Housekeeping: This diary is a response to Maryscott O'Connor's latest missive, which can be read here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/12/204821/773. I recommend that you read her diary before this, otherwise it's not going to make a whole lot of sense.
Aside from a few introductory comments, Maryscott's diary is an essay by David Podvin entitled, "Resurrection". In the diary, Podvin postulates that the best way for Democrats to take back Congress and the White House is to listen to and rally around Howard Dean. He claims that Howard Dean will be successful for myriad reasons, but I have to take issue with two of them...
Read on...
In his first paragraph, Podvin comes out and stipulates that one of Howard Dean's greatest strengths as Chairman of the DNC is that he can explain issues in terms that "...the Homer Simpsons of the nation can easily understand." Further on, he postulates that the best person to help Dr. Dean with his message is Al Gore, going so far as to say that Gore should be "...encouraged to run" in 2008. Quite frankly, this strategy seems so completely bassackwards that it makes my head hurt. I probably won't offer a whole lot of solutions in this diary, but I'll tell you what's wrong with Podvin's strategy.
First of all, the Homer Simpson comment is downright insulting. It's no secret that over the years, Democrats have earned a reputation as granola-munchin', Volvo-drivin', East Coast liberal elitists. These complaints are based on our reputation for going up on the stage and pontificating at great length about what's wrong with our opponents and their parties, our penchant for trotting out useless things like facts and figures, charts and diagrams. The fact of the matter is that in this day and age, we're fighting a war of sound bites, quick little snippets that make or break our success at the polls, and I don't have to tell you that we're getting our asses handed to us. The simple truth is that these sound bites do not give voters an opportunity to really listen to what a person has to say. Howard Dean can write a fifty page missive about how BushCo is ruining our country, about how the Republican Party is full of neo-fascists who are raping and pillaging our country in the name of the almighty dollar, but none of it matters. All voters get is a quick little impression, and then it's on to sports and weather. Couple that with the growing viewpoint that all Democrats and Republicans are alike, and that none of them can really exact any change, and no wonder most voters don't give a shit about politics anymore.
Maybe I'm just a jaded old bastard (which would be pretty interesting, considering that I'm only 23), but if I've learned anything from watching the last four elections, it's this: ISSUES DON'T MATTER. Sure, there are a few core constituencies on both sides, the pro-life voters and the pro-gay-marriage voters. There are a fair number of yellow dog Democrats and a fair number of yellow dog Republicans. But when it comes to winning elections, none of these people matter. You're not going to change their vote. I'm a pro-gay-marriage Democrat, so I'll ALWAYS vote Democratic, because I don't want to let the Republicans rip away my civil rights. I don't matter in the scheme of winning an election for the Democrats, because they've already got my vote. I know it's a tired old phrase, and it should be: SWING VOTERS WIN ELECTIONS. These are the regular workaday folk, the people who get up, go to work, come home, feed the kids, maybe watch five minutes of news, go to bed, and get up and go do it all again tomorrow. They don't have time to sit around and read the Downing Street Minutes, or to peruse Daily Kos for hours on end. They live on five second sound bites provided to them by their local news. I don't have to tell you that you can't articulate a coherent foreign policy strategy in five seconds. It can't be done. These voters have proven to me four times now that issues don't matter. PERSONALITIES matter.
In 1992, some would say that Bill Clinton pulled out a miracle. He came back from Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers to somehow win an election. By most accounts, the man is a lying, philandering bastard who thinks with his dick. Yet somehow, he won the election, and is one of the most popular ex-Presidents in history. Hell, I still look back on 1993-2000 as the Good Old Days, and I get all misty-eyed when he comes on television. How did he win the election? Two words: Arsenio Hall. He got up on that stage and played his saxophone with the sort of passion and intensity reserved for things like music, and that sealed the deal. He went on to win the election, unseating a very rich incumbent. In that two or three minutes on the Arsenio Hall Show, Clinton showed charisma and youthfulness, a unique combination of personality traits that George Bush I just didn't have. He did it again in 1996, despite Whitewater and growing questions about his ability to keep his libido under control. He won the 1996 election because the Republicans decided to run Bob Dole, a man so wooden and lifeless that many voters actually demanded empirical evidence stating that Bob Dole was indeed alive. The Republicans, faced with an incumbent who couldn't be more diametrically opposed to their core constituency's agenda, a man with questionable ethics and great moral deficiency, picked a man so boring and lifeless that they got their asses handed to them again.
Here comes the fun part. Rather than learning from the Republicans' mistakes of 1996, when 2000 came around, we made exactly the same mistake. Bill Clinton presided over arguably the greatest economic period in our country's history. Toward the end of the Clinton era, life was good in this country. All we had to do was stay the course. So what did we do? We picked a lifeless bore to represent us, and SHOCKER! We lost. The Republicans, on the other hand, learned from this mistake and picked a man who, despite the fact that I can't even look at his face, despite the fact that he's a lying, cheating, morally bankrupt slimeball, might actually be a fun guy to go out and have a beer with. Time and time again, when people are interviewed on TV about why they like Bush so much, they cite his personality. He's a likeable guy, a regular guy who clears brush at his ranch on the weekends. To them, it doesn't matter that he's a Hyannisport blueblood, because he's constantly on TV in his cowboy hat and boots, slumming it with the regular folk at Nascar races and baseball games. Howard Dean (or John Kerry!) could get up on a dais and read a ten page list of all the horrible things BushCo has done, and none of it would matter. It didn't matter in 2004, because the Democrats, faced with a big pool of applicants for the job, again picked a lifeless bore as the face of our party. To suggest that we should do it again in 2008 and rely on our rock-solid case against BushCo to win an election is, quite frankly, the stupidest idea I've heard yet today.
DISCLAIMER: It's no secret that I adore Maryscott. She cracks me up and makes me think unlike no one I've ever met before. Hell, you don't see me going off and writing diary entries based on the missives of other people, do you? So, it goes without saying that Maryscott isn't really full of shit. But it got your attention, didn't it?