Dems: who was right - Dean or Emmanuel/Shumer?

Great Debates
1

Hello - infrequent visitor to the GD Forum, but I think this may be best asked here…

In an article in the NYTimes Weekly Magazine from before the election (had Howard Dean on the cover) - they reported on the tension, even acrimony between Howard Dean of the DNC and the team of Rahm Emmanuel of the House and Chuck Shumer of the Senate. The gist was this: in order to pursue a majority in the House and Senate, Dean wanted to pursue a very different strategy than E/S.

Emmanuel / Shumer - focus funding and resources on those races deemed winnable

Dean - return to establishing some sort of election support in all 50 states; don’t ignore seemingly-unwinnable states and focus on re-building the infrastructure needed to have a longer-term base of support for Democrats nationwide.

Well - the Dems took both the House and Senate (minor editorial aside: yay!). But - who was right? Does anyone here have any inside scoop as to which strategy was generally considered the more important in terms of delivering victory? I know that Rahm and Chuck have gotten a ton of media play, but from an insider POV, anyone know who is getting credit?

Thanks!

2

I find it fascinating about how all the praise of Dean’s efforts seems to rest on nothing more than that the hype sounds good: there’s ZERO attempt to actually go and look and see if Dean’s people and program worked out well on the ground. People just assume that it did, sight unseen.

I know from many people who actually worked on coordinated campaigns this cycle that things were not, in fact, all that good, and in many places, the Democratic candidates won in spite of bungling DNC coordinated campaigns, not because of them.

Simply put, talking about being competitive in all 50 states sounds great. But when the brass tacks of that plan means dumping lots of money on incompetent state parties that weren’t doing anything to begin with, and will now continue to do nothing and get paid handsomely for it, I just don’t see where the genius lies.

Again, I’m a fan of the idea of broadening the approach to even Republican dominated states, but I’m a fan of doing it in a way that will actually work, rather than just tossing money at layabouts.

3

Does it have to be either/or? There is no quesiton that Emmanuel and Shumer did an excellent job recruiting candidates, but there is also no question that the Dems won in some places no one thought they would. But I think that Demmanuel and Shumer mostly got it right and that Dean mostly got lucky-- no one could have predicted* that the GOP would self-destruct as they did, especially in the last month or so. Had Allen just stayed home with his pretty wife and done nothing (as Chris Matthews likes to point out), he probably would’ve won. Then, the Senate would be in the hands of the Republicans.
*I guess that phrase is now a permanent part of our vocabulary. :slight_smile:

4

Philosophically I support the 50-state strategy. I think that the only way that the Democratic Party can thrive in the long run is by evangelizing its progressive agenda nationwide, not just in its coastal strongholds.

I haven’t heard anything about the sort of malfeasance that **Apos ** is describing. Maybe if it turns out that the 50-state strategy is being implemented poorly I’ll change my opinion of Howard Dean. But right now I agree with his vision for the party.

Apos, what specifically do you think needs to be done to help build up the local Democratic Parties in the red states?

5

Bingo. The answer is a big fat BOTH. Having a presence in every race + having good candidates and the flexibility and means to fund the competitive races.

6

I lean towards feeling that Dean was right, but John Mace’s middle ground theory is probably true. Some of the candidates selected and most strongly backed by Rahm Emanuel lost handily, but others did not, so he was doing something right. I’m just not sure why he had to (seemingly) go about trying to take all the credit.

Despite all the dire predictions of Dean’s downfall (and his backfiring on the Democrats!), he’s done very, very well.

7

By what measure? This is what’s so frustrating about these discussions: they are mostly about nothing at all, based on absolutely no information about what money went where and what got done with it and whether that helped.

I’m not prepared to give anyone causal credit for this or that until at the very least NCEC cranks out the detailed vote picture in a few months.

For all we know, both Dean and Emmanuel had very little effect at all, and it was largely a national and press driven move. For all we know, Dean’s efforts could have helped more to fire up Republicans and drive their turnout than it did to win over undecideds. At this point, trying to answer those questions without at the very least a comprehensive picture of which specific voters came out and where and matched against what voter contact and resources, is simply silly handwaving.

For the time being, the only real measure of success is to look at what the money in question bought and if the resulting campaigns were any good or not. And from what I know from talking to friends who worked on coordinated campaigns this cycle…

but wait: do half of the netroots arguing about Dean even know what a coordinated campaign IS? I don’t get the sense that they do. Arguing without knowing what they are is like trying to have a discussion about population genetics when you’ve never even heard of statistics. Anyway…

…from what I know from friends who worked this cycle (and my own experience, though I was only involved at the end of one of the congressionals) is that the coordinateds were a mess in many states. They were poorly organized, had constant personell changes, were tied up in inane bureaucracy, and really dropped the ball as far as voter contact goals.

One state that illustrates my point pretty dramatically is Ohio. We CRUSHED the Republicans in Ohio (at least in statewide candidates: we didn’t do so good in the key Congressional races)! But the fact is that under the hood, it was one disaster after another in terms of the statewide DNC-funded campaign. The fact that we won doesn’t demonstrate that Dean and his work were productive. As far as I can tell, it was, instead, a giant clusterfuck.

But few people know that. All they know is that the top of the ticket won with huge margins. That’s the problem I mean with this disconnect from reality that characterizes a lot of these sorts of discussions (I’m looking at you, dailykos).

8

Oh clearly I understand that the right answer is “both, and…” pointing to a variety of other factors, not the least of which include the Republicans’ track record over the past few years and scandals recently.

But since there was just a clear divide between the two approaches - and assertions that the “other guy” was wrong - so I am curious if there is:

a) any evidence supporting either approach more than the other

and

b) who might be winning the spin war - as 2008 starts to loom, whose approach is likely to be the most pursued?

9

I would love to know more about this. Is a concise summary or analysis available for linking, or are you expressing a personal conclusion from having read numerous discrete stories about various problems?

10

Dean’s 50-state strategy has never been about winning in 2006. A strong party base takes a long time to build up, far more than a single year or a single election cycle.

Schumer and Emmanuel might argue that this was an important year, so they needed to funnel money to the most winnable races, but when is a year going to come along that isn’t important? Like most other investments, the time to get in is right now.

So even if the Democrats had lost outright this time around, it wouldn’t mean the 50-state strategy was a failure. Even if it did mean we lost some seats we might have picked up–and I’m not convinced–the idea is still solid. The legitimate question is whether or not any real gains were made in party structure in those previously forgotten states.

11

I have yet to see a convincing argument that Dean’s 50-state strategy didn’t work.

But yes, anyone who thought Dean’s plan was about winning a single election is misunderstanding it. Dean’s all about a building a base for the long term.

12

Frankly I don’t see how anyone can say that we don’t need Dean’s 50-state strategy or something similar. The Republicans are capable of running campaigns in every state. If we simply abandon a large chunk of states as unwinnable, then the 'Pubs can simply leverage their massive financial advantage in the states that are competitive and gradually take away our seats. I know for certain that we aren’t winning in places like Alaska and Idaho in '08, and probably not '10 or '12 either. But if we let the 'Pubs walk off in those states without breaking a sweat, then they get all those Senate seats for free.

Besides, the cost of maintaining one office and five (or so) full-time employees in each state can’t be that high compared the two billion that was spent on all campaigns in this past cycle.

13

I don’t know that Dean should be credited for this either, but ISTM that the place where a ground-level organizing approach (such as Dean initiated) should have the most effect is on the lowest-level races.

And the Dems kicked GOP butt from coast to coast in state legislative races, picking up hundreds of seats.

Maybe the DLCC has its own big pot of money that funded this wave of victories. I don’t know. But state legislature campaigns appear to be completely outside both Rahm’s and Schumer’s portfolios.

And the bottom of the ticket closed the D-R gap in Ohio’s lower chamber from 39D, 60R to 46D, 53R. Pick up four more seats between now and 2010, and the R’s will have to play nice with redistricting.

The Dems had net gains of seats in both houses of 20 state legislatures. In another 15 states, they gained seats in one house while breaking even (or not having elections) in the other. The analogous numbers for the GOP were 2 and 1. The Dems picked up 9 state legislature chambers, with another 2 still in play. The GOP took one chamber where the Dems had had a majority, and turned it into a tie.

Like I said, I don’t have any proof that that was Dean’s handiwork. But it would be consistent with that possibility, and it sure had nothing to do with Rahm or Schumer.

14

Here you go.

15

None of these. I’m talking from both personal experience and what friends who were directly involved have told me. I’m not going to sit around and gossip specifically about who did what where and when, and if that’s not good enough, that’s fair. But suffice to say, the idea that the Ohio State Party is a mess, and handing it lots of money won’t help, is not exactly a unique opinion.

16

Again: this tells me NOTHING. Election results, positive or negative, aren’t helpful. Great campaigns can lose. Terrible campaigns can win. The question is exactly what the strategy is, and if it at least did what it wanted to do and did it well.

17

It’s consistent, but not particularly helpful. Especially in Ohio, we were polling extremely well long before things even got going.

Again, the strategy, as if should work, is that it builds all sorts of good party structures and resources. But the answer to that question, even if we are talking about more than just 2006 is not “did we win good this year!?” but rather “what exactly was done, and how could it have plausibly helped or help build the party”?

Is the voter file better? Are the field people competent and doing their jobs?

I know one state where a heck of a lot of national money seemed to have ultimately been spent on settling scores INTERNALLY to the Democratic party. Again, I’m not going to jump out and gossip about it, and so I can’t cite it, but can I at least suggest that such a thing is possible, and if so, then the EXECUTION of the 50-state strategy could potentially leave a lot to be desired?

18

My searches to locate it aren’t going anywhere, but I remember reading in the WaPo earlier this fall that the Dems had put a lot of money into rebuilding their voter databases in a number of states. Can’t tell you how effective it was.

My own anecdotal evidence is that I was called twice on the weekend before the election by the MD Democratic Party to make sure I intended to go to the polls and vote for O’Malley and Cardin; they even asked if I needed transportation. I don’t remember getting calls like that in previous years, but this year they identified me and called me.

19

One thing I’d like to add is I’m not keen about talking about “Emmanuel/Schumer” as if they’re joined at the hip. Rahm chaired the DCCC, which was in charge of House races, and Chucky chaired the DSCC, whose goal was to win Senate races.

The House and Senate contests are extremely different as battlefields. Each year, there are 435 House seats theoretically up for grabs, but only 33 or 34 Senate seats.

There were at most eight or nine possible Dem Senate pickups this year: the six they actually won, plus TN and AZ, and NV as the ‘or nine’ there, but NV’s a stretch.

Meanwhile, there were on the order of 70 possible Dem House pickups. At least at places like DailyKos and MyDD, part and parcel of the 50-state strategy was to stretch the playing field, to field viable candidates in as many districts as possible, and contest as many GOP-held seats as could possibly be contested.

Obviously, the difference between a ‘concentrate on a handful of key races’ and ‘stretch the playing field’ is much greater in the House than in the Senate. In the Senate, the differences between the blogosphere approach and Schumer’s came down to a few mostly small differences: Kos et al. preferred Tester over Morrison in the MT primary, Lamont over Lieberman in CT, and weren’t nearly as crazy about Ford in TN, regarding him as a DLC guy. But in terms of when and how to widen the playing field, there wasn’t a whole lot of room between the two. For instance, both the DSCC and the blogosphere preferred Webb over Harris in the primary, but neither really did much to futher his campaign against Allen until the ‘macaca’ moment brought Virginia into play.

But on the House side, the difference was vast. From early in the year, Kos was using his blog to push dozens of second- and third-tier House candidates, and to drum up contributions for them through ActBlue (as were MyDD, Atrios, Firedoglake, etc.), while Rahm was broadening the reach of the DCCC’s help much more slowly. By the time Rahm gave a candidate (outside of his top 15-20 picks) money, I’d heard about that candidate for months via Kos, MyDD, and FDL, knew how good their chances for winning were, and had often contributed to their campaigns months earlier.

I think the blogosphere approach turned out to be justified. Candidates like Carol Shea-Porter won without much help from the DCCC, and candidacies that the DCCC poured millions of dollars into, to counteract the similar amounts the NRCC was dumping in, like Darcy Burner in Washington, or Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, wound up losing. I’m still of the conviction that the Dems could have won more seats if they’d pulled a couple million each away from those two races, and spent a couple hundred thousand each instead on races that were our 40th through 60th or 70th-best prospects - races where that much money would likely have had a bigger impact.

I think widening the playing field will almost always be the best approach, unless you’re just plain losing the electorate. (In which case it’s desperation to expect campaign tactics to bail you out.) It keeps the other party having to play defense in a lot more places, and gives them fewer resources to go after seats you hold. And it gets your message out in places that it needs to reach, which is something that the ‘concentrate on a few swing states’ approach doesn’t do. And in the case of the Dems, the GOP will always have more money to play with: the corporate world is much more their constituency than it is part of the Dems’. The Dems will fare better if the GOP has to spend money in a whole bunch of places, rather than being able to concentrate their fire on a handful of races where they’ll be able to win by spending endless money on negative attacks.

Maybe Rahm will gradually come around to this approach. And it certainly is the best approach in a ‘wave’ year such as 2006 turned out to be. But IMHO, it’s still the best approach, year in and year out. And besides, we didn’t know it might be that sort of year until the end of September; you often never know how things are really likely to break until late in the game. You’ve got to have an approach that takes advantage of your strengths, and doesn’t play to the strength of the other side. In a people-v.-money environment, going wide is the best approach for the ‘people’ side.