Democrats Who Move Right Lose Elections – There Is No “Center”

[kpete]

Democrats Who Move Right Lose Elections – There Is No “Center”
By Dave Johnson April 25, 2014 6:30 am -
You have to deliver for and campaign to your base voters or they don't show up and vote for you. If Democrats don’t give regular, working people – the Democratic base – a reason to vote, then many of them won’t.


...........

Karl Rove got this. He understood that you can get the right-wing voters roused up to come to the polls by moving Republican politicians to the right. Instead of "moving to the center" he got Bush and the Republicans to stand up for conservative principles and refuse to compromise, and the result was that more of "the base" enthusiastically showed up at the polls.

Conclusion: You Have To Deliver For And Campaign To Your Base Or They Don't Show Up

Here is what is very important to understand about the "swing" vote: Few voters "switch." That is the wrong lesson. There are not voters who "swing," there are left voters and right voters who either show up and vote or do not show up and vote.

The lesson to learn: You have to deliver for and campaign to YOUR "base" voters or they don't show up and vote for you. If Democrats don’t give regular, working people –- the Democratic base -– a reason to vote, then many of them won’t.



more plus links:
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/04/democrats-who-move-right-lose-elections

[The Magistrate]

1. Give The Genn'lman A Big Ceegar, Ma'am

Cold truth, that our Blue Dog and Third Way types ignore at their career's peril.

[corkhead]

31. Even worse - 40 years ago they would have been Republicans, but they've been thrown out

by the remaining wack-jobs in their party, so they took over ours.

[truedelphi]

52. SshHH!

The hypnosis of the loyalists is not as effective if people like yourself keep pointing this out.

[Scuba]

2. Couldn't agree more. Those who argue for moving right to capture the mythical middle ...

... are advocating for defeat. Even if they win, we lose.

Moving right just tells the voters that either a) we don't care about you, or b) the right's ideas are better than ours. Neither of these messages is going to inspire anyone.

Wisconsin is a great case study. Tammy Baldwin, branded a "Madison liberal lesbian" by the right, is now one of our US Senators, while Scott Walker beat blue dog Tom Barrett twice for the governor's job. He'll beat another corpo-Dem, Mary Burke, this fall.

[L0oniX]

11. ^^^this^^^

Even if they win, we lose

= Hillary

[rhett o rick]

83. If Clinton-Sachs is nominated and runs against Bush, the middle will

stay home. And some are hoping they will be able to blame Ralph Nader if Clinton-Sachs loses.

[lostincalifornia]

128. and what evidence do you have of that. All the poll numbers seem to disagree with your assessment

[GOPee]

45. BINGO

Tell me please. for those that don't believe this message, what does moving to the right, or even center, really saying? Are we broadcasting that our true positions on issues must be wrong, or not defensible? Are we saying that our platform is too extreme, or so out of the mainstream that we have to lie?

If I hear a favorite Candidate articulating a change in position as we near the election, I began to wonder if they are worth fighting for or are they pulling off a strategy that is better than what they previously believed, and now admits was wrong? Nothing good is accomplished by lying or hiding. My two cents.

[Enthusiast]

50. Read this post!

[WillyT]

57. + 1,000,000,000 What You Said !!! - K & R !!!

:donkey

[adirondacker]

58. Great example Scuba! Our NY Gov is yet another fine example of placating to Wall St and the 1%

He is not doing well among his democratic supporters due to Union bashing, teacher bashing, and presently his showed support for corruption as usual...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gov-cuomo-stands-anti-corruption-commission-shutdown-article-1.1768508

"ALBANY — In his first two months in office, Mayor Bill de Blasio has found himself repeatedly at odds with New York’s governor, Andrew M. Cuomo. And at every turn, Governor Cuomo has not only stymied the mayor, but also seized the moment for his own gain.

As the mayor has pushed for a tax increase on New York City’s wealthiest residents, the governor has turned the tables and talked up his desire to cut taxes. When the mayor proposed raising the minimum wage in the city, the governor derided the idea as illogical."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/nyregion/cuomo-burnishes-his-political-brand-using-de-blasio-as-his-foil.html

[Mondavi]

59. True, the public wants liberal Democrats, but we can't ignore that ...

Last edited Mon Apr 28, 2014, 04:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Democratic Party leadership, specifically Rahm Emmanuel, have continued to solicit and support RW "Democrats" even to the point of failing to support liberal Democrats.

Basically, as long as the Democratic Party continues to take RW/corporate money, we are on the wrong course for a correction. Won't happen.

[L0oniX]

115. Obama is POTUS because of liberals & progressives ...not rw dems.

With out us they don't have a chance and they better start swinging left or they can blame themselves for the loss.

[Mondavi]

124. Completely true that liberals and progressives supported Obama....

but it is also completely true that those same liberals and progressives have no leverage over Obama or the party, or our Congress.

The will of the people is being ignored on every issue.

Corporations own our politicians.



.

[L0oniX]

125. We were thrown under the bus right after his first election.

[cyberswede]

121. "Even if they win, we lose."

You got that right.

[RKP5637]

3. Too many democrats don't have the guts to stand up for their base, but rather cave in with

the direction of the wind! Far too often R=D=I, especially for big $$$$$. There is a huge base of ignored Americans.

[hobbit709]

5. +1000

[Mondavi]

60. Doubt that this is about "guts" ....

rather it's about corporate money which they believe in and hold in higher esteem than what should be their duty to serve the public.
Because of this selling of government, our Democratic leaders and representatives are ignoring the will of the people in order to collect more corporate funding. This has led to betrayal of the public will.

[RKP5637]

62. Quite correct! Excellent! n/t

[brooklynite]

4. Karl Rove understood this in NATIONAL elections...

...your "base" will vary State to State and Congressional District to Congressional District.

We won the House in 2006 by taking out a lot of Republicans in Red States where Blue Dogs would be competitive but left-leaning progressives might not.

[RKP5637]

6. Quite true, it's a tricky balance. One size does not fit all.

[Progressive dog]

15. Exactly

Kirsten Gillibrand, blue dog in 2006, now moving left as Senator from NY. She replaced Sweeney (R- and I now have Chris Gibson (t-bag R) as my representative.
IMHO If the base doesn't vote, they're not the base.

[mountain grammy]

19. So, so very true! If the base doesn't vote, they're not the base.

enough said!

[Le Taz Hot]

7. I wish the Party Bosses would get this through their

pointy little heads but they won't. They are absolutely WELDED to the idea that you have to appeal to the center and the base will take care of itself. They're also back with the 6-state strategy even though Dean's 50-state strategy worked spectacularly. It's almost like they were beholden to the 1% and not the 99% -- hmmmmm . . .

[OnyxCollie]

8. It's easier to kiss corporate ass

and then blame the liberal far left when the elections are lost, as if that small section of the electorate could decide elections on its own.

[fleabiscuit]

17. Tisk tisk...

"as if that small section of the electorate could decide elections on its own."

You're going to make some DU's go into shock if they can't blame Nader for Gore losing by 537 votes in FL.

Hmm, something is brain nagging me about Gore going further right during the campaign too...

[m-lekktor]

9. for me, centrist dems are right wingers.

and i despise right wingers no matter what party they belong to.

[Mondavi]

79. Democrats who support corporate buying of our parties ....

cannot be ignorant that this includes the buying of our representatives at every level and that it moves our government agencies into corporate hands.
The SC has also long ago been corrupted by corporate ownership of its members.
Both parties are now owned by corporations and their interests are being attended to by our representatives while they in turn ignore the needs and the will of the people.

[L0oniX]

10. Unfortunatley we have the biggest Dino running for governer. Charlie Crist.

The only thing he has going for him is indeed ...appealing to the left with the marijuana issue ...and that is the ONLY reason I would vote for him ...but he represents the worst kind of centrism ...literally changing sides. When someone is that close to the line it can only mean further damage to our Dem party. It's not a purity thing. We are suppose to be unlike the conservatives and when they are so close to Dem ideology they can cross the line as Charlie Crist has/is.

[Scuba]

12. Nah, Wisconsins has the biggest DINO gubernatorial candidate - Mary Burke ....

Donates to charter schools ...

Offshored jobs to China as CEO of Trek Bicycle ...

On record as saying State employees need to pay more to their pensions ...

Voted against the union as a school board member ...

And doesn't support even medical marijuana.

She's gonna get crushed by Scott Walker this fall.

[sabrina 1]

13. Funny how it's okay to vote for or at least tacitly support certain Republicans, see Christie

eg, if they simply put a D after their names, or are required to stfu about all the Republicans who got back into power after we threw them out, when this President either appointed them to powerful positions or left them there to continue Bush's policies.

But if someone mentions that someone with no D after their name is actually right about something, the outrage is hilarious. They hypocrisy of it is stunning. It's okay if the Party actually votes for Republicans, but outrage for those who would never do so but dare to mention that one of them actually got something right.

I am so disgusted by the whole thing, the hypocrisy, the shift to the right, the pretense that we only support Dems when in fact that is an outright lie when all you have to do is look at who is in this President's cabinet, Monsanto CEOs eg, Bush Loyalists etc.

The OP is correct, the base has come out, holding their noses many times over the past few elections and got blamed for the policies of the Leadership anyhow, which drove away the Independents and the young in 2010.

But no one is going to continue to vote against their own interests over and over again. Especially when they are told, as we see here at times, that they are not needed, or to just 'stfu' and voted.

[L0oniX]

23. Agreed.

[pecwae]

63. Sounds very much

like the pragmatism that gets trotted out from time to time. One gets very tired of the SOS when the hunger is for real change.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

81. Arlen Specterish.

Changed party because he knew he was going to lose as a Republican, then couldn't win as a Dem even with the Dem machinery doing their best to muscle the real Dem running off to the side to try and give Arlen a shot.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

14. totally!

The Time is right, now.

The herds are afraid of change but the combination of PBO and increase of other strong congress members, PLUS the ever more un-hideability (I think I made up that word) of repuke pukiness, make this the Right Time. !!

YAYYYY!

[winter is coming]

16. It's not just that they won't vote for you -- they're less likely to work for you, too,

so the effect is compounded. After all, which sort of candidate would you put in more hours for: one who actually supports the policies you believe in, or one who is merely "not the Republican"?

[ColesCountyDem]

18. Here's what I've seen happen in my lifetime:

We've moved away from the 'Big Tent' concept that occasionally involved strategic compromises, to a generic 'centrist' policy.

[erronis]

20. None of the democrats I know want any rightward movement

I think this perceived push is really coming from RW plants in the media and on many social groups. I don't trust those slime-balls any more than the NRA or the Rove/chicken-hawks.

[truedelphi]

55. In terms of Democratic leadership, there is no real need to move to

the "Right" -- as on almost all the important issues the Party leadership is already there:

**Financial hijacking by Big Financial firms, done and finished by Obama's appointment of Geithner and re-appointment of Bernanke. Smoke a joint on streets of DC, and you get 47 days in jail. Destroy the nation's economy and rather than donning an orange prison jump suit, you can still head up US Treasury.

**Establishment of eternal pollution of convention crops and food done and finished by establishing Monsanto shills inside Ag Department and FDA

**Hijacking the Peace Dividend for the purposes of "needed surveillance" with the Peace Dividend's monies going now to all things surveillance, rather than to re-building our decrepit infra-structure, slashed to the bone health clinics, slashed to the bone education programs, etc.

**Privatizing the Big for Profit Prison corporations. Happens just as much under Democratic governors as by Republicans. Here in California, it is costing the state;s taxpayers over $ 62K a year to house an inmate, yet the prisoners often have filthy water to drink and crappy food.

**Establishing the Monsanto pollution of seeds, crops and foods. these past five years were the game changers for Monsanto and other GM food sources - as now that they were allowed to go ahead with their Gm crops, the pollen from these crops is ubiquitously flourishing. If we ever do get someone honest back in office, the pollen itself is still freely disseminating itself. You cannot legislate pollen. Monsanto has won the game.

**Fracking interests are also flourishing, under Democratic governors like Ed Rendell (and we still have little guidance from the Oval Office on the issue.) Other than when looking at the appointments that have been made, there doesn't seem to be any punishment for those who are insiders with the fracking Big Energy Industry. (BTW, retired from governing PA, rendell is now a major player in a Texas firm known for its fracking activities.)

**Speaking of Big Energy, I haven't heard that the WH has changed its mind on nuclear power. Even though the industry itself realizes it cannot recoup the costs of re-modernizing old plants or building new ones. Does anyone here know if Obama has changed his mind on having Federal loans offered to the industry (to the tune of 50 billions of dollars plus.) Of course, maybe those loan monies have already been offered up?

**TPP which will be like NAFTA on steroids. The Powers that Be are almost there on that one.

[erronis]

65. The $$$s will get the votes, if not

Grab them some saucy pictures of politocos in flagrante-deliciousum (or however it's spelt.)

I, like most, wanted to believe in "CHANGE" but I fear that the movement was coopted very early, perhaps before Barack's conception, by those forces that want to maintain the veneer of democracy but also want to steer the ship into their harbors.

While poo-pooing such theories as the Triumvirate, or the evil Israeli lobby, or the Illuminati, it seems that the world-wide capitalistic plutocracy has done a good job of shoring up their fortunes at the expenditure of most of the rest of us.

[truedelphi]

95. For sure, good old fashioned greed is as good an excuse for the

400 richest families of the world to structure all things so tightly and inhumanely that the working man and woman are now obsolete.

Hardly need to consider those pesky theories of Illuminati etc at all.

[L0oniX]

116. Yeah ...let em pay me for my vote.

[Gore1FL]

21. I've been makining this argument since 1988. n/t

[bvar22]

22. DURec.

[font size=3]"If Democrats don’t give regular, working people –- the Democratic base -– a reason to vote, then many of them won’t. "[/font]

Candidate Obama understood this,
and defeated Hillary in the Democratic Primary by romancing the Working Class.

*Make EFCA The Law of the Land

*Renegotiate NAFTA

*Label GMO products and Country of Origin Labeling

*Sign no bill without a Public Option

*Raise the CAP on FICA Contributions

*Tax the RICH

Unfortunately, he failed to even try to deliver on any of the promises he made to the Working Class,
the results were the disappointments for the Democratic Party in 2010.

[AgingAmerican]

24. Then when they lose elections

...they try to blame it on real Democrats.

[raouldukelives]

25. Yep. After we fund the coprorations to figure out who we are allowed to vote for.

The most important thing we can do is vote for the one that most closely mimics our desires while delivering on theirs.

[NorthCarolina]

26. Obama understood this and campaigned far to the left of his actual positions in 08.

Of course, after the election is over, it's business as usual.

[Maedhros]

27. The Party doesn't "campaign" to its base.

The Party makes its plans behind closed doors with powerful interests, then markets its base to accept the decisions.

[On the Road]

28. The Author is Using Karl Rove

as an example of how to win elections? Might have been more persuasive before the last election.

I guess Obama x 2, Clinton x 2, and Jimmy Carter x1 are not sufficient to counterweigh that advice.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

82. Times change.

This is not Jimmy Carter's America, or even Bill Clinton's.

And Obama won by actually using a LOT of lefty rhetoric in his campaigns, even if he then largely swung back to center in office. Well, that and the fact that the American people saw the clown car team on the opposite side in both elections. He won against Romney largely because Romney was so boring he couldn't excite his own base, and the RW religionistas don't think Mormonism is a 'real' religion. Had he had to go up against, say, pre-scandal Chris Christie in 2012, we might have had a real nail-biter as to who was in the WH this term. Thankfully, Christie was young enough he felt safe in waiting til 2016 to go up against a non-incumbent.

[TrollBuster9090]

91. Karl Rove succeeded in getting a man with a brain the size of a goldfish elected. His METHODS

WORKED. The only reason they STOPPED working was because the electorate eventually realized that the POLICIES these people implement once elected are FAILURES.

Let's face it, Rove managed to sell the American voter a pile of shit in a beautiful box, and people only stopped buying what he was selling once they opened it. If you sell a GOOD product in a beautiful box, people will KEEP on buying it.

[fleabiscuit]

97. Rove ran out of room on the right.

Nothing is left except the craziest. Perhaps he was the craziest of all if he actually believed there was life left in his RW world to get someone a presidency.

[GoneFishin]

29. When Rahm Emanuel asks "where else are they [liberals] going to go?"

My answer is "any direction that doesn't reward your lesser of two evils extortion scam".

[Mondavi]

61. If you wnat to move to the left, the Green Party is still there...

Agree, Emmanuel is counting on the "lesser of two evils extortion scam."
And it's paid off as frightened Democrats continue to embrace the selling of government and our representatives to RW corporations.

[elzenmahn]

101. Very true....

....and perhaps what the Democratic Party needs is to see an increase in interest and support of the Green Party. Left-sided competition may remind the Dems not to take our votes for granted...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. "Not as bad" rings up a lot of No Sales who want to vote for something.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. The opposite is certainly true of presidential elections - centrists have won, leftists have lost.

Clinton and Obama both ran to the right of any of Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis. Look at the results...

It's possible that that's not so true of local elections - thanks to gerrymandering, there are more safer seats. But I'd want something much stronger than this rather shallow and poorly-thought-through tirade to convince me, I'm afraid.

[pnwmom]

35. I agree. Swing voters swing elections, as do Independents.

There may not be a solid "center," but Obama needed help outside of his base in order to win.

[JDPriestly]

38. The problem for Kerry (assuming he really lost Ohio), Gore and Dukakis was that all three

appealed to intelligent well read people but not to people worried about making a living.

I think that Elizabeth Warren is much stronger than Hillary when it comes to appealing and talking with people who are worried about making a living.

This time around, it's the most progressive candidate who is speaking in easy-to-understand terms about the issues Americans care about. This time it's the progressive candidate who has the most compelling personal story and personality.

I don't think it was the policy viewpoint of Kerry, Gore and Dukakis that failed to excite enough voters. As one man said when I told him I was backing Kerry in 2004: Democrats are boring.

We need to pick exciting candidates. For all his faults, Obama is an exciting candidate. He cares about people and communicates his caring in ways people understand.

Romney was boring.

So was Gore. And since Bush was boring, you know that Gore was very, very boring. Gore's inflection when he spoke made him sound insincere. Hillary sounds hard.

Elizabeth Warren is the best candidate for 2016. She sounds and is sincere, knowledgeable and talks about the issues that matter most to Main Street America. If we want to win, we need to draft her to run.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

70. Warren has said she isn't a candidate, hasn't she? N.T.

[JDPriestly]

93. I don't think so. Not recently anyway.

Her new book is entitled "A Fighting Chance." So, . . . . . a fighting chance to win what?

See if you can find a link, a recent statement by her as to whether or not she is running. I haven't seen one.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

94. Here's a google search

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=elizabeth+warren+I+am+not+running&oq=elizabeth+warren+I+am+not+running&aqs=chrome..69i57.5536j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

[JDPriestly]

98. Doesn't mean she won't run. We really need her to run.

I don't think I could vote for Hillary. And I have a lot of friends who agree with me.

[MannyGoldstein]

105. Search for Hillary, too

She's also not running.

[Enthusiast]

49. You ignore the fact that both Kerry and Gore won.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

71. Which is why Bush never became President, and the Iraq war never happened.

The person who wins an election is the one who becomes president.

I'm not interested in fielding candidates who will "win" in the sense that Gore (and possibly Kerry, although I think you're probably wrong about that) won - I want the Democrats to choose a candidate who will win in the sense of "becoming President".

Less frivolously, even if you accept that both Gore and Kerry would have won if the votes had been properly counted, Clinton and Obama won by larger margins, so my point still stands.

[Enthusiast]

75. People voted for Obama believing him to be far more liberal than he actually was.

So your, "Move to the right for victory." argument has no legs to stand on.

[lostincalifornia]

129. It depends on the state.

[vi5]

54. Yeah, Gore ran as a total leftie.

Remind me who his VP pick was again?

[Mondavi]

64. Lieberman made clear that Gore had already given up....

any thoughts of conducting a liberal campaign, evidently warned by elites.
Later, Gore evidently regretted listening. But, were the regrets personal or for the public?
I'm guessing, personal.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

73. A centrist, to offset the fact that Gore was a liberal.

Typically candidates pick running mates to offset what they see as the gaps in their appeal.

For example, Romney and (especially) McCain were worried about being seen as too moderate, and hence they picked running mates to appeal to their core vote.

Obama and Bush the Younger were worried about being see as too inexperienced/inept, and so they picked older, experienced running mates.

Clinton was a charismatic third-wayer, so he picked a liberal policy wonk.

Gore was a liberal, and he picked a centrist to offset that.

I don't remember off the top of my head who Dole's running mate was, or what they brought to the table - I was only 13 at the time, and hadn't started following US politics yet (I'm British, not American).

Kerry, I think, was an exception - IIRC, he picked Edwards to reunify the party after a challenging primary. I may be wrong about that, though.

Bush the elder was... I don't know, possibly felt he was deficient in stupidity? I was only 9 at the time, and even I heard of Dan Quayle and the potatoe...

[Mondavi]

76. Gore wasn't a liberal and certainly didn't run as a liberal....

for more than 10 minutes and warned off by Elites not to attempt it.
Gore regretted it realizing that it had lost tremendous popular support for him.
If a candidate is true to the party and his own beliefs, she would select a VP who shared their ideals. We also saw the pitfalls of this idea with JFK's election where blackmail evidently forced LBJ onto the ticket according to Evelyn Lincoln and resulted in his assassination.
Generally, these selections have more to do with moving a Trojan horse into the VP seat.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

84. Did you get dragged through a wormhole from another universe?

Gore most certainly did NOT run as a liberal in this universe. The whole reason Nader got ANY real votes was that there was a serious vacuum on the left side of the race. The lefties begged him to throw a single solitary bone to the left to shore up his base support, and he refused. He ran centrist his whole campaign, and lost because he was courting the mythical 'center'.

Lieberman was just another trick in the bag to 'appeal to the center', that failed miserably.

And Obama ran to the left of Clinton, Gore, and Kerry. He just didn't deliver on most of what people actually wanted once he got in office. He put some bandages over the gaping wound of the economy, then went after health insurance reform. So instead of a recovered middle class, we've got more people in poverty, a smaller middle class, almost all of the recovered wealth in the 'recovery' flowing to the rich people, and at least some people who get health insurance who didn't before.

Supposedly I'm eligible for Medicaid now (not that the Medicaid office has done anything more with my paperwork), but I'd rather have had a job, and preferably not one that will likely pay half or less of the one I lost.

[vi5]

110. There was a reason Nader got so much traction among liberals/lefties.

I didn't vote for Nader and never would. But every day I found myself arguing with someone who was saying Gore was running to the center, and the only arguments I was able to put forth based on the things he was doing and saying was "Well..........the Supreme Court!!!.....we just have to trust him."

Other than shoring up Social Security rather than spending the surplus on tax cuts (which is hardly or should hardly be considered some radical lefty idea) there was very little that Gore actually articulated that he stood for that was a clearly liberal idea.

[L0oniX]

117. I hear purple rocks provide better cover.

[JDPriestly]

33. So true. K&R.

[pnwmom]

34. Karl Rove LOST his 2 most recent campaigns. Remember how shocked he was in Ohio?

Unfortunately, there are swing voters and Independents, whose votes can go either way.

Obama took the majority of these voters in his elections and they, combined with his Democratic base, helped him win. He wouldn't have won based on solid Democratic voters alone.

[TrollBuster9090]

88. Karl Rove put a chimpanzee in the White House TWICE by convincing a narrow slice of 3 million

far right voters, who normally stay home on election day, to come out and vote. The strategy was sound. The only reason it ultimately failed was because the policies that they implemented once in office were failures, and the rational people at the political center abandoned them.

Roves strategy was sound: To give people who don't normally vote a reason to vote by picking a FEW issues that they feel strongly about (classical Lee Atwater 'wedge and magnet issues.')

That strategy WORKS, and gets candidates ELECTED.

Whether they CONTINUE to get elected will depend whether the policies they implement succeed or fail:

A. If the elected candidates implement policies that FAIL, they will lose rational voters in the political center, and be stuck with the extremists they activated. Or,

B. If the elected candidates implement policies that SUCCEED, the political center will actually SHIFT in the direction the election was pulled, because you'll convince more people that your philosophy is correct.


That's really what this is all about. Roves strategy was sound when it came to getting people elected. It was NOT sound in KEEPING them elected because most of the the policies they implemented were crap. The classic old scenario of one party being good at winning elections, but lousy at governing; and the other party being good at governing but lousy at winning elections. Democrats can be good at governing, so lets not change THAT part. Let's just adopt the successful election strategies that the party that's good at winning elections uses as well.

[pnwmom]

92. Independents and swing voters also voted for Bush, not just far right Republicans.

In fact, many far right Republicans didn't care for Bush at all because they thought he was too moderate.

[Hippo_Tron]

120. No, the Supreme Court put a chimpanzee in the White House

His chimpanzee then presided over the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor and NEARLY pissed away just enough of his 90% rally around the flag support to lose in 2004, but not quite enough.

[Sgent]

131. The surpreme court

decided the outcome of an election with less than 1000 votes either way out of 100million. Either candidate could have done better and kept it from them. If certain 3rd party votes had split according to their polling then the election would have changed.

[arely staircase]

36. that depends on the election (district)

One size fits all advice is generally bad advice.

[pscot]

37. Yes but

Appeals to the Democrat's base get labeled "class warfare" by the ruling class and the kool kids who catapult their propaganda. This terrifies Democratic campaign consultants, all of whom channel beltway "wisdom".

[rrneck]

39. What if a large chunk of your base votes Republican?

It might be better to think in terms of dragging the center to the left. That means find a way to give the base what it wants and find something to entice the uncommitted center to our side.

[L0oniX]

118. Indeed ...the more centrist they are the more likely they could vote for a centrist repuke.

[Zenlitened]

41. Very true:

"There are not voters who "swing," there are left voters and right voters who either show up and vote or do not show up and vote."

[rocktivity]

42. Candidate for this year's "You Call This NEWS?" Award

Like that Jim Hightower says, the middle of the road offers only yellow stripes and squashed corpses.




rocktivity

[NaturalHigh]

43. Not true in my district.

[Fearless]

67. What district?

[NaturalHigh]

104. Northeast Oklahoma

District 2

[truedelphi]

44. Fabulous quote from Malcolm X:

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
-- Malcolm X

Probably goes without saying, but at the time of his assassination, few in Democratic Party mourned the loss of this "radical."

[Drunken Irishman]

46. This is bunk...

It doesn't account for Democrats who represent Republican districts. I've seen 'liberals' run all the time in Utah and lose over and over again, while the only Democrat to have any marginal success beyond the borders of Salt Lake, Jim Matheson, is borderline right of center.

[AgingAmerican]

80. So chase off everyone else

...because there are a few Dem politicians in GOP states. It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[TrollBuster9090]

86. In fact, far less than 50% of eligible voters ever turn out to vote. In my experience, they usually

don't vote because they're convinced that there is no difference between the two parties.

How about giving some of THOSE people a reason to turn out to vote by proving that there IS a difference between the two parties, rather than converging on a narrow slice of 'centrist' voters, and thus PROVING that there ISN'T a difference between the two parties?

[Drunken Irishman]

89. How do you know they don't turn out for that reason?

Utahns are conservative. Running a more liberal candidate won't do a damn thing and hasn't in the past. We've nominated a lot of liberals, including Rocky Anderson, to run for major races and every single time, they lose.

Who's to say the voters who are staying home would ever vote Democratic or liberal?

[99Forever]

112. Same old bunk...

... different day.

“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time”-Harry S Truman

[Drunken Irishman]

122. That quote makes me laugh...

All I hear is how Obama acts as a Republican by you guys and he easily won two elections against real Republicans.

But more importantly, you guys act as if no liberals ever run and get their butts kicked in Republican states. I live in Utah, I've supported liberal candidates, including Rocky Anderson, who ran for congress a while back, they don't win. Yet the only candidate to win, Jim Matheson, is way more conservative than most conservative Democrats.

Wonder how that works?

[99Forever]

123. If you repeat the same again...

... it'll be even more true!

[lostincalifornia]

127. Democrats who run in red states are blue dogs for a reason. Howard Dean understood this with his 50

state strategy.

[LeftOfWest]

47. Yep. Mushy Middle ALWAYS Collapses.

Always.

[Enthusiast]

48. The Democratic Party hierarchy already understand this.

And they understood it leading up to the 2010 election.

[MisterP]

130. why do you think they had their December '10 talking points lined up so fast?

[yurbud]

51. especially in midterms & national Dems having been kicking most loyal foot soldiers, teachers

since they got on board with No Child Left Behind and the Wall Street driven reform movement.

[jtuck004]

53. If two politicians agree, you don't need one of 'em. If the Democrats can't come up

with a an opposition platform for growth (of working people as opposed to their banking friends whom they have been making wealthy for years now) then there isn't much need for them to even exist.

[Jefferson23]

56. Uh oh, speaking the truth? n/t

[Fearless]

66. Hmm... I've only been saying that for YEARS

[BrotherIvan]

68. Reading down this thread

It's so funny to see the usual suspects arguing for Blue Dogs and Centrism. Gotta love the consistency.

[Autumn]

69. At last. Some one speaks the truth.

Recommended!

[merrily]

72. I all but worship at the altar of move left.

I want it, very much.

However, as far as strategies of Karl Ham Head Rove, yes, Bush pandered to his base. However, Rove also got people to the polls to vote for his boy by getting state constitutional amendments prohibiting same gender marriage on the ballot, trying his best to have his boy appeal to Hispanics and other groups, etc. And vote caging. Everything he could think of that might help.

In other words, he was not a one trick phony.

[obxhead]

74. Democrats will NOT get republican voters by moving to the right as well.

[colsohlibgal]

77. I So, So Agree

When will they get it? When will democratic presidents stop pushing plutocratic nonsense like the TPP?

Our democracy has gone off the rails, and the Supreme Court is making sure it all stays off the rails.

We need a lion, a Teddy Roosevelt figure, to trust bust rather than make big money speeches before Goldman Sachs.

It's still beyond belief, with a democratic president and AG, that no Wall Street executives have spent day one in prison for massive widespread textbook fraud.

[markpkessinger]

78. Here's a blogpost I wrore in December 2010 on this subject . . .

. . . on OpenSalon.com:

The Mythical Independent “Middle”

Marist College has released the results of a poll conducted from Dec. 2 through Wed. Dec. 8, the day the President announced his initial deal with the GOP on the Bush tax cuts, indicating that the President's approval rating has slipped still further. The deal with the GOP was, of course, exactly what most of the Beltway political pundits had been saying he needed to do following the results of the mid-term elections: move more to the right (the pundits calling moving to the center — more on that in a moment). This, they said, was how he could win back independent voters.

Well, folks, guess which group's approval of the President remained virtually unchanged as a result of his rightward capitulation: that's right, INDEPENDENTS. The ratings among independents were 39% favorable and 52% unfavorable. A month ago, the same group's ratings of the President were 38% and 54%, respectively. On the other hand, his favorable rating among Democrats dropped nine percentage points, from 83% to 74%, and among liberals from 78% to 69%, while his unfavorable rating among Democrats nearly doubled from 11% to 21%, and among liberals from 14% to 22%.

The fact that the President has realized no sudden boost of support among independents following his “move to the center” on the tax cut deal ought to (but probably won't) permanently put to rest the the notion being perpetuated by the D.C. punditry that the midterms were a vote “against the President's liberal policies.” Independents are not a cohesive political group; they are all over the map, with some of them more liberal than most democrats and some more conservative than some of the hardest right GOP legislators. Many of them are not even consistently “left-leaning” or “right-leaning,” but in fact lean different ways on different issues. Independents are simply unaffiliated with either of the two parties, for reasons which vary from person to person. Some are independent simply because they've never registered as members of a party. Others are unaffiliated because they lack confidence in either party. Thus, the suggestion that the President will win over disaffected independents simply by aiming for the midpoint between the current Democratic and Republican party positions on any given issue is absurd on its face. Senate and House Democrats now occupy what has historically been the center position in the American political spectrum, and the GOP has gone off a rightward cliff. So the President, by aiming for a mythical midpoint, succeeds no only in offending his core constituency, but by arriving at a place that is, in fact, pretty far to the right, he likewise fails to gain credibility with many independents.

Nevertheless, so much of the media continues to speak of independents as if they are a cohesive constituency whose preferences lie between Democrats and the GOP. Part of this, I think, may be a function of the one-dimensional, left-right visual metaphor we use to describe the range of political ideas in this country. In reality, political ideas are probably better plotted in three-dimensional space rather than along a uni-dimensional left-right axis. So I think we too often allow the left-right visual metaphor drive our thinking about the relationships of various ideological positions relative to one another, and thus find ourselves with no place left along our one-dimensional line in which to place independent voters except in the middle, between the two parties. But it simply is not a reflection of reality.

The message for the President in all this should be that if he were to actually feed, water, give adequate sunshine and talk nicely to the progressive constituency, and fight for progressive values, he would, in fact, bring a long a good number of those independents (not all of them certainly, but I bet it would be enough).

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/10/105105/poll-obama...

[99Forever]

85. If a candidate is a Corpo/Third Way/DLC ...

... I WILL show up, but I WILL NOT vote for them, either in the primary or the general. Period. To me, they are no different that Republicans. I have not ever voted for a Republican, nor will I, regardless of the "team" they claim to play for. I know the difference between an actual Democrat and a DINO.

[elzenmahn]

102. As a trend, DINOs are going extinct...

...witness Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and a host of others.

If you present the option of a Republican and a Democrat who acts and talks like a Republican, people will gravitate to the "real thing" every time.

Democrats need to be DEMOCRATS. And we need to re-establish the left's political backstop: labor, education, etc.

[99Forever]

103. I hope you are correct...

... and think the odds are better than not you are, and couldn't agree more with your assessment.

[blkmusclmachine]

87. ,

,

[Egnever]

90. You have to deliver for and campaign to your base voters or they don't show up

Absolutely right.

The problem with this article is it doesnt recognize the vast differences in a base in say San fransisco and a base in Alabama. They are not the same and what is left in one is looney toons left in another. You can not run the same campaign in both with the same results.

This article is dumb.

[pragmatic_dem]

96. Spying, TPP, no Wall Street prosecutions, death of net neutrality, fracking, drill baby drill

if the President is trying to kick away support of millions of traditional Democrats who believe this is an immoral and unethical way to govern, then he gets what he deserves.

Republican Leadership doesn't have to move to the left because Democratic Leadership is more than willing to move to the right and the Democratic "moderates" are literally wetting themselves with pragmatic jubilation.

[BrainMann1]

99. I agree

[elzenmahn]

100. Are you listening to this, HILLARY?

Those who play kissy-face and smoochie-ass to the Banks and Corporate America will not win the base support you need for the primaries, especially in this environment. If you can't do that, forget the general.

[emulatorloo]

106. Yes, absolutely. Kick and Rec n/t

[Recursion]

107. Ah, the myth of the "uncompromising" George W. Bush

Despite the fact that he pushed for the largest expansions of Federal spending in health and education since LBJ. Despite the fact that none of his domestic agenda except triangulations like that passed. Despite the fact that conservatives consider him a RINO quisling at best.

[Zorra]

108. + 100000! "Democrats moving to the "middle" is a double disaster

that alienates the party's progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.' It unconsciously locks in the notion that the other side's positions are worth moving toward, while your side's positions are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the right just moves further to the right."
~ George Lakoff

[tomp]

109. the leadership and power players of the democratic party....

....would rather lose elections than move left. the powers that be will fight tooth and nail to keep the democratic party serving the rich, as always. left wing losses are good for the rich. the sole function of the democratic party is to APPEAR to be serving the majority while in fact serving the minority, and they are very good at it.

[The Wizard]

111. Appealing to people who will never vote for you

is a guaranteed losing strategy.
In 2009 Obama moved to the right to appeal to the Republicans as being the President of all the people. He gave up the public option in the Health Care bill, and as a result alienated the base of the Democratic Party, thus causing many of the base to abandon the 2010 midterm election. The result was the radical fringe (Teahaddist) element to seize control of the Republican Party and block all of the President's legislative initiatives. Their goal was/is to destroy his presidency.
These are neither normal nor patriotic Americans. They are anarchists and Nihilists bent on restoring the Gilded Age, or worse slavery.
The fringe element that has seized power in the Republican Party sees normal Americans as the enemy and will lie cheat and steal to gain total control of the government so as to "drown it in a bathtub."
When right wing god Ronald Reagan declared government to be the problem he set in motion a movement with the ultimate goal of undermining all semblance of a civil society.
We've recently witnessed the lawless militia movement show up in Nevada, encouraged by Fox News, for the purpose of overthrowing the United States government by force.
I repeat, these are neither normal nor patriotic Americans, and if Democrats continue moving to the right to appeal to voters who will never vote for them, we will have neither a government nor a country that is inhabitable by a civilized society.
If Democrats want to be successful they must stand for the principles upon which the Party has stood by since FDR.

[Kermitt Gribble]

113. Love this post! Huge K&R!

People register as Democrats because they support traditional Democratic Party values. When the Party abandons those traditional values, people abandon the Party.

[treestar]

114. If they don't vote, they aren't the base.

That should be obvious. The base always votes.

[Hippo_Tron]

119. How'd that work out for Mitt Romney?

Yes I'm of the opinion that you have to stand for something and milquetoast democrats who don't can often find themselves losing for that reason. But "appeal to your base" isn't the holy grail of winning elections much as we wish it were because we're the base.

[lostincalifornia]

126. Do you believe that a base voter in a red state is different then a base voter in blue state?