Thoughts on the filibuster fight

Thoughts about the filibuster fight….

The last time the filibuster was under such serious attack was in the mid-20^th century. At that time the caucus of southern Senators was using the filibuster to stop any civil rights legislation from being enacted. Then it was liberal Democrats who were trying to overturn the filibuster as Civil Rights legislation had a majority of votes, but not one large enough to cut off debate.

As Majority Leader, LBJ artfully maneuvered a piece of Civil Rights legislation through the Senate in 1957, sidestepping the filibuster. He gutted the legislation so as to satisfy his southern allies, but left key a key provision that enabled blacks to register to vote. LBJ felt that if blacks could vote, the political process would open up to them and they could use their power to overturn at state levels the more noxious versions of Jim Crow. Getting this legislation through, relieved pressure to repeal the filibuster – as the House had done at the turn of the century.

Today the situation is just the opposite. The far right is flexing its muscle and is attempting to overturn the filibuster to confirm ten judges. This has lead to a month of political brinksmanship. Unfortunately, even after being offered a reasonable compromise the Majority Leader refuses to deal. If ever there was a time to display skill for political back room gamesmanship this is it. Unfortunately Frist does not have the skill.

In the end, no matter which way the vote goes, it will hurt the White House, which in its arrogance or ignorance (hard to say which), will not get involved. They don’t seem to realize that their entire political agenda is at risk over 10 judges. If the filibuster rule is repealed, the Dems will return the Senate to the days before LBJ’s reforms, where it was a sleepy backwater where legislation went to die. The Dems can tie the workings of the Senate up – legitimately – without too much political price for a very long time. If the filibuster rule remains intact, it will be a significant loss for the Senate Republican leadership and will embolden the opposition to oppose more Republican initiatives. One way or the other, the White House agenda will go down the drain.

In the meantime, the filibuster fight has completely dominates the political agenda – sucking media oxygen from the President’s message. To compound Bush’s problem here, neither the Pres or Vice Pres is running in ’08 but half the Republicans in the Senate are. Those presidential aspirants will owe Bush and Cheney nothing. Thus, after this session ends, the window of opportunity for Bush’s agenda will slam shut as the Republican presidential candidates put forth and try and pass an agenda that they think will get themselves elected. If the Bush White House was as smart as they say they are, they would have pressured Frist to make a deal with Reid weeks ago when the situation began to get out of hand. The loss of two or three judges would have been a small price to pay to get the rest of the President’s programs passed.

Where Do We Go From Here?

So where do we go from here?

Good question.

First we need to build on what went right. We had the best get out the vote organization that we have had in several elections. We were unified like never before. Even though he lost, Kerry did get over 51 million votes. That is a block that cannot be ignored. We need to build on that base. For the first time, Dems were also financially competitive. In 2000 Gore had to make hard choices on where to campaign based on money. Lack of money did not drive Kerry’s end-game.

Second, we need to define what makes us Democrats and see the points of intersection with the concerns of voters in the red counties. Off the top those would be fiscal responsibility, (the deficit), Social Security, and genuine healthcare reform.

Third, we need to continue our social stances. These worked for us in the past and they will work for us again. But we need to address them in a broader, less urban context. Pro choice for example is also a privacy issue. We can run on this, by talking about keeping judges out of your medical choices.

Fourth, Iraq. We should maintain our loyal questioning of Bush’s policy. Iraq will continue to spiral out of control. Win or loose it will be Bush’s and the R’s responsibility. If Kerry won the R’s would be blaming him for its situation in ’08. We should question, and not cave in.

Finally, and most importantly we need to reach out to the red counties and understand what they are thinking, hoping and dreaming. We can’t write them off as stupid. Remember in ’08 we won’t be running against Bush. We may need them for our comeback.

Thoughts on the 2004 Election

Here are few thoughts on what happened to us in the 2004 election. Please comment with your views.

The Fahrenheit 9/11 Syndrome:
We spent so much time hating and bashing Bush - discussing how the 2000 election was stolen - we forgot to develop a message. For us, 2004 became an election about settling a score, not presenting a vision. We made Bush the issue, but did not present a compelling alternative. In 2000 the majority of America voted for the liberal agenda (Gore and Nader). Unfortunately, in our Fahrenheit 9/11 frenzy, we did not take that opportunity to build a liberal foundation.

Demographics:
Demographics are also working against us. For Bush to win all he had to do was hold on to his 2000 states. Why? Because population has dropped in the Gore states and moved to the Bush states. Indeed, Bush could afford to have a state flip, (NH) but Kerry could not. Our votes are moving away from our base. In these circumstances, the R’s can run any candidate, and they will start out with the electoral votes of the midwest, the old confederacy and the southwest. It will only get worse in 2008 and 2012.

With this population drift, we also need to understand that it is not Red State v Blue State, but Red counties v Blue counties. Anyone who followed the vote election night on a county level (CNN provided the means to do so on their site) could see this happening as the votes came in. The Votemaster on http://electoral-vote.com/ has a great map illustrating how the vote broke down by county. You can easily pick out the big urban areas – blue islands on a sea of red.

A chart in the New York Times of 11/07/04 puts numbers to the illustration. The Dems won 60% of the vote in cities with population over 500,000 – which are 13% of the electorate. They lost every other urban grouping. For the first time since 1988 (the first year shown in these statistics), Dems were under 50% in cities of 50,000 to 499.999 in population (19% of the electorate, Dems 49% and R’s 49%). The suburbs make up 45% of the electorate. We got our heads handed to us there, getting only 47% of the vote.

Blue states went blue only because the inner urban areas outweighed the rural and suburban areas. With this trend, we can see as the cities continue to empty, more old industrial states like Michigan will flip and become regular red states. In short, we cannot pitch to states any more and expect the urban voters will carry the Dems past the rural/suburban votes. We must fine-tune our message to the non-urban voters.

Value Voters

Thoughts on the Value Voter:

Much has been made of the “value voters.” But really folks, the R’s have been thumping the family value drum for a long time. Who can forget Pat Buchannan’s speech in the Republican convention of 1992 on the cultural war in the US? What was the difference this time? This time they went looking for votes where we weren’t. Senator Shummer (D-NY) said it best on Jon Stewart, the night after the election to “They did their get out the vote drives in places we had never even heard of – like the churches.” (emphasis mine). In other words they went right to where the voters were in areas Dems tend to ignore. They were very successful. Their message wasn’t new – their organization was. Our get out the vote was effective, but we were mobilizing a smaller base. The R’s had a larger base and got them to the polls.

African Americans and Value Voters:
A lot of ink was spilled about how much of the African American vote Bush got in 2004 v 2000. Many articles point to this as evidence that African Americans are increasingly in tune to the Republican “value voter” message. This is not quite the case. Again the 11/07/04 edition of the New York Times had some interesting insight on this. According to a table they ran, in 1976 the R’ received 16% of the African American vote (Carter). In 1980, (Reagan.1) 11%; in 1984, (Reagan.2) 9%; 1988 (Bush) 12%; in 1992 (Clinton.1), 10%; in 1996 (Clinton.2), 12%; in 2000 (W.1) 8% and 2004 (W.2) 11%. The African American vote simply returned to its historical proportion of Republican v Democrat - a shift of 3%. Kerry got more of the African American vote than Clinton did in his re-election campaign. It is hard to argue Clinton’s popularity in the African American community. So neither side should get too excited about how Blacks voted in 2004. It was simply the normal break.

What About Our Image?

What About Our Image?

The Dems played into the image of being elitist and out-of-touch with the average voter. We derided the President as stupid. We derided his supporters as stupid. We pat ourselves on the back as to how smart, and with-it we are. But we made little or no effort to figure out why supporters of Bush were so rabid in their support. What did he speak to in these voters? Could all those people be idiots? Dems certainly made them feel like we thought they were. When you were in High school, who did you like to hang out with? The smart rich kid on the debate team who lorded his good grades over you? Or the laid back C+ B- student who would take a hit for his pals, and was fun to hang out with? In a larger sense this is what is going on in the US. Gore and Kerry couldn’t help reminding people how smart they were – how much they knew and any one who wasn’t for them, was not that bright. Indeed we got so caught up in that mentality we did not even notice we lost the third debate. While Kerry was showing off his statistics, Bush was busy reaching out, drawing a larger picture of his vision, a vision most voters were comfortable with. Charming Bush: Bush’s charm is that he is inarticulate. He speaks in the halting fractured way most people who are focused on survival and not the latest position papers, use when talking about the world. Clinton was great at talking to the average joe and not talking down to them, so was Carter. Notice they won. We first need to understand that many of our dreams and the dreams of many who voted for Bush are similar. To succeed we need to learn to speak to those dreams.