(NOTE: As explained in an earlier post, this is a guest item from Jonathan Krasno, Associate Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University).
With John McCain the all-but-certain Republican nominee, the obvious question emerges: which Democrat is likeliest to beat him? This, of course, is a purely hypothetical question. John Kerry won the Democratic nomination in 2004 in large part because of the perception that he was the strongest candidate against George Bush. He lost, but we have no way of knowing whether John Edwards or Howard Dean would have done better. The same is true of many of the judgments that people make of candidates. We’ll never know whether Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Barack Obama, whether his foreign policy would work better than hers, and so on. The best we can do make an informed guess. On the question of electability, my guess without question is Obama.
The case for Obama as the strongest candidate comes from simple electoral math. The 30+ primaries and caucuses to date, plus the polls and the pattern of endorsements from red-state Democrats, show that he has more appeal to independents, to a handful of Republicans, and to casual Democrats than does Clinton. Clinton’s support is largely concentrated in core Democrats, the sort most likely to vote in primaries and the reason why she remains in serious contention despite a string of loses. Obama is almost certainly right to claim that he would be more likely to win over Clinton’s voters in the fall than she would be to win over his. Although widely interpreted as a reference to blacks, it is independent and Republican supporters who are most out of her reach. In short, Obama begins with a larger pool of potential supporters, one that encompasses the core Democrats currently on Clinton’s side and extends past them.
The key word in that last sentence is “potential.” The main knock against Obama as a candidate – and the main argument for Clinton – involves his ability to withstand the withering attack to come. Obama has enjoyed a charmed political life, with fawning press and weak Republican opposition. Can he maintain his exalted status a fresh, new voice (for change!) once the campaign really begins? The Clintons, after all, knocked him off his stride for several weeks after Iowa with some hardball tactics, although by South Carolina he managed to turn those tactics against them.
Once the campaign begins, the argument goes, Clinton is better prepared. She has been in the national spotlight since 1992, so she knows what the counterattack will be like and what she has to do to get beyond it. She won’t, like Kerry or Michael Dukakis, be surprised by an attack and lose an early lead. She is not invested in a holier-than-thou image, so she can throw some pretty sharp elbows and do whatever is necessary to win, etc. Furthermore, the strong economy of the Clinton years supposedly gives her a solid claim as the candidate best equipped to deal with recession, especially versus McCain.
All of that would be more convincing if Clinton were a proven vote-getter or a proven campaigner. She ran five points behind Al Gore in New York in 2000, two points behind Elliot Spitzer in 2006. (Her husband, his recent missteps notwithstanding, who is a better politician than she is, never managed to win a majority of votes nationwide.) I live in upstate New York and can confirm that whatever Clinton hatred that remains here is muted, proving that with time Clinton can win over her critics. She does not have the time to lavish attention on the whole country as she has lavished it on New York, to get people who discount her to pay attention. More important, against the toughest political opponent of her career in Obama, she has squandered a huge lead and a dizzying array of advantages. If Obama has run a better campaign for the nomination (aimed at appealing to people who will be swing voters in the general) why should Clinton be seen as the stronger candidate in the fall? It is certainly hard to discount his superior rhetorical skills and the organizational success of his campaign.
Nor does Clinton’s ability to match up against McCain on an array of issues seem like a big deal. One of the things that the exit polls have consistently shown is that Clinton and McCain, arguably the two biggest hawks on each side, have done better than their opponents with voters who favor a quick withdrawal from Iraq. What that suggests, of course, is that voters look at a variety of things besides issues. In Obama’s case it is his uplifting message of hope and change; in McCain’s it is his reputation for honesty. Against either one, Clinton’s mastery of the details of government seems wonkish and uninspired. Given the choice between going into the general election with the master of the economy or the charismatic apostle of change, I would opt for the generic message of changing the friendless status quo.
In other words, the argument for Obama is most electable is based on breadth of his appeal, while Clinton is favored for her supposed mastery of the process of running against Republicans. Of the two, the first seems more tangible and more valuable to me. The potential to bring more Democrats to the polls (especially young ones who could help the party in the future), the potential to win more independents and perhaps more than a sliver of Republicans, the potential to keep the Republicans in disarray rather than healing their divisions for them by nominating an opponent who instantly unites them – all these make Obama the stronger candidate. Obama will be savagely attacked, pulled off his pedestal (along with McCain), and possibly even fatally wounded in the process. But will he end up any more disliked or divisive than is Clinton already? Probably not. The campaign against her is, after all, in the midst of its second decade. It will cost the Republicans tens of millions to try to demonize Obama as effectively as they have demonized Clinton, and there is no certainty they’ll succeed.
One of the common observations about Obama is that he is a high risk, high reward candidate, while Clinton represents a surer thing. The risk is that, with his lack of exposure on the national stage, the bottom could fall out; the reward is that Obama fulfills his potential as a transformational candidate. I do not see him doing any worse than Clinton’s worst. But with the stars aligned for a Democratic victory in November, Democrats can afford to think big. Clinton can win a narrow victory, but only Obama can deliver a landslide.
Editor’s Corner
(NOTE: This item is by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of The Democratic Strategist’s advisory board. It was originally published at The Daily Strategist on February 10, 2008).
Now that Arizona Senator John McCain has all but sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, the first task that faces him is winning over disgruntled conservatives, many of whom were supporting former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries. To that end, McCain gave a conciliatory speech on February 8th at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC, pleading with conservative leaders and activists to unite behind his candidacy.
Meanwhile the two remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are locked in a tight battle that could go on for several more weeks and possibly continue all the way to the Democratic convention. This has led to growing concern among Democratic leaders that a protracted battle between Clinton and Obama could make it difficult to unite the party for the general election campaign.
It is clear that unifying their respective parties will be a key task for both John McCain and the eventual Democratic nominee. But for which party’s nominee will this task be more difficult? The answer to this question will depend in part on how deep the ideological divisions are between supporters of the nominee and supporters of the defeated candidates in each party.
In order to compare the difficulty of the task that John McCain faces with the difficulty of the task that will face either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I compared the ideological preferences of each candidate’s supporters based on data collected in the Democratic and Republican exit polls for California on Super Tuesday. I used exit poll data from California because California was by far the biggest prize in both parties, none of the candidates is from the state, and the primary was hotly contested in both parties.
I calculated the mean score of each candidate’s supporters on a five-point liberal-conservative scale that was included on the exit poll. The scores on this scale were 1 for very liberal, 2 for somewhat liberal, 3 for moderate, 4 for somewhat conservative, and 5 for very conservative. Thus a mean score of 3.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was right in the middle of the liberal-conservative scale while a mean score of 2.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was well to the left of center and a mean score of 4.0 would indicate that the average supporter of a candidate was well to the right of center.
The results of my calculations showed that the mean scores for Clinton and Obama supporters were almost identical: 2.5 for Clinton voters vs. 2.4 for Obama voters. In contrast, the mean scores for McCain and Romney supporters were quite distinct: 3.5 for McCain voters vs. 4.1 for Romney voters. The ideological divide between McCain and Romney voters was six times as large as the ideological divide between Clinton and Obama voters. And on this sort of scale with a very limited range, that is a very large difference.
The average Obama and Clinton voter was a moderate liberal. Similarly, the average McCain voter was a moderate conservative. McCain voters were about as far to the right of center as Clinton and Obama voters were to the left of center. But Romney voters were much further to the right of center. Given that Americans generally don’t like to place themselves at the extremes on these sorts of scales, it is striking that 40 percent of Romney voters in California placed themselves at the far right end of the scale. In contrast, only 12 percent of McCain voters placed themselves at the far right end of the scale and only 18 percent of Clinton voters and 22 percent of Obama voters placed themselves at the far left end of the scale.
These results suggest that despite clinching his party’s nomination much earlier than his Democratic opponent, John McCain may face a more difficult challenge in uniting his party’s voters than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Because supporters of Clinton and Obama have almost identical ideological preferences, it should not be difficult for either group to unite behind the other candidate if he or she wins the nomination. The winning candidate will not need to move to the left or right in order to win over supporters of the defeated candidate.
John McCain, however, may be forced to move further to the right in the next few weeks in order to win over disappointed supporters of Mitt Romney. In fact, this is precisely the course of action that is being urged on him by conservative spokesmen and it appears to be what he was attempting to do in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that he shunned only a year ago. But this may be a risky strategy for McCain since it will delay if not prevent him from moving back to the center to appeal to independents and swing voters in the general election-a move that will be crucial if he is to have any chance of winning in November.
(Note: This item was originally published at The Daily Strategist on February 4, 2008).
As Democrats prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, there’s a new public opinion survey for NPR conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner in conjunction with Public Opinon Strategies that shows (1) the landscape still favors Democrats in the general election; and (2) that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bring different strengths to the table in running against probable Republican nominee John McCain. Put simply, HRC currently does better among Democrats, while Obama does better among independents and Republicans.
Here’s the GQR summary of the research:
The race between John McCain and either Democratic candidate produces a very close national race for president — although voters want to be voting Democratic and want the Democrats’ direction on issues and leadership qualities.
Democrats can win with either candidate for president, though the races look totally different. Hillary Clinton has already consolidated Democrats who came away from the primaries even more positive about her. That energy can put her in the race, though gains with independents are key. Barack Obama too gained popularity in the primary among Democrats but also with independents — allowing him to split independents evenly with McCain. But with Obama, a fair number of Democrats support McCain, almost balanced by the proportion of Republicans who split off to support the Democrat. Both races are close but they produce totally different politics and strategies for the general election.
Voters want the Democrats to lead the country, however.
49 percent support a generic Democrat for president, 5 points ahead of the Republican candidate. The support for the Democrat has not changed a point in many months. As the actual Republican nominee has emerged, many dislodged Republicans have moved back to their candidate.
Voters have watched the primaries closely and say they much prefer the Democrats’ issue priorities and their qualities of leadership. The post-primary environment is very favorable for Democrats.
When one takes McCain’s position on Iraq and the economy and contrasts that with the Democrats, voters show a strong aversion to McCain’s direction. Voters want to begin troop withdrawals, not create a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. Voters favor a stimulus with investments, unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts, not simply making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.
For those Super Tuesday voters who value electability, this survey shows either Democrat should be able to win, but may follow two distinct tracks to a majority.
(NOTE: This item is by Matt Compton, and was originally posted at The Daily Strategist on January 7, 2008).
As predicted by the much-questioned final Des Moines Register poll, Barack Obama won Iowa on the strength of unprecedented support from independent voters and first-time Caucus-goers.
But well before the Caucuses, on blog sites like Talk Left and Firedoglake, questions were being raised about an Obama candidacy based on what sometimes seemed like excessive efforts to reach beyond the Democratic base.
For many bloggers, the problem with Obama was—and is–that he’s been playing into a much-derided “triangulation” meme in appealing to voters without traditional Democratic credentials. As Ezra Klein said last Tuesday, Obama was using “old politics of centrist caution and status quo bias.” Markos Moulitsas walked back from his announced intention to vote for Obama, saying “you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that’s not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy’s hearts a flutter.” Matt Yglesias tempered his former enthusiasm for the candidate as well, writing “while there’s a lot I like about Barack Obama, if he wins Iowa it won’t have been by running hard on the things I like best about him.”
In truth, Obama hasn’t been afraid to strike back at all his critics with whichever tool best fits the job. Whether criticizing Hillary on health care or questioning John Edwards on the Iraq war, his campaign throws an effective punch. When he announced his intent to seek the presidency, there were real questions about whether Obama had the toughness to win — no longer. But to his online critics, Obama willfully ignored a crucial tenet of blogosphere doctrine — they accuse him of using right-wing talking points to criticize his opponents. And in their eyes, there is no greater sin than validating a GOP frame.
The great irony here is that, ostensibly, the thing that gives so many bloggers pause about Barack Obama is the very thing that they hate about Bill Clinton’s presidency. In fact, the strategy of using “centrist caution” to reach out to swing voters and Independents has been called Clintonism for a long time now. But many of those uncertain about Barack Obama have a lot invested in an alternate strategy of hyper-partisanship, of one-upping the conservatives, of constant confrontation, and when Obama says he does not want to pit Red America against Blue America, you can almost hear them asking, “Why not?” Obama’s real problem in the blogosphere, however, might be about something much bigger than his talking points.
(NOTE: This item was originally posted at The Daily Strategist on November 27, 2008. Like the item immediately below on national security, it represents another in a series of “Strategy Memos” that deal with large, long-term strategic challenges facing Democrats.)
(Andrew Levison is the author of two books and numerous articles on the social and political attitudes of blue collar workers and other ordinary Americans)
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It is an unfortunate fact that during election years important discussions of long-term political strategy often get oversimplified and distorted in order to squeeze them into conventional campaign narratives.
This is what happened to an important Democracy Corps memo issued several weeks ago. The memo — which offered an analysis of polls and focus group data on a range of domestic economic issues including immigration and open borders — got grabbed and sucked up into the mainstream media debate about the electoral wisdom of the Republican’s “get tough”, anti-illegal immigrant posturing and whether the Democrats should follow their lead or stick to traditional progressive principles.
But this was not the specific issue the D-Corps memo was actually evaluating and its more subtle strategic analysis and conclusions should not be allowed to get lost in the shuffle. The central finding of D-Corps’ polls and focus groups was that a profound and unrecognized degree of frustration exists among average middle-class Americans regarding a wide range of economic issues, feeding an extraordinarily deep contempt and anger at the political establishment, Democratic as well as Republican. The Memo’s key thesis was that, without a proper political strategy, this deep discontent will not necessarily benefit the Democrats next year.
In regard to immigration, the memo noted three critical facts:
1. While Democrats in the survey identified Iraq and health care as the major areas where the country was going in the wrong direction, the top issue identified by independents was immigration and “unprotected borders.” 40% of independents chose this option – no other issue even came close.
2. Immigration and open borders were the top concern for those voters who want to vote Democratic but are holding back – the most attainable swing voters of all.
3. The voters who were most angry about the issue were those with a high school education and rural voters – groups where recent surveys have suggested Democrats might otherwise be able to regain some lost ground.
The first point that should be noted is that these conclusions are focused on how immigration is perceived by a specific group of voters – “ordinary middle-class” swing voters – and not how the issue will play with the electorate as a whole (In fact, when D-Corps studied national opinion as a whole, they found slightly less support for the one- sided “get tough” measures then for alternatives that included some path to citizenship).
More important, the basic problem the D-Corps memo identified is not simply that there is substantial middle-American antagonism to illegal immigration. It is that this sentiment threatens to fuse with three other attitudes among many potential democratic voters: a sense of severe economic distress; a feeling of powerlessness and of being ignored by political leaders; and a simmering sense of class resentment toward the “liberal” educated elite. This was the potent ideological package that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and both Bushes used to ride to the presidency and which Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ross Perot and scores of their lesser imitators have ridden to national celebrity.
(NOTE: This item was originally posted at The Daily Strategist on November 12, 2007)
As a Veterans Day meditation, I thought it might be a good idea to take a fresh look at one of the most contentious subjects in intra-party discussions: How Democrats can clearly differentiate themselves from Republicans on national security issues without falling into the “weak on defense” stereotypes conservatives have spent many years and billions of dollars promoting.
To make a very long story short, there have been at least five basic strategic takes on this subject among Democrats in recent years:
1) Ignore national security as “enemy territory” and focus on maximizing Democratic advantages on domestic issues (the default position of Democratic congressional campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s).
2) Agree with Republican positions on national security to “take them off the table” and then seek to make elections turn on domestic issues where Democrats have an advantage (the Dick Gephardt strategy for congressional Dems in 2002 and for his own presidential campaign in 2004; also common among Democrats running for office in conservative areas).
3) Vociferously oppose Republican positions on national security (and particularly the use of military force) in order to convey “strength,” on the theory that “weakness” is the real message of conservative “weak on defense” attacks (a common assumption among bloggers and activists arguing that a single-minded focus on ending the Iraq War is a sufficient national security message).
(4) Oppose Republican positions on national security while focusing on Democratic respect for, and material support for, “the troops” and veterans, on the theory that a lack of solidarity with the armed services is the real message of conservative “undermining our troops” attacks (a common theme in the Kerry 2004 campaign and in post-2004 Democratic messaging).
(5) Find ways to compete with Republicans on national security without supporting their policies and positions (e.g., the 2002-2004 Clark/Graham “right idea, wrong target” criticisms of the Iraq invasion as distracting and undermining the legitimate fight against terrorists).
By Ed Kilgore
(NOTE: This item was originally posted at The Daily Strategist on November 8, 1007).
Over at TAPPED, Dr. Tom Schaller has suggested that Barack Obama and John Edwards should supplement their attacks on Hillary Clinton’s policy positions by making a parallel political argument: that “the Clintons” presided over the destruction of the Democratic Party during the 1990s:
On her health care debacle and war vote, Edwards and Obama are making the case that she used bad policy and/or personal judgment, but they ought to try a new, politically-themed tack: Hillary and (they should be more careful here) Bill Clinton fought the Republicans but the GOP was stronger, not weaker, when they left office in 2001 than the Republicans were when the Clintons arrived in 1993.
Also at TAPPED, Dana Goldstein doubts that actual Democratic voters will be persuaded by a political narrative of the 1990s that doesn’t accord with their own memories. I agree.
But the discussion of the political viability of Schaller’s hypothesis avoids a more fundamental question: Is it true?
This question isn’t just a matter of historical interest. Schaller is faithfully expressing a revisionist take on the 1990s that has become an article of faith in many Left-netroots circles, with an implication that is of immediate importance to Democrats. The idea is the Clinton-style centrism was an electoral as well as an ideological disaster, producing at best two less-than-majority presidential wins at the price of the erosion of Democratic support in congressional and state elections. The 2006 Democratic comeback, according to this theory, proves that a more base-oriented, left-bent Democratic strategy is the key to a long-term Democratic majority.
But what really happened to Democrats in the Clinton years? And why?
By Will Marshall and Ed Gresser
Populism has a checkered history, but that hasn’t stopped a new crop of American politicians from embracing it in reaction to the supposed scourges of trade and globalization.
Today’s neo-populism has right and left strands. Republican populism is mainly anti-immigration: Think Patrick Buchanan or Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Ariz). Democratic populism, personified by two newly elected Senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is vehemently anti-trade. The two strands converge in the person of CNN blowhard Lou Dobbs, who blames immigrants and corporations for either taking American jobs or sending them overseas.
U.S. progressives ought to think twice before adopting the “populist” label, and not just because it’s commonly hung on such noxious demagogues as Jean Le Pen, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The homegrown American populism of the 1880s and 1890s–the horny-handed-sons-of-toil faith identified first with the People’s Party in the 1880s and 1890s and, later, three-time Democratic Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan–also is a dubious model.
The old populism, after all, was a curious amalgam of cultural reaction and worker-farmer radicalism, mixing calls for important democratic reforms–public regulation of corporations, the progressive income tax, labor union rights, direct election of U.S. Senators–with nutty obsessions like “bimetallism,” and nastier tinges of nativism, racism and religious bigotry.
A better model for today’s Democrats is the Progressives, who came after the populists. They agitated for fundamental reforms in government and society that went with, rather than against, the grain of industrial transformation and urbanization. That is why they succeeded where populists failed–in gaining power and governing.
Neo-populists are right to focus on growing economic insecurity and inequality in America. But they need to offer more realistic diagnoses of their causes as well as remedies.
Americans today face an economic paradox. U.S. industrial output is booming, consumers have their choice of the world’s goods, jobs are reasonably plentiful and unemployment is fairly low. But middle class workers simultaneously see their wages stagnating and old guarantees of security eroding–not only in the sense of stable jobs, but more fundamentally in their families’ security against financial disaster.
The combination is difficult for either party to manage.
On one hand it spells trouble for Republicans. Their tendency to discount well-grounded anxieties appears callous and out of touch. And the Bush administration’s answer to the global competitive challenge is principally tax cuts–‘more money back in your pocket.’ But that is irrelevant to fear of a sudden and sharp fall in income and security, especially when it favors the wealthy more than middle- and lower-income families. It is easy to see why the public gives the White House little credit for economic policy.
On the other hand, a phobic reaction to foreign competitive pressures carries risks for Democrats. Simply railing against the pain and unfairness of economic change didn’t work in Bryan’s time. (The Great Commoner, somewhat inconveniently, was an ardent champion of free trade.) It is likely to fare no better for today’s “Lou Dobbs Democrats,” as the tele-populist modestly calls them. They need only think back to the 1980s, when pessimistic rhetoric about decline and deindustrialization helped ensure Democratic presidential defeats.
Confronting the quandary, the center-left has fragmented into three main schools of thought: neo-populists who blame trade for economic woes; social Democrats who want to import the Nordic model of capitalism from Scandinavia; and progressive modernizers in the Clinton-Blair mold (like us), who want both to raise America’s game in global competition and raise the floor of security beneath ordinary working families.
The neo-populists, allied with industrial unions and a rump group of surviving protection-minded business lobbies, are convinced that foreign trade pressure is unfair and that the U.S. cannot compete against low-wage countries. A typical approach is to demand an indefinite halt to trade liberalization (a “strategic pause,” as Jeff Faux terms it) along with trade protection through tariffs on Chinese goods and strict labor-standards tests on all imports, and to rail against offshoring without offering a policy-based way to block it–because, short of somehow turning off the Internet, none exists.
Whatever its political utility, populism fails as policy. Higher labor standards in developing countries are a worthy goal, but they wouldn’t make countries with vast reserves of low-cost labor less competitive. And the experience of high-tariff U.S. industries like textiles and shoes gives little reason to believe new trade barriers would keep U.S. industries competitive. To the contrary, they would lower living standards and damage our companies’ ability to compete, by raising input costs, depressing the purchasing power of their local customers, and jeopardizing access to foreign markets just as America’s housing boom fades and we need to rely more heavily on exports to generate growth. Rather than offer a new path to the future, populism simply offers complaint.
A more sophisticated critique comes from what might be called the “social democratic” wing of U.S. liberalism. The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, for example, points out that trade is a much bigger part of European economies than our own–yet Europe has managed to avoid the job churning and worsening income disparities that have made globalization so contentious here. The reason? Europe has more lavish social welfare policies, more extensive labor market regulation, and stronger unions. Kuttner advises Americans to look to the Scandinavian model–the Danes are the popular flavor this year–in which solid growth rates and low unemployment coexist with high-wage policies and generous social spending. In this telling, America needs not old-fashioned protectionism but a healthy dollop of European-style social democracy.
Prospect editor Harold Meyerson likewise is no fan of free trade, but he stresses its impact on wages rather than jobs per se. He identifies the real problem as “global convergence of wages,” as U.S. workers lose bargaining power with employers thanks to shrinking unions and the surge of millions of low-wage workers from countries like China and India into the global marketplace; and the solution as a much enlarged form of global governance designed to create social democracy on a world scale.
But–even leaving aside the improbability of Americans voting in European tax burdens and state paternalism, or a global regulatory program–there’s a hitch. The U.S. social democrats seem determined to hold progress on trade liberalization hostage to highly ambitious and sometimes unattainable goals–a dramatic expansion of America’s welfare state; a miraculous revival of militant trade unionism; global governance mechanisms; and full implementation by low-income countries, enforced by trade sanctions, of labor and environmental standards which took Washington decades to develop. This means growth, efficiency, and trade reforms to help the poor must wait for a social-democratic millennium.
Which brings us to the third camp, the progressive modernizers. They reject claims that Americans can be shielded from technological and structural forces affecting the whole world, and hope instead to replace the industrial-era safety net with a new social contract that helps working Americans manage the risks of global competition and share in the rewards of growth. They agree with social democrats on a key point: as U.S. businesses and labor provide less security for workers, government must step into the breach and provide more.
Where they differ is in insisting that robust economic growth and open trade policies are not bargaining chips, but crucial policies for generating the resources and political support for a new social contract with American workers. They backed Bill Clinton’s trade liberalizing initiatives, which played a vital role in the prosperity of the late 1990s, support new trade initiatives that build upon Clinton’s work. But they also recognize that changing terms of global competition pose new risks for working Americans which demand new responses.
In short, they believe America must both fashion a winning strategy for global competition and build a more solid foundation of economic security beneath working families. The strategy can be summed up in four points:
- Trade liberalization remains crucial to growth, economic efficiency, rising living standards, and amicable relationships among great and rising powers.
- The integrated global economy and the technological revolution are the result of structural forces–economic reform in places like India and China, container shipping, the Internet–as well as government-to-government negotiations. Their benefits outweigh their costs, and in any case they will not be repealed.
- For workers, globalization brings risks, as many businesses can no longer provide the health, pension and other quasi-welfare state functions they did in earlier years. And independent of global competition, changing American patterns of work, with quick shifts among companies now far more common than careers at single firms, means neither businesses nor Wagner Act-style unions are as well-suited to providing these protections as they once were.
- Imaginative policies can ease these problems. Government should step in where businesses no longer can, ensuring that job loss does not mean loss of health care, pensions, or hopes for college and home ownership. And social institutions, in particular a reformed and reshaped labor movement, have an essential part to play in finding solutions.
Democrats in Congress can begin to craft an agenda based upon these premises this year. A progressive, optimistic-but-realistic-and-empathetic legislative program for 2007 would open markets, by supporting completion of the Doha Round with a grant of fast-track authority focused on the WTO rather than small-scale free trade agreements. It would simultaneously begin strengthening family security. Recognizing that unions and liberals are right to say the Trade Adjustment Assistance program is wholly inadequate to the modern scale of disruption, it would also draft a broader Economic Adjustment program open to all dislocated workers, including broadened support for health insurance and job placement services. Accompanying both would be a competitiveness package to extend R/D tax credits, bolster investment in basic research, and ensure that visa policy allows American businesses and universities to attract the world’s brightest students and scientists. As we write, Congressman Charles Rangel is leading a courageous effort to develop such a broad policy synthesis, beginning with a formula for approval of several pending trade agreements and revival of the Doha Round.
A modern Progressive presidential candidate, in turn, can use this agenda as a foundation for a much more ambitious social contract, including fundamentally changed domestic policies and modernized civil-society institutions. By 2010, this would include guarantees of universal health insurance, portable pensions, and new forms of insurance to ensure that job loss does not mean inability to pay college tuition and mortgages. It would call upon unions to adopt a new role for the decades ahead, modeled on the approach of their most successful colleagues abroad, such as the Scandinavian unions.1 Their memberships are the world’s highest and their attraction for young workers uninterested in conflict with employers rests upon through career development, unemployment assistance and job training and placement programs.
In the 19th century, populism faded and died–unable to preserve a fading agrarian order, and offering more complaints than realistic solutions. Bryan, its great champion, lost three presidential elections. Rather than take this as their model, today’s Democrats would do better to look again at the Progressives who succeeded the populists. They struggled not to preserve a fading agrarian order, but to update old political and social arrangements to meet the new structural challenges emerging from industrialization and urbanization. The Democratic candidate who offers the modern version of this program may well be the one who can win; and will certainly be the one offering the new social contract that anxious workers and a puzzled country need.
Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute and editor of With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty.
Ed Gresser has served as Director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s Project on Trade and Global Markets since February, 2001. In this capacity, he writes and speaks on the value of open markets, internationalism and social responsibility in the global economy. Gresser joined PPI after ten years of service in the Clinton Administration and as a senior Congressional staffer.
1For a discussion of alternative models for modern unions, see the recent TDS discussion.
By Amy Chapman
The months since the election have been filled with a variety of polls and opinions explaining why Democrats were able to sweep both the House and the Senate. In reality, each of the most commonly-cited factors–war fatigue, Republican corruption, a coordinated media effort and boots on the ground–contributed to winning this year. However, as we look deeper into the results, Democrats at every level of government won in this election, and it is clear that the Party infrastructure built early in states was critical to this result.
What happened?
Besides the obvious change in congressional control, one of the most exciting–and important–results of the 2006 election was that Democrats won up and down the ticket in states across the country. Though most of the national focus rested on the House of Representatives and the Senate, the large number of Democrats who were elected to state legislatures, statewide offices, city councils and school boards will be of tremendous value to the Party and the nation for years to come. These newly elected leaders will function as our farm team for higher offices, as leaders for progressive policy, and as liaisons to a new generation of activists. The Party as a whole won in this election.
Critical to this success was the focus on creating a permanent Democratic Party infrastructure. State parties played a vital role in recruiting down-ballot candidates, training precinct leaders to implement a ground operation, and providing vital communications, research and voter file resources to candidates and to county and local parties. It was this ‘build-up’ of a permanent party structure that helped to elect the state and local candidates and support the many federal candidates who won or came close. In many states, the state parties provided the fabric that extended coattails beyond House and Senate victories and made sure that local candidates had the attention and resources they needed.
One example of this success was Kansas. The Kansas Democratic Party worked hand in hand with the Governor’s office, candidates, county parties, the national committee, faith organizations, and other allies and activists—including Grassroots Democrats, the organization I head–to make unprecedented gains at the local, state and national levels. The State Party knew what was happening on the ground, understood the electorate better than anyone outside the state, and used every tool at its disposal to win.
As a result, the Party kept the Governor’s office, picked up the Attorney General spot, increased the number of Democrats in the State House by double digits and beat a popular incumbent in the 2nd Congressional District–a race no one outside of the state was giving attention a month before the election.
In Indiana, the Democratic State Party was fighting on every level to rebuild after what had been a devastating 2004 cycle, in which the state had voted for Bush and Republicans had taken the Governorship, Lieutenant Governorship and the state House of Representatives. The state legislature then removed the dedicated funding source state parties had received, leaving the Party with a $750,000 budget shortfall.
Financial support from Grassroots Democrats, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and staff subsidies from the DNC Partnership Program—along with the political atmosphere in Indiana going into 2006–gave the State Party the opportunity to organize support for the strongest candidates early in the cycle. They were able to then build an efficient on-the-ground organization to mobilize voters on Election Day. In just two short years, the State Party was able to build a financially self-sufficient operation, take the lead in communicating the overall message to the electorate, coordinate events and field operations for candidates across the state, and lead the Party to unparalleled electoral success.
As a result, Indiana Democrats gained three Congressional seats, regained control of the state House, and are positioned to successfully defend the eight Democratic mayors in the state’s ten largest cities in 2007 as well as to field challengers in the two remaining mayoral races. Because the Indiana State Party remains fully-staffed, active, and focused on the long-term strategy of winning, more Democrats are competitive earlier in the cycle and on more levels than in previous years.
In Washington state, Democrats have steadily expanded their reach as the State Party built stronger ties to its volunteer community during the heat of the victorious, yet bloody, 2004 gubernatorial campaign. That year, the State Party was instrumental in delivering the win to Governor Christine Gregoire. The Party made the critical decision to insist on a recount, then assumed the debt associated with the recount and raised the necessary funds to cover its cost. They also provided most of the volunteer observers to staff the recount and shepherded the entire Democratic community through the effort, basically acting as the coordinated campaign leader for the recount.
The quick and able maneuvering by the State Party gave Democratic voters in Washington a vested interest in their party. This carried into the 2006 cycle with more grassroots candidates and volunteers participating in the election and more success at every level. Democrats in 2006 successfully defended Senator Maria Cantwell’s Senate seat, improved their majority in the state Senate and picked up seven seats in the state House.
The importance of early investment in states has been the subject of heated conversation over the last two years. The DNC’s “50-State Strategy” highlighted the importance of what Grassroots Democrats has been working on since January 2003.1 Strong organized state parties with professional staff and year-round operations will lead to more Democratic victories. While the results of the 2006 election will not end the debate, they have certainly strengthened the argument for building infrastructure and long-term investment.
What needs to be done before the next election?
Despite the progress that has been made over the past four years by Grassroots Democrats, and since the last presidential election by the DNC, we have really just begun the process of genuine state party infrastructure building. In contrast, the Republican Party has focused on building from the ground up for over 30 years. They have invested money and training in their state and local parties; recruited, trained and paid for key state party staff; and, most importantly, have made state parties an important part of their electoral strategy.
The 2006 election showed that investment by our side will work and that when Democrats talk to people in every county of every state, they listen. We need to make sure Democratic state parties are well-funded and reasonably self-sufficient in their fundraising. Although most states can use non-federal money to pay for up to 72% of their costs, most state parties instead principally rely on federal dollars from national sources in order to operate. By forgoing non-federal money, which ordinarily can be raised in greater amounts than federal dollars and from a wider variety of sources, state parties are using precious federal dollars for operational costs like electric bills and paperclips. This means there is less money to advocate for federal candidates and undertake direct voter mobilization during election season, which federal funds are uniquely able to underwrite.
Additionally, we need to make sure state parties have well-trained professional staff on a year-round basis. It doesn’t work to have a volunteer receptionist for 18 months of an election cycle and then a huge, temporary staff for the last six months. It especially doesn’t work if you want to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. The field and communications staff provided by the DNC was a good start in helping states build a strong, stable staff. However, we must continue to invest as a complete organization should consist of professional staff that is trained in compliance, communications, research, field operations, online strategy, political outreach, information technology, fundraising, and volunteer recruitment.
We need to make sure each state party develops clear goals and a detailed strategy to elect Democrats up and down the ticket using the best available targeting, enhanced voter files, and research. In addition, parties need to be at the forefront of both traditional on-the-ground field work as well as new forms of online grassroots mobilization in order to maintain an electoral edge.
Finally, we need to make sure that all Democratic elected officials and allied organizations are partners in building strong and useful full-time state party infrastructures. There is too much work to be done to leave it to one organization, the Governor or the Presidential nominee.
The only way to sustain the Democratic wave of 2006 into the next election and beyond is through dedicated grassroots action with state parties as the key building block.
1In contrast to the 50-State Strategy, which focuses on federal expenditures, Grassroots Democrats helps states with their non-federal expenditures in the areas of compliance, finance, online strategy and communications, technology, and political management. In compliance with the current campaign finance law, Grassroots Democrats and the DNC do not coordinate efforts but, by nature, work towards the same goal–strong state parties. For more information on federal and non-federal expenditures, visit www.grassrootsdemocrats.com/faq
Amy Chapman is Executive Director of Grassroots Democrats. She is a seasoned political strategist specializing in campaign management, coordinated campaigns, field programs, labor and constituency group outreach. Amy has extensive experience managing all levels of Democratic campaigns, including many local and state races in her native state of New Jersey, and in both federal and non-federal races throughout the country, from presidential to senate, and gubernatorial.
By Cornell Belcher and Donna Brazile
The 2006 midterm elections brought about monumental change in the nation’s power structure when Democrats, bolstered by the support of Black and Hispanic voters, took control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1992. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 8) made history when she was sworn in as the first female Speaker of the House, and a record 87 women are now serving in Congress (16 in the Senate and 71 in the House of Representatives) plus three female Delegates to the House from Guam, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. Of the 74 women Representatives and Delegates, 23 are women of color (14 African Americans, 7 Latinas and 2 Asian Pacific Islanders).
Although the number of African American candidates elected to federal office did not change during the 2006 midterm elections, Duval Patrick was elected the first Black Governor of Massachusetts (the second African American to serve as Governor in the history of the U.S.). Record numbers of Black candidates ran for public office at all levels of government, and targeted races for higher office included Black candidates from both major parties.
White voters broke 51 percent to 47 percent for Republicans this past midterm election. As the white vote grows increasingly polarized, the outcome of more and more elections will rest in the hands of Black and Hispanic voters nationally. In this polarized environment, the ability of either party to win and hold together a majority coalition rests heavily on its ability to compete for and win over minority voters by both serving their interests and running more minority candidates.
The Republican effort to be a truly “big tent party” took a huge step backwards this November 7th. Despite making valuable inroads with the Hispanic community in 2004, and despite an unprecedented outreach campaign to minority voters in ’05-’06 that saw former GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman making speeches apologizing for the notorious race-baiting GOP “Southern strategy,” Republicans lost considerable ground among both Hispanic and African American voters this past midterm election. Democrats actually garnered a larger share of the African American and Hispanic vote in 2006 than they had in the previous election.
After losing ground with Hispanics in 2004, Democrats improved their performance by an astonishing 16 points among Hispanic voters in 2006. And while we thought Democrats had perhaps reached a ceiling among African American voters, they managed to improve their performance with Black voters by 3 points this past fall. Our ability to expand the base vote helped in several key battleground areas where we squeaked past Republicans in races that were toss-ups going into the closing week. Democrats were also able to improve their performance in the African American community despite the fact that Republicans fielded a number of very high-profile Black candidates for statewide office in key states this past election cycle.
In two states with major implications for the 2008 presidential race, Senate Republicans experienced major disaffection from African American voters as their support dropped by 6 points in Missouri, and by a startling 17 points in Ohio. This erosion is a profound step backwards given the fact that Republicans had such high hopes and employed such aggressive strategies for courting African American voters coming into this cycle.
Losing (more) Black voters
The Republican persuasion campaign targeting African Americans ultimately collapsed under the negative weight of President George W. Bush. In our post-election polling by Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies, Bush ended the election cycle with a nine (yes, nine) percent job approval rating among African American voters. That is eight points below the job approval rating of Congress among African Americans. By contrast, in our national poll of all voters, Bush’s job performance, while low, was consistently higher than that of Congress throughout 2006 meaning that while voters as a whole were most upset with Congress, African Americans were most displeased with Bush himself.
On Election Day 2006, African Americans’ primary focus was a desire for change. In our post-election poll, when we open-endedly asked voters what was on their minds as they entered the polling booth to vote, a 32-percent plurality of African American voters said they wanted to change the state of the country or get Republicans out. Twenty-two percent said they were thinking about Iraq, 21 percent said they were thinking about who would do the best job, and 10 percent said they were thinking about the economy.
In this environment of intense dissatisfaction with the Bush/Republican status quo, the power of the Black Republican candidate to appeal and attract more African Americans to the Republican Party failed to materialize in 2006. In Pennsylvania, GOP gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann might have actually set Republicans back further. Even Senatorial candidate Michael S. Steele in Maryland–who presented the greatest threat to the Democratic hold on African American voters early on–ultimately failed to sever the coalition. Indeed, failing to garner even one-third of the Black vote, these high profile Black Republican candidates were simply outside the mainstream of Black political attitudes.
Democrats dodged a bullet this cycle, as few Republicans in tough races were able to escape the burdensome weight of President Bush’s albatross. But the story could have been very different. Early on in the year, Republicans were well positioned to compete for the considerable swath of African American voters who were questioning their support for Democrats and seeking alternatives. Heading into the summer of 2005, about three-fourths of the Black electorate nationwide said they would support the Democratic candidate in November 2006. While not a substantial drop from the 88 percent Kerry secured in 2004, Republican efforts appeared successful enough to at least have given some African American voters pause. That window of opportunity for Republicans soon closed, however, as the end of the summer saw the disastrous Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. And by our February 2006 poll, 83 percent of African American voters were once again supporting Democratic candidates.
While the Katrina debacle clearly undermined Republican efforts to court African American voters, there were plenty of other issues important to African Americans that proved problematic for Republicans. According to our internal post-election polling, health care, education, Iraq, the minimum wage, and the economy/jobs topped the list of issues that Black voters said most guided their vote. From wages and the economy to Iraq, Republicans were not on the same side of the issues as the broader African American community. In the summer of 2006, a 61 percent majority of African Americans wanted an immediate removal of all troops from Iraq. Consequently, Republicans were not well positioned to pick up African American votes.
Furthermore, over the past few years Republicans have attempted to win over African Americans by focusing on so-called “moral issues.” While that strategy may have reaped some benefits for them in 2004, Republicans, caught up in a culture of corruption two years later, found no traction on those issues in 2006, in part because they ranked among the lowest priorities for African American voters. Public exit-polling showed the economy (57 percent), corruption (51 percent) and terrorism (44 percent) were the strongest issues tested, while values and immigration (33 and 26 percent, respectively) fell toward the bottom of the list with Black voters.
The Rise of the African American Swing Vote
Early in 2006, our polling among African American voters in the battleground states of Missouri, Ohio and Maryland revealed the possibility of an erosion of Black base voters in the Democratic Party. Nearly one-third (31 percent) of Black voters in these battleground states were identified as persuadable swing voters, compared to 61 percent who were strong Democrats and 9 percent who were strong Republicans. Younger voters and men, in particular, are less wedded to the history of the Democratic Party and, therefore, more willing to do some comparison-shopping. This is especially true of independents and drop-off voters. The following graph illustrates just how up-for-grabs important subgroups of the Black base were back in the spring of 2006 in these states.
Early on in Maryland and Ohio (both of which had relatively large swing components), we initially felt that both Steele (Maryland candidate for U.S. Senate) and Blackwell (Ohio candidate for governor) gave some African American voters pause in their support for Democrats, and had the potential to extend Republicans’ reach statewide.
In Maryland, for example, there were an equal number of swing and base voters among African Americans (Strong Democrats: 43 percent; Persuadable/Swing: 44 percent). We cannot overemphasize how deeply Steele’s candidacy could have carved into the Democratic Party’s African American base (and taken him on to victory, considering he carried white voters in the state) if not for the implementation of a well-orchestrated Democratic persuasion program aimed at swing African American voters. A conventional GOTV-only communication program would have been particularly inept in both Ohio and Maryland, because the African American vote there (not to mention around the country) is increasingly undecided. In our polling, we found that less than a year out from the election, while 74 percent of African American voters in Missouri could be considered base Democratic voters, just 54 percent in Ohio could (that is, they were certain of their support and there was little chance of them switching their vote). The situation was even worse in Maryland, where just 43 percent of African American voters could be considered base Democratic voters.
All three states experienced some unique movement of African American voters when comparing the Senate contests of 2004 to those of 2006. In Ohio, African American voters moved in large numbers to the Democratic candidate. In Missouri, there was also some growth in African American support of the Democratic Senate candidate, although this growth was constrained somewhat by the high level of support African Americans gave the Democratic candidate in 2004. Maryland, however, shows that Republicans do have the ability to cut into the level of support Democrats normally enjoy if a credible candidate (someone who can at least argue that he or she can give convincing voice to the concerns and values of the community) is on the ballot and he or she makes an effort to court the African American vote. The 2004 results in Ohio also show this ability. If Democrats treat African American voters simply as turnout targets, it is likely that the results seen in Maryland this year and in Ohio in 2004 will become much more the norm, rather than the exception.
Turnout
Nationally, turnout of all voters increased slightly from 2002 to 2006. And while the lack of 2002 exit poll data makes it impossible to make estimates of 2002 Black voter turnout, there is evidence to suggest that the Black share of the off-year electorate has held steady at 10 percent since 1998. It is reasonable to assume then, that Black turnout also experienced the same slight bump since 2002 that overall turnout did.
That said, Black turnout continues to lag behind overall voter turnout, though the gap appears to be shrinking. In 2006, about 38 percent of the U.S. voting age population turned out to vote, compared to about 34 percent of the Black voting age population. That gap of 4.1 percentage points, while wider than the historically small 1.4-point gap of 2004, represents a significant narrowing since 2000, when the gap was 6.3 points.
Perhaps the most important point to be made about Black turnout in 2006, however, is that there were several states where Black turnout increased significantly and had profound impacts on contested statewide Senate and gubernatorial races.
In Missouri, for instance, the Black share of the electorate increased from 8 percent in 1998 to 13 percent in 2006. That surge of Black electoral participation likely made the difference in Democrat Claire McCaskill’s victory over Republican incumbent Senator Jim Talent. Similar surges in the Black share of the vote also occurred in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, helping to propel Democratic statewide candidates to victory. Finally, the increase in the Black share of the vote in Tennessee (from 11 percent in 1998 to 13 percent in 2006) likely made the Ford/Corker Senate contest closer than it otherwise might have been.
The real story of the 2006 election is the re-emergence of the Democratic Party as a national party, competing for voters in every section of the country among more demographic groups. Our current majority rests on Democrats’ ability to expand the playing field and compete strongly in all counties, states, and regions in 2006. This phenomenon reveals a roadmap for 2008 and should also call into serious question the wisdom of the traditional Democratic battleground-state strategy. Too often in past elections, narrowly casting our political net has left us hungry. The so-called “battleground-state strategy,” as it is currently constituted, not only makes Democrats captive to an increasingly small group of interests, but also effectively disenfranchises segments of the Party’s strongest blocs of voters. Progressives will not build an effective movement in this country until they broaden their strategies to allow for greater engagement and mobilization of Black and Hispanic citizens in the South and West.
Cornell Belcher is the founder and president of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies and functions as the principal strategist on all of the firm’s projects. Belcher is experienced at campaign politics and has over a decade of expertise in quantitative and qualitative research, message development, and product and behavioral insight. His clients include the Democratic National Committee and the Barack Obama for President campaign.
Donna Brazile is Founder and Managing Director of Brazile and Associates, LLC. Brazile, Chair of the Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute (VRI) and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, is a senior political strategist and former Campaign Manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000–the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign. Prior to joining the Gore campaign, Brazile was Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia where she helped guide the District’s budget and local legislation on Capitol Hill.
