Democrats Cautioned Over Strategy Changes
"Opinion"05/15/2005
Paul Munnis
As we debrief from the 2004 election in a bottom up manner and we look at the strategic elements of winning and losing elections, there are voices heard from Democrats who say that “the Democratic Party should not become a home for everyone with a crying towel.” Another way to say this is that “disaffected citizens shouldn’t look to the Democratic Party for help with their woes.”
That is clearly a wrong premise and it goes against everything taught in political science classes and based upon more than 200 years of political experience.
Let’s take an example from the recent announced base closings where 289,000 people are threatened with the loss of their jobs.
Most voters are either Swing or Undecided voters. We are talking in excess here of 80% of registered voters and even in what are considered to be red or blue states. Those people can be swayed in their voting patterns. They feel moved to activism in their own enlightened self-interest, they realize that the GOP is their enemy, yet they are meek people who feel a need to seek permission to become street active in their protesting. This is because activism is an unnatural act for many American citizens.
If the Democratic Party recognizes these people impacted by base closings as 289,000 potential new voters for the Democratic Party and then focuses on getting them organized in a manner designed to get even 60% of them to become active Democratic voters, then there will be a lot of new votes come November 2006 for Democratic candidates. The sixty percent success rate means 173,000 plus votes for Democrats. That is not a small piece of political change and it could sway the outcome of elections in States like Ohio, home to Wright-Patterson Air Force base, and a state that cost Democrats the 2004 election.
For all that is known about politics, the DNC should be sending shock troops to Ohio right now, arranging meet-ups, forming citizen groups, collecting money, getting local leaders either elected or appointed, and getting those 289,000 workers to speak out about their future and to take control of communication to Congress concerning base closings. That needs to be repeated in all 50 states with emphasis on the biggest numbers of impacted voters.
So it is wrong to say that people with issues should be turned away from the Democratic Party when just the opposite is the case. These people should be welcomed, they should be embraced, we should be locking arms with them and Democrats should be helping them to organize themselves to solve their problems. In the process we will harvest votes for the Democratic Party. If we ever stop doing that then we will become an extinct political species.
We would caution against a rapid buy-in to this sort of emotional appeal and we assert it to be a strategically wrong solution for Democrats. We should never drive away potential constituencies without first examining their issues carefully. We acknowledge that there may be some issues that are counter strategic for Democrats to embrace. The point is that the issues have to be examined closely and not just rejected out of hand using some sort of ideological bromide as the basis.
That leads to the question of the Democratic Platform and what should really be in it.
Some criticize the Democratic Platform as “a collection of minor issues that do not decide the outcome of elections.” The logical consequence of embracing people with issues, such as the base closing example that we are using here, is that their issue will end up in the DNC platform. To me that is fine. If 173,000 voters want to take issue with the GOP base closings then I think that the issue does belong in the Democratic Platform and as a plank too. Many however say that we have too much content in the DNC Platform and that it obscures our message.
That is false.
The message that we Democrats use in campaigns is mainly drawn by the candidates themselves and arises from them and their election committees. They communicate the three of four key issues that they will base their campaign upon. Some of those issues are forced upon the candidate by their opposition, some are enjoined as byproducts of prior legislation efforts, and some are chosen by the candidate themselves. The actual numbers of issues that decide the outcome of an election are very few and may not even be elements of the Democratic Party Platform but they are heavily focused upon during an election campaign. The planks of the Party Platform do not drive the campaigns; the issues of the election Districts are what act as campaign drivers.
We should be highly cautious about who we turn away from our doorstep and why we are doing it. When we adopt a disaffected group we should scale the level of support that we provide and size it to the number of voters that it attracts to our Party and its candidates. We should use our Party Platform to lock these groups in and to bind them to us.