be noted that they set a high plateau of eligible voter turnout–ranging from 74% to 79%–far above twentieth-century levels.
A more recent, if general, example of the divisibility of ideology from partisanship is in the contemporary politics of the South. Anyone paying real attention to southern elections these days would have to concede that despite the relative conservatism of many Democrats in the region, campaigns are generally as combative and sometimes down-and-dirty as anywhere else in the country.
And to be much more specific, despite all of Bill Clinton’s supposed “triangulating” and the deals he cut with Republicans on trade, welfare reform, and the budget, anyone who lived through the Clinton administration would have a hard time accepting that this period represented a low point in partisanship, on either side.
One of the sources of this disconnect between theory and practice in terms of the correlation between ideology and partisanship is simply disagreement over the degree of differentiation that is needed to produce partisan energy. For decades prior to 1980, conservatives argued that Republican acceptance of the main tenets of the New Deal drained elections of any real reason to vote for one party over another. And today, some Democrats sincerely believe that their party’s acceptance of, say, a private-sector role in health care or a legitimate U.S. national security role in the Middle East, leaves voters with no real choice and no real excitement over the outcome. Yet voters have less trouble finding significant differences between Ds and Rs.
This is not to say, I must emphasize, that ideologues don’t have legitimate grounds for decrying “moderation” in either party. Agreement between the two parties to fight elections on some issues but not others, even if it doesn’t reduce partisanship, could in theory and sometimes does in practice take important issues off the table. The extreme example was during the period prior to the founding of the Republican Party, when Democrats and Whigs fought violently partisan elections on a foundation of a system that avoided disputes over slavery whenever possible.
But that’s precisely why those on the Left of the Democratic Party today should simply make their case that party “moderates” are wrong on real-life policy grounds, instead of arguing that they aren’t partisan enough, or are cowards when it comes to opposing Republicans. Indeed, when John Edwards suggests (as Barack Obama has come close to suggesting) that the Clintons are part of the same corrupt system that produced George W. Bush, he’s really saying there are some things more important than partisanship, which is undoubtedly true. Confusing this argument, as many netroots activists have done, by asserting that any Democrat who fails to oppose the GOP on every conceivable issue is actually, secretly, indifferent to partisan control of government, requires conspiracy-theory reasoning about the D.C. Democratic Establishment that loses whatever power it has when you start looking at those many Democratic centrists who work and live outside Washington and have no stake in the Beltway status quo.
For that reason, the partisanship-versus-ideology debate in the blogosphere that sites like OpenLeft is promoting is very healthy, even for “centrists.” You can definitely be a highly partisan centrist, and if you take seriously claims that there’s not a sufficient difference between the two parties right now, you can be a bipartisan, nonpartisan, third-partisan, or post-partisan ideologue (that, in fact, is a position that could theoretically justify Barack Obama’s appeals to a new kind of bipartisanship based on a complete overturning of the current system, if he were clearer about the ideological underpinnings of his “new politics”). But the idea that all “centrists” or “moderates” or whatever you choose to call them don’t want to win elections and don’t viscerally dislike the other side, just doesn’t pass the laugh test.


“The Deal”

Also on the intraparty unity front, there’s a fascinating discussion going on over at OpenLeft (a site devoted to making the netroots more of an ideological force in the Democratic Party) spurred by Mike Lux, who suggests that any of the likely Democratic nominees are going to be more “Center” than “Left.” The question he then poses is whether those on the Left are willing to accept a coalition “deal” for limited but real influence over the next Democratic administration, similar in some respects to the “deal” their ideological predecessors struck during the Clinton administration.
So far, the comment thread on Lux’s post seems to indicate general acceptance of “The Deal,” with discussion centering on those issues deemed non-negotiable (typically action on climate change, movement towards universal health coverage, rejection of war with Iran, and refusal to retreat on social issues).
While you are at OpenLeft, you should also check out Chris Bowers’ post, which reviews the lack of any post-Nobel public demand for a Gore candidacy, and concludes Gore is more useful outside the presidential campaign. As it happens, Gore has already made a post-Nobel comment which, though it falls short of full Sherman Statement, indicates a continuing lack of interest in a presidential run.


Pulling Together

In a small but significant sign of progress on the intraparty unity front, Markos Moulitsas hands a brief attaboy to DLC chairman Harold Ford for a recent pattern of combative, pro-Democratic appearances on Hannity and Colmes. So, too, at greater length, does the Fox monitoring site News Hounds.


Defining “Triangulation”

As you may have heard, Barack Obama continued his recent pattern of coded criticisms of Hillary Clinton by denouncing “triangulation and poll-driven politics,” which is being generally interpreted (not least by HRC’s camp) as an attack on her husband’s political tactics and alleged infidelity to progressive principles.
John Edwards has also attacked “triangulation” as part of a broader, yet still heavily-coded, criticism of the Clintons as representing an unprincipled Washington Establishment.
So with HRC’s top rivals both definining themselves in opposition to “triangulation,” it might be a good time to ask: what, exactly, does “triangulation” mean?
Outside politics, “triangulation” is used in geometry, electronics, and gunnery as a general term for locating an object through reference to two fixed points.
In politics, “triangulation” is identified with the 1990s-era international Third Way movement generally, and with Bill Clinton specifically. And it’s pretty much agreed that the term was invented by Clinton advisor Dick Morris to describe the approach used by the Clinton-Gore campaign in its successful 1996 re-election campaign. Indeed, beyond Morris, no one associated with either Clinton has ever, so far as I am aware, used the term; it’s become entirely pejorative.
But what does it mean?
The AP story on Obama’s speech offered this definition: “His reference to triangulation, however, refers to Bill Clinton’s eight years as president when some advisers urged him to make policy decisions by splitting the difference on opposing views.”
Aside from the questionable suggestion that “triangulation” preceded and succeeded Dick Morris’ brief tenure as a Clinton strategist, I’m reasonably sure that anyone connected with Bill Clinton would angrily reject the idea that “splitting the differences” between the two parties was the essence of Clintonism. But the same argument has raged with respect to the related concept of “The Third Way,” which critics from both the Left and Rightviewed as an effort to appropriate conservative policy ideas and political messages, but whose advocates always maintained was an effort to refresh the Left with new policy ideas while refusing to concede whole issue-areas to the Right.
Going to the source himself, Dick Morris did an entire chapter on triangulation in his 2003 book, Power Plays. Here’s how he defined the term he made famous, as explained in a review of the book that I wrote at the time:

“The essence of triangulation is to use your party’s solutions to solve the other side’s problems. Use your tools to fix their car.” Clinton, Morris shows, adopted the longstanding conservative goal of welfare reform as a top item on the Democratic agenda, but developed progressive policies, including higher funding for child care and stronger financial support for working families, to pursue that goal.

So according to Morris himself, triangulation isn’t about compromising on principles or policies, but about preempting conservative wedge issues by addressing them through progressive policies.
It’s no accident that Morris uses welfare reform as an example of triangulation. And so would many Democrats who prefer the pejorative definition of triangulation. Clinton’s 1996 decision to sign welfare reform legislation that a majority of House Democrats had voted against was at the time interpreted by some as a surrender to Republican principles and priorities, and by others as a redemption of his 1992 promise to “end welfare as we know it,” after a reshaping of the legislation (he vetoed two previous versions) to reflect much of his own approach to the issue. The real argument isn’t about Clinton’s subjective intentions, but about whether you think accepting a time limit for public assistance represented an unacceptable betrayal of progressive values, as some of Clinton’s own friends and advisors said at the time (though many have since recanted given the success of the initiative, and Clinton’s efforts after 1996 to eliminate some of the original bill’s restrictive provisions).
Another example of Clintonian “triangulation” you often hear of was his famous statement in the 1996 State of the Union Address that “the era of big government is over,” which a lot of conservatives treated as an ideological victory. But was it? Is “big government” essential to progressive governance? Or was Clinton’s argument that smaller but more efficient government was actually progressive defensible?
And a third example often cited was his advocacy for trade expansion, and particularly NAFTA (another issue where he was opposed by a majority of House Democrats, and by the labor movement). But whether NAFTA was right or wrong (and if anything, Democratic unhappiness with the agreement has increased since 1994), it’s hard to describe Clinton’s position as a “triangulating” surrender to the Right, since he was continuing a pro-trade Democratic tradition that dated back to Martin Van Buren, and included virtually every progressive luminary of the past.
What I’m driving at here is that differences of opinion about “triangulation”–its definition and its propriety–often come down to differences of principle, not differences between principled and unprincipled people. All of Clinton’s supporters and critics would agree that the conditions under which he governed–facing, for six of his eight years as president, a ruthless congressional Republican majority that eventually sought to remove him from office—excused some tactical flexibility. But is that all he represented?
In the end, maybe it no longer matters. Even if Obama and Edwards are attacking a disputable definition of triangulation that may not be historically accurate, I think we’d all agree that we don’t want a Democratic nominee for president who is unprincipled and entirely poll-driven. That’s why I agree with those who encourage HRC’s critics to get more specific, drop the code words, and take on her actual policies as evidence of her actual philosophy. And that’s particularly true of a candidate who has previously defined himself as representing a new generation of progressives who want to get over the tired arguments of the 1990s.