Marketing Brand Democrat
Marketing Brand Democrat
Paul Waldman
January 13, 2005
First of all —says Gadflyer editor in chief Paul Waldman—Democrats need to quit trying to get everyone to like them. Dean’s willingness to take what seemed like unpopular positions is precisely what gives his candidacy for DNC chair the momentum it has today. As for ideology, Waldman disputes Dean’s image as a flaming liberal—and offers his own agenda for the next DNC chair.
Paul Waldman is editor in chief of the Gadflyer.
Now that Howard Dean has formally entered the race for DNC chair, he will suck up much of the air around the contest—he might or might not win, but the race will be mostly about him. This is not because Dean is radically different from any other candidate, or because he is a fulcrum around which the various potential courses for the party revolve, but because he is the most prominent of the contenders, and reporters know exactly what they think about him.
The race for DNC chair has handed the chroniclers of conventional wisdom yet another opportunity to ruminate on whether Democrats will “move to the left” or “move to the center.” (There are ideological battles within the Republican Party, too, but the press doesn’t take much interest in them. The Republican defeats of 1998, 1996 or 1992 were not greeted with endless Week In Review essays on whether the GOP would “move to the center” or “move to the right.”) Even a commentator as usually perceptive as Ronald Brownstein recently wrote that the race “will pit liberal Dean and party operative Harold M. Ickes against centrists such as former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer and Simon Rosenberg.” The blogosphere immediately gave Brownstein a well-deserved spanking for trying to fit a new reality into the old storyline. In fact, if you had to divide the candidates, on one side you’d have the establishment, including Roemer and Martin Frost (Ickes would have been on this side had he stayed in the race), and on the other side you’d have the insurgents, represented by Dean and Rosenberg.
Dean: The Myth v. The Man
Unfortunately, with Dean in the race much of the press discussion will revolve around ideology, because of the myth that Dean is some kind of far-left ideologue. Of course, this idea is utter nonsense—not only because of the many conservative positions Dean took over the years—but because the things that were supposed to mark him as a leftist during the presidential campaign now don’t look so far-out after all. He was opposed to the Iraq war when his primary opponents were lining up to vote for Bush’s force resolution—and today a majority of Americans think the war was a mistake. He was excoriated for saying that Saddam’s capture didn’t make the United States any safer—something with which no sane person would disagree today. When he started his campaign, what supposedly made him too liberal for the American electorate was not his opposition to the war but the fact that he had signed a bill establishing civil unions in Vermont. By the end of the campaign, support for civil unions had become the median position of the American voter, with more than 60 percent of the public advocating either civil unions or gay marriage. No less a personage than George W. Bush expressed his support for civil unions in the campaign’s closing days.
The real reason Dean is assumed to be such a radical is that the national press corps has a fixed image of what a Democrat is supposed to be: meek, uncertain, accommodating, afraid of Republicans, unwilling to stand up for his or her beliefs. When a candidate comes along demonstrating evidence of a spine, the conclusion is that he must be some kind of ideological extremist (needless to say, a Republican of the same type is said to be principled). In this sense, Dean is the candidate of the party’s progressive wing, since they are the ones who never believed accommodating President Bush was a good idea, who were against the war from the beginning, who wanted to fight all along. Their attraction to Dean was never about ideology—it was about the fighting spirit he had when so many others were cowering.
The Role Of The DNC Chair
But will the “image” of the person elected as DNC chair, whether it’s Dean or someone else, really matter? Not particularly. In fact, the race for DNC chair has almost nothing to do with whether the party will go left or right. The party’s ideological identity is determined by the individuals who run for office as Democrats—not by the personal views of the chair. Ask yourself whether Terry McAuliffe is a progressive or a centrist—or whether Ken Mehlman is a conservative or an ultraconservative. Chances are you have no idea, and no one really cares.
The real question for these candidates is what sort of transformation they want to affect in the party, and what their chances of success are in affecting that transformation. My Gadflyer colleague Tom Schaller recently offered a persuasive case for Simon Rosenberg’s candidacy, based on the fact that Rosenberg is not a politician but a tactician who has spent a good deal of time thinking about what changes the party needs to make. Would it be good for the party chair to be skilled at televised debate? Sure. Is that the most important thing the party should be looking for? Not even close. There are plenty of Democrats who can go on the Sunday shows and be effective spokespeople for the party. The question for the chair is where the party is as an organization—and, in the words of one blogger, " Brand Democrat", where it will be four years from now.
Many of the candidates are talking about the need for a “50 state strategy.” That would certainly put Democrats one up on the GOP, whose strategy leaves out the Northeast and West Coast—two regions in which they have won a combined total of one state in the last four presidential contests (New Hampshire in ’00). But in the service of attacking the Democrats’ most fundamental problem—the commonly held belief that they don’t really stand for anything—a good first step would be for Democrats to quit trying to get everybody to like them. They have a bizarre tendency to look around after each election and say, “Who was least likely to vote for us? Who hates us the most? Those are the people we need to pander to!”
Does anyone think that Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman stay up nights worrying about how to get more votes in Berkeley or the Bronx? Of course they don’t. They don’t care whether everyone likes them—they care about winning. Democrats can bring their message to Southern voters and support down-ballot Democrats everywhere in the country, but any Democrat who spends one nanosecond contemplating what it would take to win Mississippi’s electoral votes ought to be committed.
Reviving Democratic Populism
That message—the same message they should be bringing everywhere—is that Democrats are on the side of regular people. This is the one thing that unites Democrats from every corner of the country, whatever their views on abortion or gun control or the Iraq war.
Standing up for regular people is also the core of progressivism. And unlike the pundit class, the progressive community is not worried about the Democratic Party's ideological direction. They’re worried about whether the party will be up to the challenges of the coming years—whether it will be tough enough and smart enough to fight the GOP in ways that bring both short-term and long-term success. And they understand that the cause of progressivism is helped when the Democratic Party is strong and hindered when the party is weak. The order of the day for Democrats—acknowledged even by the DLC—isn’t some kind of careful ideological recalibration that would only entrench the impression that Democrats don’t know what they believe in. It’s about doing the things that Republicans have done so well over the past few decades: building and sustaining the state parties; nurturing a farm team of candidates, activists and communicators; engaging in policy arguments in a way that builds a positive image of your party and a negative image of your opponent; and finding new methods to keep your supporters involved and engaged between elections.
This is a tall order, to be sure. What it takes is a vision that goes beyond 2006 or 2008, one that sees the struggle between Republicans and Democrats in terms of decades. Four years from now, we’ll find out if the person Democrats choose is succeeding in moving their party on its way back to the dominance it once enjoyed—or if we have to have this discussion all over again.
Paul Waldman
January 13, 2005
First of all —says Gadflyer editor in chief Paul Waldman—Democrats need to quit trying to get everyone to like them. Dean’s willingness to take what seemed like unpopular positions is precisely what gives his candidacy for DNC chair the momentum it has today. As for ideology, Waldman disputes Dean’s image as a flaming liberal—and offers his own agenda for the next DNC chair.
Paul Waldman is editor in chief of the Gadflyer.
Now that Howard Dean has formally entered the race for DNC chair, he will suck up much of the air around the contest—he might or might not win, but the race will be mostly about him. This is not because Dean is radically different from any other candidate, or because he is a fulcrum around which the various potential courses for the party revolve, but because he is the most prominent of the contenders, and reporters know exactly what they think about him.
The race for DNC chair has handed the chroniclers of conventional wisdom yet another opportunity to ruminate on whether Democrats will “move to the left” or “move to the center.” (There are ideological battles within the Republican Party, too, but the press doesn’t take much interest in them. The Republican defeats of 1998, 1996 or 1992 were not greeted with endless Week In Review essays on whether the GOP would “move to the center” or “move to the right.”) Even a commentator as usually perceptive as Ronald Brownstein recently wrote that the race “will pit liberal Dean and party operative Harold M. Ickes against centrists such as former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer and Simon Rosenberg.” The blogosphere immediately gave Brownstein a well-deserved spanking for trying to fit a new reality into the old storyline. In fact, if you had to divide the candidates, on one side you’d have the establishment, including Roemer and Martin Frost (Ickes would have been on this side had he stayed in the race), and on the other side you’d have the insurgents, represented by Dean and Rosenberg.
Dean: The Myth v. The Man
Unfortunately, with Dean in the race much of the press discussion will revolve around ideology, because of the myth that Dean is some kind of far-left ideologue. Of course, this idea is utter nonsense—not only because of the many conservative positions Dean took over the years—but because the things that were supposed to mark him as a leftist during the presidential campaign now don’t look so far-out after all. He was opposed to the Iraq war when his primary opponents were lining up to vote for Bush’s force resolution—and today a majority of Americans think the war was a mistake. He was excoriated for saying that Saddam’s capture didn’t make the United States any safer—something with which no sane person would disagree today. When he started his campaign, what supposedly made him too liberal for the American electorate was not his opposition to the war but the fact that he had signed a bill establishing civil unions in Vermont. By the end of the campaign, support for civil unions had become the median position of the American voter, with more than 60 percent of the public advocating either civil unions or gay marriage. No less a personage than George W. Bush expressed his support for civil unions in the campaign’s closing days.
The real reason Dean is assumed to be such a radical is that the national press corps has a fixed image of what a Democrat is supposed to be: meek, uncertain, accommodating, afraid of Republicans, unwilling to stand up for his or her beliefs. When a candidate comes along demonstrating evidence of a spine, the conclusion is that he must be some kind of ideological extremist (needless to say, a Republican of the same type is said to be principled). In this sense, Dean is the candidate of the party’s progressive wing, since they are the ones who never believed accommodating President Bush was a good idea, who were against the war from the beginning, who wanted to fight all along. Their attraction to Dean was never about ideology—it was about the fighting spirit he had when so many others were cowering.
The Role Of The DNC Chair
But will the “image” of the person elected as DNC chair, whether it’s Dean or someone else, really matter? Not particularly. In fact, the race for DNC chair has almost nothing to do with whether the party will go left or right. The party’s ideological identity is determined by the individuals who run for office as Democrats—not by the personal views of the chair. Ask yourself whether Terry McAuliffe is a progressive or a centrist—or whether Ken Mehlman is a conservative or an ultraconservative. Chances are you have no idea, and no one really cares.
The real question for these candidates is what sort of transformation they want to affect in the party, and what their chances of success are in affecting that transformation. My Gadflyer colleague Tom Schaller recently offered a persuasive case for Simon Rosenberg’s candidacy, based on the fact that Rosenberg is not a politician but a tactician who has spent a good deal of time thinking about what changes the party needs to make. Would it be good for the party chair to be skilled at televised debate? Sure. Is that the most important thing the party should be looking for? Not even close. There are plenty of Democrats who can go on the Sunday shows and be effective spokespeople for the party. The question for the chair is where the party is as an organization—and, in the words of one blogger, " Brand Democrat", where it will be four years from now.
Many of the candidates are talking about the need for a “50 state strategy.” That would certainly put Democrats one up on the GOP, whose strategy leaves out the Northeast and West Coast—two regions in which they have won a combined total of one state in the last four presidential contests (New Hampshire in ’00). But in the service of attacking the Democrats’ most fundamental problem—the commonly held belief that they don’t really stand for anything—a good first step would be for Democrats to quit trying to get everybody to like them. They have a bizarre tendency to look around after each election and say, “Who was least likely to vote for us? Who hates us the most? Those are the people we need to pander to!”
Does anyone think that Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman stay up nights worrying about how to get more votes in Berkeley or the Bronx? Of course they don’t. They don’t care whether everyone likes them—they care about winning. Democrats can bring their message to Southern voters and support down-ballot Democrats everywhere in the country, but any Democrat who spends one nanosecond contemplating what it would take to win Mississippi’s electoral votes ought to be committed.
Reviving Democratic Populism
That message—the same message they should be bringing everywhere—is that Democrats are on the side of regular people. This is the one thing that unites Democrats from every corner of the country, whatever their views on abortion or gun control or the Iraq war.
Standing up for regular people is also the core of progressivism. And unlike the pundit class, the progressive community is not worried about the Democratic Party's ideological direction. They’re worried about whether the party will be up to the challenges of the coming years—whether it will be tough enough and smart enough to fight the GOP in ways that bring both short-term and long-term success. And they understand that the cause of progressivism is helped when the Democratic Party is strong and hindered when the party is weak. The order of the day for Democrats—acknowledged even by the DLC—isn’t some kind of careful ideological recalibration that would only entrench the impression that Democrats don’t know what they believe in. It’s about doing the things that Republicans have done so well over the past few decades: building and sustaining the state parties; nurturing a farm team of candidates, activists and communicators; engaging in policy arguments in a way that builds a positive image of your party and a negative image of your opponent; and finding new methods to keep your supporters involved and engaged between elections.
This is a tall order, to be sure. What it takes is a vision that goes beyond 2006 or 2008, one that sees the struggle between Republicans and Democrats in terms of decades. Four years from now, we’ll find out if the person Democrats choose is succeeding in moving their party on its way back to the dominance it once enjoyed—or if we have to have this discussion all over again.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 10:42 AM
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