# Who should the Democrats choose for national party chair? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 14, 2005, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772 "2005-01-14T21:38:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/41 "2005-01-21T14:35:33Z")
> [@John Corrado](#): > > Let me ask, then, Daniel- would you describe any of Mondale, Dukakis, or McGovern as right-wing lite? Admittedly, none of those candidates are what I’d consider “firebreathers”- “milquetoastbreathers” is more like it- but at the time each ran, each did so on very strong liberal platforms. And each was _soundly_ defeated. There are two parts to being inspirational. First, you gotta have the charisma; second, you gotta have the vision. Mondale, Dukakis, and McGovern lacked the charisma; the first two lacked any vision as far as I know. I’m not saying that a traditional liberal platform is a surefire winner; I am saying that racing behind the Republican party panting and saying, "Me too!’ ain’t gonna win an election. Clinton managed his triangulation strategy in 1992 by catching the Republicans off-guard, but they’re not off-guard any more, and he only won in 1996 because of the great economy. Near as I can tell, his strategy is unrepeatable. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/42 "2005-01-21T15:45:41Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > There are two parts to being inspirational. First, you gotta have the charisma; second, you gotta have the vision. Mondale, Dukakis, and McGovern lacked the charisma; the first two lacked any vision as far as I know. McGovern was charismatic. Heck, compared to Nixon, anybody was charismatic. McGovern lost because he was too far to the left, or at least because the Republicans were able to portray him as too far to the left. He had charisma and vision, it just wasn’t a vision most people shared. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/43 "2005-01-21T15:46:55Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > McGovern was charismatic. Heck, compared to Nixon, anybody was charismatic. McGovern lost because he was too far to the left, or at least because the Republicans were able to portray him as too far to the left. He had charisma and vision, it just wasn’t a vision most people shared. Okay, my fault; he was before my time, so my knowledge of him is sketchier than my knowledge of mid-eighties politicians and beyond. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/44 "2005-01-21T15:50:56Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > McGovern was charismatic. Heck, compared to Nixon, anybody was charismatic. McGovern lost because he was too far to the left, or at least because the Republicans were able to portray him as too far to the left. He had charisma and vision, it just wasn’t a vision most people shared. Really? As with Daniel, McGovern was before my time, but most of the reports I’ve heard of his speaking ability and charisma were that he was as dull as dishwater. Tip O’Neill stated in his autobiography that while shopping around potential Democrats as speakers for local events in 1970 and 1971 the general reaction to McGovern was “That bore? We wouldn’t have him host our function if _you_ paid _us_.” ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/45 "2005-01-21T16:01:42Z")
Did you ever hear Nixon speak, though? It’s not like he was any sort of inspiring, himself. While McGovern wasn’t one of the great orators, he was at least as charismatic as Nixon. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/46 "2005-01-21T16:07:59Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > Did you ever hear Nixon speak, though? It’s not like he was any sort of inspiring, himself. While McGovern wasn’t one of the great orators, he was at least as charismatic as Nixon. I’ve heard Bush speak, and he’s not exactly inspirational himself. Compared to Kerry, though–oy vey. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/47 "2005-01-21T16:59:04Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I’m prepared to accept that definition. > > And what is the magin of error in this instance? +/-51%. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/48 "2005-01-25T20:56:17Z")
Update: Dean just won the endorsement of several key black members of the Democratic National Committee, including Yvonne Gates, chair of the DNC’s black caucus, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Illinois. [http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/25/democrats.chair.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/25/democrats.chair.ap/index.html) Of course, Dean won a lot more key endorsements than anyone else for the 2004 Dem presidential nomination, and he still lost out to Kerry in the primaries. You never know. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/49 "2005-01-25T21:41:10Z")
I get the feeling that most people who support Dean have some misconception that the chair of the DNC is, like being President of Democrats or something. They go on and on about who Dean represents this or that, without any real consideration as to whether he’s the right guy for the job. He’s not. The position is largely one concerned with doing things behind the scenes. About the most public celebrity it has is signing its name to fundraising letters. Unlike most of the other candidates, Dean has a huge public image to manage. And for a position like this, that’s a huge handicap and waste of everyone’s time. You’ll note that Republicans incoming chair (and their outgoing chair) is not a rock star, not a lead singer. He’s a technological and managerial innovator with a low profile that gets things done so that the REAL stable of public voices, the candidates, can actually win elections. Policy opinions don’t come from the central party: they come from the people who need to get their names and faces on Tv: the politicians. As chair, Dean is going to end up spending a lot of time putting out a lot of rhetoric that’s all going to come to naught because _he’s not really running for anything_. I think Simon Rosenberg is the right guy. And I say this not as an outsider to the process, but an insider. Working on the Kerry campaign, I saw first-hand some of the real problems this party has: not just on message, but on operations. The Republicans are two generations of technology ahead. They have a huge echo-chamber network of public lobby thinktanks in order to diseminate and corraborate their party line. The Democrats need to build that if they hope to compete in the future. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/50 "2005-01-25T22:38:36Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > Unlike most of the other candidates, Dean has a huge public image to manage. And for a position like this, that’s a huge handicap and waste of everyone’s time. Why does Dean have to worry about maintaining his public image? Even if he wants to run for president again in 2008? He could spend the next three years in Antarctica and everybody would still remember his name. > [@Apos](#): > > Working on the Kerry campaign, I saw first-hand some of the real problems this party has: not just on message, but on operations. The Republicans are two generations of technology ahead. They have a huge echo-chamber network of public lobby thinktanks in order to diseminate and corraborate their party line. The Democrats need to build that if they hope to compete in the future. Well, Rosenberg certainly is thinking along those lines. (OTOH, I’m sure Dean can see it too.) From the website of Rosenberg’s organization, the New Democrats Network, [http://www.ndnblog.org/archives/000743.html:](http://www.ndnblog.org/archives/000743.html:) > [@](#): > > As NDN has been discussing for the past several years, the modern Republican political machine has redefined politics as we know it. Years of investing billions of dollars in their infrastructure have created a vast and complex web of multimillion dollar operations which include think tanks, for-profit media outlets like Fox News, traditional political advocacy groups and, in recent years, a very healthy and strategic set of national, state and local party organizations. > > The Republicans understand the division of labor required to run such a political empire, and have a diversified set of leaders to build and manage their affairs - spokesmen like Bush, Colin Powell, Bill Frist, Rudy Giuliani, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; strategists like Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist; managers like Roger Ailes, Ed Gillespie and Ken Mehlman; intellectuals like those at Heritage, Cato and the dozens of other local and state think tanks; propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge; and investors like the Coors and Scaife families. > > They run their politics like a business. They have strategic plans, targeted outcomes, measures to gauge progress and accountability. As Democrats, we must come to terms with what they have built and how they run their affairs, for today they have a much better system that yields much better results than ours. > > Finding someone who can take on Bush on TV is not the biggest or most important part of the job of chairing the DNC. Terry McAulifffe has repeatedly said as much, and the Republicans have clearly recognized this in their recent choices for chair of the RNC. We already have dozens of national leaders well-equipped to take on the GOP each day. They are named Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Richardson, Gore, Dean, Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Hoyer, Bayh, Lieberman, Vilsack, Landrieu, Menendez, Graham, Salazar, Ford Jr., Nelson, Lincoln, Durbin, Stabenow, Granholm, Rendell, Warner, Biden, Holbrooke, Harman, Spitzer and Emanuel. We could all add more. > > What we need at the head of the DNC is someone who can take on Rove, Reed, Norquist and Mehlman. Someone who understands how to defeat the modern Republican machine at its own high-level strategic game; someone who understands the demographic, attitudinal and socio-economic complexities of the coming America; someone who is deeply rooted in the emerging new media world of databases, digital media, satellite and cable television; someone who understands the internet and modern community-building techniques; someone who can speak for the mainstream of the party and connect with its increasingly youthful activist base; someone who has successfully raised money and worked in all regions of this diverse country; and someone who has a proven track record at running a business or political organization. > > We cannot lose sight of the fact that the DNC has become a business that could raise as much as $1 billion in the next four years. The day-to-day job of DNC chair requires running the largest and most important political organization that Democrats have in a time when Republicans have vastly improved their political machine, and are using their party institutions in ways we must emulate in the years to come. First and foremost, this job is to be the head of an organization that is the primary vehicle for millions of partisan Democrats to organize and defeat Republicans each day. But, again, Dean has been the governor of a state, which is also like running a business with a huge budget. And he put together a really enormous grass-roote campaign organization, which still exists under the name of Democracy for America. Purely as an administrator and organization-builder, I see no reason why he should be inferior to Rosenberg. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/51 "2005-01-25T22:56:32Z")
Here’s Dean’s plan for the DNC, from his website, [http://www.democracyforamerica.com/features/2005/01/18/deans\_plan\_for\_the\_dnc.php:](http://www.democracyforamerica.com/features/2005/01/18/deans_plan_for_the_dnc.php:) > [@](#): > > Show up! Never concede a single state, county, district or even a single voter to the Republicans. We must be active and compete in all 50 states and work with the state parties to build a truly national party. > > Recruit, train, and encourage candidates to run for office at every level – building tomorrow’s farm team from the ground up. This was the founding principle behind Democracy for America. > > Actively grow local Democratic committees in local communities. Local neighborhood advocates are our best spokespeople – helping them reach out in their own communities will better articulate our message and enable the grassroots to support state and local candidates. > > Better integrate national and state party operations. Specifically, that means: providing the state party the means to pay for its executive director in every state; building and sharing lists between the national and state parties; and creating an ongoing active presence – a permanent campaign in every state that does not have to be recreated for only four months every four years. > > Develop and articulate core Democratic principles that we all can agree on, that will let people know what our party stands for. We will not win elections or build a lasting majority solely by changing our rhetoric, nor will we win by adopting the other side’s positions. We must say what we mean – and mean real change when we say it. > > Make Democrats the party of reform – reforming America’s financial situation, reforming our electoral process, reforming health care, reforming education and putting morality back in our foreign policy. > > Utilize cutting edge Internet technology, not only to fundraise, but also as an effective organizing tool to recruit more supporters, communicate with them, and empower them to lead in their local communities. > > Strengthen the party institutions and leadership institutes so that they rival the Republican machine that currently exists. These institutions must work together in a coordinated way to recruit new talent, develop leaders, articulate our values and elect Democrats at every level. I like that vision a lot better than Rosenberg’s – which, as stated (above), could be entirely executed from inside the Beltway. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/52 "2005-01-25T23:11:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Why does Dean have to worry about maintaining his public image? Even if he wants to run for president again in 2008? He could spend the next three years in Antarctica and everybody would still remember his name. The problem isn’t name recognition, it’s management of a public image with the agenda of eventually running for something in the future. > [@](#): > > Well, Rosenberg certainly is thinking along those lines. (OTOH, I’m sure Dean can see it too.) While Dean’s people had passion and I appreciate them for that, they also had a LOT of really bad ideas that they were obsessed with that unfortunately got translated over to the Kerry campaign through all the Dean hires. In fact, this “put someone in every place!!!” idea has, acutally, some serious downsides. The Republicans got such fantastic turnout in many of their strongest counties because, for the first time in a long time, we stuck organizers in those areas to make a lot of noise. Good Ole’ Boys who had forgotten that Democrats even existed ran to the polls to try and vote them out of their counties in a hurry. I don’t see from Dean or his people any appreciation that grand new ideas can sometimes be stupid and counterproductive as often (if not MORE often) than innovative. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/53 "2005-01-26T01:59:21Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Grr. Bush won this time. Bush won this time. Bush won this time. I know all about the four stages of grief, but it’s time to take off the ashcloth and move on with our lives. Can’t believe some of y’all are still stuck in denial. \ _Five_ stages: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. (I’m still stuck in Step 4.) \ > [@](#): > > I’m not very educated on these guys; personally I’d love to see Dean win. As I see it, a lot of people vote for the most inspirational candidate, the one that makes them think, “Yeah! Right on!” It is a sad comment on the Democratic party that we managed to run a candidate less inspirational than Bush. I’m for Dean too. We need to have a party chair with some _vision_; he can hire the expertise of guys like Rosenberg (who wouldn’t be half bad, in many ways) to carry it out. > [@](#): > > The idea that we need to move even further to the right is pathetic. People who want to vote for a rightwing candidate will do so; they’re not going to vote for rightwing lite. We keep trying to be rightwing lite; we keep failing. Why not give the old inspirational firebreathing liberalism a good try? If it fails–if a candidate who puts forward visionary proposals for universal healthcare, for global cooperation, for sweeping environmental protections fails–then I’ll accept it. But just once, for old times’ sake, let’s quit with the dithering, cringing, pandering to the right for me. My attitude is, forget left and right; it’s about fight or capitulate. Even centrist Democrats presumably have clear reasons for not being Republicans, differences that clearly distinguish them from the Bushes and DeLays, even if the distance isn’t as great as if they were liberals. The way to win is to identify those distinctives that almost all Dems can agree on, then be willing to fight for them, year in and year out, in a concerted, organized manner that gets people’s attention. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2005, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/54 "2005-01-26T03:19:11Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > \ > _Five_ stages: anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. > (I’m still stuck in Step 4.) > \ For motivational purposes, it would be more helpful for the Democrats to stay at step 1, anger, from now until November 2008. And I’m sure we will. 😉 > [@RTFirefly](#): > > The way to win is to identify those distinctives that almost all Dems can agree on, then be willing to fight for them, year in and year out, in a concerted, organized manner that gets people’s attention. Note, based on my excerpts from their respective websites, Dean is the one who sees the need to “identify distinctives”; Rosenberg doesn’t even seem to perceive that this is a problem. ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/55 "2005-01-27T00:30:56Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > The Republicans got such fantastic turnout in many of their strongest counties because, for the first time in a long time, we stuck organizers in those areas to make a lot of noise. Good Ole’ Boys who had forgotten that Democrats even existed ran to the polls to try and vote them out of their counties in a hurry. But how do you know that this was a _reaction_ to the increased Dem presence and not the GOP strategy all along? From everything I’ve read (admittedly in retrospect), Rove had been mobilising and energising “the base” for at least a year before the election. Why do you think it was a “Deaniac _bad idea_” that caused that? Do you have anything other than opinion to back it up? > [@](#): > > The Republicans are two generations of technology ahead. They have a huge echo-chamber network of public lobby thinktanks in order to diseminate and corraborate their party line. The Democrats need to build that if they hope to compete in the future. This I agree with, and I don’t doubt that Rosenberg is on top of that. But, could you tell me more about him? I know he broke away from the DLC (or more specifically, Al From), but I’m not sure why (a lot of factional spin out there). I don’t like Rosenberg’s comments about the war in Iraq. And I’m not sure he is much different, or the best solution to, the (IMO out-dated) strategies of the DLC. > [@Brain Glutton](#): > > For motivational purposes, it would be more helpful for the Democrats to stay at step 1, anger, from now until November 2008. And I’m sure we will. Hope you’re right, but DLC seems to be stuck at step 3,_bargaining_. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/56 "2005-01-27T00:46:59Z")
> [@](#): > > From everything I’ve read (admittedly in retrospect), Rove had been mobilising and energising “the base” for at least a year before the election. Why do you think it was a “Deaniac bad idea” that caused that? Do you have anything other than opinion to back it up? Well, I do have some actual experience, seeing as I was running several of these smaller rural counties in a battleground state for the Kerry campaign. Yes, they did a fantastic job mobilizing their base. But we played into that. Rosenberg isn’t as hyped up about this or that issue (and to be fair, I don’t think Dean is either). He’s looking at a nuts and bolts rewriting of how the Democrats do business and fight Republicans. I think he’s definately going to be able to do a much better job at that than Dean, without a doubt. And he also understands what I fear Dean does not, which is that the DNC chair is not “President of Democrats.” Anyone that sees the position like that is just going to end up being one more head on a hydra of factions. What the DNC needs to be is the body of the hydra. People are definately correct that Dean is the most inspiring guy out there to mobilize and exite people to support Democrats and get involved and take ownership. It’s just that that sort of thing isn’t what the DNC chair actually is involved in. The DNC chair basically creates the toolkit that Democrats need to win locally. But as anyone who’s ever been involved in coordinated campaigns knows: individual candidates largely set their own positions in the end. Dean isn’t going to be in any better position to define “what we stand for” as DNC chair than he is right now. If anything, Democratic politicians tend to resent and tune out the central DNC when it starts to lecture them on this or that. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/57 "2005-01-27T00:48:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Note, based on my excerpts from their respective websites, Dean is the one who sees the need to “identify distinctives”; Rosenberg doesn’t even seem to perceive that this is a problem. uh hunh. Blog for Dean! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/58 "2005-01-27T01:02:42Z")
Just for the sake of completeness, here’s Donnie Fowler’s website: [http://www.changetheparty.com/](http://www.changetheparty.com/) ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/59 "2005-01-27T02:06:52Z")
Thanks, **Apos**. > [@Apos](#): > > Well, I do have some actual experience, seeing as I was running several of these smaller rural counties in a battleground state for the Kerry campaign. > > Yes, they did a fantastic job mobilizing their base. But we played into that. How do you distinguish and measure that, as an insider? BTW, I’m not challenging your experience, I’m just trying to get perspective on the nuts and bolts of inside politics. (For example: When the fraud allegations were being thrown around, a lot of people pointed to the improbability that Bush increased his 2000 percentage of the African-American vote to such a degree. After I looked at it, it _could_ be explained by the GOP’s FBIP efforts). What you seem to be saying is that you _could have_ mobilised your base (Dem) _without_ alerting the opposition (GOP). Is that right? Was it a lack of sophistication on the part of the Dean people? Did the Kerry campaign _have_ a popular vote strategy, or were they just concentrating on the battleground states? ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2005, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772/60 "2005-01-27T03:59:32Z")
I’ll tell you this: the reason Kerry gave up so early is that we did our own work to figure out turnout on election day in key areas, figure out how many of their people came out compared to our people. When we first saw the numbers in our core counties halfway into the day, we thought we had it in the bag. But when we had the whole picture, we knew that shenanigans or no, they had also really done their homework. > [@](#): > > What you seem to be saying is that you could have mobilised your base (Dem) without alerting the opposition (GOP). Is that right? Was it a lack of sophistication on the part of the Dean people? Did the Kerry campaign have a popular vote strategy, or were they just concentrating on the battleground states? I think the major problem I have with how the Dean people think, and all the self-modeled grassroots revolutionaries, and all of this is from having talked with them and worked with them, is that they have no sense of counterfactuals. They come up with what sound like great ideas, but they don’t listen when people point out that there may be downsides (there are a whole host of dismissive terms they use: “insider” is just one of them. Yeah, like, I’m an insider, a guy who’s never in his life worked in Washington). And that’s fine insofar as insiders often ARE set in their ways, narrowminded, whatever. But at the same time, politics is a really messy, dirty business, and by that, I don’t mean that it’s corrupt or wrong. I mean that it involves people, and human beings are a mess: emotional, irrational, switching from side to side, extremely complex to manage especially in large groups. This is especially the case when it comes to campaigns, because a gazillion people want to walk in and get hired as a speechwriter. Or they have big ideas about “what Kerry has to say to win.” Well, these ideas and statements might seem great… until you think seriously about what the Republicans could respond with, or how easily they’d be able to counter or turn it to their advantage. In a lot of ways, politics is like fencing: amatuers think that they can just pick up a sword and start flailing: they envision some fancy move that’ll slash right into the other guy, the end, gg. The problem is, the other guy’s already got that move figured out. In fact, far from being original, it’s practically a cliche. In real pro fencing, you have to think many many moves ahead. Now I’m not saying that Kerry and his people didn’t do things wrong. But a lot of those things that seem obvious to people now are only hindsight, and they are hindsight totally uninformed of other important unseen factors that maybe constricted the campaign in other ways. Worse, I don’t think a lot of the “revolutionaries” have a very good sense of what actually happened. They talk about needing to do more official campaign fieldwork. They seem to be under the impression that ACT was the only group out there knocking on doors (in part this was because ACT was media-hungry, while Kerry field people couldn’t talk to the press on their own initiative). Well, get a grip. Not only did the Kerry campaign call more people, knock on more doors than ACT and other such groups, we outdid the Rpeublicans in many areas too. So if your conclusion from this election is that you can solve things by doing what, essentially, already actually DID happen and WASN’T ENOUGH, then your analysis isn’t going to be very helpful. > [@](#): > > What you seem to be saying is that you could have mobilised your base (Dem) without alerting the opposition (GOP). Is that right? Yes. In fieldwork, aside from canvassing and bunch of other things, there are ID calls, and message calls. ID calls are basically designed to pretend to be polls: we just want to know if you’ll be supporting Kerry or Bush. Once you’ve ID’d a voter’s level of support for Kerry, you know what to do with them on election day (if they say that they support Kerry, you get them out to vote). On message calls, however, we actually tell people that we’re for Kerry and try to get out an deliver a message. Now, there’s upsides and downsides to this. Obviously, calling pisses people off, though having it be a real person helps a lot. But message calls into areas that have a high Republican concentration can be a very, very bad thing. The whole point of having good info on voters is so that you can GOTV them: make them all excited and worked up to go out and vote. But what happens when Republicans get a bunch of Democrats ringing their phones off the hook, knocking on their doors? Especially in places where they had been comfortably isolated from ever having to think that Democrats existed or were getting uppity? You can damn sure that motivates them to get out and vote. This is a well known phenomenon, called “stirring the pot.” In my opinion, we should have just stuck to ID calls in these rural counties, only ever doing message calls to people that were leaning towards Kerry. Find out covertly who our guys are and then use that info on election day. Don’t pass out fucking lawn signs everywhere, don’t make tons of noise. Don’t risk trying to convert the undecided directly by phone: if they are going to come our way, the best way is to do it by door knocks and mail. Otherwise you just end up talking to too many Republicans. Let the Democrats in the area know we are there person to person, not with big flashy 'I’m proud to be a Democrat!!!" noise. Well, that’s what we did, and I think it backfired. > [@](#): > > Was it a lack of sophistication on the part of the Dean people? Look, I don’t want to blame Dean people only. The final campaign was the work of a lot of people, and in the end, I think the campaign was actually pretty well done compared to most. We got higher turnout and percentages in a lot of areas than every before in history. It’s just that they did even better. But there were a lot of really frustrating hangups. Most of them had to do with how slow the DNC was with targeting resources. Other things had to do with the fact that our technology tools are just awful: several generations behind the Republicans. Imagine trying to compete with a guy who’s got Excel 2004 and its macros, when you have a spreadsheet program from 1995 that can barely do complex functions. And then there was the fact that we don’t have the sort of powerful network of message institutions that the Republicans have. You can see this dominance on cable: a “balanced” panel will consist of a Republican pundit, a guy from a right leaning think-tank, and an ostensibly “leftist” journalist. Who among that group do you think just does carefully couched analysis instead of just going all out to get a particular message of the day out? It’s pretty obvious that the journalist type isn’t going to do that. > [@](#): > > Did the Kerry campaign have a popular vote strategy, or were they just concentrating on the battleground states? You’re going to have to explain what you mean here. Obviously, the campaign wanted to appeal to everyone that it could, but with limited resources, it didn’t put tons of field operatives in Texas. It let the local Dems handle that, and raise money. That’s just the way it is. If you think Dean is going to plunk down as much DNC money in Texas as he will in Ohio in 2008, then he’s misleading you. And the idea that we had a lot more money this, neck and neck with the Republicans, is true and its false. The reality is, how much money you have isn’t the only thing that’s important. What kind of money, and into what pot it goes, is also important and really complex (part of the reason the DNC was slow is because of the new campaign finance laws: not even the people that drafted that bullshit could explain what was permitted and what was not, so we had lawyers working fulltime for months trying to figure out what the hell we could do and what we couldn’t, and the bottom line is that those laws hurt and restrict Democrats a lot more than they do Republicans, because our money comes in from different sources) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-should-the-democrats-choose-for-national-party-chair/284772.md?page=4)