Dry wit Sarah Vowell’s cultural commentary is always worth a read. But on Saturday she hit on a couple of political messaging angles Dem ad-makers should think about. Here’s a clip from Vowell’s op-ed in the New York Times:

During a gubernatorial debate in 2006, Governor Palin claimed that if her daughter, then 16, were impregnated as the result of being raped, Ms. Palin would hope that the girl would “choose life,” which is a polite way of saying she would expect a tenth-grader to give birth to her rapist’s baby.
Here’s a not-so-polite fact about the United States: According to Amnesty International, a woman is raped here every six minutes.
Like his running mate, Senator McCain has been a true-blue opponent of abortion rights during his political career. Unlike his running mate, he supports the right to terminate a pregnancy in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. So does President Bush. During a Republican primary debate in 2000, Senator McCain denounced Mr. Bush for being in favor of the exception but not having the guts to push for putting it in writing in the official Republican Party platform that year.
This year, Senator McCain himself didn’t bother to stand up to the right wing of his party to insist that the rape and incest exception be written into the Republican Party platform. Just as he failed to stand up to the right wing of his party in choosing his running mate. His first choice was reported to be Senator Joseph Lieberman, a man who stood up to the Democratic Party to the extent that he isn’t even a Democrat anymore.

Some promising memes brewing here. First. McCain dumps his ‘principles’ whenever he smells an opportunity for more power (see Vega’s Aug. 6 post at TDS for more on this angle). Second, he backs down from political bullies. Third, If anything should happen to 72-76 year-old McCain during his term, President Palin — it’s difficult to even think the words — will appoint Supreme Court justices who favor her extremist positions on outlawing abortions, and perhaps her troubling ideas about book-banning.
As our recent staff post reported, healthy majorities of single women of all races are already tilting toward Obama. Some well-targeted ads (women watch more TV and surf more net than men) could help awaken more single women to the disturbing prospect of the McCain-Palin policies on abortion, and just might cut a little slice out of McCain’s big lead lead among white married women.
And Dems concerned about how the Catholic vote factors into the Palin effect, and anyone struggling with abortion as a personal and political issue, may find helpful our veep nominee’s comments on Meet the Press. As Biden explained,

It’s a personal and private issue. For me, as a Roman Catholic, I’m prepared to accept the teachings of my church. But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths–Protestants, Jews, Muslims and others–who have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They’re intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life–I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.

The entire transcript and netcast of Biden’s Sunday appearance on MTP are highly recommended for illuminating the stark contrast in the gravitas of the Dem and GOP veep nominees — and, more importantly, for what it says about the presidential nominees who selected them.

This was a great convention — the best I’ve ever seen. I was a tad worried about some of the innovative format ideas. But, in the end. they all worked together to create a highly positive overall impression of a candidate, campaign and political party who have their stuff together.
My one quibble about Mile High last night: The 20 or so generals and admirals who lined up for Obama was a jaw-dropper. But It seems a waste to bring them all together like that and have America hear from only one of them. One of McCain’s strong cards is a widely-held perception that he and the GOP are more qualified to protect our national security, and his campaign will hit hard on that meme going forward. These military leaders could do a lot more to increase confidence in our nominee’s national security creds. I do hope somebody has the good sense to videotape a bunch of them saying why they support Obama.
Other than that, boffo!

The Denver doings Wednesday night were surprisingly impressive. I was expecting a pretty slow night, if not a yawner, hoping for maybe a good Biden speech. Instead I was glued to the tube throughout, watching one powerful presentation after another, with few slow spots. Some of the shorter presentations were exceptional — Tammy Duckworth and Admiral John D. Hutson especially. Hutson, a self-described lifelong Republican until he recently joined the Democratic Party, was not an exciting speaker stylisticly. But his content was laser-sharp — his five word riff “Arrogance Abroad, Incompetence at Home” is about as good a short meme as we’re going to get for the Bush-McCain continuum.
Bill Clinton was polished, eloquent and delivered the requisite endorsement of Obama with panache. The Biden package — video bio, son’s intro, and speech — was very well-done and his speech was heartfelt and fierce. It’s hard to imagine Romney holding up well in comparison. The lesser-known Pawlenty may be a little harder for Biden to target. Obama’s surprise visit, joining Biden onstage after his speech, was a huge hit with the delegates and a nice capper for the evening.
C-SPAN proved a good way to go. You don’t have to listen to any lame commentary telling you what you see and you get to experience the spectacle unfiltered. Also the colors seem more vivid than the PBS broadcast.
Kudos to the program organizers for producing a tight, mediagenic convention program for Wednesday night. All in all, an excellent set-up for the big day.

Paul Begala and Chris Bowers lead the charge today, calling for a more attack-focused Democratic convention. At OpenLeft, Bowers asks,

…Other than Pelosi’s less than convincing “John McCain is wrong” call and response, do we have any plans to attack John McCain during this convention? I haven’t heard any of it so far. It would be a massive waste of an opportunity if we don’t really open up on him in this election. For example, the Carter video could have shown Bush and McCain sharing cake when Hurricane Katrina struck. But we decided to take a pass.

A sentiment amplified by Desmoinesdem in the comments following Bowers’ post:

I also feel like we need to build a strong narrative against McCain this week. The Obama campaign has issued a tough statement here and run a state-specific negative ad there, but they are not building a concise case against McCain comparable to McCain’s case against Obama (shallow celebrity politician who’s not ready to lead).

Writing at HuffPo, Begala adds,

This is a no-brainer. The political press is abuzz with overblown stories of a Clinton-Obama rift. There are some hard feelings, but less than you’d think, given the closeness of the primaries. But I have a seven-point plan for uniting the Obama and Clinton wings of the party:
Attack, attack, attack, attack, attack, attack.
Attack.
…If the Democrats do not spend the remaining days of their convention — hell, the remaining days of the campaign — in an all-out assault on the ruinous Bush-McCain policies, they will lose.
I was for Hillary in the primaries, but when she endorsed Sen. Obama, I proudly sent him a check for the legal maximum. On the memo line of the check I wrote, “FOR NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ONLY.” No matter what minor difference Hillary and Barack had, they pale in comparison to the corruption, incompetence, dishonesty and criminality of the Bush-McCain Republicans.
Democrats need to attack as if the future, the country and the planet depend on it. Because they do.

Begala and Bowers echo a concern shared by many Dems, including myself — that the Dem Convention may squander too much precious air time on “getting to know the candidates” and all that. Begala is also concerned by reports that Dem keynoter Mark Warner will avoid attacking the GOP ticket because he needs Republican votes to win his Senate seat:

To be fair, Warner is running for the Senate in a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson. Tearing into war hero McCain while running in a state full of military families could prove problematic for a guy whose reputation as governor was made on bipartisanship.
Democrats should not have put Warner in this bind. They should have chosen as their keynoter someone who, like Pelosi, can give voice to the anger and anxiety of hundreds of millions of Americans. Someone who will show McCain to be the Bush clone that he is.

Michelle Obama did an outstanding and necessary job last night. But Bowers and Begala are right that it’s time to engage the adversaries with the most withering attacks Dems can mount. Here’s hoping the Dems will draw some blood tonight, and that Warner will realize he needs to show some mettle to this audience if he wants to be perceived as a potential president. Certainly Senator Clinton has never been a wallflower about attacking the opposition. Dem leaders should not have to be reminded that this is the largest television audience they will get between now and November 4. We can be sure that the GOP convention will waste little time before they go on an all-out offensive against our ticket.

As our staff post reported yesterday, the latest New York Times/CBS poll indicates the selection of the vice presidential running mate is an important factor in the ballot decision of 25 percent of voters.
Any choice Obama made would disappoint some important constituency. And it may well be that the net number of votes gained and lost as a result of different choices wouldn’t vary all that much regardless.
The selection of Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate is nonetheless a solid choice that should help with some pivotal constituencies, including Catholics, the white working class, seniors and those concerned about Obama’s foreign policy experience. Biden’s home state, DE, doesn’t add any electoral votes. But his Scranton roots should help Obama shore up central PA and perhaps NJ, all of which Obama had a good chance of winning anyway.
Biden also gives Obama a savvy running mate, who can help Obama target McCain’s weak and strong spots more effectively. As the Senate’s top foreign policy expert, Biden will be in position to provide helpful counsel to Obama on a daily basis. Biden also has a gift for quotable sound bites and an ability to explain policy in simple terms without talking down to voters. I wouldn’t worry too much about gaffes, despite his “clean and articulate” blunder in the primary season. Biden is too smart not to have learned from it. The ’88 plagiarism controversy? I think most voters know that top politicians use speechwriters, and they sometimes screw up. Besides McCain’s “cross in the sand” story’s similarities to Solzhenitsyn’s account makes it unlikely McCain’s campaign will make too much of it.
The selection of Biden may hurt some with women, southerners and Virginians in particular. Kaine would have helped more with Virginia, and perhaps the south. As Ed noted yesterday, however, Obama has some strengths in VA that could provide a margin of victory, especially if Webb, Kaine and Warner campaign energetically for Obama. As for the south as a whole, Biden’s selection won’t help much, except possibly in FL, where Biden may help elevate seniors’ comfort level with Obama. It may be that Biden as veep may chill Obama’s southern strategy altogether. Obama can win without any southern states, but only if he wins just about all of the other swing states. As I noted in my 8/19 post, no Democrat has ever been elected without winning some southern states, and Obama has to win 72 percent of electoral votes outside the south if he is shut out in the region.
Perhaps the toughest problem posed by the Biden choice is winning the votes of women who are disappointed that a woman was not selected. As Ed pointed out yesterday, the NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll indicated that “among self-described Hillary Clinton supporters, 52% say they now support Obama, while 21% support McCain and 27% are undecided.” Worse, when that poll was taken, there was still hope that Obama would pick a woman running mate.
The Dem ticket’s strong pro-choice advocacy will help with women. Dems should miss no opportunity to point out that McCain supports criminalizing abortion. Few women, even some of those who have doubts about abortion, want women who have abortions to be subjected to criminal penalties.
The important question facing the Obama campaign now is, what can be done to win more support from women and southerners. Obama’s GA and NC campaigns may be crippled by the Biden selection. Perhaps the only hope in these states is that the African American and youth voter registration surges are big enough to justify continued investment of campaign resources. If Sam Nunn and Jimmy Carter campaign vigorously for Obama in GA, it might help with some white and conservative voters.
One thing that might help with both the south and women is to name his cabinet before the election, and make sure that women and southerners get a healthy share of the top posts. Paul Waldman suggested naming his cabinet at the same time as his veep pick. But Obama could still release cabinet nominees slowly between now and the election to good effect. It would give him a half-dozen or so days when he could dominate the news in a positive way, and it could make McCain look disorganized in comparison. Imagine the splash, for example, if Nunn and/or Clinton were Obama cabinet nominees going into November 4. The Democratic party is loaded with impressive women and southern office-holders. Obama can benefit by leveraging this resource before the election, and it would show a bold, innovative spirit that would inspire confidence in the electorate..

A little addition to the veepstakes hysteria Ed referenced yesterday: I was roundly ridiculed for floating an idea in conversation with friends a few months ago, probably with good reason. Now, Michael Moore is putting it out there via email and his website post “Caroline: Pull a Cheney! An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy (head of the Obama VP search team) from Michael Moore.”
Yes, I know. An Obama-Kennedy ticket would be doubling down on the perception that the Dem ticket’s experience is limited. But jeez, the idea is appealing on a number of levels. As Moore puts it in a couple of nut graphs:

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we’ve known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all….That person, Caroline, is you.
…And Barack, if you’re reading this, you probably know that she is far too humble and decent to nominate herself. So step up and surprise us again. Step up and be different than every politician we have witnessed in our lifetime. Keep the passion burning amongst the young people and others who have been energized by your unexpected, unpredicted, against-all-odds candidacy that has ignited and inspired a nation. Do it for all those reasons. Make Caroline Kennedy your VP. “Obama-Kennedy.” Wow, does that sound so cool.

Kennedy’s gender is a plus, although you couldn’t blame feminists for complaining that more experienced women were passed over. Yet, Kennedy, more than anyone in her family, evokes the passionate spirit of hope her father, JFK and uncle RFK embodied so elegantly. She has natural dignity and real class (in the positive sense of the term), elements in short supply in American politics. She is extremely bright, intensely patriotic and deeply concerned about civil liberties. Her speech to the 2000 Democratic convention was a smash, as much because of her ability to personify the renewal of lost hope as the content of her speech. Talk about mediagenic. Romney or Pawlenty would look like moral midgets compared to her, and it would be fun to watch exasperated Republicans try to attack her without looking creepy.
When called to serve, the Kennedys have always answered. But no, it ain’t gonna happen, since Ms. Kennedy seems too level-headed to do crazy, even if Obama’s team went for it. It’s too late for a trial balloon to do any good, with Obama’s decision expected any hour now. Yet Moore’s proposal resonates because Kennedy symbolizes a time when all Americans could be rightly proud of their President, however idealilzed were our perceptions back then. She bears that precious memory for the nation with both humility and poise.
It’s not too late, however, to put Ms. Kennedy’s impressive skill set to good use. If Obama decided to embrace the interesting idea put forward by Paul Waldman, to name his cabinet and some key appointees in advance of the election, or even if he does it later in keeping with tradition, Caroline Kennedy would make an excellent U.N Ambassador. Having her represent us at the United Nations would signal that America is determined to earn the respect and admiration of the world, not through militarism and intimidation, but by providing moral leadership and a higher level of humanitarian concern.
It’s often said that America lost some of its spirit when JFK was assassinated, and the sense of loss deepened with the assassinations of MLK and RFK. Obama’s pending nomination has helped reclaim some of that spirit. A leadership role like that of U. N. Ambassador for Ms. Kennedy would be yet another step forward — and it would also be smart politics.

Bob Moser makes the case about as good as it can be made, so his pre-convention Salon post “How Democrats can take back the South,” along with Thomas Schaller’s response, is a must-read for Dems focused on electoral vote strategy. The debate also has implications for the veepstakes in both major parties.
Moser’s Salon piece is based on his new book, “Blue Dixie: Awakening the South’s Democratic Majority,” which has gotten a “highly recommended” review from Publisher’s Weekly. A couple of nut graphs on southern demographic shifts from his Salon post provide a taste:

Thanks to a historic “re-migration” of millions of African Americans back South, combined with the country’s fastest growing Hispanic population, the political potency of Southern whites has started to shrivel. From 1990 to 2005, the white population percentage dropped in every Southern state — and in many places, the change portended revolutionary political shifts. The state of Texas is now officially “majority minority,” with large chunks of the South following suit. Georgia went from more than 70 percent white to less than 60 percent just between 1990 and 2005. Nashville, of all places, has been dubbed America’s “new Ellis Island” due to its large influx of not only Hispanics, but Kurds and Somalians (among others). These seismic demographic shifts, which the Census Bureau expects to accelerate over the next few decades, mean — among a world of other things — that the Democrats’ “threshold” of white votes needed to win Southern states (in Mississippi, for instance, it’s 31 percent with average black turnout) will keep falling for the foreseeable future.
The Southern swing voters of the future — and of 2008, at least in the closely competitive states of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida — bear scant resemblance to the Bigfoot of yore. That’s not simply because fewer of them are Caucasian: It’s also because white Southerners’ political attitudes are undergoing a profound generational shift. The backlash whites, their anti-liberal politics forged in the ’60s and whipped to a froth by the GOP’s wedge issues in almost every election since, are losing members by natural attrition every day. (Rev. Falwell and Jesse Helms, RIP.) Younger Southerners — and the millions of college-educated Yankees who’ve migrated south for bigger houses and better jobs in recent decades — hold more moderate views on cultural and “moral” issues than their elders did. They support withdrawal from Iraq and strong environmental policies. And on economic issues, they lean populist: Like black Southerners, most whites in Dixie now support government action to reduce income inequities; increased regulation of business; more spending on education, Social Security and healthcare; and higher taxes to help the poor.

Moser is more concerned with long-range strategy here than how the Dems will do in southern states on November 4. Schaller’s response focuses more on Moser’s embrace of “economic populism” as a wedge that can help Dems in the south. Schaller argues,

…Economic populism tends to be more useful politically in the post-globalization Rust Belt, or the new growth economies of the Far West, than in the South. Though the South is the nation’s poorest region and millions of Southerners of all races are hurting financially, the conclusion reached by many demographic analysts, myself included, is that the deep-seated social conservatism and widespread resistance to race-blind redistribution in the South serve as powerful bulwarks against the curative effects of economic populism.
…Unfortunately, the prescriptions Moser offers in “Blue Dixie” are closer to overstated hopes, often based on anecdotal evidence contradicted by broader patterns or wholesale data. If economic populism were an untapped electoral reservoir in the South, Southern state budgets would not be among the lowest per capita in the country, unions would not be weaker than in any other region, and working-class white Southerners would already be joined at the hip with working-class black Southerners as the backbone of the most Democratic region in America. But these are not Southern political realities, and wishing them so will not make them so.

Schaller concedes that the Dems have a shot at winning Virginia and elsewhere he has included Florida as a possibility. But he sees Dem resources poured into winning the electoral votes of other southern states as a waste. On balance, he may be right for this cycle, although Georgia is a possibility if Obama picks Nunn and Bob Barr runs strong.
I think he overstates his case, however, in arguing that the 2006 elections indicate Dems have limited prospects for winning congressional, state and local elections in the south. He argues that “85 percent of all new-seat gains in Senate, House, gubernatorial and state legislative races in 2006 came outside the 11 states of the former Confederacy.” Those 11 southern states are 22 percent of the states. If they account for 15 percent of new gains, that’s a little short, but hardly hopeless. And even if Obama loses all the southern states electoral votes, the increased African American registration should help Dem congressional, state and local candidates. Further, as Ed Kilgore noted of the ’06 elections,

In a quirk of the electoral calendar, only five Senate seats were up in the South (accepting Schaller’s definition of “the South” as the 11 states of the old Confederacy), four held by Republicans. Democrats won two, for a net gain of one senator, which is a perfectly proportional contribution to the conquest of the Senate. Similarly, there were six gubernatorial contests in the South, five in seats held by Republicans. Democrats won two for a net gain of one, again a proportional contribution to the national results. (Democrats also won the single Southern governor’s races held in 2004 and in 2005, which means they now control five of the 11 executive offices.)

At present, Democrats hold majorities of both houses of the state legislatures in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and West Virginia (and one House in TN and KY), as well as the governorships of Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Dems hold two U.S. Senate seats in both Arkansas and West Virginia, and one each in Virginia, Florida and Louisiana.
Schaller’s position on southern electoral votes gets some support from the latest poll by The Charlotte Observer/NewsChannel 36, which indicates that 43 percent of North Carolinians believe McCain would be a better president, compared to 38 percent for Obama. McCain’s 5 percent advantage increased when respondents were all registered voters. As Taylor Batten concludes in his Charlotte Observer report on the poll,

By most estimates, John Kerry won no more than a third of the white vote in North Carolina in 2004, according to exit polls. If Obama were to win 30 percent of the white vote and 95 percent of the black vote in North Carolina, blacks would have to make up about 31 percent of the electorate for him to win. They represent less than 21 percent of all registered voters.

Still, Dems are not giving up NC, as Katharine Q. Seelye reports in her New York Times update on Obama’s NC campaign:

Mr. Obama has spent more than $1.9 million on television commercials here since mid-June. He has opened 16 offices in the state since early July…His blueprint calls for deploying 625 teams, of four to six volunteers each, to blanket the state’s 2,762 electoral precincts. So far, more than half the teams are in place, each with captains who are committed to contributing at least 10 hours a week. Almost 6,000 volunteers are actively engaged to some degree…Obama headquarters in Chicago would not confirm the number of paid staff members it had in the various states, but the number in North Carolina is believed to be close to the estimated 150 it has deployed in another battleground state, Missouri, where Mr. McCain is two points ahead.

Regarding NC voter participation demographics, Seelye adds,

In 2000, blacks made up 17.3 percent of the vote, and in 2004 they made up 18.6 percent, according to the state elections board. To win this year, by Mr. Jensen’s calculations, Mr. Obama needs blacks to make up 23 percent of the electorate while also winning at least 35 percent of the white vote. Others say he may need more.
So far, the rate of black registration (up 9.8 percent over 2004) is outpacing white registration (up 4.6 percent), but at the current rate blacks would make up only 20 percent of the electorate.

And, although both Gore and Kerry received no electoral votes in the 11 southern states, Dick Polman notes in the Athens Banner-Herald,

…No Democrat ever has won the presidency without capturing some Southern states. This year, the Old Confederacy holds 153 electoral votes. Nationwide, there are 538 electoral votes on the table. Do the math. If Obama cedes Dixie, he has to win 72 percent of the electoral votes everywhere else. And that’s one reason Howard Dean, the party chairman, has long been touting the importance of a “50-state strategy” to ensure a broader playing field.

Meanwhile the Obama campaign continues to invest heavily in VA, NC, GA and FL at the expense of close campaigns in other swing states. We can be sure only that Obama’s southern strategy is a major gamble that will go down as a colossal blunder or a stroke of genius.

In his column at WaPo‘s ‘The Fix,’ Chris Cillizza discusses Senator McCain’s latest veepstake trial ballon. Cillizza quotes McCain:

I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party…And I also feel that — and I’m not trying to equivocate here — that Americans want us to work together. You know, [former Pennsylvania Governor] Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out…I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a — albeit strong — but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that.

Cillizza sees it as a genuine veepstakers trial baloon. My guess is that what McCain is really up to here is trying to cool out pro-choice GOP women and PA Republicans, since he still harbors hope that he can be competitive in that state. Ridge will almost certainly get a big cabinet job if McCain wins. But putting a pro-choice veep on the ticket could open up a big can of ugly at the GOP convention, with angry ‘pro-lifers’ giving bitter interviews to anyone who will listen.
Also, Seema Mehta and Maeve Reston caught a revealing comment by McCain in their L.A. Times post, “Sounds like Tom Ridge is out of the VP picture” :

…Conservatives scoffed at the notion that McCain, already viewed with suspicion in some conservative circles, would choose a running mate who supports abortion rights. And McCain hinted Monday, perhaps unintentionally, that Ridge might not be on his short list.
During a visit to a General Electric plant in Erie, Pa., with Ridge in earshot, McCain was asked what he would do in his first 90 days in office. He replied, “Call Tom Ridge to Washington from whatever vacation he’s taking and get him to work.”

McCain is clearly worried about losing the votes of pro-choice women in the general election, even though he has cast his lot with a strong anti-choice position. He doesn’t want to discuss his position regarding criminalizing abortion in any detail because it could be a huge loser, with the rapidly-growing single women demographic and what polls show about their views on abortion-related issues.
Dems have much to gain by making sure the public, especially women swing voters, understand that he favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and more Supreme Court justices who support criminalizing abortion. At some point during the campaign, he should be asked straight out “Do you favor criminal penalties for women who have abortions?” Letting him get to November 4 without answering this question on camera would be the real crime.

Although the media is fixated on the implications of the Edwards mess in the context of the current election, it also helps bring into focus a problem of longer-term significance that has been overlooked.
In John Edwards, we had a candidate who offered what was arguably the best package of reforms benefitting working people in decades. I still believe his concern was sincere, that he had some genuine compassion for those who didn’t have basic economic or health security. Yet at the same time, he was willing to risk getting his Party — the one party than can rise to this challenge — crushed in the presidential election by revelations of his sloppy personal life.
I’m sure Edwards rationalized it with the argument that he could do a lot of good if he got elected. But it’s not merely appalling that he would risk having his Party trashed. For me it’s a disturbing revelation of the underlying fragility of the Democratic Party. When even our better candidates have so little regard for the Party as an institution, what have we got?
The examples of Bill Clinton and Gary Hart prove that Edwards was not such an exceptional case in this regard. Earlier Democratic (and Republican) candidates knew that the media would give them a free pass. I’m just hoping Senator Obama is the exceptional case — a candidate who not only has his personal life together, but who also has enough respect for his party (as well as his family) that he would never jeopardize it so casually.
Not to let Edwards, Clinton or Hart off the hook for their personal responsibility. But party loyalty is pretty shallow across all demographic groups. Yes, the percentage of self-identified Democrats has increased significantly recently and the percentage of those who have a “favorable” view of the Democratic Party has increased. But only about a third of voters i.d. themselves as Dems, and evidently party i.d. doesn’t resonate very deep.
You have to go back to the FDR era to find a time when party loyalty was a strong value among many Democrats. Back then, a healthy majority saw the Democratic Party as a reliable champion of their interests, and a lot of the credit goes to FDR’s leadership. Reagan usually gets the cred for the GOP’s inroads into the working class, but really it was Eisenhower who laid the foundation and blurred party lines.
FDR had the benefit of a growing union movement to support his party. In Europe, stronger union movements have delivered better wages, benefits and working conditions, and European unions have helped empower European progressive parties. Strengthening Democratic party loyalty will also require rebuilding America’s trade union movement. Until that happens, my guess is that efforts to invoke ‘party discipline’ will have limited success.
To make this happen, unions must do a better job of informing the public about organized labor’s vital contributions. For example, why the hell is there no AFL-CIO TV network offered in my cable package? There should also be more creative membership options for unorganized service and white collar workers for unions to grow and become strong again.
On another track, the Obama campaign, with its elements of a social movement offers hope that we can begin to deepen party loyalty among Democrats. But much depends on the depth of his personal commitment to strengthen unions if he gets elected. The Democratic Party also needs a more aggressive campaign on its own behalf. We are seeing lots of candidate ads. But you don’t see many ads stating the Party’s commitment to needed social reforms. People need to know that the ‘big tent’ doesn’t mean Dems have amorphous values.
In a couple of weeks, the Democratic Party will convene for our quadreniial pep rally, culminating in a powerful, historic moment when Senator Obama accepts the nomination as the nation’s first African American presidential nominee on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Obama and the Democratic Party will enjoy a surge of support, and hopefully, some of it will last through November 3. On day one after the election, that great energy driving the Obama campaign should be channeled into strengthening the Democratic Party.

In case anyone doubts Senator John McCain’s proclivity for callous narcissism and his campaign’s inclination toward vicious hackery, I refer you to the statement, via HuffPo, of Kathy Hilton, mother of the McCain-dissed Paris Hilton.

I’ve been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

And in case you wisely tuned out the buzz surrounding the McCain ad that prompted the response, McCain said he was ‘proud’ of the ad, which trashed two fellow Republicans in a silly, ineffectual attempt to diminish the gravitas of Senator Obama by unconvincingly associating him with two ‘Hollywood train wrecks.’ “All I can say is we’re proud of that commercial,” the GOP nominee-apparent told a town hall meeting.
Yes, the ad insults two Republicans. Ms. Hilton’s parents reportedly contributed $4,600 to the McCain campaign, no less. Ms. Spears has been captured on videotape touting her support for President Bush. Such is the gratitude and loyalty they get from the leader of their party.
The mean-spirited ad reveals McCain’s callousness in 3-D. Yes, many feel that Spears and Hilton have often behaved like superficial, immature air-heads. But would it be too much to ask that an aspiring leader of the free world show a little more dignity and compassion toward them and others who may have psychological problems or substance-abuse issues?
It may be that McCain and his team didn’t know they were trashing fellow Republicans. If so, that would be very sloppy research and compelling further proof that McCain is sorely lacking in management skills and as a judge of character and abilities of those who he would select to run the government. In any event, McCain’s misguided hubris about the celebrity ad provides yet another indication of his lousy judgment.
It’s McCain’s campaign that is the real train wreck, and the most charitable explanation is that the engineer is asleep at the switch.