NOTE: This is a long piece crossposted from Blog Free Or Die. Hope you enjoy it.
The primary may be over, but there's plenty to think about for New Hampshire Democrats as we head out of the lofty world of presidential kingmaking and back to tending to our own house.
For one thing, we're not quite out of the presidential arena yet, as is evident from a
visit from You-Know-Who today. The
primary results didn't bode well for the incumbent, to say the least:
Overall, independents who voted Tuesday were disgruntled.
Four in 10 of the independents who voted in the Democratic primary said they were angry at Bush, and another four in 10 said they were dissatisfied. Eight in 10 said they were worried there will be another major terrorist attack in this country. Results of the survey of 1,848 voters were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, higher for subgroups.
Almost four in 10 voters in New Hampshire are independents, political analysts say. Their support will be crucial in the general election in a state Bush won in 2000 by just over 7,000 votes. At stake are four electoral votes.
As we've heard a million times, Gore would have won without Florida if he'd carried New Hampshire. And Terry McAuliffe is warning that if the Granite State doesn't go blue in 2004, we might well say goodbye to Vote First Or Die. (Like hell, Terry, but nice try anyway.)
So New Hampshire Democrats are faced with some major questions in 2004:
- How do we put New Hampshire in the Democratic column of the Electoral College in November?
- How do we begin to bring the huge number of Granite State independents into the Democratic fold permanently?
- How do we challenge the formidable Republican incumbents (Gregg, Benson, Bradley and Bass) in the fall?
Let's begin at the beginning, if we may.
How do we put New Hampshire in the Democratic column of the Electoral College in November?
Well, if the undecided voters are any indication, we've got a good chance. I'll try to sum it up in four talking points:
1) Bush's agenda has hurt our state tremendously.
If you want the numbers, they're very clear: since Bush took office, New Hampshire's lost over 22,000 manufacturing jobs, nearly 10,000 of our people are still out of work, and over 125,000- that's nearly 10% of the state- are uninsured. And while half of us will get less that $100 back from the Bush tax cut, our property tax burden has gone up more than 7 percent, and the costs of Bush's education mandates cost nearly $500 per kid more than the money being sent here to fund those mandates. And that's before we bring up the deficit- hell, even the Union-Leader took their lips off the presidential hinder long enough to complain about that.
And don't forget the Bush-backed energy bill, which would have specifically stopped New Hampshire from suing over the MTBE being dumped in our water- even our Republican Senators and Congressmen refused to support that one. While one can argue that we're in better shape than we were during the first Bush recession in 1992, we are hurting compared to where we were on January 19, 2001. Bush has been bad for our state.
2) Bush is the only major presidential candidate who skipped the entire primary season.
The president hasn't been in our state since a quick visit to help John Sununu's campaign in 2002. And when he did finally show up today, it was for a staged "conversation" at the offices of a major Bush/Cheney campaign contributor:
The format will be not quite a speech and not quite a campaign-style town hall meeting, with some interaction between Bush and a group of Granite Staters on stage with him.
And even in the phoniest of settings, Bush's pep talk was pretty weak:
"First, we had a recession in America. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. It was kind of a leading indicator of what was to come. And then the country went into a recession. The first three quarters of '01 were negative growth. When you have negative growth, it means people are not working. And times were tough. The people of New Hampshire know what I'm talking about. When that recession came, it was awfully hard for some people to be able to do their duty as a mom and a dad to put food on the table, because their work wasn't steady. And they're worried about employment, if they were working at all."
He then goes on to blame the recession on 9/11 (an excuse that's been discredited about a zillion times) and to say that things are getting better even though we're still losing jobs and few new jobs are being created to replace them.
Meanwhile, there were ten Democrats (don't forget Bob Graham) stumping here for a year, having real conversations with voters. And as the turnout showed, voters- especially independents- were excited about that. If we can capitalize on that excitement and reach those frustrated swing voters, we can do well in November.
3) Our troops- from our state- are in danger because of Bush's failed foreign policy.
There are roughly a thousand troops from New Hampshire in or headed to the Iraq theater right now; two of them won't be coming back, including Sgt. Randy Rosenberg of Berlin, who was killed on Monday. There are no concrete indications that Iraq is really getting safer; but there are more and more indications that Iraq posed no threat, and that the White House wants to continue cutting soldiers' and veterans' benefits, while enforcing stop-loss orders that essentially draft soldiers back into the military after their tours are up. Eight in ten independents told primary day exit polls that they're very worried about another terrorist attack- meaning they know, as we do, that we're less safe thanks to the Iraq war.
4. Democrats can set our economy and our foreign policy back on course.
Al From sez we have to win on hope, not anger, blah blah blah. But seriously, we'll need our national ticket to offer a specific alternative to four more years of the Bush agenda. We have a huge deficit- what will we do to curb it? Iraq is a mess- how exactly will we make it stable AND keep our troops safe? How will we get jobs back into the state? Vague pronouncements about "experience" and "leadership" won't be enough to bring about a Democratic win.
Democrats can win here- Clinton proved that twice, and Gore came awfully close. But we'll need a strong message, and then, a strong party, which leads us to our second major question:
How do we begin to bring the huge number of Granite State independents into the Democratic fold permanently?
Rep. Chris Malloy hit on this a while back when he told BFOD about his plan to get southern NH Dems organized. Independents are frustrated by the Republicans and are interested in alternatives. We're the obvious alternative, if we play our cards right.
Our major obstacle is the party's identity crisis. NHDP chair Kathy Sullivan said as much at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner last year, talking about our reputation as the "party of protest." In fairness, it's hard to be anything but the party of protest when you're outnumbered the way we are, but we need to start emphasizing what we're for and not just what we're against. Peter Burling and Sylvia Larsen got that ball rolling the day before Craig Benson's Powerpoint presentation disguised as a State of the State address, by putting our legislative priorities out in the open:
Democratic leaders said yesterday they want to stop cuts at the state level that shift the burden onto local property taxes. "Property taxes are skyrocketing," House Democratic Leader Peter Burling said.
Democrats also proposed a pharmaceutical commission to negotiate for lower prescription drug costs for residents.
"If the state can negotiate good liquor prices, it ought to be able to negotiate better drug prices," said Senate Democratic Leader Sylvia Larsen.
Other goals include raising the minimum wage, establishing an ethics code for state officials with penalties for violations, restoring funds for the preservation of land and historic buildings, reducing mercury pollution and increasing penalties for identity theft.
The statewide property tax is a winning issue if we frame it right. In 2002 the Republicans framed it for us- they were against every tax, they said, while we were going to slap a fat income tax on hardworking people. One landslide later, we're realizing we need to frame the issue ourselves. What the alternative to the property tax should be is better left to people who aren't me, but if there's a way to repeal or fix the tax without putting an income tax on instead, Democrats need to rally around it.
Other issues we can lead on are schools, health care and the environment- all issues Craig Benson has bungled and/or ignored. Benson's offering laptops; perhaps we could (finally) offer universal kindergarten? Benson signed SB 110, which raised insurance premiums in the Seacoast by 150 percent, and people aren't happy about it. And Benson's environmental record amounts to trying to rebuild the Old Man and buying a SUV with state money. We can offer real alternatives on these issues, and we should.
In short, the party needs to reintroduce itself to independent voters- not as the party of protest, not as the party for an income tax, but the party that can help New Hampshire keep the qualities that make it such a great place to live.
Organization will be another key to our chances statewide. I'm a bit grassroots obsessed, but there's something to be said for the thousands of native New Hampshire voters who attend Meetups and volunteer for their candidates. The party needs to reach out to those people and give them an outlet for their energy. I'd prefer expanding local Democratic organizations in towns like mine, getting like-minded Democrats together and giving them a voice in shaping the party. If independents hear our message and like it, we need to be prepared to bring them into the fold, rather than just letting them use us as a protest vote against Dubya or Craig Benson.
Speaking of Craig Benson, didn't we have a third main issue? Ah, here it is.
How do we challenge the formidable Republican incumbents (Gregg, Benson, Bradley and Bass) in the fall?
Supposedly Gregg's reelect numbers are showing he's vulnerable, but I find that hard to believe, especially now that he's got a new federal prison project coming to Berlin. That said, we've got a great candidate in Burt Cohen- he's smart, he's raising some money, he's well-liked by Republicans and independents, and he's putting together a good organization. We'll need strong candidates like that to challenge the other incumbents as well. Rumors abound that Burling, Larsen, and/or Dick Swett may jump in against Benson and Jeb Bradley; we could use strong folks like that. And some Dems can always dream that Jeanne Shaheen will come back and whup Benson...
No doubt these races are an uphill battle- especially since Gregg, Bass and Bradley are moderate enough for many independents and Benson's lack of skill, achievement and leadership are masked by the millions of dollars he sleeps on at night- but with strong candidates, good organization and the right message, we can do well. Stranger things have happened, right?