Focusing the debate

Boy is this new DNC web ad a good one:

Though I've always believed that the way to win this election is primarily through pocketbook issues, it's also important that we tie Iraq -- which, as we saw in 2006, is a proven vote-mover -- to the debate. This spot reinforces the already-developing perception, on both foreign policy and economic issues (please DO go read those links, btw), that McCain actually has no idea what he's doing and is just making stuff up as he goes along. Which is a GREAT frame for us, both because it makes the McCain=Bush argument that much easier, and because it works against the "experience... trustworthy... integrity" argument that the GOP will undoubtedly make. More like this, please.

UPDATE (Saturday, 11 AM): As if on cue.

Missing the point

Ed Kilgore at Democratic Strategist, who has been refreshingly readable in recent years, is back in the old DLC mode today with a silly argument attacking criticism of Obama's perceived move to the center. Basically Kilgore's case comes down to "Obama's not moving to the center, but if he is it's just because he's awesome, SHUT UP ARIANNA HUFFINGTON," and it's not really worth our time. (Especially his dreamy-eyed contention that Obama is a "remarkable man" who can operate outside existing political paradigms, which is startlingly credulous for a man of Kilgore's intellect and experience.) But there's one bit I do want to take issue with, because it's important -- it has to do with concepts of "swing voters." Kilgore writes:

Second of all, as the TDS Roundtable on swing and base voters earlier this year illustrated, there's plenty of disagreement about the definition and nature of "swing voters." They don't necessarily all reside in the ideological "center" of the electorate on every issue, and moreover, "base" voters don't necessarily have inconsistent or antagonistic points of view from "swing voters." The two things that are pretty hard to deny are that (1) undecided "very likely" voters are indeed a disproportionately important electoral prize because winning each of them produces two net votes, and (2) most successful campaigns in a competitive environment manage to energize the partisan base while expanding it into the ranks of independents and even the other party's base. Huffington's horror at swing-voter pandering, and her manifest contempt for swing voters themselves, probably reflects the fashionable but very dubious Lackoffian belief that swing voters are cognitively confused, perhaps even stupid or amoral people who can only be appealed to by an even more strongly expressed partisan "frame."

This is wrong on a very profound level, and it misunderstands both Lakoff and the entire political-strategy argument of the netroots (which Huffington is making a facile version of). If I can arrogantly presume to speak for Lakoffian progressives for a minute -- we don't think that swing voters are confused. We think they don't exist.

Longitudinal research has shown, consistently, that people who claim they are "independent" or "nonpartisan" or whatever overwhelmingly display identical voting patterns to partisan voters. They may not say they're affiliated, but they vote like they are. A few people are out there whose votes regularly switch from Democratic to Republican or vice versa depending on the election in front of them, but there are so few of them that they're politically and statistically insignificant; most are just partisans who won't admit it. What DOES actually define that self-identified nonpartisan group, meanwhile, is that they're predominantly lower-information voters who are much less engaged with the political process and turn out much less frequently. (Which makes sense: the more time you spend following politics, the more likely you are to take a side. It's not that they are "stupid and amoral," and frankly it's rather offensive that Kilgore put those words in Arianna Huffington's mouth. It's only that they're politically disengaged.)

Therefore, outcome-decisive changes over the course of an election, so often assumed by the best analysts to be the product of swing voters changing their minds, are more likely the product of these marginal voters deciding whether or not to vote. (Traditional polls, not being longitudinal, cannot measure this.) Hence a focus on turning out the "base"; there is nobody else to turn out! Of course that's a controversial thesis, and I imagine Kilgore and lots of other people disagree, but it sure makes more sense to me than the alternative (that elections are decided by a tiny cadre of cerebral David Brooksian independents who are somehow engaged in the political process yet fail to identify with a political group).

So even if we grant Kilgore the argument that Obama's not moving to the "center" per se in his pursuit of swing voters, it doesn't matter, because pursuing swing voters at ALL is a wild goose chase. The way to win those valuable marginal votes is to campaign confidently and persuasively, using -- here comes Lakoff -- a cognitive FRAME which can be easily adopted by voters who aren't particularly political in nature. Republicans have done very well since Reagan in establishing their frame (and winning over all kinds of marginal Democrats, both so-called independents and their "Reagan Democrat" cousins, in the process); Democrats are only starting to do so. (I'm beginning to think that Obama's "Change" thing is a good step in that direction, actually, which is for another post.)

From this perspective Obama's movements away from progressivism, then, actually do direct damage to both the Democratic voter coalition and to his own electoral prospects (which are closely tied), by cutting up the party's frame for no damn reason. Hence Arianna Huffington's outrage, and hence the netroots' frustration at those within the party who still (insanely) think nonpartisanship and "triangulation" is a route to victory. Kilgore's total failure to understand this, and to instead treat the argument like he's defending Obama from hordes of raging hippies, is a saddening reminder of how out-of-touch -- how ignorant -- DC-elite centrism is of the way politics works in real life. But what else is new?

We Like Ike

Ezra Klein (a popular man on this blog lately) thinks Ed Kilgore has a good idea:

I actually think the New Dems are onto something when they suggest "Restart the 21st Century" as a 2008 election theme. We want a redo! And Obama is fairly clearly the guy to push that appeal forward. Hillary just ain't the change candidate. In the post, Ed Kilgore is considering Hillary's tricky identification with the past even as she runs to lead the future. I guess I don't really see the problem for her: She's running on a theme of competence. With her, voters know what they're going to get, which I think may be a more powerful appeal than many realize after the turmoil of the past few years. Change has its uses, but so does stability, and it wouldn't shock me to learn that a healthy portion of the electorate wants nothing more than to hand the country over to someone they basically trust and stop having to worry about what that cipher in the Oval Office will do tomorrow.

Well, this kind of question is almost impossible to parse, because in politics "change" can mean about sixty different things depending on its context. And it being Friday I don't have the energy to launch a lengthy investigation of public perceptions of the status quo. But, briefly:

Ezra isolates "turmoil", and that's the critical factor. The past seven years have been totally chaotic, under an administration that framed every stupid little policy move with apocalyptic grandeur -- Good vs. Evil, etc -- and continues to invade our living rooms weekly with whatever new outrage they're embroiled in. We have a president with a Messiah complex. The American people are exhausted from this.

What we're looking for, then, is just the opposite: a humble president who won't bug us. It's not quite "someone they basically trust" as Ezra puts it, though that's close to what I have in mind; it's more just somebody who's placid and comfortable and won't get all pissy about stuff. I'll show you the kind of president we need:

Man, Ike Eisenhower was cool. For a Republican (and by today's standards he'd be a RINO) he ran the country pretty darn well, and with a minimum of fuss. With Dwight Eisenhower in the Oval Office we could all relax.

Which of the 2008 candidates fit this profile? I'm conflicted. But I know that very few of the Republicans project that vibe. McCain and Giuliani are vein-popping warriors, you expect them to bust out of your TV screen screaming "SPARTAAAAAA" and hack your chaise-lounge to bits; Fred Thompson's a self-important dick who'd never let his jowly mug leave our prime-time schedule; Mitt Romney's a robot, and nobody trusts a robot; Mike Huckabee would spend his entire presidency lecturing us about healthy eating... to be fair, Ron Paul would probably be a pretty chill president, but Ron Paul is also batshit insane, so we should probably rule that out.

My point is, Democrats are clearly the party of what amounts to a Return to Normalcy. (Sidenote: Did you know that "normalcy" was not a word until Warren Harding coined it? That's true. The word is supposed to be "normality.") And we'd be wise to frame this 2008 election not in terms of "change vs. more of the same," but "more of the same vs. less of the same." In other words, we want a change from change.

And when you step back for a second and realize just how little sense that actually makes, you understand just how twisted American politics are today. Goddamn do we have our work cut out for us.