The GOP and ideology: Can’t win elections without moderates

July 5, 2007 – 8:51 am

So, Pollster.com , from Survey USA, has some interesting data about the Libby Sentence Commutation. I am not actually interested at all in writing about the results of the poll regarding Libby. (although it was fascinating how disconnected conservative voters are from the conservative chattering classes) I’ve presented the partisan and ideological alignment in the chart below The size of each box is proportional to the percentage of the population.

Republican Independent Democrat  
Conservative Moderate Liberal  


I am interested in the connection between party and ideology that we get from the underlying data. Some observations:

  • The GOP and conservatives are, basically, the same with Republicans being 30% and conservatives are 29%
  • Liberals are, however, only half the self-identifying Democrats with self-IDing Dems being 40%, while liberals only 19%
  • In other words, 50% or so of self-identified moderates feel comfortable identifying as Democrats.
  • In other words, almost no moderates are identifying as Republicans.

The GOP is not appealing to moderates at this moment while half of self-identified Democrats are moderates. That should scare us.

Now, some caveats. These labels describe self-identification quite a long ways from an election and are a reaction to Bush. Once the frame shifts so that Bush will, hopefully, not define Republicans.

But still. This is bad

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Last night’s Sojourners Democratic Forum

June 5, 2007 – 7:53 am

UPDATE: Turns out Marc Ambinder did at his new blog. (already blogrolled)

I didn’t know if people would write about this, but David Brody did:

For the next hour I sat in my seat in awe. There was conservative Christian “red meat” everywhere. Topics ranged from evolution to abortion, to forgiveness of sin, to prayer, to homosexuality, to whether this is a Christian nation, etc. I mean I was waiting for Soledad O’Brien to pull a “Mission Impossible” move, take off her face mask and reveal…James Dobson!
 
I thought all three candidates came off looking pretty good. Hillary Clinton’s body language was interesting. She leaned in to O’Brien a few times with elbows on the tables. Like they were at the kitchen table and we were listening in. Very effective. From a substance standpoint, I think her answer on abortion where she talked about trying to bring both the pro-life and pro-choice communities together was well thought out and something she can build on throughout the campaign.

Full disclosure. My uncle was one of the organizers of this. I’m headed off to breakfast with him in a little bit, and I am sure that we will talk about this.

First, you have to remember what the political agenda of the event was. It was organized by Jim Wallis, whose book God’s Politics has the subtitle, "The right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it." Wallis is trying to get left to get it more. And he is trying to take religion out of the hands of the right. The goal was to expand the number of issues that are discussed in a religious framework, and to make the religion of those on the left more accessible to voters who are religious.

I do think that this will cut both ways for the Democrats. I am sure that many secular Democrats are going to be alarmed by the things that they heard last night.  Edwards sounded the most "evangelical" to me, but he is from the South and understands deeply the way that religion is worn on your sleeve. But I found him the most believable. I was struck by Obama’s language which seemed the least overtly religious. This was in contrast to his speech at Selma and a number of other speeches he has given. I thought that Hillary’s seemed a little bit fake when she talked about religion, but she played up her (upper-middle class?) sense of privacy about religion.

In the end, the biggest result of this may be that these clips could be played credibly on Christian radio in a general election. (or even today) A lot of my conservative friends will disagree with me on this, but I think that this could be an important moment in the 2008 election. Not because Democrats will contest for votes of conservative Christians. It is the moderate Christians who are swing voters. By forcing Democrats to talk God, Wallis may have forced open a door and strategy for Democrats.

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Movements versus campaigns and parties

May 27, 2007 – 2:46 pm

Patrick Ruffini argues that the GOP has the right model for online activism:

I can sing chapter and verse on why our model was better. Lateral communications (or community building amongst supporters) is a worthwhile goal in itself, but often gets confused with what it takes to do GOTV in the final days of an election. That’s when you want a unified message, and you don’t want canvassers coming up with their own talking points. The end result of that strategy is Dean in Iowa.

I am torn on this question. On the one hand, the GOP online effort did convert better to GOTV, and winning the 2004 election. But there is another question about long-term investment. Indeed, the underlying question is apples and oranges. Campaigns versus movements.

In 2005, the Dean list and community was converted into an unprecedented grassroots candidacy for DNC chair. And the Deaniacs took over state parties and county parties around the country. The Deaniacs lost the 2004 primary campaign but may yet transform their party over the long-term. That’s a movement, not one campaign. And, over the long-term, movements have a lot more power. In short, the online left is solving a different problem than the Bush campaign was. The online left is trying to change their party, not elect candidates.

Now look at what Patrick says:

Did we sustain it? Well, that’s a fair question. The Bush list did continue on at the RNC. We did parties. We activated the base on key issues. That’s a greater continuity of effort than we saw on the other side. Terry McAuliffe famously boasted of wanting to bring all the Democrat candidate email lists in-house to the DNC. In the end, not one obliged, not even John Kerry. He kept his own list, blasted to it regularly during the 2006 elections, and as Chris Cillizza has been fond of harping on, that 3 million list alone was probably the only reason he could be considered viable for 2008.

MoveOn and Dean for America, rebranded as Democracy for America, did continue to activate with their 3m list. And they don’t have to take orders from the party. To them, candidates are a way of effecting policy changes, not the objective in-and-of-themselves, like they are for a party committee. Whatever candidate we nominate in 2008 is going to have a different coalition. Will the Generation Joshua guys show up for a Rudy Giuliani, a John McCain, or a Mitt Romney? I kinda doubt it.

I continue to believe that the right way to understand the online left is not as a party, but as a movement. Their historical antecedent is the New Right, using direct mail, the new technology of the day, to raise money and deliver message. In essence, the new technology is being used to expand the power and size of a part of the coalition that hasn’t had a seat at the table of the Democratic Party. For example, the Rock-the-Vote voter registration engine:

What’s happening this cycle could be ground-breaking, in that Rock the Vote is building a voter registration engine with an API anyone can innovate on top of.  Groups and individuals will be able to capture the number of people they register, the data of the people they register, and the contact information of those they register.  This means that, unlike with a standard voter registration download form, the person who asked you to register, presumably someone you trust, will be reminding you to vote.  That’s a big deal.  They will also be able to get credit for registering you to vote, since the voter engine will let people see how many people have registered through a page.  It’ll be kind of like Actblue, for voter registration.

This doesn’t help parties. Parties have voter registration lists. They keep them (kind of) up to date. This helps the interest groups, outside organizations, and movements.

The online left is a movement to reinvent and renew the Democratic party. The question for the GOP is whether we need something similar. A newly organized coalition, etc. I think that the answer is "yes." Perhaps Patrick disagrees with me?

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Sarko, Sego, and the Public Employees

May 8, 2007 – 10:28 am

Even though I follow and try to be involved in European center-right politics, I have mostly avoided the Sarkozy love-fest on the American right. However, I think that E.J. Dionne had a nugget that I think captures the deep truth of what happened:

And where Royal won by almost 3 to 2 among public-sector workers (she also carried students and the unemployed), she lost private-sector workers (as well as the retired). The left can’t win without a better showing among workers in the private economy.

In 1989 ,Stephen Harper, today the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada but then the Policy Director of the Reform Party, wrote in a memo to Preston Manning, the head of the party, that the core conflict of modern politics is between the private sector workers on the right and the public sector workers on the left, not a distributional one.

In the "most economically developed" states, that is essentially the conflict. Look at California, where the public employee unions are public enemy number one for most Republicans. Quite correctly so.

Going back to France for a moment, consider this nugget from the Economist’s European blog:

But the big question, as one said to me this afternoon, is what happens now. Will Sarko, the quintessential man of action, actually be able to carry out his campaign promises: to cut the personal tax burden from a maximum of 60% to 50%; to impose heavier sentences for repeat offenders; to lower unemployment by allowing the easier hire-and-fire measures that are normal elsewhere; to relax the rules of the 35-hour week (“work more to earn more” was Sarko’s biggest campaign slogan); above all, to reform the pension rights of the public sector and guarantee a minimum of public service whenever France’s public-sector workers indulge their appetite to go on strike?

The American labor movement has shattered. We now have the service workers union, SEIU, and the public employee unions, AFSCME (but also AFGA) who are on the cutting edge politically. The industrial unions do not matter much in France (8%, even less than here) and they no longer dominate the debate here. It is the public employee unions who are truly bankrupting our country. (And France’s)

Something to consider as we enter what may be the next phase of political and economic development. Is this the face of politics in the age of globalization?

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What the “Left’s New Machine” has to teach the right

May 7, 2007 – 9:51 pm

A number of people have asked me what I think of Jon Chait’s TNR article, "The Left’s New Machine." Here are my thoughts. I just finished reading Kos and Armstrong’s Barbarians at the Gates this morning. So I may merge some thoughts together.

First of all, this has tended to be discussed in the context of the "netroots", as a technological phenomenon. This is wrong. This new phenomenon is about changing and activating constituencies.

Second, the netroots activated people who were not part of some activist class. The labor movement has plenty activism outlets. The black and hispanic communities have them too. The netroots identify with the Democratic party before they identify with an interest group. They are Democrats because they are progressives. And progressives haven’t had an outlet. The netroots gave it to them. (In some sense, the internet is the 2000s version of the 1970s direct mail)

Third, because they are more interested in the Democratic Party than some interest, they can focus their energy on elections and the big defining issues, like the war, rather than petty infighting.

I do believe that there are lessons here for the right. One of them may be that Republicans have taken the character of interest group factionalization. There was a day when being pro-choice was the main test for moderation. Now there are taxes, abortion, marriage, the environment, campaign finance, Iraq, Iran, and so many more issues. Each of them is associated with an interest group, a donor base, etc.  Do Republicans have to shift from infighting to winning elections?

Another question is: Is the Republican Party ready to change its coalition at all?

Another question is going to be, from whom does the energy come? One option would be activating the elderly. Another would be college students.

And, of course, what tools do we use to reach them?

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What is going to happen to the primary calendar?

April 24, 2007 – 8:54 am

As has been repeatedly noted, the primary calendar is strongly in flux. However, one of the most interesting questions is: what happens if New Hampshire moves up sharply, as I expect it will. Consider some facts:

  1. New Hampshire is committed (and empowered) to move up before, at least, Nevada, meaning that the latest it is held is probably Jan. 15th.
  2. Florida is committed by law to be one week after New Hampshire.
  3. The South Carolina GOP has committed to moving up to be the "First in the South" primary, which probably means before Florida, but after New Hampshire.
  4. The Michigan Dems have stated that if New Hampshire moves up too much, they will do something radical. And if they do, the Michigan GOP has committed to re-evaluating its date.

Perhaps the most important limiting factor here is that New Hampshire can call and hold elections very quickly. Once the ballots are printed, Bill Gardner can call an election almost whenever he wants. Therefore, New Hampshire will be technically capable of holding an election as early as early December. Would Florida be able to print ballots and hold on election on 4 weeks notice? Would the South Carolina GOP be able to do it on 3.5 weeks notice? What if the timing meant that candidates were campaigning over Christmas? (say NH holds it in mid-December, putting the FL and SC elections between Christmas and New Years) Would NV move up to hold caucuses the same day as SC? (they’ve never done caucuses like this before. Are they capable of doing that either legally or logistically?)

Those are merely logistical considerations. What happens when NV becomes irrelevant because it is competing for candidates time with SC and FL, both of which will have more delegates. Candidates will fly from NH to SC and FL.

Finally, what happens if people believe that we are approaching a brokered convention and every delegate will count?

I think that it is fair to say that the current calendar really is more a set of negotiating positions.

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The blogosphere, Obama, and the media

April 19, 2007 – 9:01 am

Marc Ambinder writes, in response to Matt Yglesias,  that Hillary Clinton is "not doomed! Yet!" and discusses her relationship with the blogosphere. The fundamental question is "does Hillary’s failure to catch on in the lefty blogosphere mean that she is doomed."

Marc describes one way of answering the question:

In the sense that the blogosphere is a self-contained constituency, and it is, even if its range spans across several other identity groups, one would need to demonstrate not only that Demcorats read blogs, or that blog-readers vote, but that blog-readers are somehow more accurately aligned with actual primary voters than other constituencies.

In other words, Marc argues, are blogs representative of the party as a whole, or are they merely a faction of a highly factionalized party? I am constantly reminded when I read lefty blogs that they seem socio-economically-located (more wealthy, more white, etc. than Democratic coalition) I was reminded of this again in Harold Meyerson column in today’s WaPo:

For the Democrats, the contest is settling into a pattern set four decades ago: primary-season class conflict, in which one candidate appeals to a younger and more upscale electorate by talking about political reform and other chiefly noneconomic concerns, while another emphasizes pocketbook issues to the party’s working-class voters. In primaries past, the upscale-reformer role has been embraced by Eugene McCarthy, Morris Udall, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean, while the part of the more populist bread-and-butter battler has been played by Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards, among others. This year’s upscale reformer, as Ronald Brownstein keenly noted in his Los Angeles Times column last month, is Barack Obama.

I would add a biographical point about Obama. He was elected to a black state Senate seat in Chicago with most of his energy coming from students at the University of Chicago, my alma mater. His biography and district (Hyde Park, the University’s neighborhood, is an upper-middle class black neighborhood into which a 12,000 student university has been inserted) allowed him to reach into two dissimilar parts of the Democratic coalition. In some sense, Obama is more of a Paul Wellstone than a Mondale or Humphrey.

I suspect that the blogs are less important in the sense that they represent voters and more in the sense that they, as Marc notes, have come to dominate opinion formation in the party, an undeniably elite project:

It seems to me that a more satisfying and ultimately more precise way to describe the power of the Democratic blogosphere is to characterize them as the "leading edge" of base opinion. In the same way, national presidential preference polls, which Hillary still tops, are trailing indicators.

I would make the broader point that the rise of the blogs is contributing to the strength of the upscale reformers in the Democratic party apparatus, already in many ways dominant. Howard Dean, the upper-class pro-NRA, pro-deficit reduction, candidate for President rode them to the DNC Chair. And the media, especially the national elite media, shares socio-economic roots with the blogs and this wing of the Democratic party. No wonder they are the media phenomenon. That’s almost the entire echo-chamber of the left.

Note that, in many ways, the mainstream righty blogs have a similar structure and socio-economic relationship with the media. Hugh Hewitt is a Harvard educated law professor. Glenn Reynolds is a Yale educated law professor.

Back to the original point about Clinton. Bill Clinton was clearly an ally of the reformers in many ways, but he was much more "with but not of" the reformers but "of but not with" the class-warriors. Bill Clinton is also not on either of Meyerson’s lists. Neither is Hillary. What to make of that?

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Another take on the right and the left online

April 15, 2007 – 9:07 am

Since I am relatively new to politics online, although neither politics nor technology, I followed the conversation last week between Patrick Ruffini, Rob Bluey, David All, Michael Turk (here and here), and Matt Stoller, with comments from Conn Carroll, with interest but I did not jump in. But between that an a conversation sponsored by Rob Bluey last week, a nagging feeling has emerged that I am going to talk about here.

It is taken as self-evident  that the right is behind on online political activism. The evidence is usually taken in numbers. More contributions, more readers, more bodies showing up in Iowa without instruction about what to do. Is that what the right should be trying to achieve? When we achieve that, have we reached parity? I do not think so. Michael Turk points out that there are real reasons why Republicans give less online.

When I worked in technology and on Capitol Hill, I was continually presented with the proposition that information (or numbers) without organization is nearly worthless. This is well known in other spheres:

Politics is sublimated war. In war, technological innovation without updated organizational innovation is almost worthless. However, organizational innovation is almost always decisive until the opponent adopts counter-strategies.

The left has better ideas about how to use technology and organize themselves. Let me give some examples:

  • TPM Muckraker. This is a website devoted to exposing corruption at the national level. That has meant, while Republicans were in charge, skewering Republicans. (Now, I grew up in Chicago, and I believe that corruption is part of the fundamental DNA of the Democrats, so don’t get harsh on me) Both the capacity and the niche provided by TPM Muckraker during the 2006 elections was phenomenal. Without that, I wonder if the Democrats would have been able to make corruption an issue.
  • Rightsfield. Several lefty bloggers are following what is happening on the right side of the Presidential election. I do not believe that neither the right nor the left has any significant blogs focused the left side of the Presidential election. But both have blogs following the right. Which side of the blogosphere is going to be better equipped, in terms of structured organization, when the nominees are selected? The left. Hands down. (I was reminded of this the other day when I was linked to by TheGarance.com, a lefty blog with a section in the blogroll, "Finding 44" in which all the sites were from the right.
  • Huffington Post’s video project. I don’t know if this will work, but it is a worthy experiment. This will destroy Republicans. Destroy.
  • BlogPAC. Fundraising is great. But remember the Edwards blogger story? Remember this post from MyDD in which Matt Stoller, mentioned above, urged readers to send letters to reporters to "fix" stories? It happened. This was a relatively minor story, in the grand scheme of things, but they were able to mobilze 1,525 people to take action against a reporter.
  • State blogs. National blogs have readers. State and local blogs do not so much. But they can define the press in determinative ways. Partly because the reporters tend to have fewer resources for state and local stories.
  • Too many other ways to mention.

The left dominates converting enthusiasm to activism online. Republicans basically don’t show up. The left dominates message control online. The right probably is better at converting activism to votes, but we are off-line too, so that’s not surprising.

Right now, the enthusiastic on the right have very little to do. They even had little to do in 2006. The options were to stew in their juices about Lincoln Chafee, ultimately, to my mind, a counter-productive activity, or talk to each other about how bad the Democrats were.

My point is not that we need to get more enthusiasm, although we do and that is hard, but rather than we need to think much more deeply about how to channel that enthusiasm in productive ways.  Once that happens, the money will almost certainly follow, especially if we are able to give young professionals, a generally busy lot who won’t go knock doors but have cash to burn, something to do.

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GOP Winning in 2008

April 12, 2007 – 11:02 am

Kavon over at Race 4 2008 got me back to this little project I have of comparing general election matchups for various GOP candidates.

Rasmussen has started to collect general election matchups. I have collected them and presented them in, what I think, is the clearest and most useful format (note that these are not all from the same poll, so methodologically, there is something deeply unsound about this. RCP averages would be great):

  Clinton Obama Edwards Fav - UnFav % unknown
Giuliani +8 +1 +7 +33 3%
McCain +7 0 -9 +17 3%
Thompson +1 -12  -14 +13 41%
Gingrich -7 -10   -5 9%
Romney -9 -15 -26 -5 31%
Brownback -5 -15   -19 43%


Analysis of the digits after the jump.
Read More »

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Iraq and 2008: A ballot issue and two visions

April 11, 2007 – 4:56 am

There was an interesting exchange yesterday at the Politico. Tom DeLay and Martin Frost agreed that Iraq is likely to be the dominant issue of the 2008 Presidential election. DeLay stated it as a certainty, but Frost allowed for the possibility that we might pull out:

The only question is whether a definitive decision about our continued involvement in Iraq will be made prior to the November 2008 elections, particularly the wide-open presidential election.

I believe the status quo cannot continue for the next 18 months. If I’m right, and major changes in Iraq policy are made very soon, the 2008 presidential election will wind up turning on other issues. If I’m wrong, then nothing else will matter.

Of course, in typical Democratic fashion, Frost ignores that "major changes have been made". DeLay had a different view which I, no DeLay fan, would agree with:

As long as most Republicans want to fight and win the war in Iraq, a conflict they see as the irrefutable central front in the global war on terror, while most Democrats want to cut and run, then the American people are faced with one prohibitively important decision.

Right now, it is clear that the people, with the information that they currently have, will likely support the Democrats’ (to my mind, immoral) position. With that in mind, I want to turn to a discussion that I took part in yesterday with the Iraqi government’s spokesman Ali Aldabbagh. (also discussed at Q and O and The Weekly Standard)

Aldabbagh expressed a hope that was encouraging to hear, and a hope echoed in Fuoad Ajami’s piece in today’s WSJ. I asked him to give tangible indicators of success and he spoke of economic development:

  • More than a 100-fold increase in teacher pay (in real terms), new and re-opened factories, etc.)
  • Increased arrests (1,700 since the beginning of the surge and the new Iraqi security plan two months ago)
  • More public cooperation with the Iraqi government manifested in actionable intelligence against the terrorists, etc.

In the end, this will come down to a simple question. Will the American people believe that the next 10 American lives and several billion dollars will make a real, tangible difference in the lives of Iraqis and our own security? Will that blood and treasure save, for example, 2,000 Iraqi lives by preventing some number of attacks? And will that prevention be due to a political change in Iraq? If so, that could very well be worth it.

However, the Bush administration and John McCain, now perhaps the most trusted and articulate defender of the war, will need to communicate the successes that are taking place on the ground and the hope that the Iraqi people feel. Without facts supporting that hope, the American people will almost certainly come to support the Democrats morally empty position. (I should say that it is only morally empty if you believe that there is a chance of success) Without facts that are contrary to the ones that they are receiving, the American people would have to come to that conclusion.

The Democratic primary electorate has almost certainly bought into the idea that this is unwinnable, which is why Hillary Clinton has tacked to the left, and is one of the reasons for Barack Obama’s success. He was quoted in AP yesterday saying:

I have stated clearly and unequivocally that the open-ended occupation has to end.

By calling our deployment to help the Iraqi people an "occupation" he has lowered the moral status of our mission there. That is quite a different vision from Tom DeLay’s above or McCain’s:

There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but we must try. As every sensible observer has concluded, the consequences of failure in Iraq are so grave and so threatening for the region, and to the security of the United States, that to refuse to give Petraeus’s plan a chance to succeed would constitute a tragic failure of American resolve.

One can only hope that McCain and Bush succeed in communicating the seriousness of this moment. Or we risk repeating the past and have more letters like this one, written on the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. The New York Times reported this fall with the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." Soon after the Khmer Rouge began the killing of over 1.5m people.

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