You know, when you look back into how the Dems lost [in 2002 and 2004], most of the reasons offered up are, honestly, bullshit.
What the Dems didn't do, while the GOP did, was target and reach their voters over and over, in a trusted setting. For argument's sake we'll call it a church. David Kuo explains in great detail how the White House could and would use government money to buy church votes. The media went on and on about values voters and scared the Dems away from their base. Don't pay too much attention to the blacks or the gays or the urban voters. It was Soccer, then Security moms and NASCAR dads. The Dems were being told repeatedly to compete for voters who had many reason not to vote Democratic......ever.
But for the most part, excluding Carter's evangelical based victory, the Republicans looked for new pools of voters and shaped their messages to meet their needs. Lower taxes isn't just a bromide. but for suburban voters in good school districts, a desperate cry for help. Their tax burdens are serious issues in their finances. And with stagnating wages, it sounds like a solution. It wasn't an issue of services, they wanted to maintain those, but wanted to pay less for them.
Which is why the meme of waste, fraud and abuse was so popular in the late 80's and 90's. People wanted to believe government was pissing their money away. They wanted someone to blame. And since Reagan had provided the subtext that the money was going to the underserving [sic} poor, it was an easy campaign to sell.
The Dems never really answered it, they never defended government and explained how efficent [sic] it was in reality. They were scared off from doing so by the think tanks. Grover and Steve and the rest of the Olin/Scaife mafia was making a cottage industry convincing the public that the market solved all problems.
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But the Dean campaign made the same mistakes all Dem campaigns had in that period. A muffled message, a victim of Dem sniping with no reasonable reply, and a poor GOTV strategy. The Cult of Dean didn't help matters. It was the best move for everyone that he became head of the DNC. He knew how to run state races, he got advisers who didn't eat in the original Ben and Jerry's and he had to finally find a way to deal with the Dems diversity.
By the time Bush had gotten to Kerry, who I still think has been unfairly maligned for his campaign, the attacks had already been defined. Kerry ran a good campaign, not great, but good, but the underlying structure doomed him to a close defeat. ACT, GCI and their underpaid staff made GOTV efforts a nightmare. But considering Kerry's liberal record and his manner, his narrow defeat was hardly some epic failure. Despite all of the years of demonizing liberalism, Kerry came within 113,000 votes of winning.
People have claimed it was Diebold which provided that edge. Unlikely, and here's why: remember how people claimed the exit polling indicated fraud? Well, no. It is far more likely to indicate lying. People lied about voting for Kerry when asked. Why? They didn't trust him, they didn't like gays, they thought he was weak. This was a version of the Bradley effect, when people lie about their vote for various reasons, in the 1982 California governor's race, race.
Rove's real secret weapon was the evangelical vote. While the Dems were working the state with ACT, and some genius had the idea of having English newspaper readers send letters to Ohio voters, Rove was working his well sown network. The one which came together in 2002 to hold the House, and then won Ohio for him. If the Dems wanted to claim, with only the thinest of proof, that Diebold didn't work, fine. Rove knew what he really had, and planned on keeping it.
Even if Diebold depressed urban voting, even if it did, Rod Parsley and his evangelical bretheren [sic] had the ability to drive thousands of voters, especially elderly voters, to the polls. I mean, place them in vans and take them to the polls. All organized and planned.
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Now, back to the Dean comment. In the months after the election, you had people like Amy Sullivan suggesting that the Dems toss their coalition under the bus. Rove's wet dream.
What many were still transfixed by was the idea of getting white southern men to vote for the right kind of Dem. Which was a wasted effort. The price of that vote would be the entire coalition. Much of that vote was driven by race anyway, but the DC Dems bought into it and a lot of other GOP-sponsored theories.
The Dems had not taken GOTV seriously, not trained people to do it, not thought about expanding the battlefield. Kos was laughed at in Washington and by some idiots online for backing long shot races. They never saw the value of making them competative. [sic]
Howard Dean did. While some people still don't get it, making the GOP defend everywhere means they defend nothing. If we were still targeting races, Chris Shays would have enough money to beat Diane Farrell. Now that you have the House leadership under attack, Tom Reynolds down by double digits, the Dems are on the offense and can pick even more races to press the GOP on.
Dems are now just realizing that their pool is single women, they're just dealing with their issues in a concerted way.
The problem that in assigning losses to Diebold, you ignore the strategic and tactical errors of the Dems which led to defeats. It was seriously flawed thinking which created these problems, mistaken assumptions, bad judgments which cost the Dems their Congressional majorities and lost the White House. Those are the things changing and giving Dems a chance to win.
My own ideas about what we (the Democratic Party) ought to have beeen doing in 2002 and especially in 2004 were also kind of messed up. But it was really depressing to hear other Democrats--especially white, rural men--tell me that unless we sacrificed some of our core (and principled) platform to appeal more to white, rural men, we would never, ever win another election again EVER. It was doubly depressing because this meme seemed to originate from Republican pundits like David Brooks. When your party starts taking their marching orders from the opposition, it's no wonder things go to shit.
Hopefully Gilliard is right, and this meme can be put to bed. Combined with Howard Dean's efforts to actually build a party rather than just run it further into the ground, we might just bring some sanity back to our own party and to Washington over the next few years.
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