The Dean Debate. I've collected some excellent blog bits from Ruy Teixeira at the terrific DONKEY RISING:

July 14, 2003

Is Dean Electable?

That's really the question, isn't it? Now that his boosters are getting over the euphoria of his fundraising numbers and his indisputable status as one of the top tier candidates in the Democratic race, they are (to their credit) starting to engage on the issue of his electability. Yes, indeed, Dean has a reasonable chance of capturing the Democratic nomination. But does he have a reasonable chance of actually beating Bush?

John Judis' piece in Salon.com argues: not really; in fact, he'll probably get clobbered. The essence of Judis' argument is that, while Dean can fairly be said to represent the ethos of the country's increasingly influential professional class, which plays a leading role in today's Democratic coalition, his ability to appeal outside that group and other elements of the Democratic base is likely to be poor. His aggressive antiwar stance and liberalism on issues like gay marriage will turn off swing voters, especially white working class and culturally conservative voters, and especially in swing states the Democrats need to win to build an electoral vote majority.

DR thinks Judis is right. But TAPPED and Jerome Armstrong ( writing in MyDD ) offer some counterarguments that deserve attention. Perhaps their dominant theme is that Judis is contradicting his own thesis in The Emerging Democratic Majority by saying that Dean represents the views of the professional class--which EDM annoints as the ideological leader of the new Democratic coalition--but somehow can't put that coalition together.

DR is pretty familiar with the EDM thesis and can assure TAPPED and MyDD that there is no contradiction. The key point is that political leadership involves building coalitions that reach outside your base and absorb independent and moderate voters who are leaning your way. Clinton's strength was being able to synthesize the views of professionals with those of older elements of the Democratic coalition and present that synthesis in a way that made enough independent and moderate voters feel it was safe to vote Democratic. That includes the white working class and culturally conservative voters Dean is likely to have the most trouble with.

Really, it seems to DR that Dean supporters' main argument has to be that the Dean straight talkin', McCain mojo, aggressive alpha-male thing will obviate any need for the kind of electoral finesse displayed by Clinton. Independents will hear that straight talkin' and they'll rush to sign up, especially as the administration continues to dissemble on Iraq, etc. But DR believes that not all independents are created equal and that Dean's approach and persona is still likely to yield its most success with socially liberal, upscale independents in relatively liberal states.

None of this is to say that Dean couldn't possibly beat Bush in any situation. If the administration gets into enough hot water on Iraq and the economy anything is possible. But, if they get into that kind of hot water, then a more moderate, less polarizing--less purely professional class!--candidate like Kerry or Gephardt is even more likely to be able to beat Bush.

It's all a matter of probabilities. Dean's supporters can make a case that he possibly could beat Bush if enough things went his way. But we need to look at probabilities not possibilities and that's where Dean's candidacy falls short.

posted 1:25 pm



July 16, 2003

The Dean Debate Continues!

Yesterday TAPPED responded to DR's response to TAPPED's response to John Judis' Salon.com article about Dean's (non)electability. It appears we've reached unity on some the problems likely to beset a Dean general election candidacy As TAPPED puts it:

[There is] much that is appealing about Dean, but we'd have to agree that his ability to resonate with moderate voters in center-right swing states will probably be the acid test of whether his straight talk can overcome his geographic undesirability.

Exactly. That is where the case for Dean has to be made. An interesting contribution along these lines was made recently in &c., The New Republic 's blog. The post is essentially a response to a column by The Los Angeles Times ' Ron Brownstein, where Brownstein argues that Ho-Ho's fervent denunciations of Bush play great with Democrats but are probably frightening away centrist voters Democrats need in the general election.

&c. reasonably points out that any successful candidate for the Democratic nomination winds up frightening at least some centrist voters, due to the nature of the process: you're marketing yourself to Democrats not the general electorate. The question therefore is not whether there's damage but how much there is and how fixable that damage is. &c. argues that Dean's liberalism is more tonal (he let's 'em have it!) than based on policy (many of his policies--though not Iraq, which is a big exception--are relatively conservative for a Democrat). And that's good because tonal liberalism is much easier to modify for the general than policy liberalism, which tends to box you in with commitments that are hard to keep if you want to appeal to moderates.

&c. argues further that there are aspects of Dean's aggressive tone that could even help with some moderate voters, especially white men, since many of these voters see Democrats as hopelessly wimpy. Dean may be many things, but wimpy he's not!

There are problems with this argument, but it is crisply put and again focuses us on the central question that has to be convincingly addressed to make the case for Dean's electability: can he really get those moderate voters in the swing states--and can he get them better than the other Democratic candidates?

Well, maybe more on this tomorrow. DR's spies tell him that The New Republic 's two Jonathans (Cohn/pro and Chait/con) will weigh in tomorrow on the Dean electability question and they'll no doubt have new and interesting things to say.



July 17, 2003

Take Two Dean Articles and Call Me in the Morning

The good doctor is on trial today in the pages of The New Republic . Can feisty Ho-Ho (if nominated) actually beat George W. Bush and become President of these United States? Yes, he can! says Jonathan Cohn . Don’t be ridiculous, says Jonathan Chait .

DR urges you to read both of them and then pick your Jonathan. Both are fine articles. Cohn’s is possibly the best defense of Dean’s electability I’ve seen. Chait’s, if a bit over-the-top at times, raises so many good questions about Dean’s electoral viability that honest Dean supporters will be forced to slow down for a minute and ask themselves: gee, could this guy really, really beat Bush?

DR doesn’t entirely agree with either article, but he is inclined to think Cohn is more wrong than right and Chait is more right than wrong.

Cohn’s case is that Dean’s centrism is real and misunderstood and that his appeal to liberals is based mostly on the fact that “he’s as angry as they are� and tells it like it is about Bush and the sins of his administration. Cohn further argues that Dean’s blunt-speaking persona will be just the ticket with voters, including swing voters, who are looking for someone who speaks like a human being and tells you what they really think in clear, short sentences. That authenticity, Cohn argues, will be the key to reaching the political center, even on contentious issues like the Iraq war (where, he reminds us, Dean’s consistent stance against the war looks less far-out with every day that goes by).

Well, maybe. As Cohn himself cogently puts it:

[V]oters will quite properly demand that presidential candidates demonstrate their ability to protect national security. That's a difficult challenge for any governor lacking foreign policy or personal military experience. Make that governor a New Englander, load him up with a few cultural positions (such as pro-civil unions) that some voters interpret as "soft," then have him oppose a war that was widely popular at the time, and what you have--it would seem--is a recipe for disaster.

I’m not sure Cohn ever really extricates Dean from these problems in his article. And Chait’s article sticks this knife in and twists it. The article, ominously (biblically?) subtitled “Howard Dean and the Tempting of the Democrats�, systematically marches through all the ways (like the ones Cohn mentions and then some) in which Dean can easily be portrayed as out-of-step and too liberal for centrist general election voters. As Chait points out, Dean’s heterodoxy on issues like guns and the death penalty is unlikely to help him that much in the general because voters do not carefully examine each candidate’s individual positions. Instead, they go for a broad impression of the man, which Rove and Co. will be happy to supply based on the abundant raw material that a Dean candidacy will supply.

There are some problems with Chait’s article. He spends too much time upbraiding Dean for being unfair to his fellow Democrats (quit lying about their records!) And he never really deals with the energy and mobilization issue, which is surely a strong point of the Dean candidacy. Any Democratic candidate will need energy and mobilization in abundance to be successful and Chait, shall we say, doesn’t really give the devil his due on this one.

No matter. It’s a good article and so is Cohn’s. Read ‘em both and you’ll be up to speed as the Great Dean Debate continues.


July 22, 2003

Once Again on the Dean Question

DR’s posts on the Dean electability question (July 14, 16 and 17) have generated some comment, including most recently this post by MyDD and this post by Demosthenes , in which they hasten to assure me that my misgivings about Dean’s electability are misplaced.

I can’t say I was convinced, any more than I was by Jonathan Cohn’s fine case for the good doctor in The New Republic . But I think their posts are instructive because they reveal some of the assumptions that Dean boosters tend to make when arguing (in essence) that only Democratic wimps, hopeless Establishment types and/or DLCers believe Dean can’t beat Bush.

Assumption #1: Dean’s association with liberal social issues like gay marriage won’t hurt him much—or, at least any more than any other Democrat will be hurt by social liberalism--because he is conservative on other social issues (guns, death penalty). Anyway, the country is becoming more liberal on issues concerning gays (witness the recent Supreme Court decision), so Dean won’t seem nearly so out-of-step as a lot of commentators think.

Problem #1: Yes, all Democrats, including nominal front-runner Kerry, will have to battle social liberalism critiques and hit jobs if nominated. But that’s exactly why you don’t want to present too much of an easy target and Dean does, due to not only the specific issue of gay marriage (still a bridge too far for most of the public, as opposed to legalizing gay sex, which they support), but also his geographic origins and the general profile of his candidacy.

Assumption #2: Dean’s antiwar stance will not hurt him; in fact, it’ll help him, now that Iraq has evolved into a seemingly intractable mess and the public is starting to wonder whether the whole adventure was worth the costs. Dean’s been consistently against the war, while the other candidates, like Kerry, have not and voters will reward that consistency.

Problem #2: Voters do not necessarily reward consistency. They reward those who seem to represent their view of the world and what needs to be done. The fact of the matter is that Kerry’s ambivalence-but-reluctant-support of the Iraq war more fairly represented the public’s view of the war going in than did Dean’s intransigent opposition and Kerry’s current move from ambivalence toward a critique of Bush’s approach also fairly represents how the public mood is evolving. So the inconsistent Kerry is probably in a much better position than the consistent Dean to capture the moderate voters who are becoming disaffected with the war’s aftermath, as well as the administration’s mendacity. And don’t forget: Kerry’s war hero status does matter and will help allay moderate voters’ fears that a critique of Bush comes from Democratic softness on national security, not from a realistic, tough-minded appraisal of what it’ll take to beat terrorists and keep America safe.

Assumption #3: Sure, Dean may have some trouble with some independent voters. But he will do well with independent-leaning members of the public who do not currently vote. In fact, he will bring out enough of these currently nonvoting independents to more than cancel out his losses among today’s independent voters.

Problem #3: This almost never works. The idea you can make up serious losses among existing voters by turning out lots of nonvoters is a very dangerous game indeed. Nonvoters rarely differ enough from voters of similar characteristics to warrant such an approach. (For those who want the long course on why this is so, DR recommends, in all due modesty, The Disappearing American Voter ) Instead, stick to the tried and true: get out your base (the folks you know will vote for you); fight like hell for the swing voters; and hope that an exciting campaign will bring in some new voters that will lean your way. But to vest your hopes in new voters is a serious—albeit common—mistake.

Well, all for now and, as DR is fond of saying: let the debate continue!

Coming soon in DR: The Demographics of Deanism

posted 5:23 pm



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