Where Democrats Go From Here
By Charlie Cook
© NationalJournal.com
November 30, 2004
As Democrats choose a new national party chairman early next year, it's important that they take time to assess their strengths and weaknesses before making this decision. As the old adage goes, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades" -- coming within 136,483 votes in Ohio wasn't close enough. Democrats lost.
In the House, depending upon what happens in two runoffs coming up this Saturday, Democrats will have suffered a net loss of one, two or three seats nationwide. Had redistricting not taken place in Texas, Democrats would have actually gained a bit in the House. Call it a loss on technical grounds. In the Senate, Democrats took a big loss of four seats, but every seat was in the South (plus Florida) -- the continuing and not quite completed realignment of that region into the Republican column. Outside of the South, Democrats actually gained one seat, in Colorado.
Democrats, particularly Americans Coming Together, did a phenomenal job of getting out the vote in the competitive purple states, exceeding their targets (the numbers of votes thought to be sufficient to win) in virtually every state, with Kerry winning the second largest number of votes in American presidential campaign history. It's just that the Bush campaign did a bit better in the last couple of swing states, and that made all the difference. While there is always something that can be done better, this part of the Democratic apparatus is hardly broken. With a stronger candidate and a better, sharper message, Dems' get-out-the-vote operation would have been plenty sufficient to turn out a winning number of voters.
At the same time, the Nov. 2 elections revealed some very significant problems for Democrats. It has become a highly marginalized party, one that does well among minorities (though not as well among Hispanic voters as four years ago), in urban and close-in suburban areas... and that's about it. It's hard for a Democrat to look at the national county-level red/blue map of the 2004 election and not recognize the problems this party faces. Though Kerry won 48 percent of the popular vote and did even better in the Electoral College, it seems that about 95 percent of the ink on the map is red, not blue, and its concentration in the cities and close-in suburbs is incredibly unhealthy for a national party.
My friend and colleague, Hotline editor Chuck Todd, points out that with the exception of black radio stations, the Kerry campaign and the Media Fund bought virtually no radio advertising in this campaign, despite the fact that outside of the cities themselves, people drive cars (and even trucks!) and an important way to reach voters is when they are listening to their car radios. It would seem that many Democratic media consultants believe that all voters use public transportation and listen to their iPods after stopping by Starbucks. Democrats would be well-advised to study how the Bush campaign found new ways to communicate with voters, while Team Kerry relied too much on television. Having spent a considerable amount of time in purple states this year, I can say with a good deal of authority that the law of diminishing returns on television advertising was long past exceeded in this campaign.
In terms of specifics, perhaps the most important factor is that Democrats pick a chairman or chairwoman who will make a full four-year commitment to the job of rebuilding the Democratic Party, not someone using this as a two-year stepping stone for running for president.
The second most important factor is finding someone who understands the nuts-and-bolts of campaign organization, someone who understands the importance of taking the massive amount of data that was collected about voters in this election and putting it into a permanent database to be used in future campaigns -- information about voters leanings in the 2004 campaign, preferences on issues and the like.
Third, Democrats need someone who understands the presidential nominating process, and can appreciate the important role that Iowa and New Hampshire play in terms of forcing the candidates to do retail, face-to-face campaigning among real voters. But they need someone who also understands the importance of changing the calendar, so that Iowa and New Hampshire alone don't effectively make the choice, as it did this year.
Fourth, the next head of the DNC needs to be somewhone who knows how to raise money and isn't afraid of getting their fingers dirty doing it.
And finally, Democrats must find someone who will adopt the following party bylaws: (1) Don't nominate anyone from the Northeast; (2) Don't nominate anyone with an Ivy League undergraduate degree; and (3) Don't nominate a stiff. |
