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William D. Randall's Blog (of no particular interest to no one in particular)
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Wednesday, November 03, 2004
When do we get to tug on the Rope? After watching the returns, crunching the numbers, reading the post-mortems on Kos and TalkLeft, I have realized that the Democrats may have more to work with despite the negative returns. We as a party have started a period of introspection that is needed to take back the House in 2006. I have worked a lot on this campaign, and I do have to commend the GOP on their election strategy. Morality is possibly the weakest aspect of the Democratic party, and when the election boiled down to "Gay, Guns and god," we were at a sizable disadvantage. Other issues in this campaign have also angered me. The first issue has to be the ability of the campaigns to stay on message. Watching the Kerry campaign from the primaries through yesterday, they always looked like a campaign that was unsure of what to say. The GOP was able to capitalize on this and paint the "flip-flop" label on him. Unfortunately the American people have little knowledge of history and they forget that the "Flip-flop" label is the oldest trick in the political book, along with "don't change horses in midstride". The second issue is the choice of a senator to run for the presidency. Senators have lengthy voting records which shed light on their personal positions. I personally support Kerry for being a liberal senator, Bush however went to the extremes and painted him as being the "most liberal." The National Journal, in their congressional vote rankings reserved this title for Senator Kennedy after looking at their entire career voting records. Governors are better suited to run for the presidency as they can make a lot of promises and they are not held to a voting record. Governors can set policy and legislative priorities, but the votes are made in the state legislatures where the members are not as well known. Howard Dean was the only governor to run for the presidency in this cycle and his rapid move to the front was based in part on the health care policies he was able to advocate for the small state of Vermont. The third issue I have about the Kerry campaign is how the liberal candidate ran an old fashion "conservative" campaign. Many aspects of this pertain to the marketing of the candidate. Standard rectangle bumperstickers versus the stylish W. Ovals. One Kerry supporter in Phoenix was able to "hack" the sticker and make a Kerry "K" sticker, but the Kerry campaign never bother to go toe to toe. At the local level, requests for signs at our county office fell on deaf ears until the state party and our Orange County Victory Fund raised money to print our own OC for KE signs. Bumper stickers and signs did not come in from the state party until a week and half before the election. Large BC signs went up around OC while all we could do at our HQ was sigh. I hated having to tell volunteers that we were "out of this" or "out of that". On the visual front, the New York Times ran an interesting editorial pertaining to the designs of the campaign signs. Bush's bold and forceful font versus Kerry's somewhat prim and proper font conveyed a subliminal message to voters about who could fight the "war on terror." Other candidates in Orange County ran on the presidents coattails for reelection by copying the BC design for their signs. Issue number four pertains to the lack of a coordinated heirachy among the 527's. I applaud MoveOn and ACT for their extensive GOTV efforts. But the BC campaign kept all of their GOTV efforts under their campaign. Allowing the 527's to freelance represented a serious tactical error on behalf of the KE campaign. With multiple groups on the ground in Ohio, the likelihood of alienating Kerry voters is possible with multiple untrained and unprofessional volunteers knocking on the doors. Now this is not to knock those who worked for ACT, but a Nightline special on GOTV was extremely interesting. Precinct walkers for BC never said "are you going to vote for George Bush," Instead they said "Are you standing with your President?" What is a person going to say when the question is phrased like that. If you say no, your loyalty instantly comes into question. If you were a Kerry supporter you would get lamblasted with BC phone calls and flyers. If you said "yes" just to appease them, then you would be lying and would be placed into a moral conundrum. The BC people also co-opted the flag. WTF!! It's our flag too dammit. We should have them at every event, in the crowd, behind the candidate. In the end the Democrats need to start looking more like the Republicans but talking like Democrats. Karl Rove's church outreach program, the GOP 72-hour initiative, along with placing initives banning gay marriage in eleven states was crucial in winning votes from conservative christians. Rove stated how he never needed the Democratic vote to win reelection, well he was right. Questioning god is equated as not being faithful, and no conservative christain voter wants to be painted as a being faithless. It is the ultimate peer pressure and when decisions about who and what to vote for are being made from the pulpit, the separation of church and state is further weakened. About leadership at the campaign level, Bob Shrum should never be hired by a presidential candidate ever again, Give Trippi an advisory role the man had an idea and he was able to manage the rapidly growing Dean Campaign. By the time former Clinton officials came on board, we were trying to change engines in the middle of the racetrack while being lapped by the Presidential Limo. And as for leadership at the Party level It's time for Terry to go. While Marc Raicoit was able to run a nondescript spin room in Boston until the cover was blown, Terry never quite got the concept in New York. He has failed to unify the many different factions within the party, and as Kos mentioned, he has overseen the worst electoral season for the Democrats since Clinton was elected. The former chairman, Joe Andrew was able to unite the party. During his reign Unions, environmentalists, and other groups realized winning was everything and they put aside their differences to get Clinton elected. The Democrats need a party chairman that is similar to the GOP chairman. Young, charismatic, and has the ability to keep the party on message. I would recommend the CEO of the DNC in Boston, Rod O'Connor. He was able to pull the convention off without a hitch despite a prolonged police strike. Now we have a situation where the Republicans control the House, Senate and the Presidency. The voters have spoken and have given the GOP the run of the town in D.C. O.K. fine, the GOP now has enough rope, they are saddled with the responsibility of reducing the National Debt, finding and killing OBL, and continuing to resolve the Iraq quagmire without institution the Draft. Failure in any one of these three areas will allow the Democrats to tug on the rope and pull the GOP out of power by Midterms in 2006. One last thought pertains to voter turnout. About 120 million voters voted in this election, each candidate received a record number of votes, and the final tally was roughly 51%-49%. James Carville stated that the candidate who is dependent on voter turnout is the first loser. Kerry depended on GOTV way too much, the next phase however must be building up grassroots voter support, not just telling the voter to vote for the candidate but by giving them a compelling reason to vote for the candidate that infuses a passion among the electorate on a personal and charismatic level. Clinton was able to do this and until we have a candidate that can solve this problem (Obama?), Democrats will have difficulty in the south where the changing number of electoral votes make the south extremely important. And how in the heck can we lose Florida! Democrats outnumber Republicans but we lost the state. Until we can lock in Florida, it will be difficult to win the presidency again. "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." "We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire...Give us the tools and we will finish the job." - Winston Churchill
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