I've been thinking......

[ewagner]

about the bigger picture of the 2004 campaign and specifically about our nominee.

It occurs to me that a lot of the dislike for one or the other of our candidates for the nomination stems not just from from the candidate and his policies, but from the basic campaign strategy tthat candidate represents.

Really. The 2004 campaign will be won or lost on the basis of which strategy we as a party choose and all of the candidates seem to fall in two philosophical molds concerning Democratic strategy.

The first strategy is a more traditional approach to national electoral politics. This view hold to the formula which has been used for years: 30% of the voters are die-hard dems; 30% are die-hard repubs; the battleground is for the "soft" 40%. Candidates trying to appear more centrist are obviously proponents of this school of thought.

The second choice for strategy is relatively new, and I have ot admit, I'm quite fascinated by it. This strategy assumes that there is no middle ground. It assumes that the polarization of the country is so pervasive that there is no "soft" middle. The calculus for victory is energizing the base and drawing a line in the sand that will eventually equal 50.00000000001% of the total vote, or 535/2 +1 electoral votes.

For lack of a better term, I'll refer to this second strategy as the polarization strategy. The polarization strategy takes into account that we don't need to be "dividers"; Dubya has already done that for us. The polarization has already occurred and we need to simply become better at it than bush/rove.

there are dangers to each of those strategies. For instance in the "appeal to the middle" strategy, the danger is becoming "repub lite" and not offering any real choice between us and dubya. In that case, dubya wins. The danger to the polarization strategy is, of course, that too much polarization will alienate all but a small group of the party base and toss a landslide to dubya.

I've been a non-combatant in the candidate flame wars here in GD. I've lurked in a few and these thoughts became very clear. We're arguing philosophy and strategy here folks, not personalities even though each one of our candidates can be rightly placed in one of the two philosophical/strategic camps.- If we,as democrats and true liberals/progressives are serious about defeating bush/rove, then we should be talking/debating about the serious issues of which of these two strategies is most likely to succeed. The choice of a candidate to implement that strategy will come much later.


It's late. I've shoveled a lot of snow today (f**king snow blower wouldn't start) and I've just finished an 8 hour shift in a call center. I'll check the thread in the morning. (HHHHmmmmm, temp is going to -4 tonight; -15 wind chills. Might be nice to site in front of a nice flaming thread tomorrow morning)

[Redneck Socialist]

1. I've been thinking about the same thing.

Check out this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=100158

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. Politics is not about integrity, principles, issues or even policies

I have been very impressed with the candor and forthrightness of many people on here who are very upfront and illusion-free about what their goal is.

With a few exceptions, most serious supporters of the moneyed candidates understand that what they are working toward is putting a Democrat face on the PNAC strategies.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy for those who expect anything else, saddest of all are those who sincerely object to the crimes against humanity being committed in their name around the world, and who will be disappointed to discover that "multilateralism" means giving rich and powerful people in other countries enough money to ensure that Iraqis are slaughtered by Crusaders from a variety of countries.

[Coldgothicwoman]

3. My take is that it is almost 45%-45%

'base' and the remaining 10% will be swayed either by fear, whether it is the Rove-inspired fear of what 'the terraists' will do, or the fear of what * intends for their family, children, and world. While I don't necessarily like a fear strategy from either side, we already know that */Rove will trump up the fear and amongst those trump ups will be that 'Dems cant protect you'.

I think the winner will be whoever energizes the base most (this is heavily in our advantage, I do believe) and whoever can counter the fear mindset that the swing 10% are set into.

I still think it will be us. :)

:grouphug: