Nothing But Words

Reviewing the debate between the Left and the Right on Social Security reform leads me to conclude that both sides are handling it irresponsibly. Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum are good representatives for the argument from the Left: that it’s a false crisis, as Social Security will be solvent until 2042, even if we do nothing. Bush makes the opposite case, arguing we will hit a financing crisis in 2018.

What both sides are dancing around is the real problem: Al Gore wasn’t elected in 2000, and we didn’t get his Social Security “lockbox.” The following excerpt from this January 2004 Slate article makes clear why the Republicans don’t want to talk about the real reasons for Bush’s plan:

Back in 1983, as part of a deal to save Social Security from impending demographic doom, Congress enacted legislation to essentially increase payroll taxes and reduce benefits. As a result, the government began to collect more Social Security payroll taxes than it paid out to beneficiaries each year. The theory was that the government would use these surpluses to pay down the national debt. That way, when baby boomers retire—and comparatively more people are collecting benefits while comparatively fewer people are working—the government would be in a better position to borrow the necessary funds to provide the promised benefits.

So much for theory. The reality? For the first 15 years, every penny of the surplus was spent, first by Republican presidents and then by a Democratic president… It was only in fiscal 1999 and 2000, when the government ran so-called on-budget surpluses, that excess Social Security funds were actually used to retire debt… Bush (who had the good fortune to take office at a time when the surpluses were growing rapidly) and Congress used $480 billion in excess Social Security payroll taxes to fund basic government operations—about $160 billion per year!

By so doing, Washington spenders have masked the size of the deficit. For Fiscal 2004… if you factor out the $164 billion Social Security surplus, the on-budget deficit will be at least $639 billion [not the approx. $500 billion claimed by Bush]…The accounting for Social Security surpluses has always been dishonest. But in the past few years, the Bush administration has made this shady accounting a central pillar of its fiscal strategy.

I think the Left has correctly ascertained the motivations of the conservatives: the eventual abolition of Social Security. While they’re right to call them on it, the Left has made a mistake in denying there’s a problem. Buying Krugman’s and Drum’s argument requires you to either not know what I’ve just reviewed, or to believe that there’s some magical way the payroll tax revenue already spent to mask the size of the federal deficit can be repaid to Social Security beneficiaries without assuming a crushing load of debt.

If the Democrats acknowledged the problem, of course, that would lead to the requirement of offering a counter-proposal to Bush’s. Unfortunately, at this stage it would be difficult to come up with one, because once again the Republicans have beat them to the punch in framing the debate. Given the misuse of the payroll tax money for the past 20 years, the only options at this point are either reducing the government’s long-term commitments to the program (which is essentially what Bush is proposing, but with massive transition costs to a private accounts scheme along the way), ballooning the federal debt to an unprecedented and unsustainable degree down the road, or coming up with a new tax scheme and saying “trust us to not blow it this time.”

The Democrats could have gotten out in front on this issue – it’s not like they didn’t know Bush was going to move on this in his second term. If they had, they could have framed it as an issue of overall fiscal responsibility, and laid much of the blame where it belongs: at Bush’s feet. Then they would have had a shot at making the case for an overhaul of Social Security funding: with a real “lockbox” and revenue from something like a VAT (as Kevin Drum suggested). The American people can handle – and would respect – some straight talk, but neither side is giving them that right now (and the press has been particularly abysmal, merely parroting what each side is saying). I mentioned in an earlier post that the Democrats must become the Party of fiscal responsibility, since the Republicans no longer are. If they talked frankly about how we got into our current mess, and offered some real ideas on what to do about it, that would start giving them some real credibility on fiscal matters. But as far as Social Security is concerned, I’m afraid they may have already missed the boat.

Looks like somebody’s taking my advice Senate Dems Plan Investigatory Hearings:

[Senators] Reid and Dorgan said they [GOP-led congressional committees] fell short of fulfilling the role of Congress to oversee executive branch excesses. They said issues that “cry out” for closer investigation, in addition to contracting abuses in Iraq, include the administration’s use of prewar intelligence and its reported effort to stifle information about the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

I had suggested the idea of such investigations as a 2006 campaign theme. I didn’t contemplate launching investigations now, as panels led by the minority Democrats do not have real teeth, in that they lack subpoena power. But “Dorgan said there are plenty of whistleblowers ‘anxious to tell their story.’” If there’s anything to his assertion, hopefully doing these investigations now will amount to more than just empty political theater.

You can tell from my last post that I like the campaign model exemplified by the Republican’s 1994 Contract with America: it nationalized traditionally local House races, unified the Republicans around an easily understood, crystal clear picture of what they stood for and what they wanted to accomplish, and actually invited Americans to keep score on how much they delivered within the promised 100-day time frame.

Compare that to the House Democrats’ Partnership for America’s Future (in PDF format) that they ran on in this election. It had two major shortcomings. First, nobody’s ever heard of it. Second, it’s organized around a series of amorphous terms like “Prosperity” and “Fairness,” each of which is followed by a big, unsorted barrage of fragmentary ideas that’s more a wish list than a legislative agenda.

Preparing for the 2006 midterm election is a greater imperative right now than worrying about possible 2008 Presidential candidates. A crucial element in Bush’s November victory was that the Republicans re-took the Senate in 2002. If the Democrats had maintained control, they’d have had a crucial platform for reaching the public. They could have made counter-proposals to the Bush agenda (they wouldn’t have made it into law, but the Democratic positions would have been much more in the public eye). They could have launched investigations of not just intelligence failures, but of intelligence abuses by the executive branch. If Kerry had won without a popular majority, and with hostile Republicans controlling both houses, he would have spent all his time fighting for his political life, with little hope of advancing an agenda. Retaking the Senate in 2006 is crucial for laying the groundwork for the 2008 Presidential campaign.

I’m not yet sure of the right name for it, but for 2006 the Democrats need their equivalent of the Contract with America. It should be used for both House and Senate races. While reading through my ideas below, keep in mind the car advertising analogy in my last post: emotional touchpoints, crisp terminology, and real improvements that the public can easily measure. But that doesn’t mean every element of it has to be something big. Like the Contract with America, some elements are symbolic measures of what you stand for, while others are substantial legislative proposals.

Saving Infants: astonishingly, there are 40 countries in the world with an infant mortality rate that’s lower than ours (and for blacks in the US, the rate is twice as high as whites’). Countries like Japan and Sweden have an infant mortality rate that’s two times lower than ours. Even economically moribund Cuba does better than we do. The Democrats need to re-frame the abortion debate, and this is how to do it. The anti-abortion movement is not pro-life – it is merely pro-pregnancy, and they need to be called on it. What’s been brilliant about the Republican approach to social issues is that they deliberately single out issues like abortion and gay marriage – things you can oppose at no financial cost to yourself. The Democrats can start to advance their long-held goals about child health care while at the same time laying plain the hypocrisy of the Republican position. In terms of specific legislation, I’m not a medical expert, but I’m sure some bullet-point proposals could be drafted which would outline how to make improvements on this front.

Independence from Middle East oil: this has floated out there for some time, but the Democrats have yet to really embrace it. The intent is to advance green power technologies, make us more of an honest broker in Middle East affairs, and remove our economic dependency on this very unstable part of the world. Such achievements would garner rich rewards for the Party. What’s held the Democrats back is that pursuing it would put them in a political bind in regard to domestic drilling for oil. Frankly, I think we have to allow for that (and over the next two years of Republican control, it’s likely to happen anyway). Even if there were massive funding for alternative energy research starting tomorrow, it’ll be a long time before we lose our dependence on oil.

I think an effective case can be made within the Party that it’s better to make some short-term sacrifices on this front for the sake of brightening the future of the Middle East, securing the stability of our economy (i.e. jobs), and advancing the long-term, global cause of environmental protection. The parallel example is how the GOP has dealt with the Department of Education. In the 1990s they tried to abolish it, and they got slapped back hard. Now Bush is pouring money into it, but under a set of guidelines he’s dictated. The lesson is, if you have to live with something you don’t like in order to achieve broader goals, at least do it on your own terms.

No indicted party leaders: this is a no-brainer. The GOP repealed it’s own rule on this in anticipation of an indictment against Tom Delay. The Democrats have instated such a rule for their Party, but they didn’t get much press attention for it. They need to bring it up again for the 2006 races. This isn’t a one-off though. It ties into the next three items, which can be used to construct a narrative about the responsibilities of power.

Honesty in legislation: the Democrats should propose a rule that any amendments to a piece of legislation must be relevant to it. This would serve to both highlight the massive pork barrel spending occuring under Bush’s watch, and attempts at abuse of power (such as the amendment that recently almost made it into law, granting the Chairs of the Appropriations Committees the power to disregard privacy rules and read anyone’s income tax return).

Legislation for the people, not lobbyists: the Democrats should make a pledge that they will have a publicly transparent process for writing legislation. It wouldn’t be hard to portray the current House leadership as a cabal of industry lobbyists and Republican frontmen, because that’s what it is. Industry lobbyists are literally writing legislation (this and much more is covered in the book The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress).

No more living on the credit card: with unprecedented deficits that have more to do with tax cuts for the wealthy and massive increases in discretionary spending than they have to do with Iraq or the war on terror, the Republicans have ceded their touchstone of being the party of fiscal responsibility. The Democrats must claim it. Politically this is a tough nut to crack, which is why Kerry didn’t pursue it too vigorously. But I think the American people are more open to some tough love than the Democrats give them credit for. It must be framed first and foremost not in terms of taxing and spending statistics, but in terms of the nightmare our children will inherit if we keep up what we’re doing now (as well as what might happen even sooner if the dollar continues it’s downward slide).

Enhance small business opportunities: traditionally Democrats have seen the business community as a monolith. But it is not. Big business is often the enemy of small business, and small businesses need help. More on this can be found in the article Top Billings, which describes how super red-state Montana now has a newly elected Democratic governor. His advocacy for small business was a cornerstone of his campaign. This is the 21st century face of populism.

Those are some of my ideas. I have others too. Senate Democrats could keep the party engaged on foreign policy matters by formulating their own Israeli-Palestine peace plan, as a way of possibly building some momentum (even if it’s the Europeans who end up riding it) and highlighting Bush’s dithering in this crucial area. They could even come at the global warming issue by framing it in terms of preserving property values (who wants waterfront property that will soon be underwater?). But I’ll stop there. The point of all this is to illustrate that, as a Party, we surely have the brainstorming abilities to put together a winning agenda. It must be a bold agenda that reframes key issues. And it must have clearly defined goals, the achievement of which can be easily measured and publicized.

There are two things the Democrats must learn from the Republicans: the art of message crafting, and having some brass (defined in the dictionary as “a type of insensibility to shame: very bold or impudent”). Since the 1994 “Republican Revolution” the GOP have used these to dominate the political landscape.

A long time ago, message crafting was something the Democrats were good at. For example, they turned the “Negro problem” into the “civil rights movement.” See Kevin Drum’s piece on this for more. But there’s more to it than just slapping a good-sounding label on an issue. It’s about constructing a seamless narrative about what the Democrats believe in, and providing a clear message about where they want to take the country. This point is explained brilliantly in a post at Daily Kos:

Democrats and Democrat-friendly 527s spent a record $250 million (or more) on this election cycle. Does anyone have any idea how much money that is??? That’s more money than Sony U.S. spends marketing its products in a year. It’s almost as much as Burger King spends in a year, and significantly more than Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut, Subway, Domino’s…Yet by all accounts the recall rates of all that advertising were abysmal. It was obviously unsuccessful in persuading enough people to vote for Kerry. After all the ads, the speeches, the talking-head spin-room appearances, the voters still didn’t feel they knew who Kerry was and what he stood for. Whereas they do believe Saddam Hussein had WMD’s and something to do with 9/11…

Auto manufacturers, some of the most sophisticated marketers going, do a lot of research–just like pollsters and politicians. But they don’t simply determine that drivers want better brakes, stick slightly better brakes in their cars, and hang up a sign that says “New and Improved: Now with better brakes!!!”. Unfortunately, I think this is about the level we’re at with Democrats today…

An auto manufacturer, by contrast, starts by identifying safety as a critical touch point on the car-owning consumer’s psyche, and uses that to back into features it can lead with as selling points. R&D spends real money making real improvements to the brakes, product managers create names like “anti-lock brakes”, and then they roll them out with sophisticated, repetitive messaging that communicates whatever combination of fear, vulnerable children, family camaraderie, and classical music they think will nudge their target audience one point closer to buying the safe car with the important safety features they are now confident will keep their family safe.

Take that understanding of marketing, combine it with a bold agenda and a flat-footed opposition, and you’ve got a winning recipe. The best example from recent history is the Republicans’ 1994 Contract with America:

Those who embrace its value as a political tool argue that the contract led to a swing of 10 million votes in favor of the Republicans between the 1992 and the 1994 U.S. national elections…

[It] was marketed with the tag line, “If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it!”…By avoiding the use of political or bureaucratic lingo, the contract as presented was easily digestible..[the Republicans chose to publish it in] TV Guide…because the publication, while widely read, is outside the universe of U.S. electoral politics…

Running together on the contract’s commitment to eight major congressional reforms on the first day of a new majority and to bring 10 pieces of legislation to the floor for a vote by the end of the first 100 days, the GOP engineered the largest transfer of power in the history of the House of Representatives: The GOP picked up a net of 52 seats on Election Day…

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich…said it gave the GOP the metaphorical “battering ram” the party needed to overwhelm Washington’s political old guard long enough for the GOP to come to power as a governing majority.

The Contract with America was bold, but Bush has gone to a new level – he’s as bold as brass. His approach to environmental issues is a good example. He served the interests of polluters with his promotion of the cleverly marketed “Clear Skies” initiative, which actually rolls back environmental protections in the existing Clean Air Act. The “Healthy Forests” initiative is a similar story. Bush knows he won’t win over environmentalists with his plans, but he figures he can neutralize an issue where the Democrats are strong, and advance an industry-friendly agenda at the same time.

The lesson here for the Democrats is not dishonesty. As I mentioned before, most Americans agree with the Democrats on most issues, so unlike the Republicans they don’t need to craft messages that mask the real goals of their agenda. But they do need to learn to speak the modern language of marketing and branding, which the Republicans already have well mastered. They need to frame their issues in a bold manner and reshape the nation’s political dialogue, rather than continuing to fight and lose on the Republicans’ terms.

Up next: some ideas on how to do it.

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.

“I miss voter fraud” – John Stewart, The Daily Show

While there have been numerous reports of voting irregularities on election day, there were no massive, widespread failures of electronic voting machines, and no evidence emerged indicating manipulation of the electronic vote totals. And so concern over e-voting has disappeared from the news. But this wasn’t a vindication of e-voting – it was more like dodging a bullet. It’s been amply demonstrated that e-voting machines are prone to failures or are susceptible to data manipulation (see Newsweek’s Black Box Voting Blues, the Washington Post’s Electronic Voting Raises New Issues, and my previous post on this).

Picture in your mind a close, hard-fought election. Imagine a successful, nefarious plot to rig the totals from electronic voting machines, and then imagine the plot is exposed after the election. It’s not possible to do a recount, because the voting records themselves were manipulated. Imagine if this happened in Florida in 2000. The tangle of state and federal rules (or lack of rules) in this unprecedented situation would provide no obvious guidelines on what to do.

So what would happen? Would there be calm and rational discussion of the options? Don’t bet on it – there’d be people in the streets, and an incredibly nasty, drawn-out legal battle, the result of which would not bestow broadly accepted legitimacy on the winner. You need look no further than the current crisis in Ukraine. The Christian Science Monitor described it as “a key test for a fledgling democracy.” It would be a test for even the oldest democracy, where there are no clearly defined procedures concerning what to do if the validity of the votes themselves are in doubt.

What’s been lost in the heated discussions about electronic voting is that it’s potentially superior to any mechanical system, so long as it leaves a paper trail. Even some of the electronic machines currently out there – when handled competently – demonstrate this potential. They can almost completely eliminate the “undervote” and “overvote” problems that lead to “spoiled ballots” which are never counted. There were 1.9 million of these in 2000, and the vast majority of them were from heavily Democratic minority districts. See the Miami Herald article Touch screens reduced spoiled ballots. In fact, it was the tens of thousands of spoiled punch card ballots in Ohio that led some to argue that Kerry would have won Ohio if it were possible to reliably count them (see Greg Palast’s Kerry Won Ohio).

However, poorly designed and implemented electronic systems are no better than poorly designed and implemented mechanical systems – see Analysis reveals flaws in voting by touch-screen. I’ve been designing and developing web applications since 1996, including systems that deal with confidential financial and personal data, so I know a thing or two about electronic security and interface design. What’s maddening to me is how badly written the software is in most of the electronic voting machines (see the Newsweek article above). I used to work at E*Trade, and compared to online stock trading (or even ATMs), meeting the requirements for a secure, reliable, recountable, and easy-to-use voting system just isn’t that hard. So why are the e-voting machines so bad?

1. All decisions regarding the purchase and evaluation of these machines happens at the local level. Frankly, most of the folks on local election boards don’t have the expertise to set performance and security requirements for e-voting machines, nor do they know how to properly test the machines once they receive them. I’m not questioning the dedication of these folks, but I doubt the vast majority of them have a strong background in human-computer interface design or electronic security. Assessing voting machines isn’t like comparison shopping for a TV: not understanding what goes on inside a TV doesn’t seriously limit your ability to choose one well, but the same cannot be said for a voting machine.
2. We’re currently relying on the free market to create these machines, and that’s a bad idea. A free market entails multiple suppliers competing for buyers, and over time the bad products are weeded out, the good products win market share, and overall product quality increases. For how many elections will we endure this market clearing process? How many of our elections will be handled by badly designed systems as market forces eventually lead us to the good ones? With the inner workings of the machines considered trade secrets, how can they be effectively assessed? And who exactly is the “customer” who decides whether a system is good or bad? At the very least, national standards should be established indicating a minimum set of requirements that all e-voting systems must meet. Believe it or not, right now there are no such standards. Maybe we could start with a regulatory scheme similar to what Nevada has for its gambling machines (see this New York Times editorial).
3. It doesn’t take a lot of analysis to realize that a quality, nationwide e-voting system would favor the Democrats, as spoiled ballots would be virtually eliminated. I’d be willing to bet that if Gore had won in 2000, or Kerry in 2004, they would have pushed harder for the development of such a system than Bush has. Bush came into office in 2000 under a cloud, and had to at least make a semblance of an effort on this front. Two years later, the Help American Vote Act was passed. Even though a multitude of problems have been discovered in the e-voting machines it spawned, have you heard anything in the past two years from Bush or the Republican Congress about fixing them?

“You’re all in the process of making history,” Kent boomed in a clarion voice. “This is another Hue city in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done — kick some butt.” Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent, speaking to the Marines preparing to assault Fallujah

February 1968: The Battle for Hue wages for 26 days as US and South Vietnamese forces try to recapture the site seized by the Communists during the Tet Offensive. Previously, a religious retreat in the middle of a war zone, Hue was nearly leveled in a battle that left nearly all of its population homeless. PBS Vietnam War Timeline

It was the single worst battle of the war. There were over 10,000 people killed in that battle. Terence Smith of PBS’ Newshour, discussing the Battle for Hue

Within a few weeks of the Battle for Hue, General Westmoreland requested 206,000 more troops, and the My Lai massacre happened.

Let’s hope I’m pushing the Sgt. Major’s Hue analogy too far.

Footnote: my link for the Kent quote goes to an AP story posted on the Fox News site. What’s interesting is that there are two different variations of this paragraph out there, and it’s not clear which is the true AP version. The Fox version says “Kent boomed in a clarion voice” whereas other publications of the same paragraph (see the Seattle Times version) simply say “Kent told a crowd of some 2,500 Marines.” I’m curious as to whether the clarion call version is the original, or if that’s a Fox embellishment.

Over the past several days I’ve submitted this article to various publications, hoping that one of them would pick it up. But I didn’t get any takers. So I present it to you here…

You have to hand it to Karl Rove, George Bush’s senior political strategist. He has created a new form of politics, and it needs a name. Let’s call it Neo-Populism. After Kerry’s loss, Democrats have been scratching their heads in bewilderment. They know that if Al Gore had been President these past four years, and the same events had unfolded on his watch – huge job losses, exploding health care costs, ballooning deficits, massive increases in non-defense discretionary spending, a seemingly intractable mess in post-invasion Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Osama Bin Laden still at large – Gore would have been buried in a landslide by almost any Republican opponent. So how did Bush not only survive this election, but win by over three and half million votes?

He won because of Rove’s neo-populist strategy. To understand what that is, a useful point of comparison is perhaps the greatest of all American populists, Louisiana’s Huey Long. As he rose from railroad commissioner, to Governor, and then to Senator, he was repeatedly indicted, impeached, and plagued with corruption scandals. But none of these slowed his rise to power, or dented his popularity. He was so successful because he masterfully exploited the traditional means of populism: in a state that was predominately poor, rural, and under-educated, he provided free textbooks to schools, and employed thousands to pave roads and build bridges all across the state. He also engaged in aggressive class warfare, advocating a “Share Our Wealth” program on the Senate floor and proposing a limit on the size of personal fortunes. With these means he achieved the ends of populism: a large core of unshakable supporters whose personal faith in him was almost bulletproof.

George Bush has achieved the same ends, but through entirely different means. Obviously, Rovian neo-populism has nothing to do with the class warfare associated with the traditional practice of American populism. It is instead a fascinating blend of three emotive elements: charisma, a transformational vision of America, and fear.

An essential ingredient of any populist movement is a charismatic leader. Huey Long was a lawyer and a brilliant orator, yet he cultivated the image of a (drunken) buffoon. His critics mocked this persona and did not understand its appeal. But his followers loved it. George Bush cultivates an image of plainspoken, forthright Texan swagger, mixed with a strong dose of Evangelical faith. As with Long, his followers love it, and his urban, overeducated opponents do not comprehend it. When you listen to ardent Bush supports, their excitement is palpable – one of us is running the White House.

But who is “us”? A populist leader pulls in his supporters with a rousing, bold agenda. Huey Long limited his to class warfare, but Bush’s is multifaceted. He is seeking to transform the role of government, and the place of America in the world, in almost every respect. From massive tax cuts, to a unilateralist and pre-emptive foreign policy, to advancing the agenda of social conservatives, Bush and the GOP have succeeded in stealing the “big tent” label from the Democratic Party. The Pat Buchanans of the party are excited about the social agenda, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers applaud the business-friendly policies, the William Kristols celebrate the foreign policy, and the Rudy Giulianis trumpet the strong leadership imagery. The latter is particularly important – the persona of the resolute, unwavering leader is the glue that holds this coalition together.

In the post-9/11 world, neo-populism replaces class warfare with the politics of fear. The Bush campaign featured repeated reminders that terrorists might explode a nuclear bomb in one of our cities (hint: vote for our guy to keep you safe), and even suggested at one point that voting for the Democrat was tantamount to inviting another terrorist attack. The campaign also rode on the fears of social conservatives – that activist judges and the “liberal elite” are pursuing an agenda that will ultimately lead to nothing less than the destruction of American morality. In both foreign and domestic policy, the politics of fear encourage the “you’re either with us or against us” mentality.

The Democrats have what it takes to successfully challenge neo-populism, but they haven’t realized it yet. After the Democratic primaries, the Bush campaign quietly confessed they were glad John Edwards didn’t emerge as the candidate, because they understood the political power of charisma. After the election, some Democrats have suggested moving to the right on social issues, seeing it as the only way to compete for “moral values” voters. But it is vital to not equate divisive wedge issues such as the recent marriage protection initiatives with the broad values of Christianity. The Democratic Party must reclaim the “big tent” label on an agenda of hope and unity, not fear and division.

Why was my election prediction wrong? I did call 10 of the 13 swing states correctly, which would have been a respectable showing if two of my three misses weren’t Ohio and Florida

Rather than focus on specific political issues, I think it may be more helpful to look at this in emotional terms:

Fear: in my post on 11/1, I took into account some of the fear factor and lowered my original prediction for Kerry’s margin of victory. But I didn’t take it into account enough. While I could understand the desire to not change leaders during a war, in my gut I just didn’t really believe that anyone would buy into the cartoonish idea that electing Kerry was tantamount to inviting terrorist attacks, or that he would let the UN dictate our foreign policy, or that he would somehow find a way to bungle the war in Iraq more badly than Bush has. But it appears that many lent some real credence to the “Kerry is weak and misguided” cornerstone of the Bush campaign.

The question is whether our political discourse can survive the “Rove-ization” of campaigns. Each campaign Karl Rove has managed for Bush has been accompanied by a nominally unassociated character assassination squad. With the run against Ann Richards in Texas, it was a whisper campaign that she had surrounded herself with “avowed homosexuals.” In the primary fight against John McCain, it was talk that he had been brainwashed by the Viet Cong and had a black baby out of wedlock. And with Kerry it was the Swift Boat Vets. All these moves are intended to play to the fears and prejudices of many, and the unfortunate lesson is that they work amazingly well. My concern is that there’s nothing to stop this sort of thing from becoming the norm for all major campaigns.

Anger: much of what fueled Kerry’s support was anger against Bush. But evidently anger isn’t enough. After a terrible summer, Kerry ran a competent campaign in the end, but it lacked the “vision thing” that has fueled other successful Presidential campaigns against an incumbent (Carter had one in ’76, so did Reagan in ’80, and Clinton in ’92). Also the right has spent years fueling anger among its base against the ethereal “liberal elite” that apparently control everything and are eroding all the moral values of our country (I even heard one caller to a radio talk show fret about the “oligarchy of activist judges” that were out to destroy Christian values). In the end, both campaigns benefited from the anger running through their core constituencies.

Values: part of the reason Kerry didn’t articulate a vision is that Democrats don’t know how to talk about values anymore, while at the same time the Republicans have become experts at it. This is predominately a Christian nation, and you may be surprised to learn that there are probably as many liberal Christians as conservative ones. The Democrats have not only failed to unite them, they’ve virtually ignored them. In contrast, the Republicans have been brilliant at selling their party as the political home of moral virtue. While Kerry was ok at talking about health care, jobs etc. in programmatic terms, he didn’t effectively connect them to overarching moral and social themes.

Integrity: I’m not going to touch on the actual integrity of the candidates – instead I want to focus on the perception of their integrity. I think Bush received a lot of support from people who disagreed with his policies, but saw him as a man of integrity and a devout Christian. The past several Democratic candidates have suffered from the opposite problem: folks agreeing with their policies but turning away from them because of their public personas. Clinton had zipper problems, and both Gore and Kerry were perceived by many as panderers. For Gore and Kerry, much of that perception had to do with how well the Republicans pushed it, but the reason they pushed it in the first place is that they knew it was a weak spot.

Turnout: it looks like the main reason I called the election incorrectly was the big Democratic turnout I anticipated didn’t materialize. While turnout was high, it was high across both parties, lending no relative advantage to Democrats. For example, the 10-to-1 advantage in new Democratic voter registrations vs. Republican registrations in Ohio did not lead to an advantage in turnout that was anything close to that. Prior to this election, someone who was registered was very likely to vote. This is because registering usually required some effort, which meant someone who bothered to register by their state’s deadline (typically 30 days prior to the election) was someone who was already motivated to vote. The massive voter registration drives for this election, however, broke that motivational link between registration and voting. With volunteers practically knocking down doors to register people, getting on the rolls became a very easy thing to do. It looks like a good number of the newly registered did vote, but even more of them did not. James Carville once said: “You know what they call a candidate who’s counting on a lot of new voters? A loser.” He made that statement in “normal times,” before this election cycle. While there were a lot of new voters in this election, it looks like both sides brought them out in roughly equal numbers.

The Electoral Map: rural communities and social conservatives were once at home in the Democratic Party. As recently as 1988, Michael Dukakis lost big time, but he still carried West Virginia, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Kerry lost Iowa, barely held Wisconsin, and West Virginia wasn’t even on the table. The entire upper Midwest is trending Republican and probably won’t be reliable territory for Democrats in the future. The only safe bets for Democrats these days are big cities near water, the African-American vote, the overeducated, and maybe the unreliable youth vote. That’s just not enough to convincingly put together a winning electoral college map. The Democrats were once the “big tent” party, and at this point they need to win over new constituencies and become that again if they want to survive as a truly national party.

The Future for the Democratic Party: they need more candidates like Barak Obama and John Edwards: they come across as sincere and even inspirational when talking about issues and about values. What other prominent Democrats can you think of who can do that? If the party is smart they’ll seek out candidates like these guys. The proof of this point is the confession of the Bush campaign that they were most worried that Edwards would win the Democratic primaries (and the candidate they were least worried about was Dean). My concern is that, after such a bitter campaign and a close defeat, the Democrats will be tempted to take a hard turn to the left and hope that Bush self-destructs. That may be great for firing up the base, but this election demonstrates that the base just isn’t big enough anymore to win Presidential elections.

The Future for the Republican Party: the Republicans papered over their internal splits to support Bush in this campaign. If Bush had lost, you’d see them doing the same soul-searching that Democrats are now doing. But since they won, they’ll just keep plastering more paper over the rifts. The old-guard internationalists and isolationists have – at least for now – lost to the neo-cons. The deficit hawks have lost to Bush’s tax-cutting agenda and to Congressmembers who are drunk on power, increasing non-defense discretionary spending faster than any administration in recent memory. And the small government wing of the party has lost to Bush, who promised $3 trillion in new domestic spending in his Convention address. Other than tax cuts, name an issue that Republicans agree on these days. How far can the social conservative agenda be pushed before the coastal Republicans (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee) cease to recognize their own the party? How much longer will John McCain and the Club for Growth-type folks tolerate the flood of red ink? How much longer will the isolationists (think Pat Buchanan) and the internationalists (think Colin Powell) acquiesce to a unilateralist, militaristic foreign policy? We’ll see how they do at holding it all together.

I canvassed for Kerry in Lansdowne this morning. It’s a mixed-race, working-class area. The volunteers were very pumped up, and there were a lot of them. I took this picture when I arrived at the meeting place, and there were about twice as many people there by the time we hit the streets.

I was paired with a woman from DC (probably about a third of the volunteers were from other parts of the country). We had a list of addresses to visit, which consisted of folks who were registered Democrats or had in some way identified themselves to the campaign as Kerry supporters. Lansdowne is considered a “base” Democratic town, and now I know why: our list consisted of about 80% of all the houses on the streets we worked. I didn’t expect that many people would be home, but there were more than I thought. In addition to the elderly folks and stay-at-home moms that I expected, we also encountered a number of contractors who were just leaving home. Our primary job was to just remind folks to vote, and to put them on a list for a ride to the polls if they needed one. There were also MoveOn.org folks working the streets, and the woman I was with asked why we weren’t coordinating efforts with them. I explained that would be illegal.

So now Kai is in bed and Maria and I are glued to the screens. She’s in the other room shouting tidbits of information to me that she’s seeing on TV, and I’m on the internet, shouting back other tidbits that I’m finding. It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when the two mediums converge someday.

Anyway, the exit polls must be taken with a large grain of salt, but so far they look great for Kerry. And they line up fairly well with my predictions With any luck we’ll know before the morning who the next President is.