Just spotted this interesting
post over on the Dean blog.
While I don't hold with every rhetorical flourish (e.g., the poster uses the term 'gestapo' to refer to those who enforce traditional political campaigning that shies away from tough issues) I think the poster raises critical issues.
In this case, the focus is Dean, but whether you support Dean or Clark or someone else:
- to what degree do we face the chance for a true 'realligning' election in '04?
- if we face that possibility (I think we do) how do we take advantage of it?
- specifically, how do we balance the risk-taking that can create new alliances against the gotchas that the Rove machine is waiting to exploit?
In successful coalition politics, such as the multiracial coalitions that held power in some US cities in the 80s, it was critical for coalition partners to see that they could ally on big issues while still having lots of genuinely diverging interests.
There's a temptation in such a coalition to brand your partner as betrayer or hypocrite when these conflicts show up. It takes lots of hard work and skilled leadership to hold such a coalition together. This is laid out in some detail in Rafe Sonenshein's excellent book on the Bradley coalition in LA.
I think that example illustrates both the potential power and the genuine difficulty of coalition building. For my money, a Dean-Clark ticket might be our best shot: two men brilliant in very different ways, who between the two of them have a chance to corral just about every potential anti-Bush constituency.
Thoughts?