About 6 months ago, I started warning about the potential for a really bad electoral cycle for the Democrats in the 2010 midterms. I feared that by not taking the big banks on more aggressively, not doing more to create jobs in a really bad economic period for job creation, and letting the health care bill drag on and get too compromised in terms of taking on the insurance industry, that Democrats would be badly hurting ourselves with both our base voter turnout and with swing working class voters getting hammered in this economy. A lot of the Democratic establishment said folks like me were over-hyping, that while it wouldn't be an easy year, there were all kinds of reasons to think it wouldn't be so bad. To my great chagrin, my predictions were proved right with a vengeance in the first three big elections of this cycle in NJ, VA, and MA: base vote turnout was terrible, and working class swing voters turned dramatically against us. Now, the conventional wisdom has turned and just about everybody in the Democratic party is in full scale doomsday mode.
That's why I was so heartened to see David Plouffe's well reasoned analysis piece in the Washington Post on Sunday, laying out a strategy on how the Democrats can survive 2010 without getting slaughtered. Because what is needed now in the Democratic party is that kind of calm, steady thinking. As worried as I have been now for these last 6 months, I am equally convinced that if we do the right things politically and policy-wise (the two are in sync), we can surprise people in the 2010 elections and do a lot better than the pundits and the panickers think.
The reason I believe this is that I have been involved in several elections where good things happened against all the predictions of the conventional wisdom. Let me take you back to some elections in the past where Democrats came back when things looked really dark for them:
This afternoon, I had a chance to participate in a conference call with David Plouffe, concerning his new book and the Obama campaign.
My question for Plouffe focused on the moments where the campaign appeared to engage in top-down behavior, despite its reputation as a vast grassroots organization. As part ofthe question, I cited incidents such as:
The replacement of the 50-state organizers at the DNC with Obama campaign staff and organizing fellows (which also put that staff under the direction of the DNC, rather than the state parties);
How this call was just about the only campaign-related conference call bloggers were invited to participate in (although the White House is inviting us on calls now)
Plouffe response was straightforward and blunt. He stated that, having ran the IE (independent, non-campaign directed expenditures) for the Kerry campaign, he didn't feel as though that sort of campaign "outsourcing" worked. Because they were on the outside, these groups did not know the strategy or the metrics.
While they appreciated outside organizing on their behalf, the Obama campaign wanted to control the message, so they encouraged people to work within the campaign structure. Whatever problems this might have caused for outside progressive infrastructure, the belief was that the stakes were too high, and they needed to do everything within their power to win.
My take is that whether or not you approve of how the Obama campaign acted in this regard, it does reveal a tension between its reputation as a vast, bottom-up, grassroots structure, and a tightly controlled, top-down, more authoritarian operation. Such tensions are, I believe, unavoidable. Rather than organizations being either top-down or bottom-up, all political organizations fall somewhere within a continuum without ever reaching one absolute or the other.
Primarily, in the end I just wish they had kept the 50-state organizers, and paid Joe Anthony for his work. Even though they certainly have some benefits, I can live without the 527s, too. Also, if I don't have access to something, I consider that my own fault. However, undervaluing, or just flat out dumping, the grunts who carry out so much of the actual organizing, simply isn't right for a campaign that ran on being a community organizer, and which called upon campaign supporters to play a role in governing.
If you are going to ask people to be selfless foot soldiers, don't cut off funding for your troops.
I'm listening to an Obama conference call for the 20,000 teams across the country who have been canvassing and phone banking for Democrats all around the country. Plouffe just announced the campaign has turned in 1.9 million voter registration sheets, flipping such states as Nevada in terms of registration numbers. He said that the campaign has had 13.3 million conversations across the country about Obama, not just knocks on doors or on the phone but actual conversations.
... There's a 500,000 early vote advantage in North Carolina for Obama
... Nevada, 13 points more Democrats in early voting (it was 4 in 2004)
Jake Tapper thinks this is the 'fourth' time Obama has taken off the glovers. Mike Allen at the Politico also reports on the story, as does Adam Nagourney of the New York Times.
Lieberman will probably join McCain's cabinet and let the Republicans pick up another seat.
Josh Marshall unwittingly points out why Obama can't run well against McCain-Palin.
A further point. It's true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia's accession into NATO -- a very bad policy position, as I've argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain's positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter's favor. But there's a big difference.
What are you reading? And man, hasn't Iraq just come to dominate this Presidential election? I mean I know we're in a war but seriously all I hear about from McCain and Obama is Iraq Iraq Iraq.
Jake Tapper thinks this is the 'fourth' time Obama has taken off the glovers. Mike Allen at the Politico also reports on the story, as does Adam Nagourney of the New York Times.
Lieberman will probably join McCain's cabinet and let the Republicans pick up another seat.
Josh Marshall unwittingly points out why Obama can't run well against McCain-Palin.
A further point. It's true that Obama and Biden both favor Georgia's accession into NATO -- a very bad policy position, as I've argued before. However, I do not think that their positions and McCain's positions are equal. The best analogy I can point to is the nominal agreement on Iraq policy (embodied in the Iraq Liberation Act) between the Clinton administration and the most radical neocons in the late 1990s. Nominally, they shared a policy. In practice, however, it was one group that was completely nuts and gung-ho in favor of a reckless idea and another that was sort of dabbling in and passively favoring the same policy. Not that that is saying much in the latter's favor. But there's a big difference.
What are you reading? And man, hasn't Iraq just come to dominate this Presidential election? I mean I know we're in a war but seriously all I hear about from McCain and Obama is Iraq Iraq Iraq.
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