In this primary season, ordinary Democratic voters seem obsessed with the kinds of tactical political concerns that used to be the province of party operatives. Could that come to haunt us in November?
When the Bush Administration was banging the drums for war in the fall of 2002, Democratic party tacticians were advising Congressional Democrats to give Bush the authority to make war in Iraq so they could quickly move on to domestic issues, and thereby attack the Republicans in their soft spot.
The idea was to neutralize Bush and the Republicans on national security and foreign policy and inoculate Democrats from being attacked by Republicans for being soft on terrorism, weak on defense, and insufficiently patriotic. Instead, Democrats would frame the mid-term elections as a referendum on Bush's domestic policies and crony capitalism, where Bush was looking increasingly vulnerable and suffering in the polls.
Readers will know that the strategy did not meet with success. I believe that Democrats failed to present Americans with a coherent message because they were too worried about positioning themselves, and got stuck reacting to a President who framed the debate. There's a time and a place for thinking about political tactics, but that sort of maneuvering is not a substitute for a real campaign message. In 2002, our leaders were too smart by half, and we lost dramatically.
Now, as Bush again begins to appear vulnerable and Democratic voters decide who should be the party standard bearer to go up against Bush in November, Democrats are again thinking strategically. But this time, it's not party consultants who are ruled by political tactics, it's the voters.
When choosing who to support in the caucuses and primaries, many voters are obsessed with the question of whether a candidate can beat Bush. "Ordinary" voters are now thinking like party operatives, obsessing over how the candidate can be inoculated from Republican attacks, who can win in the South, or other tactical concerns.
Those are all legitimate considerations. But they tend to have a strange effect on people, turning their decision-making on who to support into a zero-sum game in which electability -- or more accurately, the perception of electability -- trumps everything else.
This sort of tactical politics distracts us from the real work to be done: articulating a clear and appealing agenda for making our country and our world a better place. This is work that has to be done by each and every one of us, not just by our candidates. We need to spread a message -- once we have one -- to our neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends. Hopefully one or more of the candidates will help us out by defining that message.
Perhaps we should take a moment to put aside the electability issue and ask ourselves which of the candidates has the vision and the message that we feel is best for our country.
Is the mistake made by the party's advisors and leaders in the 2002 elections now being repeated by voters? Will the results be the same?
Anything can happen, and I believe Bush is a lot more vulnerable than most people think. But while we may be currently obsessed with the question of who, at the moment, seems the most electable, I hope we can put it behind us and make sure we have a candidate who articulates a new and inspiring vision of what America can be and how we can change this country for the better. Any of the leading candidates has the potential to become that leader, I believe. I simply hope that focusing on "electability" now doesn't get in the way of focusing on our vision.