California Conservative

In an article in yesterday’s Washington Times Tod Linberg agrees with me about the Democrats’ chances of winning back the House, Senate or White House. He cites many of the same portions of Elaine Kamarck’s and William Garston that I did in this article. Here’s a couple of his best observations:

Let’s start with the basics: There are more voters in the United States today who call themselves “conservative” than call themselves “liberal,” 34 to 21 percent, according to 2004 exit polls, figures that have held remarkably constant over time. To the extent that each party, in what the authors call “the great sorting-out” that has taken place over the past couple decades, have essentially become the sole home to one or the other of these two proclivities, the Republicans start out with an advantage: It is a shorter distance for them from the baseline outlook of the party to a winning percentage at the polls.

Thus we must conclude that liberals have very little margin for error in winning national or even statewide elections. This also argues that Howard Dean liberals just have to fight for their beliefs to return to power is a wrongheaded approach. It never hurts to show passion for great ideas and to be idealistic. Where the Deaniacs and Kossacks go wrong is in thinking that people like their ideas, especially their cut-and-run policy towards Iraq. Simply put, people aren’t totally in Bush’s corner on Iraq but they’ll trust him far more than they’ll trust Jean Fancois Kerry or Al Gore or Hillary Clinton.

And they offer as a shorthand formulation the “myth of prescription drugs”: the party’s tendency to try to push to the side national security issues and cultural issues, on which Democrats’ standing with voters is weaker, in favor of domestic policy issues on which the party is stronger. Here, the problem is that Democrats’ de-emphasizing these issues does not make them go away for voters or reassure voters that Democrats pass muster on them.

Last fall, Dick Morris opined that “Bush will win if we’re talking about the War in Iraq but Kerry wins if we’re talking about domestic issues.” I understand where that statement comes from but it’s wrong. This was always going to be a national security election. People know that we’re at war, even if they don’t pay particularly close attention to it on a day-to-day basis. Most independents knew that Kerry didn’t take it seriously and tuned him out.

Just after the elections, Hillary came out sounding concilliatory towards pro-life views so she wouldn’t be cast as an out-of-touch social liberal. The first few speeches sounded nice, though not particularly convincing. Now she’s back to talking about conservative extremists and “far right wing ideologues”. Does anyone doubt that that’s code for “I’ve always disagreed with pro-lifers and church goers?” If all she does is pay lip service a time or two about pro-life concerns but doesn’t back it up with concrete actions, she won’t be judged as anything but an abortion-on-demand radical. That won’t fly these days.

The recommendations follow accordingly: The party needs a candidate with real credibility on national security, whose convictions on social issues are accompanied by a spirit of tolerance, and who embodies those big-three characteristics of strength, integrity and empathy. The problem for Democrats is that the man who best fills this bill is Sen. John McCain. And he’s a Republican who, notwithstanding his maverick reputation, still has a better shot at winning his party’s nomination than his Democratic doppelganger, if indeed there is such a one, has of winning the Democratic nomination.

BINGO!!! Unwittingly, Kamarck and Walston think that the best candidate that the Democrats could run in the general election is a Republican. The reality is that Joe Lieberman embodies these characteristics but doesn’t have a shot at winning a primary much less a nomination.

Cross-posted at BoxerWatch

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 6:47 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, DNC, Election 2008, Liberals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.