Recently around these parts I've seen lots of calls for the Kerry camp to get its hands muddy, take the gloves off, stop bringing knives to a gunfight, (insert colorful metaphor here) with regard to their campaign tactics. I disagree. Although it's important for the Kerry camp to be strong and respond to attacks, I don't think that their interests are served by going negative and getting nasty. Here's some reasons why.
- Turnout. When turnout is high, Democrats tend to win, and when turnout is low, they tend to lose, simply because there's more of us than there are of them. Therefore, it's a general strategy of Republican campaigns to do everything they can to reduce turnout in all elections. The Republican base is usually harder and its turnout more consistent, so strategies that depress turnout on both sides will hurt Democrats more. And nothing depresses turnout more consistently than a negative campaign. The more disgusted the country gets by the election, the less they will turn out to vote, and the more the Republican hardcore vote will matter. The more the Kerry campaign goes negative, the more they contribute to this effect.
- The Base. As I've said, the Republican base is harder and votes more consistently. Have you noticed that Bush has been campaigning to his base as well? While Kerry grasps at the swing voters, Bush just shored up his base (up until the convention, that is). The R's believe that victory will depend on turnout of the base -- and in a race this close, the base for each side is 45%. A negative campaign will depress turnout of swing voters (ie Kerry supporters) and make Bush's campaign style more effective. Kerry going negative will only turn away the swing voters he's gone to such length to woo.
- Johnny Sunshine. Remember that the most effective campaign of the primary season was Edwards'. Despite major disadvantages in the map, the calendar, the money race, the endorsement race and the staffing race, Edwards came close to taking it from Kerry by sticking to a positive message. Now that Edwards is on our team, why aren't we spreading that sunshine? Dick Cheney is the master of mean, so why is Edwards trying to beat him in that contest instead of being the nice guy that everyone loves?
- Favorables. Bush's favorable/unfavorables suck. His re-elect sucks. His right direction/wrong track sucks, and that's really not going to change that much no matter what the campaign is like. Seeing that they can't affect the incumbent's numbers much, the Republicans have sought to drive down Kerry's fav/unfav and it's worked. Bush and Cheney can sink to new lows of gutter politics and it just won't hurt their ratings that much. When Kerry goes negative, though, he lowers his own fav/unfav more than he can hope to lower that of the incumbents.
- Issues. This is really the big one. Republicans like to make elections about character, Democrats like to make them about issues. And as long as this election is centered on character -- whether it's Bush's character or Kerry's -- the Bush team gains ground. That's because the entire Bush presidency has been a cult of personality centered on Bush The Man, to distract attention from the failures of the administration to govern. When the election turns toward issues, any issues, Kerry gains ground because the Bush team has negative ratings on nearly every single issue and their failures are too many to list. (In fact, part of the Kerry campaign's failure to focus on one issue or one set of issues has been a result of there being just too many things to focus on.) Negative campaigning is almost always about character, and is simply a distraction from issues. Even if the mud is aimed at Bush, the underlying dynamic of the discussion favors him.
In conclusion, I'd like to remind everyone here that we're the Democrat hardcore base and we like our red meat. But we're coming out to vote no matter what. It may be hard to believe, but there might be a large bloc of voters that turn their backs on this race if it turns into a mudslinging contest. And those voters are Kerry voters. So in the interests of keeping turnout high, of avoiding Republican message and Republican strength, of turning the conversation to the Republican weak side, and of using our candidates' best attributes to best advantage, I say we should resist the temptation to fight fire with fire. Instead, fight fire with water.