Nothing But Words

It’s been a month since the election, and the web has been filled with ruminations about what went wrong for the Democrats, and what they should do now. Let’s see who’s making useless noise, and who’s got some real insight:

Useless Noise

The main stream media narrative: like most other political observers, I was initially taken in by the storyline endlessly parroted on the network and cable news: that a major factor in Kerry’s loss was the unexpectedly large role played by “moral values” voters. It took an analysis from a foreign magazine (the Economist), to set me straight:

…that 22% share [of the electorate citing 'moral values' as their top concern] is much lower than it was in the two previous presidential elections, in 2000 and 1996. Then, 35% and 40%, respectively, put moral or ethical issues top… all that this means is that the war on terrorism has not fundamentally altered, or made irrelevant, the cultural, moral and religious divisions that have polarised America for so long.
The Economist – The triumph of the religious right

While the Bush campaign did bring out born-again Christians in big numbers, he won because he increased his support across the board, even among those who never go to church: see
It Wasn’t Just (Or Even Mostly) the ‘Religious Right’. Aside from an effective bring-out-the-vote effort among the religious right, there was nothing new in this election about “moral values.”

The Republicans have fooled the voters: a book that many Democrats are studiously examining is Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas. Going back a few decades, Kansas was a solid Democratic state, but now it’s one of the reddest of the red states. A similar transformation has occurred in other states as well. How did it happen?

According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans’ actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.
Amazon.com – Editorial Review

While the Republicans certainly have shaped cultural grievances into very effective campaign wedge issues (like the marriage-protection initiatives), Frank is wrong in arguing that the Republicans are just paying lip-service to the conservative social agenda. Many GOP leaders, including Bush himself, take these issues very seriously, and I think you’ll see that very clearly when it comes time for Bush to make a Supreme Court appointment. To see Frank’s argument more thoroughly dismantled, see Witness – at New Donkey (a blog that unofficially represents the centrist Democratic Leadership Council). Like New Donkey, I’m concerned that the Democrats will take Frank’s argument to heart, and from there shape a losing, populist agenda for 2006 and 2008. This is why I think the Democrats would have done even worse if Howard Dean had been the nominee. While he wouldn’t have suffered from Kerry’s “flip-flopper” image, his brusque refusal to even consider “God, guns, and gays” as issues worth discussing would have utterly sank him in the red states. I can’t say it better than New Donkey:

…the whole point of cultural anxiety…has far less to do with abortion or gays than with a widespread sense that a whole host of traditional values are being threatened and perhaps extinguished by cultural forces ranging from globalization and commercialization to sex-and-violence saturated entertainment products…We’re the “wrong track” party when it comes to the cultural direction of the country, and we have to decide whether to bravely swim upstream out of loyalty to hip-hop and Michael Moore and Grand Theft Auto IV and Hollywood campaign contributions, or do something else, like at least expressing a little ambivalence about it all. Changing the subject is cowardly and insulting no matter how you look at it.
New Donkey – Witness

Real Insight

The red-blue cultural divide: although the role of moral values in this election wasn’t new, it’s actually good for the Democrats that the media has forced them to take a hard look at how narrow their base of support has become. While it’s interesting to compare the 2004 electoral map with this pre-Civil War map, it’s important to not read too much into it. The real division in this country isn’t between states – it’s between urban and rural communities (with the in-between suburbs as the battlegrounds).

For example, in John Ashcroft’s home state of Missouri, Bush received 54 percent of the vote, making it a red state. But Kerry won the city of St. Louis by an overwhelming 81 percent; he also won the two other most populous counties in the state, St. Louis and Jackson counties, according to data from CNN.com.

With the exception of the uber-conservative states of Utah, Nebraska, Alaska and Oklahoma, nearly every “red” state with major metropolitan centers had pockets that strongly supported Kerry, including Colorado (Denver and Boulder), Georgia (Atlanta), and Indiana (Gary).
Alternet – Blue Islands, Red Seas

And Josh Marshall offers some insights on the nature of this cultural divide that’s unlike anything you may have read elsewhere. The last two Democratic Presidents have been southern governors, and the reason they succeed where others fail is because they can bridge this cultural divide.

The flailing Kerry campaign: I think it was in September – after weeks had gone by with no real counter-punch to the Swift Boat Vets – that Chris Matthews said something along the lines of “the Kerry campaign is the most inept in American history.” Howard Kurtz, in a recent Washington Post column, lays plain the two key problems: indecisive management from Kerry, and a lack of a coherent message. In regard to message:

That Kerry lacked a clear message isn’t just a convenient postelection critique. It was a mantra during the campaign…It was a problem that plagued the campaign as soon as they stumbled, penniless, from the primaries into the general election. ‘When we got into the general, nobody knew how to go against Bush,’ says a senior campaign official. ‘[Senior adviser Bob] Shrum and [pollster Mark] Mellman built this strategy against Bush, ‘Stronger at home, respected in the world.’ What does that mean? We never even had strategy memos.’ By the fall, things were no better. ‘If there was a clear message in September about why you elect Kerry and defeat Bush, most of the people in the campaign were unaware of it,’ says one senior strategist hired late in the campaign.
The Washington Post – Kerry’s Troubled Campaign

Salvation for the Democrats can be found in something that’s been discussed recently under a variety of labels: branding, framing, and message crafting. Polls consistently indicate that most Americans agree with the Democrats on most issues, but the Democrats have been failing for at least 10 years now to market themselves coherently to win their votes. Meanwhile, the Republicans have been brilliant at it. This dovetails nicely with something Howard Dean is right about, which is that the Democrats need to engage the Republicans nationwide, and cannot cede the South and Midwest to them. In my next post I’ll talk more about all this, and (unlike most of the other armchair-quarterbacking bloggers) offer some specific recommendations.