Burnt Orange Report

A moment of clarity

By Jim Dallas

The Jeffersonian has a good round-up on the blogospher's reaction to a new report by Williams Galston and Elaine Kamarck saying that Democrats need to move to the center. My two cents:

(1) A conversion strategy is not mutually-exclusive with a base-mobilization strategy; but because Democratic politics have long favored a top-down, candidate-centered approach which necessarily requires tight message-control, base-mobilization will end up being the strategy "tasked" to the thankless grass-roots, while conversion will often be "tasked" to a national media campaign with all the accompanying accoutrements (polling, focus groups, etc.) Our side has been trying to do both for years, and just being completely ineffective at it. Googling around suggests that Ms. Kamarck is intimately aware of this problem.

Where the GOP has done well, it has been in more effectively identifying their base, and more effectively targeting persuasion towards the "weak links" in ours.

It sort of annoys me that discussions about strategy seem to boil down (and I'm not saying this is necessarily Galston and Kamarck's fault) to either-or arguments about "moving to the center" versus "exciting the base." What those arguments about are more "who should be running the national media campaign" than "whether or not we should be mobilizing." Centrist triumphalism versus left-wing triumphalism, basically.

That isn't to say that this debate is mental masturbation; but...

(2) The real problem that Democrats need to think about is how to build something more enduring than the current preoccupation with candidate-centered top-ticket campaigns.

(3) And the stumbling block to that has a lot to do with overcoming, or at least working around, the "internal contradictions" within our coalition. That doesn't mean imposing rigid purity tests; rather, it means formulating a clear, consistent message with universal appeal. One of the advantages of doing this is it could (although it could do just the opposite if pushed too far) strengthen party unity and resolve while expanding our party's appeal. I don't really particularly care what kind of "positioning" that entails, just as long as we actually take a position and stick with it.

Note, my position basically amounts to "it's not about ideology, it's about competence." I'm sure Ms. Kamarck will appreciate that.

(4) Heck if I know what THAT is, though. And that last little bit may be Utopian or worse (cue the Will Rogers reference).

Meanwhile, a must read for the blog saavy is the analysis of blog-media-candidate triangles by Peter Daou.