Arizona Borderlands Democrats

Op-Ed Contributor: The Dead Center

January 29, 2004
By ROBERT B. REICH

The dismal fifth-place showing by Senator Joseph Lieberman
in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday serves as both
reminder and motivator to the other Democratic presidential
candidates on what it will take to win in November. For so
long now, everyone has assumed that recapturing the
presidency depends on who triumphs in the battle between
liberals and moderates within the party. Such thinking,
though, is inherently flawed. The real fight is between
those who want only to win back the White House and those
who also want to build a new political movement - one that
rivals the conservative movement that has given Republicans
their dominant position in American politics.

Senator Lieberman's defeat on Tuesday could be a good
indicator of which side is ahead. To their detriment, Mr.
Lieberman and the perennially dour Democratic Leadership
Council have been deeply wary of any hint of a progressive
movement, preferring instead an uninspired centrist message
that echoes Republican themes.

On the other extreme is Howard Dean, who could be called
the quintessential "movement" Democrat. His campaign is
both grass-roots and reformist, and is based on the
proposition that ordinary people must be empowered to "take
back America." Similar threads can also be seen in the
campaigns of Senators John Edwards and John Kerry. (Full
disclosure: I've been helping Senator Kerry.) It was no
accident after last week's caucuses in Iowa that a beaming
Senator Edwards told supporters they had "started a
movement to change America."

I hope that Mr. Edwards and the others will stay on message
- and movement. After all, Democrats have seen what the
Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the
years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated
sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only
get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections
persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised
frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy
debates (among them: it's your money, tax and spend,
political correctness, class warfare).

It has a system for recruiting and electing officials
nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote
accordingly. And it has a coherent ideology uniting
evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and
West, and big business - an ideology in which foreign
enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all
must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.


In contrast, the Democratic Party has had no analogous
movement to animate it. Instead, every four years party
loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate
who they believe will deliver them from the rising
conservative tide. After the election, they go back to
whatever they were doing before. Other Democrats have
involved themselves in single-issue politics - the
environment, campaign finance, the war in Iraq and so on -
but these battles have failed to build a political
movement. Issues rise and fall, depending on which
interests are threatened and when. They can even divide
Democrats, as each advocacy group scrambles after the same
set of liberal donors and competes for the limited
attention of the news media.

As a result, Democrats have been undisciplined, intimidated
or just plain silent. They have few dedicated sources of
money, and almost no ground troops. The religious left is
disconnected from the political struggle. One hears few
liberal Democratic phrases that are repeated with any
regularity. In addition, there is no consistent Democratic
world view or ideology. Most Congressional Democrats raise
their own money, do their own polls and vote every which
way. Democrats have little or no clear identity except by
reference to what conservatives say about them.

Self-styled Democratic centrists, like those who inhabit
the Democratic Leadership Council, attribute the party's
difficulties to a failure to respond to an electorate grown
more conservative, upscale and suburban. This is nonsense.
The biggest losses for Democrats since 1980 have not been
among suburban voters but among America's giant middle and
working classes - especially white workers without
four-year college degrees, once part of the old Democratic
base. Not incidentally, these are the same people who have
lost the most economic ground over the last
quarter-century.

Democrats could have responded with bold plans on jobs,
schools, health care and retirement security. They could
have delivered a strong message about the responsibility of
corporations to help their employees in all these respects,
and of wealthy elites not to corrupt politics with money.
More recently, the party could have used the threat of
terrorism to inspire the same sort of sacrifice and social
solidarity as Democrats did in World War II - including
higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for what needs doing. In
short, they could have turned themselves into a populist
movement to take back democracy from increasingly
concentrated wealth and power.

But Democrats did none of this. So conservatives eagerly
stepped into the void, claiming the populist mantle and
blaming liberal elites for what's gone wrong with America.
The question ahead is whether Democrats can claim it back.
The rush by many Democrats in recent years to the so-called
center has been a pathetic substitute for candid talk about
what the nation needs to do and for fueling a movement
based on liberal values. In truth, America has no
consistent political center. Polls reflect little more than
reflexive responses to what people have most recently heard
about an issue. Meanwhile, the so-called center has
continued to shift to the right because conservative
Republicans stay put while Democrats keep meeting them
halfway.

Democrats who avoid movement politics point to Bill
Clinton's success in repositioning the party in the center
during the 1990's. Mr. Clinton was (and is) a remarkably
gifted politician who accomplished something no Democrat
since Franklin Delano Roosevelt had done - getting
re-elected. But his effect on the party was to blur rather
than to clarify what Democrats stand for. As a result, Mr.
Clinton neither started nor sustained anything that might
be called a political movement.

�This handicapped his administration from the start. In
1994, when battling for his health care proposal, Mr.
Clinton had no broad-based political movement behind him.
Even though polls showed support among a majority of
Americans, it wasn't enough to overcome the conservative
effort on the other side. By contrast, George W. Bush got
his tax cuts through Congress, even though Americans were
ambivalent about them. President Bush had a political
movement behind him that supplied the muscle he needed.

In the months leading up to the 1996 election, Mr. Clinton
famously triangulated - finding positions equidistant
between Democrats and Republicans - and ran for re-election
on tiny issues like V-chips in television sets and school
uniforms. The strategy worked, but it was a Pyrrhic
victory. Had Mr. Clinton told Americans the truth - that
when the economic boom went bust we'd still have to face
the challenges of a country concentrating more wealth and
power in fewer hands - he could have built a long-term
mandate for change. By the late 90's the nation finally had
the wherewithal to expand prosperity by investing in
people, especially their education and health. But because
Mr. Clinton was re-elected without any mandate, the nation
was confused about what needed to be accomplished and
easily distracted by conservative fulminations against a
president who lied about sex.

As we head into the next wave of primaries, the Democratic
candidates should pay close attention to what Republicans
have learned about winning elections. First, it is crucial
to build a political movement that will endure after
particular electoral contests. Second, in order for a
presidency to be effective, it needs a movement that
mobilizes Americans behind it. Finally, any political
movement derives its durability from the clarity of its
convictions. And there's no better way to clarify
convictions than to hone them in political combat.

A fierce battle for the White House may be exactly what the
Democrats need to mobilize a movement behind them. It may
also be what America needs to restore a two-party system of
governance and a clear understanding of the choices we face
as a nation.

Robert B. Reich, former United States secretary of labor,
is a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis
University and the author of the forthcoming "Reason: Why
Liberals Will Win the Battle for America."

Beyond Belief
Steven Waldman



Seven Myths About Faith & Politics
The truth about the politics of evangelicals, Catholics and seculars




Reprinted with permission from Slate.

I heard about this guy who called himself "evangelical," said he lived a "Bible-centered life," had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ … and voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush.

A confused, lonely, iconoclast? Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore.

Many people, especially secular liberals, misunderstand the nature of religion in politics-which is, to be fair, ever shifting. To them, if it's not about Jerry Falwell or Joe Lieberman, it's kind of a blur. So, just in time for another religion-packed election, here is a guide to sorting through some common myths about God and American politics:Myth 1: Evangelicals all vote Republican. People often confuse the words "fundamentalist" and "evangelical." Fundamentalists are very conservative and almost entirely Republican because they view the deterioration of traditional morality as the primary public policy crisis. But fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals, which is a more diverse group.

John Green, a professor at the University of Akron and the foremost scholar of evangelical voting behavior, spliced and diced data some time ago and managed to delineate a group of moderate evangelicals. I like to call them "freestyle evangelicals" because they are socially more liberal (they don't vote strictly for pro-life candidates, for example) and politically "in play." There are about 8 million to 10 million of them. This group went for Bill Clinton 55 percent to 45 percent over Dole in 1996 and 55 percent to 45 percent for W. over Gore in 2000. That's a swing of about a million votes.

And that qualifies them as a serious voting bloc in 2004.



Myth 2: The religious right flooded the polls for George W. Bush in 2000. Turnout among the members of the "religious right" (that's the goofy way pollsters make people self-identify) was 56 percent, says Green, only slightly higher than the national average-and actually lower than that of devout Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Jews. The "religious right" gets a lot of attention because a) to liberals, they are verrrrrrry scarrrrrry and b) their turnout has been on the rise in the past few decades.

But Bush's political folks view this as a huge target of opportunity. They were able to increase turnout among religious conservatives in the 2002 congressional elections through aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts. The 2004 election may turn in part on whether religious Christians behave more like they did in 2000 or 2002.

Myth 3: Bush's religion talk has appealed to his base but has alienated moderate swing voters. Actually, 56 percent of independents think he mentions his religious faith just the right amount compared to 20 percent who say he does it too much, according to a Pew Religion Forum study. Even most Democrats agree. Attacking Bush's religiosity will not be politically fruitful; alternatively, a Democratic candidate unable to discuss his own faith will place himself defiantly outside the mainstream.

Myth 4: In this era, no candidate would lose votes just based on his or her religion. The same Pew study tried to assess which religions carried the most electoral baggage. When they asked people if they would be less likely to vote for someone because of religion, the big losers were not Jews or Catholics. Rather, the groups with the most political baggage were atheists, evangelicals, and Muslims. We have become a much more tolerant country, but that doesn't mean we don't hold religious biases.

Myth 5: Most religious extremists are in the GOP. Defining "extremist" as someone on the far end of the religious spectrum, it is true that most fundamentalists are Republican. But what about the other end of the religious spectrum? Statistically speaking, secular people (atheists, agnostics, etc.) are extreme, too, in the sense that they are well outside the public opinion norm. They tend to be Democrats. According to one study 60 percent of first-time white delegates to the 1992 Democratic convention claimed no attachment to religion.

Myth 6: Hispanics are conservative. The perception of Hispanics as conservative is misshapen by the political behavior of Florida's Cubans, who are indeed overwhelmingly Republican. But on the question of gay marriage, for instance, Hispanics were at the national average (54 percent opposed). Professor Green has found a big difference between Hispanic Catholics and Hispanic Protestants, with the latter group more conservative than the former. American Hispanic Catholics, it turns out, aren't that religious. Professors Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio put voters into three groups according to religious intensity-"traditionalists," "moderates," and "secularists." Only 10 percent of Hispanics turned out to be traditionalists-this fraction in the African-American community was much larger. So, Republicans shouldn't assume that issues like abortion will lure large numbers of Hispanic Catholics.

Myth 7: The key to the Catholic vote is abortion. It is true that in some ways Catholicism is in flux. John Kennedy beat Nixon among Catholics by 54 percentage points, and Hubert Humphrey beat Nixon by 26 points; but Reagan won them by 21 points, and from that day forward Catholics were "in play." Clinton won them by 20 points in 1996, but Gore did by only 6 points. So, figuring out how to appeal to swing Catholics is important. While it's true that many Catholics are pro-life and dislike the Democrats' position on abortion, they tend also to be more interested in social issues, such as health care, and may be influenced by opposition to the Iraq war expressed by the pope and the bishops. For Bush, then, it's important that he still tout "compassionate conservatism," not so much to appeal to conservative evangelicals as to appeal to swing Catholics.

Some bits of conventional wisdom about religion are true. Republicans are also attempting to lure Jews, who are one of the few groups that vote "against" their own socio-demographic class. Based on their income and education levels, Jews ought to be voting Republican, and the GOP sees their strong support of Israel and the Iraq war as a way to make inroads.

So far Republicans have been far more sophisticated at understanding religious voting patterns than Democrats have. I suspect it's because religion gives the willies to a lot of secular liberals, who just happen to be the folks who run political campaigns and cover them for the media. Perhaps the biggest religion question of the 2004 campaign will be whether the Democratic nominee can talk about his faith without gagging.

The Bush In 30 Seconds ad contest has a winner! The entrants were honored on Monday honored on Monday night by a crew of celebrities ranging from Michael Moore and Al Franken to Chuck "D" and Margaret Cho. But the ads were the stars -- the crowd was bowled over by their power. The Overall Best Ad and People's Choice Winner was (drumroll) "Child's Pay" by Charlie Fisher of Denver, CO.

To see the winning ads and support getting them on the air, go to:

http://www.moveonvoterfund.org/superbowl/

I strongly recommend that everyone vist this website and view the 30 second ads put together by members of MoveOn.org. The finalists are now available for viewing and you can still vote for the Funniest ad, Best Animation and Best Youth Ad. All ads are available in a high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth version and use the Quicktime plugin for your browser. They do not begin automatically after download, so click on the forward arrowhead just to the left of the progress bar when the ad has downloaded to begin viewing.

There are many powerful ads here. My favorites? In My Country, Imagine, Human Cost of War, Desktop, Gone in 30 Seconds and What Are We Teaching Our Children?

Message from Rev. Patrick Cunningham, a new PC and activist in Gila County to JB who forwarded it on to ABDs

Dear Janice,
The following article reinforces what I communicated to you earlier--that Democrats: MUST start organizing at the grass roots level; MUST be able to generate some passion that motivates people out of complacency and into action; MUST be willing to apply the shoe-leather; MUST be increasingly involved in the critical aspect of early voting; MUST be working to expand our roster down to the precinct level; MUST rediscover the importance of communicating personally with people; and must be willing to engage people in face-to-face conversation.  It¹s so much EASIER to whine and complain and talk, talk, talk about Bush, his administration and the need for change.  We need people who are willing to WALK the TALK; we need people who don¹t faint at the prospect of organized effort and who are willing to take the more DIFFICULT path of concretely WORKING to elect democrats, even if it means doing tedious grunt work in preparation for the election; we need people who will roll up their sleeves and be involved through concrete ACTION.  The election is NOW!!!

Regards,

Patrick Sheridan Cunningham

washingtonpost.com

Election Is Now for Bush Campaign
Early Efforts Aim To Amass Voters
By Dan Balz and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 30, 2003; Page A01

President Bush's reelection team, anticipating another close election, has begun to assemble one of the largest grass-roots organizations of any modern presidential campaign, using enormous financial resources and lack of primary opposition to seize an early advantage over the Democrats in the battle to mobilize voters in 2004.
Bush's campaign has an e-mail list totaling 6 million people, 10 times the number that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has, and the Bush operation is in the middle of an unprecedented drive to register 3 million new Republican voters. The campaign has set county vote targets in some states and has begun training thousands of volunteers who will recruit an army of door-to-door canvassers for the final days of the election next November.
The entire project, which includes complementary efforts by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and state Republican parties, is designed to tip the balance in a dozen-and-a-half states that both sides believe will determine the winner in 2004.
"I've never seen grass roots like this," said a veteran GOP operative in one of the battleground states.
Dean, a former governor of Vermont, has made major strides in organizing a grass roots-based campaign in a bid for his party's nomination. His advisers say it is the largest in the history of presidential politics.
While saying he is not familiar with all the details of Dean's grass-roots and Internet efforts, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said, "Our goal is for the largest grass-roots effort ever."
Organization alone cannot elect Bush to a second term. Given the reality that the president's campaign team cannot control such potentially decisive factors as the economy or events in Iraq, officials are determined to maximize their advantage in areas they can control. Rarely has a reelection committee begun organizing so early or intensively -- or with the kind of determination to hold state party and campaign officials, and their volunteers, accountable for meeting the goals of the Bush team.
In Ohio, for example, more than 70 elected officials and volunteer workers dial into a conference call every other Wednesday at 7 p.m. to report on their efforts to recruit leaders and voters, and to hear updates from Bush's campaign headquarters in Arlington. Roll is called, which initially surprised participants used to less regimented political operations.
The massive ground war now in the early stages underscores the latest turn in political campaigns, in which there is renewed interest in applying the shoe-leather techniques of an earlier era, enhanced with advances in technology. Campaigns, both Democratic and Republican, have rediscovered the importance of putting people back into politics, after years of focusing on television commercials.
"We live at a time of the greatest proliferation of communications technology in history, and in an ironic way, that technology has taken us back to the politics of an earlier time," said Ralph Reed, former Georgia GOP chairman and now a regional official in Bush's reelection campaign.
Having the biggest presidential campaign treasury ever -- more than $105 million raised already and heading toward $170 million -- and no primary opposition gives Bush the luxury of focusing now on general-election organizing. The RNC and the Bush team have begun planning across a wide range of fronts, even including an analysis of which supporters are likely targets for absentee ballots or early voting, an increasingly critical aspect of turning out the vote.
The Bush campaign not only has started early, but also has set deadlines for developing its organization. In Ohio, there is a Dec. 1 deadline for recruiting county chairmen in the state's 88 counties. In Florida, the first three of a dozen planned training sessions have been held, and two campaign staffers are working out of an office in Tallahassee; county offices -- complete with plenty of lines for phone banks -- are scheduled to open shortly after Jan. 1.
In Iowa, the campaign's state chairman, David M. Roederer, said volunteers have been identified in all 99 counties, and they are working to expand their rosters down to the precinct level.
The Bush team hopes to build on techniques first employed in 2000 and honed in 2002 through what is called the "72-hour project," which is shorthand for mobilization operations during the final days before the election. Democrats acknowledge these techniques proved highly effective as a counter to their mobilization efforts in earlier campaigns.
"They've proven they can do it," said Gina Glantz, of the Service Employees International Union, who will join the Dean campaign as a senior adviser next month.
The absence of unlimited "soft money" donations to parties and tighter rules on coordination between a presidential campaign, the national committee and state parties -- all part of the new campaign finance law -- make this organizing more difficult and put a premium on volunteer labor. Mehlman said that, despite those challenges, "we want to take it a step further in this campaign" than in 2002.
Republican officials say these efforts are necessary to counteract voter mobilization by Democrats and their allies in organized labor and liberal interest groups, who plan to spend substantially more than $100 million on get-out-the-vote efforts.
Although Republicans have their own network of outside groups, from the National Rifle Association and the National Federation of Independent Business to the Christian Coalition, GOP strategists say privately that none of them comes close to matching the resources, sophistication or fealty of organized labor and liberal groups.
"This party has no infrastructure," one Bush adviser said.

"We have to build it from the ground up."

Both parties have rediscovered the importance of communicating personally with people, rather than assuming that television ads or direct-mail brochures will motivate someone to vote. From their analysis of previous contests, including this month's gubernatorial elections in Mississippi and Kentucky, GOP officials said someone who votes only infrequently is four times more likely to go to the polls after having a face-to-face conversation with a campaign volunteer about a candidate than after receiving a phone call or direct-mail brochure.
Thus, the Bush team is trying to build an army of millions of volunteers to go door-to-door next year to talk to potential voters. Officials have concluded that old-fashioned literature drops should be replaced by in-person contact with voters whenever possible, and they are trying to change old habits among veteran GOP workers in the states.
The Bush campaign will devote a portion of the estimated $170 million it will raise during the primary season to grass-roots organizing, although spending on television ads will still outstrip expenditures for the ground war. Any excess money in the Bush account can be given to the RNC at the time of the national convention next summer for get-out-the-vote efforts for Election Day in November.
The Bush campaign is focused now on building its state organizations, while the national committee is working on a variety of organizing efforts, including voter registration. Registration is important because, at a time when Bush enjoys about 90 percent support from self-identified Republicans, GOP officials believe there is no surer way of producing votes than getting more people registered with the party. The party is registering voters at NASCAR events and naturalization ceremonies, on college campuses and in targeted precincts.
The RNC has set state-by-state goals for registering voters, based on a formula that attempts to determine Bush's maximum potential vote percentage, all with an eye toward turning states that he narrowly lost or won in 2000 into winners next year.
In Oregon, which Bush lost to Al Gore by about 7,000 votes in 2000, the national committee's goal is to register 45,000 GOP voters by next year, enough to provide a cushion in a close election.
Republicans are using several techniques to reach and register voters. In New Hampshire, new homebuyers receive a postcard from the state GOP welcoming them to their neighborhood, explaining the party's historic opposition to higher taxes and urging them to register as Republicans. Party officials follow up with phone calls, often from volunteers in the same community, and next spring will begin going door to door.

In Arkansas, RNC officials recently hosted a breakfast for nearly 100 ministers, outlining ways they can assist parishioners in registering. Party officials plan to follow up by identifying volunteer coordinators in the churches to oversee those efforts.

In Illinois, Republicans have hired field operatives who will concentrate their efforts -- by telephone and sometimes face-to-face -- to identify and register likely GOP voters.
"If you've got a precinct where 50 percent [of registered voters] are Republicans and 30 percent are independents, there's probably gold to be mined in that precinct," said Bob Kjellander, one of 11 regional chairmen for the Bush reelection committee.
The campaign has staged splashy events to announce leadership teams in 16 of its targeted states, usually featuring Mehlman or campaign chairman Marc Racicot. The campaign's ambitions are evident from the depth of the organizations being assembled.
In each county, for example, the Bush operation will include an overall chairman; chairmen for surrogates, volunteers and voter registration; and an "e-chairman," whose responsibility is to communicate with supporters registered with the campaign Web site.
Campaign officials look for specific tasks to keep people involved. Team leaders have been asked to recruit five other team leaders and sign up 10 friends to receive campaign e-mails.
The campaign Web site includes an easy way for supporters to send letters in support of Bush's policies to local newspapers and has generated 28,000 letters since August. At training sessions, campaign workers are urged to help recruit participants for coalitions the campaign plans for teachers, farmers, Hispanics, African Americans, disabled people, law enforcement officials and sportsmen.
Bush officials say they have one advantage over Democrats: Enthusiasm for the president among the GOP base makes it far easier to organize a grass-roots army.
Sally D. Florkiewicz of Cleveland has signed up 196 people since mid-September to serve on Bush's committee, and has a list of 225 more e-names she wants to call.
"They're so surprised we're calling them this early," she said. "I tell them it's going to be a very, very close election."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company