The subjects covered in this diary are how Russ Feingold can win the general election for the presidency in 2008. (Winning the nomination is a different battle, and the toughest part will be doing that with the required
opposed set of tactics to what it takes to win the general.) Here are the highlights of what he has to do for the next three years:
- Play the Supreme Court battle right, becoming the bipartisan filibuster leader against Miers, but then eventually voting for an acceptable but unavoidably somewhat right-wing nominee.
- He needs to understand how the public reacts to use of the military and threats to use the military. A very different thing than what Democrats perceive generally.
While I don't like Feingold's vote on Roberts, I can live with it. I can live with it, because, come on people, we were ready to embrace John McCain in much the same manner George Dumbass Bush did, if he had run with John "Fit For Command" Kerry.
Politics Is Sausage Making
Purity in politics is a bit of a misnomer. Absolutely, I want it, absolutely I will work for it. Absolutely it is out of reach for the next couple of years. And this comes from someone who spends a fair amount of time striving for pure small-government liberal politics here, and for pure agressive messaging. But this is not a diary about those things. I will talk a little about that, but this is a diary about winning the Oval Office in 2008, safely.
Some want to win it narrowly in order to push a way left agenda.
I want to win it broadly in order to succeed with a way left agenda.
I hope Feingold does too.
This Is Not About Roberts Or Miers
Roberts was a "stealth candidate." Steal means steal... Roberts stole in, got confirmed and Chief Justice no less. Ouch. Is Miers really less qualified than Roberts? Really is she a lot less qualified? Is she held to a higher standard as a woman? Is she perceived as a "yes man" to Bush and a bit of vanity on his part as he concedes the shreds of his popularity? These are not questions I care to ponder.
Russ Feingold Can Take Voters Away From The GOP
Not by being GOP Lite. He can woo them by wooing them to competent and reasonably accommodating liberalism. Yes, I said "accommodation." But not in the sense of "accommoditionist." Not in the sense of Chamberlain. But in the sense of the Marshall Plan. The Hitler regime never really surrendered. But a lot of individuals did. And they were in a lot more of a rush to surrender to the Americans than the Soviets. That is because the Americans were far more accommodating.
Nazis: Surrender To Americans, Or Soviets?
The Germans needed to lay down their arms and their abominable ideals, and they did this easily once that was the way the wind blew; just as they had gone with the power that was Nazism. Why? Because they expected life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They could still be themselves.
The Soviets offered a different set of strict ideals, as well as a vengeful regime, and unsurprisingly the Germans fought harder against them and ran away if they could: They would never have voted for the Soviet conquest or occupation.
As the Democratic Party, we have a choice going forward.
Do we offer a Soviet-style facade to the republican voters, or an American-style one?
Make no mistake, there is no winning Chamberlain option, the DLC approach is out.
But make no mistake, the Soviet option is also out, because we aren't going to make conservatives so afraid of us, belittle them so much, that they decide they want to be ruled by us; and why not? ...Because this is only a metaphorical war.
No Compromise: Unconditional Surrender
People do not surrender unconditionally and come over to your side if you are going to compromise with them. Feingold's vote for Roberts, if he flubs the Miers hearings, will count against him with the elusive swing voters. (Let's not get into whether swing voters exist here, because if they swing by staying home, because they are unafraid of Feingold, that is another to prove this thesis, although I do suggest true conversion could occur.) Feingold must show that letting Roberts through was a good faith mistake. An Austria. Miers is a Poland. This means war, uncompromising war, total war. War that must end in the complete destruction of a philosophy, but not of a people.
Feingold Must Tattoo Love & Hate On Each Fist
Love on the left. Hate on the right.
This is the time to fight.
But make no mistake, a judge will be nominated by Bush and be confirmed in the Senate.
That judge must NOT be Miers.
Why not?
Because it is a mistake to think that republican voters will be so dispirited by Bush's bumbling that they will stay home in 2008 and let a different Republican candidate be defeated by a Democrat.
Reid has miscalculated. If Miers really is Reid's compromise choice as has been alleged, and he intends not to filibuster, Feingold must seize the day.
Feingold must become the leader on this issue, and lead a filibuster... A bipartisan filibuster.
Surely, on Miers, there are a few Republicans who will break with their party if there is resistance on the other side with which a break can be achieved. (It's like a dinner plate... It can move really fast but won't break unless there is some firm resistance.)
But then, eventually, Feingold must vote for a nominee, the nominee that will be confirmed, if that nominee is experienced, impartial as befits a judge, and is forthcoming.
And Now, Kitchen Sink....And The Surprising Contents In Its Drainpipe...
For a lengthy section leading to the determination that Feingold can sweep as a peacenik.
A pragmatic peacenik, but an unabashed peacenik.
A peacenik on military issues, but on political partisanship as well.
Determinations different from what the DLCers expect on the one hand, but different from what DKos expects on the other.
The Wishbone
How did Reagan sweep 49 states in 1984?
How did Carter sweep the South in 1976?
And more importantly, how did the wishbone break nearly fifty/fifty for two presidential elections in a row in 2000 and 2004?
We cannot aim for another 2004 and hope merely to put it over the top of the rim this time; we want to hear nothing but net: Swoosh.
When the wishbone breaks, we want to, basically, be holding practically the whole damn thing.
No Opposition In 1984
Incumbents largely run against themselves and to the country, Reagan had done nothing deserving of eviction in common knowledge.
Reagan swept not because outside of Massachusetts the country had lost faith in Democrats; Mondale seemed like a luckless turtle and too connected to the Carter era, Ferraro seemed like she belonged to a later era that some wanted to stave off (not femininity but the capitalist little porn sideline her husband had done, or more accurately the sensationalized hay made over that insubstantial issue).
But that wasn't the issue.
Carter's supposed emasculation by Khomeini was supposed to have been the continuing issue; contrasted with Reagan's flexing.
We could look to The Son of Sam too; not his job, and no blunder on his watch, but a younger Rupert Murdoch made his entry to the American political scene by creating the Summer of Sam on the front pages of his newly purchased New York Post.
But 1984 was not, in my judgment, a Carter vs. Reagan rematch; nor should we continue to approach every subsequent election as one.
Rather, it was Reagan versus the Reagan that Democrats had to fear, a Reagan conspicuous in his absence, a Reagan that would blunder into big hot wars.
What Reagan Didn't Do Was His Broad Appeal
We can fixate on Reagan the supposed military muscleman.
But what is he praised for, even among wingnuts?
Not a hair trigger.
Reagan pulled out of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing (Bush would have launched a costly full scale invasion.
Carter, for that matter, may well have responded differently.
After all, the military rescue convoy Carter sent to rescue the Iranian hostages with, was not necessarily fated to great popularity had it been a Raid on Entebbe success. (For the record, the year after the famous Raid on Entebbe, Rabin was forced out as prime minister following an electoral upheaval in with the rightwing Likud took power. Despite having been Chief of General Staff during the Six Days War, and Prime Minister overseeing the Raid on Entebbe, a year later the voters had little love for Rabin.)
Military success is overrated as an electoral asset.
Military failure is not desirable either of course.
Voters Do Not Reward Use Of The Military
Military people can get elected.
Ike got elected in a rebuke to the Democratic Party that had led the US through WWII...
But then had gotten us into the Korean War under Harry "The Buck Stops Here" Truman in his second term.
Truman is also notable for "Dewey Defeats Truman," a historically close reelection battle.
Gee, maybe use of the military is not all that popular in this country?
Has a Republican ever won by talking about or around how much he might kinda like to use the military?
Not that I can recall.
Lincoln said he'd bend over backwards and forwards to avoid a Civil War; Nixon ran somewhat against the Vietnam War (twice) and was a big softy on the Red Chinese.
George Dumbass Bush ran as a draft dodger who hated nation building, first against former-POW John McCain, then against at-that-time very hawkish "Send Me To 'Nam" Al Gore, Jr.
For that matter, Bill Clinton ran as a pot smoking womanizing draft dodging ex-hippie boomer with a suit, haircut, family, and real job.
Bill Clinton had been for the first Gulf War but not as for it as the president who presided over it, and Clinton responded to the first World Trade Center bombing quietly and peacefully, then got re-elected... Against Bob WWII Dole.
The American People (TM Barack Obama) do not reward going to war or threatening to go to war.
This is different from kicking incumbents out of office during a war.
Gee, maybe Kerry should have left his praise of American militarism nebulous and given concrete plans for disengagement from muslim lands.
Maybe he should have pushed hard for acceptance of the idea that the mission was indeed accomplished, that the war was over.
That the War on Terror was no war at all in any sensible estimation.
That the War in Iraq simply needed a ticker tape parade and well-funded veteran care, to be history.
Double Gee, maybe Kerry should have stuck to asserting that Bush was not hot enough for Bin Laden, but not gone the extra mile to say at that particular impasse in our history that Bush, Bush, was not doing enough to get on North Korea's case, Iran's case; and if a recall correctly, Kerry even grumbled a bit about Venezuela after being warned not to soft-talk on Chavez.
Accepting the Bush framejob that he remained a wartime president going into November, Kerry perhaps could not have won.
But let us not forget, it was a squeaker, and Kerry did in fact try to do some of those same things, over the objection of the party that kept pushing him to run as a military hard-liner.
It's complicated; let's move along a bit.
Why Did Democrats Turn Republican For Reagan?
Some people who were Democrats became republican voters due to Reagan (while less remarked, people became Democrats during the same period).
Because of the air traffic controllers strike, and Reagan breaking it, some voters voted for Reagan and also against unions and the conservative demolition of the labor movement was underway.
People became republican voters, not necessarily changing their party, though now they are doing so, now there are supposedly fewer registered democrats than republicans... A trend that needs reversing.
Reagan held the whole wishbone in 1984 but it had fractured near the middle in fact, in larger ideological terms.
Democrats (politicians) misread the Reagan lessons and thought that Reagan's use of military ideology, which spending was only a component of, was the key to his success.
Democrats started to become "hawks."
How Did George Nonewtaxes Bush Blow It?
- Hint, it wasn't taxes.
- Hint, it wasn't the economy, stupid; you'll note that didn't help Gore, or hurt Dumbass.
George Bush the First, seems to have misread the reason for Reagan's success on the military issue too.
Bush used the military freely, in the Gulf War, in Panama.
These were portrayed, and not by the usual measure unjustly, as spectacular successes.
"Just a few" American lives were lost.
Lot's of foreigners died, almost all facelessly.
A whole new generation of conflict (seamed to) have been instituted; the "clean" war, the "stealth" weapon, the "smart" bomb.
And how was he rewarded for his uber-popular "cakewalk" wars, wars which put Regan's Lebanon and Grenada to shame?
Bush was booted out soundly.
He Started Blowing It Before He Even Got In
George Nonewtaxes Bush didn't get in with anything like the enthusiasm Reagan had returned to office with four years earlier.
I believe the Libya bombings had something to do with this, as did Iran Contra.
Even though Qaddafi was a terrorist, a head-of-state terrorist, were the American People (TM Barack Obama) really deeply vindicated to see his young daughter slaughtered by Operation Get Qaddafi?
I don't think so.
I don't think Americans are the callous or even vulture-like hawks that many Democrats seem to think of the other side as, and the center as, and play to as if they think this is proper while diminishing the other.
I think this is a tragic, somewhat-self-fulfilling misreading.
Republicans are nihilists in practice, but we Democrats are too often nihilists in our estimation of the human spirit, the American spirit.
We think too much about how the voters reward the blood-caked Republicans and not enough about how those Republicans con them with their good, peaceable rhetoric, and how the voters will in fact turn on them or away from them following that.
Why Did Republicans Let Clinton In Twice?
And just as importantly, why did they get back in the fight after Bill Clinton's successes?
Hint: It wasn't his hawkishness.
Yugoslavia festered untouched through Clinton's first term.
Late in his second term, under him, it was handled with a brilliantly successful campaign.
And the next time voters had a chance to vote they voted against Clinton's successor Al Gore, Jr.
And for the guy who ran against nation building.
Never forget that.
It was not an accident. (Well, okay, okay, of course Gore got the popular vote. And Florida in the final but not binding analysis. But then, Kosovo was not a huge conflict. And look at how retreat after humiliation in Somalia didn't in the least hurt Clinton in 1996. Unless you count 1994... But I think congressional politics are another story. And that countervaling effects of going to war can occur there along party lines, but that too is another story.)
It's not because Republicans are presumed to be warmongers anyway.
It's not the media unfairly portrayed Clinton's second-term military exploits, or because Gore distanced himself over Lewinsky, or because of Lewinski, or because of the USS Cole (because a measured response to the WTC bombing and OK City were AOK in 1996).
Be A Uniter, Not A Divider
On the left, we have some right-to-lifers, some evangelical christians, some racists, some gay-haters, some corporate pirates, some flugelhorn players.
We do.
On the right, they have some gross german porn enthusiasts (all of them are on that side, I trust), some gays, some atheists (Karl Rove), plenty of dirt poor people, some people who are partial to the rule of law and level playing fields not to mention fiscal responsibility (still?), and some people who don't think animals (let alone people) should be tortured.
Yes, they do.
We'd like to believe any Democrat would make a great houseguest or babysitter, teacher or doctor, and any Republican a terrible one.
But we shouldn't want to believe that.
Nor should people on the other side be thinking the inverse.
It's not the American Way.
We should hate everyone equally! Just kidding.
Failure To Communicate
What we should do, is respect the fact that being "great communicators," "Uniters not dividers," Nixon in China.
More importantly, we should understand that what gets presidents elected by safe majorities is not strong partisanship.
Absolutely, you can become president with a solid agenda that appeals to your partisans.
But Democrats have been making the mistake of running rhetorically against the Republicans on the one side, the left on the other...
Which does not offset the few issues of substance on offer, such as healthcare, which takes on partisan connotations by association.
The Right Mix
Feingold should run for all Democrats running, but the unspoken assumption should be that, just as his voters sent him and George Dumbass Bush to DC together, they can if they must send their radical rightwing Senators to office, and him to the White House.
And Feingold will do his best to make lemonade.
(Of course we don't want that scenario.)
Political See-Sawing, Sawing The Country In Half
Can it be an accident that both parties pull roughly even?
No, their platforms vie not for dominance but for division of the spoils.
Feingold can be a populist, by remembering that the middle is the smaller third and needs all of one side happily with it to win.
People may increasingly want to use politics as a lever to move or topple the other half of the country; but that is not a good idea.
Because it was artfully framed that way by the Republicans in 2004, as well as in 1994, the Democrats were perceived as playing that game just as much.
The Democrats were not doing that... So their support was not quite as strong from their partisan ranks.
But the Republicans were doing exactly that, playing to their base...
The "middle" resented being a fulcrum for this supposedly partisan seesaw, but they didn't see the Democrats as the antidote.
The Democrats did not succeed in appealing to a sense of unification, normalcy, relaxation.
Nor did they fire up their own people enough with real progressive promise.
The right mix, the real trick (tricky to do, but not a trick in the sense of trying to fool anyone)...
Is to run with a set of good plans that appeal to your base, that really do fire them up.
These can be expensive... Just look at Reagan's arms buildup.
But the other side should not be put on the defensive by these things.
Univeral Healthcare In The Mix
Universal healthcare is something new, it represents the government rearranging an entire essential industry in this country, a huge industry.
That is scary; voters aren't dead yet, so this scares more of them than it reassures, because the fear of being dead from lack of affordable healthcare is not at the critical mass it should be for the people who might vote either way.
Nevertheless, the role of universal healthcare specifically in getting out the poor vote for Democrats cannot be underestimated or disposed of.
The challenge here, on this example issue, is to portray the healthcare crisis as the scary, aberrant thing, and universal healthcare as getting back to normal albeit in a new way.
It's not about what the far-right partisan will say about it.
It's what the swing voters and the stay-at-home voters (some of the far right) will understand about it.
What they will have to understand is that it will not change their way of life in any substantive way.
It is too much to expect them to trust a change will be positive.
Change Needs Kid Gloves
"Change" is far too much a part of Democratic Party rhetoric; change is not something enough people crave no matter what they say when asked.
What Feingold ought to run on, and do, is restoring normalcy.
Returning to an earlier idealized age is of course a big part of conservative rhetoric.
It should not be part of our rhetoric because our base is too aware of the lie in it.
But nevertheless in some areas it is the right thing to do and that feeling of rolling back a dystopian future is something that can appeal broadly.
Standing down the police/prison state and the aggressive use and threat of use of militarism... Associated with Republicans and Democrats alike... Is paramount.
Values Is A Code Word For A Lot Of Things
Including simply calm, cool, and collected.
We can't understand that because we know better.
Reclaiming "values" is broadly appealing even to those who don't share those values because it means normalcy.
Not thou-must-be-normal-cy, but simply, phew, everything is back to normal around here, we can relax and... Be ourselves.
Scuttling the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and all of its brood, decommissioning the global militarist New World Order, declaring conditional victory in the War on Drugs in order for the US to no longer have the highest number of convicts of any nation on earth, all these things can be portrayed as getting back to normalcy.
Not a normalcy that everyone will like, but that a vast majority can live with or indeed love.
Step One: SCOTUS
Feingold must lead a bipartisan filibuster against Roberts.
He must hold a press conference and announce that he will do this if X, Y, and Z which are impossible do not happen.
When those things do not happen after he duly tries to make them happen (just to prove it), he will (I expect) have accrued enough bipartisan support to make it happen.
Reid then can join in at the last minute, or play the fall guy to progressives while at the same time being a maverick the partisan Bushists in the Senate decide they have to pay attention to and (although too much to expect, I know), potentially even pay back.
Feingold must do this a second and third time if necessary, and if the process becomes a circus that is great.
A filibustering majority could turn into a defacto nominating committee, although I'm dreaming here, to select an impartial (gasp) judge who is highly suitable and whom Bush is then in the position of needing to play ball by officially nominating.
Fighting For And Against The Future
On the heels of such a success, Feingold can then lead a successful initiative to force a withdrawal date for Iraq.
The congress, I hope, ought to have the legal power to roll back the license granted by the IWR, whatever the wording of that open-ended document.
This would position, or I should say prove, Feingold as a safe, yet exciting, choice in 2008.
Making Democrats believe that being against zealotry in war and law, and for inspiring initiatives on the left, is the right mix heading into the general election, is another battle....