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No Prisoners: How To Win In 2008
By
David Michael Green
11/19/07 "ICH" -- -- The third
smartest thing that the Democratic Party could do for themselves
(and for us) would be to nominate a decent candidate for
president next year.
The second smartest thing they
could do would be to assist the Republicans in nominating a
loser.
And the very smartest thing they
could do, of course, would be to relocate their long-lost spines
and then immediately schedule a surgery to have them reinserted
and arc-welded into place.
That first item is probably not
going to happen, what with the inexplicable Hillary Train
chugging along relentlessly toward victory (what’s up with that,
Democratic voters?), and the third item is the subject of a
whole ‘nuther discussion altogether (what’s up with that,
Democratic ‘leaders’?), so, instead, let’s talk about winning
the old-fashioned way: by using some smart guerilla warfare
tactics against your opponent.
And one of the very best ways you
can do that is to pick your opponent.
My guess is that Hillary, if she
does in fact secure the nomination, will run a smart and tough
campaign. But not as smart and tough as Karl Rove would run.
On that, she should reconsider. It’s not necessary to indulge
in the filth and the demonization of your typical Rove scorched
earth campaign in order to engage its take-no-prisoners style of
hardball politics. It is necessary to do the latter in order to
win, because – Rove or not – Republicans will be doing it, as
they always have since the era of Joe McCarthy.
Clinton, if she gets the
nomination, will enter the general election campaign with one
major strike against her: the person at head of the Democratic
ticket. She brings together into a singularly toxic brew more
baggage than JFK airport the day before Thanksgiving, less
charisma than a pile of dirty laundry, and all the principled
moral exhilaration of a down-on-his-luck bail-bondsman. Even
holding out the very real prospect of becoming the first woman
president cuts both ways. Seven percent of American women tell
pollsters that they would never vote for a female to hold the
office (now that’s a truly scary barometer on the state of the
union); who knows, maybe twice that many men feel the same
way. Democratic voters could hardly choose a more laden and
uninspirational standard-bearer if they sat down at a drawing
board to design one on purpose (Let’s see here – add one part
Michael Dukakis to one part Mark Foley and one part Margaret
Thatcher, and presto!, an instant boring and alienating
candidate is born, complete with sex scandal history.)
Well, okay, I take that back –
maybe Hillary’s not the worst imaginable. Despite all
appearances to the contrary, John Kerry’s attending physician
insists that he is actually still alive, and they’ve even
published his vitals to prove it. So if Democrats insist on
committing political suicide next year, why not just do it the
right way and let Kerry report for duty again, complete with the
same smarmy salute? Maybe Harry Reid could be drafted as the
vice-presidential nominee – talk about your charisma factor!
And they could get Bob Shrum to run the campaign again. After
losing his ninth presidential race straight, he’d only need one
more after that to advance his perfect record into double
digits!
The only reason Hillary has a
prayer of winning is because this is the year that any Democrat
with a pulse should be able to beat any Republican this side of
Jesus himself, hands down. Never has the American public been
more anxious for change, nor more angry at the current class of
clowns nominally in charge. It’s the Democrats’ election to
lose, which they – of course – seem intent on doing, having
perfected the technique over the last forty years, only twelve
of which have seen a Democrat in the White House (both of whom
were, by the way, obscure Southern conservatives who
nevertheless seemed to spend most of their time in office
happily serving as punching bags for the radical right). A
Clinton nomination, with all the negatives and no compensating
positives, neutralizes the gift of George W. Bush to the
Democratic Party in 2008 and turns the damn thing into a horse
race, after all.
(As proof of this point, consider
the wagers I offered to a right-wing ranter who was badgering me
on email about how wrong I was concerning the mood of the
country. To shut him up, I offered him three bets of $100
each: That the GOP would lose the White House in 2008, that
Democrats would increase their majorities in both houses of
Congress, and that these increases would be huge. My only
caveat was that there be no ‘national security’ October
surprises before the election. Not entirely surprisingly, he
declined all the bets other than the first one, and would only
take that on the condition that Hillary was the Democratic
nominee. I believe that’s what poker players and nuclear
brinksmanship contestants refer to as having your bluff called –
bigtime – but in any case, the more important illustration is of
the weakness Clinton introduces to the ticket.)
Having blown their prohibitive
advantage by, presumably, nominating Clinton, the Democrats’
best hope will be is to run the smartest and most aggressive
campaign they can. This would involve a number of key steps.
One of them is to choose your
opponent. Nixon did it 1972, using dirty tricks to sabotage the
Muskie campaign so he could run against McGovern instead, a nice
fat target for a country unable then, as now, to differentiate
true morality and heroism from the manufactured and cynical kind
you’d think would lose its appeal at about the same time that
playing war in the dirt with GI Joe dolls does for adolescents.
Alas, in too many cases it does not, and the dolls just seem to
get replaced with football players on TV. There is also some
evidence to suggest the Rove pulled the same trick with Howard
Dean in 2004, in order to stand up Kerry as his punching bag. A
very smart move, of course. Democrats need to do likewise for
this race, to the extent they can, and they need to start
today.
Giuliani (and to a lesser extent
McCain) is the greatest threat to Democratic hopes of winning
the presidency. To my admitted astonishment, Republican voters
seem to understand this and appear willing to forego their true
preferences to embrace a winner, just as Democratic voters are
doing the opposite. (Not that there is necessarily a compelling
alternative choice for Democrats. John Edwards is the obvious
progressive choice with a chance, but I continue to be nagged by
the prospect that he is simply wearing his progressive hat today
because he thinks that’s what might sell best among angry
Democratic primary voters.) What makes Giuliani dangerous is
that he is the least Bush-like of the four main Republican
contenders. The others – Thompson, McCain and Romney – all more
or less ape the troglodyte line on economic, security and social
policy, while the Rude Man is only down for the first two (and
the least unappealing) of those ideological categories. That
makes him a lot more palatable to moderate voters put off by the
gay-bashing, Schiavo-intervening, stem-cell-blocking and
abortion-halting strains of today’s GOP. And that marginally
greater appeal, along with Hillary’s vulnerabilities, makes him
dangerous.
Which means that a smart
Democratic Party and a smart Hillary Clinton would do everything
in their power to make sure he is not the nominee next year.
That’s no easy trick, especially if – unlike Tricky Dick or
Kaveman Karl – you have some ethical and legal limitations on
what you’re willing to do. That said, there are possibilities
for making this happen, and there’s no prohibition on
campaigning against him now, especially through surrogates.
Ghouliani has massive vulnerabilities, especially among
religious right voters, many of which cannot be pointed out, at
least overtly, by his GOP rivals, either because they share some
of the same weak spots themselves, or because it would be seen
as a violation of the GOP’s supposed Eleventh Commandment that
thou shall not speak ill of another Republican (as articulated
by Ronald Reagan, who then proceeded in 1976 to run against
sitting president Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination,
presumably breaking the rather less well-known commandment
against costing a fellow Republican the presidency).
It’s not clear who among the
front-runners in the party would be the weakest opponent – and
therefore the one Democrats should help arrange to get the
nomination – but only because Mitt Romney is every bit as
obsequious as Fred Thompson is comatose. In the end, though, I
think the SmarMitt is probably the better choice. One of the
keys to winning this race is going to be turning the Republican
candidate into The Monster from Right-Wing Hell – not exactly a
difficult chore, mind you – especially since Romney has been
hard at work on that task for the last year, completely
reinventing himself as the evil twin brother of the guy who once
was the liberal governor of the liberal Massachusetts, but is
apparently now locked up securely in an attic somewhere in the
suburbs of Worcester. Even people dumb enough to lap up the
gospel of Rush every day aren’t so far gone that they don’t find
the guy suspicious. And then if he got the nomination and then
tried to tack back to the center, he’d only alienate both sets
of voters. Either way, a smart Democratic nominee could, should
and must hammer him or any other GOP nominee as a right-wing
freak.
The nice thing about Romney is
that he’s spent the last months actually writing that script
himself, but Thompson would also do, in a pinch. Freddy’s
lumbering campaign couldn’t even light a fire in Southern
California at this point. Out on the stump, he’s got the
potential to make James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s infamous “Who am
I?” running mate, seem like a Nobel laureate by comparison. No
wonder Nixon thought Thompson was “dumb” back in the Watergate
era. Thirty years of acting and lobbying don’t seem to have
improved matters a lot.
A second crucial tactic for
Democrats, which could be part of the first as well, is to
define the Rude Dude before he gets a chance to define himself
to American voters. This will be crucial whether or not he gets
the nomination, but obviously more so assuming he’s the
candidate. Americans really know very little about the former
mayor, and what they think they know is false anyhow. Those
guns have to start blazing, and the sooner the better. There’s
a wealth of material to use here, including some outrageous
personal stunts like announcing, at a press conference, to his
stunned second wife that he was leaving her (for what would
become wife number three, with whom he was then having an
affair). Giuliani has lamely told reporters and voters to leave
his personal life alone. Normally, I would tend to agree, but
given the transgressions of his party these last decades in all
of our personal lives, I’d say any Republican with a record like
this should be savaged well and good, just like they did to Bill
Clinton, or to Terri Schiavo’s family, or to any pregnant woman
in America ever contemplating an abortion. At the very least,
Giuliani should be forced to repudiate those intrusions, which
would of course cost him massively amongst the Republican base.
It’s also crucial to attack
Giuliani at his perceived strong spot, above all, just as Rove
wisely, though so cynically, did to Kerry in 2004. Giuliani’s
twin claims to fame are that he has successful executive
experience, and that he is Mr. 9/11. Both of these can readily
and credibly be punctured by repeated use of very real evidence
to the contrary. Voters need to be continually reminded that he
was hated by New Yorkers on the day before 9/11, and that he
completely botched the emergency responses he talks about
endlessly.
Every time he goes on about how
he is the only guy to actually run something, it needs to be
pointed out that a city is not country, and that he has no
foreign policy experience. Democrats should turn the guy into
the best street-cleaner and pothole repairer ever to run for
president. More importantly, though, Giuliani must be morphed
into Bernie Kerik – whom he in fact created – and all of the
latter’s sex and money scandals, not least the mob ties Giuliani
was clearly warned about as he was promoting Kerik. I think the
little taxpayer-supported love nest that the married Kerik had,
directly overlooking the 9/11 ground-zero pit no less, might
prove instructional to voters, as well. And Rude-y must have
the angry relatives of deceased New York firefighters, who never
got the communications equipment from him that would have saved
their lives, turned into his virtual running mates as well. Let
him try to run against that. Let Republicans try to swift-boat
the tearful, angry father of some firefighter who perished on
9/11.
Giuliani – or any Republican
nominee – must also be turned into George W. Bush at every
turn. The Democratic nominee should continually push the
Republican candidate to denounce Bush. He won’t do it, because
Bush is still popular with the base, and the hated W will thus
become the perfect wedge issue in 2008. Over and over it should
be emphasized that a vote for the Republicans in 2008 is a vote
for more Bush and Cheney – more war, more debt, more
incompetence, more corruption, more endless Bushism. By the
time election day rolls around, voters should be made to think
Junior is on the ballot yet again. In point of fact, given the
way most Republicans have been campaigning, he is.
Americans have had enough of
Republicans and they’ve even had enough of conservatism. Poll
data shows an unmistakable and profound shift to the left, and
that will grow both as the true horrors of the last decade
become known, and the real vulnerabilities of the public become
clear. But this is why a Giuliani campaign is particularly
threatening. Alone among the Republican frontrunners, he can
credibly disassociate himself from the most egregious and most
abhorrent Terri Schiavo-style social regressivism. I would like
nothing more than for Bushism to continue to be the dominant
ideology of the GOP (in fact, a few more Schiavo-style stunts
would be just the ticket). I think more of what we’ve seen
these last seven years could literally drive the party into
extinction, and I for one wouldn’t exactly mourn its loss.
Giuliani, or anybody leading the party back in the direction of
Gerry Ford style center-right conservatism, on the other hand,
restores some marginal sanity and credibility to Republicans,
and postpones the day when the beast finally no longer darkens
our national doorway.
The Democratic ticket this year
should also return to the old Nixonian tradition of using the VP
nominee (and other surrogates) to serve as pit bulls attacking
the opposition. Democrats need to be aggressive, rather than
waiting to win by default (just ask the hapless John Kerry,
whose is probably still to this day waiting for his ship to come
in), putting the GOP ticket on the defensive and keeping them
there before they are ever able to get up off the mat.
The Dems also need to be
relentless. One reason Democrats are always getting rolled is
because they cease and desist in their criticism whenever the
right reacts to what they’ve said, which means they always
lose. What would happen if they just kept saying the same
things over and over again, incessantly? Has it never occurred
to this brain trust that being shut up is precisely the
objective of other side? Have they never realized that making
the right defend themselves continuously is a victory of sorts,
just on its own? Do they not understand that the only way to
make ideas stick, and to turn them into conventional wisdom, is
by repeating them incessantly? Plop, plop, fizz, fizz – has
Harry Reid never heard of this street in New York called Madison
Avenue?
Democrats are going to need to
retrain the press, as well, and that has to start now. The
media – either because of cooptation, intimidation, corporate
profit protection, or all of the above – has savaged Democrats
like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore while giving a free
pass to the most egregious inanities and crimes of Reagan and
Junior. That has to stop, and the best way to do that is to
publicly humiliate the press for their cowardice, and do so
repeatedly. Every time they come to the Democrats for a
response to the latest regressive idiocy, they need to be asked
instead why they never investigated GOP crimes, which should be
named explicitly. As in, “Come back to me after you guys have
done your job and covered the Downing Street Memos”. Doing this
repeatedly will reopen those cases and earn a little respect for
the brand new concept of Democratic pluck, currently the
oxymoron of the century. It will also do to the media what
thirty years worth of the “liberal press” myth has done so
successfully for the right, namely, getting them to self-edit.
It’s called working the ref, and it’s high time a little of
that went the other direction. Or even a lot of it.
Democrats need also to demean
Republicans, so that voters would be embarrassed to be
associated with the party in any fashion whatsoever. “I mean,
these are the same people who brought us...[insert Foley, Craig,
Schiavo, Katrina, debt, global warming, 9/11, or other
appropriate Republican fiasco here] – why in the world would we
want to listen to them now?” needs to become a standard and
repeated motif for undermining the very notion in the public
mind of even considering taking the party seriously. These
meta-narratives are crucial, because they can win battles before
they are even engaged by making any position but yours seem to
silly to consider, just as most Americans have been successfully
trained to reject the idea of ‘socialist’ programs out of hand
if they are so labeled, even when they actually approve of a
given program’s concept.
And, finally, the campaign should
play on the fatigue of the public with the status quo. Levels
of disgust with America’s direction have never been so high and
so sustained. No party could ask for a better environment in
which to challenge an incumbent government. Whoever is the GOP
nominee, including Giuliani, must be turned into George W. Bush,
and voters must be asked over and over again whether they want
four more years of this, and whether the country can afford four
more years of this.
It doesn’t matter that Democrats
don’t deserve to win anything given their complicity in the Bush
crimes and their pathetic attempts at crime prevention, when
they make the attempt at all. What matters is that the rest of
us don’t deserve the equivalent of a third Bush term. That must
be stopped at all costs, even if that means four years of
Hillary.
Which would likely not be as bad
as it sounds, anyhow. Never has there been a less principled,
more malleable politician than Hillary Clinton, unless you count
that other politician named Clinton. If the left tugs hard, and
if Congress is hugely Democratic – which it assuredly will be –
we can actually expect some moderately progressive policies to
miraculously emerge from Washington in the coming years,
especially if an angry and vulnerable-feeling public demands
them.
If that isn’t compelling enough
to get you feeling better than you do now, just imagine having
to hear George Bush’s mangled words come out of Rudy Giuliani’s
vicious face for the next four years for a point of comparative
reference.
Even waterboarding looks good
next to that.
David
Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra
University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers'
reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net),
but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to
respond. More of his work can be found at his website,
www.regressiveantidote.net.
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