| We often mock the Bushie who Ron Suskind famously quoted as scorning the "reality based community" and who expressed the idea that they could "create their own reality." Ezra Klein nicely (and hilariously) captured this in his Green Lantern Theory of politics, where the right believes anything can be accomplished with sufficient willpower. It also explains why the right tends to think economic problems are just "psychological" or a matter of "confidence." Al Franken is a Democrat, but Stuart Smalley's philosophy is a guiding star of the conservative economic sky.
The Mandate That Wasn't: 2004
We saw the Bushies attempt this after the 2004 victory. We were immediately barraged with talking points about Bush's "mandate" - his 51% "landslide", geographically misleading maps showing red versus blue counties to demonstrate how "red" America was and the infamous line that Bush had received the "most votes of any Presidential candidate ever."
Obviously, none of this worked. Luckily, Kerry did run a good enough campaign to keep it close. He was only 1 state from an EC victory, and only 3% behind Bush. Where Bush had the "most votes ever" Kerry had the second most. Beyond that, in any objective sense, Bush had won by making Kerry look craven, not on the strength of his ideas or platform. I don't think all that many voters were thinking eagerly of Bush privatizing social security when they picked him that election day. So when Bush tried to spend his "political capital" on domestic issues, he didn't really have any. He even flew around campaigning for his social security destruction scheme, and couldn't muster enough support to get it through a Republican Congress. Clearly there is more to this mandate stuff than having your media organs claim you have one and assuming everyone will go along with you.
Then again, I can't blame Bush for trying, because he did briefly enjoy a mandate in the aftermath of 9/11. The mandate wasn't really for him though, it was for "doing something" to prevent more attacks. This is why things like the Patriot act and the first AUMF passed so quickly and free of opposition so quickly after the attacks. In fact, if you think back, the mandate for change then even swept Bush along against his will. As I recall, Bush did not want the Department of Homeland Security, nor was he really interested in toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan. They later perverted the public desire for action into support for the Iraq invasion, but that took concerted effort on their part.
Still, I think there is a grain of truth to the "create your own reality" idea, in that many problems can be exacerbated or ameliorated by mass psychology. Certainly things like riots or the stampedes that plague the Haj in Mecca are often the fault of panic with no particular cause. Similarly, it can be a good idea to shut down a crashing stock market for a day to halt panic selling. So when FDR told America the only to fear was fear itself, he had the right idea. If he was a Republican, he would have left it at that, and assumed the problem was solved. Instead he followed up with substantial action to solve the problems inherent in the depression. I don't know what the limits are of the ability to either create or stymie mass psychological effects on things like mandates, I think they are non-zero and worth attempting to sway in our favour.
It will help to define some factors that can be used to evaluate the likelihood of an electoral mandate. Some prerequisites that are necessary but not sufficient:
- Popular Vote Majority. This looks fairly likely both for Obama and for Congressional Democrats. The Bradley/Wilder effect may be a plausible fear, but it is one we cannot do anything about. Obama will get over 50% or he won't. If he doesn't, I don't think a mandate will be there for him. Talking points about Democrats being unable to win popular vote majorities since Jimmy Carter will plague us, just as they did to Clinton to kneecap his landslide wins.
- Decent PV Margin. Winning 51-49 will meet the first criteria, but I think there will be too much talk of a "divided nation" and the ongoing need for bi-partisanship to bridge the gaps and end the culture wars. I don't know how big the lead has to be, but let's say 5% for sake of naming a figure that is "big enough" that it can only be easily compared to other universally accepted "mandate" wins like 1964 and 1936.
- Big EC Victory. If for nothing else, but so the visual maps are overwhelmingly blue. 300+ is a nice number, but it might need to be 350. Keeping McCain under 100EVs would be a big help, any way he can be reduced to winning a "rump" or other such lingo. Unfairly, since Republicans win most of the geographically big states, they have an advantage in this regard, irrational though it may be.
- Downticket Democratic wins. This is looking good too. Republicans picked up 4 in the Senate and 3 in the House in 2004 and that wasn't enough, but Dems look to do much better than this. This one will get a boost if there are a few surprise Democratic pickups and no unexpected losses. Reaching 60 in the Senate would be a huge milestone in this regard (Chris and Matt's doubts notwithstanding), as it is a decisive psychological threshold, even if there are a bunch of Bush Dogs who will be only too happy to join the 40 Republicans in filibustering progressive legislation.
- Absence of competiting narratives. This is key but needs more explanation than a bullet point.
Competing Narratives
A little comedy first, from our friends at Conservapedia:
Presidential dominance
In terms of winning presidential elections, the Republican Party has been the most successful political party in U.S. history. Since the American Civil War, Grover Cleveland is the only non-incumbent Democrat who has won the office of President of the United States under "ordinary" circumstances (meaning no third party, no Great Depression, no disputed count in Illinois, no assassination of the previous president, no Watergate).
See? Democrats can only win when they "luck out" with a Great Depression or a beloved President being killed or when they steal it! The point here is merely to show the extremes of reaching to which the conservative movement will go to "explain away" an Obama/Democratic win even if it meets the criteria above. Already they are setting pieces on the board to do so: ACORN for the theft angle, McCain being an impure conservative, media bias and now the credit crisis. We will hear how voters (all fundamentally conservative at heart) rejected McCain for his socialist mortgage plan, and congressional Republicans for following comrade Bush's nationalization scheme.
At heart, they will try to make this a rejection of the current batch of "impure" conservatives, but not an endorsement of Obama or the Democrats. Bizarrely, they will also argue it was stolen, and both will somehow be true though the two ideas are more or less mutually exclusive.
Of course, this is what they did after 2006, which had many historic landslide qualities to it: Big PV win, retaking both houses, the unlikely Senate majority capture, a clarion issue (ending the war), and the lack of a single Democratic incumbent being defeated. Yet in the aftermath all we heard was about all these conservative democrats who had merely displaced conservative Republicans and once the Republicans just get their act together, the unsinkable majority could surface again. Looking at the results of the 110th congress, either they were prescient, or the tactic worked to empower the Blue Dogs far out of proportion to the influence they should have been able to wield.
To have a mandate, our explanation for the election must become the conventional wisdom early. I honestly don't have much hope for this, given the residual conservative message dominance in the media, but it's not beyond reach.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
I don't think we can create a mandate out of willpower, green light and hubris. Much too big and too many X-factors that go into such a thing. But I do think we have a role to play in protecting the potential for one, by mercilessly crushing the building ACORN-Stole-It and Obama-only-won-because-of-the-market-crash narratives.
We will need pretty graphs showing Obama's bump started before the market crash, and make sure McCain's brief lead is understood merely as a convention bump that was already fading. We will need charts showing the number of ACORN registered voters not even being close to the margins Obama wins by in enough states to make 271.
Also, pushing up the importance of polls like that 53-39 CBS one, and pushing the major media sites to admit Obama would win the EC if the election was today are important tasks in demoralizing the right. If we can hit a tipping point, a certain bloc of Republican voters might decide not to bother. Similarly, the building momentum may incite some voters who weren't going to vote, to do so, just to be a part of history being made. Those are the magnifiers that turn a defeat into a rout beyond what the final day polling may say.
I don't have a prescription for much other than things we are already doing, but I hope this helps focus those efforts. The basic idea here is to build a wave that even sweeps Obama along to progressive places he wouldn't lead on his own. Some may fear the "arrogance" of such talk, and the need to play this (ahem) conservatively. It's time to grab the brass ring. The point of all this is not to get Obama elected, but to bring about progressive change and the revitalization of liberalism as a legitimate policy approach. That's what will get Obama's successor elected in 2016 and discredit conservativism for another Yellow-Dog generation. |
