As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama's historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you're white you can't open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama's playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They're not upset with Obama because he's black; they're upset because they don't expect to be treated fairly because they're white. It's not racism that is driving them, it's racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don't believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory "Our Time Has Come" they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.
Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn't do it. They don't identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they're not stupid. What they're waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won't leave them behind.
In the span of two paragraphs, Ferraro, who was on the ticket that lost more Reagan Democrats than any other Democratic ticket before or since, makes no less than tweleve generalizations about what Reagan Democrats are concerned with, how "they" feel, what "they" believe, what "they" think, and what "they" want to see.
Isn't this kind of like getting advice on shooting free throws from Shaq? Also, isn't repeatedly generalizing about an entire group of people kind of, you know, arrogant stereotyping? Maybe it is just me, but if I read an editorial that made such an enormous amount of assumptions as to what I thought because I belonged to a specific demographic group, I would probably be inclined to not vote for that person. I wonder if there is a connection here between Ferraro's assumptions about Reagan Democrats, and her previous inability to win them.
In Nevada, Obama won 13 delegates and Clinton won 12.
But if one side is unable to rally its supporters at any step along the way, it risks losing national delegates, much like Gary Hart did in 1984.
Hart fared well in initial party caucuses when he ran for the Democratic nomination in 1984, only to see some of those delegates go to Walter Mondale at the state conventions, said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who counted delegates for Mondale.
This passage is relevant to the current campaign for three reasons, as I explain in the extended entry.
When Walter Mondale endorsed Hillary Clinton over the weekend, I would bet that there was a decent amount of snickering in both Democratic and Republican circles as to whether or not that was actually good for her campaign. After all, Mondale did suffer the second worst electoral defeat of any Democrat since 1924, barely receiving 40% of the vote and carrying only Minnesota and D.C. However, to further emphasize the point in the post directly below this one, it needs to be pointed out that the Democratic Party, despite reversing its electoral fortunes, really hasn't changed that much from the days of Mondale either in terms of message or in terms of the quality of our candidates. Check out this four-minute, nineteen-second Mondale / Ferraro campaign video as an example of this:
This video presents almost the exact same issue set as the current Democratic Party presents. Two older woman talk about poverty at 0:20 and 0:30 in the video. Another older woman talks about protecting Social Security at 0:40 in the video. A diverse group of children are interspersed between these women. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs comes in at 1:00. The economic struggles of rural Americans comes in right after that, and a variation on the "people versus the powerful" or "two Americas" them immediately follows that. Republican connections to corporations and the wealthy are attacked starting at 1:47 in the video. Keeping Jerry Falwell off the Supreme Court comes in at 2:01. Fair taxes come in at 2:13, including a call for closing tax loopholes and for higher taxes on the wealthy, on corporations. After that, a fairly long attack on conservative foreign policy ensues. New opportunity for women and opening doors comes in big time at about 3:45 in the video. Updated to match current events, none of this would be out of place in pretty much any Democratic campaign commercial for state and federal office now, even in red states and red districts (if such states and districts still exist, of course). Dangerous right-wing foreign policy, protecting Social Security, ending Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy, reigning in corporate influence on the government, outsourcing, increasing diversity, keeping the religious right off the Supreme Court, fighting for economic fairness and on and on. This is all the same stuff. About the only thing missing is health care.
The Democratic message from the 1980's hasn't changed, it has simply been repackaged to better conform to the standards of contemporary mass media. Whatever changes there were in the 1990's about "the era of big government" being over seem to have disappeared from stump speeches, even if they do still show up in terms of corporate PAC donations. And our candidates have not improved, either. As I argued below, if John Kerry had performed as well as Michael Dukakis within key ethnic and religious demographics such as Latinos and seculars, he would have won. Basically, Democrats are putting forward candidates whose quality ranges somewhere between that of Walter Mondale and Michale Dukakis, and those candidates are offering pretty much the same message we saw from Mondale and Dukakis, and yet they are winning anyway.
On several levels, Bill Clinton now seems more like an aberration than ever. He was further right than most Democratic nominees (including, probably, Hillary), a better campaigner than most Democratic nominees (including, probably, everyone running), and generally successful during an era of massive Democratic electoral slumping (something none of our candidates will have to face should they win the nomination). Apart from Bill, Democrats have not really changed that much in terms of rhetoric, policy, or candidate quality over the past twenty-five years. And yet, despite this, they have moved from regularly being blown out to, in the worst-case scenario, facing very close elections. What has changed has not been the Democratic Party, but rather the country itself. With the contemporary electorate, Dukakis would have probably defeated Bush Sr., Carter would have probably defeated Reagan, and even Mondale would have probably been within single-digits of Reagan. It is a fun, fascinating transformation to watch and be a part of. At some point, the Mondale comeback will probably reverse itself, but before that happens Democrats are going to win a lot of elections. Perhaps it will even reach a point where Mondale himself could have won.
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