What is the 50 State Strategy?

[TayTay]

I had it explained to me on the weekend.

Think of a tic-tac-toe grid. On the top columns you write:

              Democrat     Swing Vote   Republican
            |            |            |            |
Always Vote |            |            |            |
            |            |            |            |
          _____________________________________________
            |            |            |            |
Some Vote   |            |            |            |
            |            |            |            |
          _____________________________________________
            |            |            |            |
Never Vote  |            |            |            |
            |            |            |            |
          _____________________________________________


In the past the Dems filled in the column marked Republican
and threw those people away. (Never contact them.) Then you
look at the Always Vote/Democratic and throw them away,
because, ahm, they always vote Dem, so what's the point. And
you throw away the Never Votes, because they never vote. So
you have left
Always Vote:  Swing Vote
Some Vote:  Democratic
Some Vote:  Swing Vote.

We have been planning elections around this 1/3rd of the
perceived electorate.  This explains the last Presidential
election and the emphasis on the 'Swing State' because that's
where the consultants believed the Dem voters were hiding and
those are the ones we had to roust from their caves and
persuade to vote Dem. This is what Pelosi and Reid are
arguing: Go after the voters who our consultants have said we
might be able to get. (This does make some sense, no?)

The Fifty-State strategy says, no this doesn't make any sense
at all. You are throwing away 2/3rds of the voters. First of
all, this model tells you to forget about your base. (Always
vote Democratic) and to ignore them. This is dumb beyond words
as they are your energy and your people on the ground. You
can't ignore them, you have to embrace them fully and bring
them into the party as fully functioning people. (Ahm, they
are your base.) 

We can't afford to not talk to voters. Parag went home over
Christmas to Texas and decided to canvass his old neighborhood
where he grew up. So, he went to 40 houses and chatted with
about 50 people or so to see where his neighborhood stood.  He
asked them what they thought of the Democrats, and what they
liked and didn't like about them. This being Texas and all, a
few people said, 'Ah Demoncrats' and sort of shut down. Mark
those folks down as, ahm, 'no's.'  (It's as simple as that.)
Also, one of his neighbors is an elected Repub who gives money
to them. Ahm, another definite 'no.'  But the other people
were happy to be contacted and asked what they think. Parag
discovered that one neighbor has deep concerns about
education. She was able to pay for one child's tuition at
State College. The cost has risen so much between the time one
kid graduated and the next one started college that she can no
longer afford tuition and the kid has to take a job to help
out. This mother is ashamed that she can't pay for her kids
education.

Parag went to another house. Repub leaning, but glad to be
asked what they want and think. Their concern was the fear of
not being able to retire because the benefits and health care
coverage is not good enough. The next person was worried about
jobs being outsourced. And so forth. So Parag, good little
wonk that he is, collected this info and sent it to the State
Party. Now, the State Party can ask Parag or someone else, but
Parag likes having his 'feet on the ground' to go back in two
months and re-canvass the neighborhood. What has changed? What
are the concerns? What do you hear on the ground? Report back.
The State Party, facing a bruising general election, then
understand, from the ground-up, what the concerns of citizens
in it's state are and can target advertising, candidate visits
and message to that area and talk about what people really
want to talk about. The canvasser, as much as possible, stays
the same and develops a little rapport with the voter.

That's it in a nutshell.  The Fifty-state strategy. Talk to
people. Don't write anyone off until you talk to them. Try and
become a presence again in people's lives and try to make it
more personal. You never know, it might work.  After all, it
worked for John Kerry in Iowa and might have worked
nationally, if the consultants hadn't convinced them to do the
'swing state thing.'

Clear?

[karynnj]

1. Thanks for the informative interesting post

This really does make sense. I can see putting more resources in the "close" races, because if there are resource constraints, this may have greater payback. But, if you start with the 50 state approach - part what may happen when you contact the base is that you will get more volunteers, which will make resources less constrained.

It was interesting to me, because NJ in 2005 didn't do this. In the area my husband and I canvassed, what we did was in retrospect very non-optimal. We had houses that we were suppose to canvas - where people were registered as either Democratic or Independent. This was in spite of the fact that there were people volunteering in the office who were former Republicans. As the neighborhood we went to was a hilly neighborhood of big houses, we did a lot of walking between houses and covered probably 30 or so houses in 2 hours. We knew from the form who was Democrat and who was Independent - so we knew not to get discouraged when we were told by many people they were voting Republican.

We went to less than a third of the houses on those blocks (it was a very affluent neighborhood). It would have been easier to go to all of the houses on maybe 2/3 of the streets we did - getting information from everyone home who was willing to give it. (The first time we went out was before the registration deadline, but we went to no homes where people weren't registered.) The other thing is we were suppose to ask for specific people. I hated the script, so if I was suppose to ask for the wife and the husband was there- I asked both and scribbled the extra information on the form. It just seemed rude not to ask the first person you met.

[TayTay]

2. There was another really, really intereting aspect to this weekend

The people I saw where, by and large, the people who won Iowa for John Kerry. The other people I saw were the grassroots people who were passionately for Gov. Dean and who want to remake the Democratic Party. I did not see the national team of consultants who took the Kerry campaign up after the primaries and did what they did. Interestingly enough, two of these forces are natural allies and work extremely well together. The third party I mentioned didn't really show up at a forum dedicated to showing Dems how to do grassroots work. Hmmmmmmmm, don't you think?

This is something to think about. (And it makes me sad. I hate these moronic fights on DU that are all about stuff that happened two and three years ago. It's pointless.) In a way, it's very disconcerting to think that the people who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in American political history didn't carry that effort forward and were pushed aside for the 'party insiders' who then did a ton of things wrong and then turned around and blamed the team that had won Iowa in the winter for the mistakes of the summer and fall. Very interesting indeed.

Again, there is a civil war in the Dem Party for how to go forward. Now we can at least identify the sides. (And there was a ton of stuff on this, some of it really funny. I loved the talk by Sen. Kerry's scheduler and political genius, Ayanna. She was asked about organizing people. She said there are three types of people who show up for politics: Affiliators, who are quieter types who build bridges, communicators, (I think) who do all that messaging and talking and the achievers who are the Type A, kick them in the butt people who want to move and shake things. (They exhaust me. Ahm, I am an affiliator, at best.) Ayanna had to deal with all these people who wanted stuff and were loud and so forth. One of her solutions was to give out titles. She said that (this is part of a much larger discussion, btw) but she gave out titles to people all over the place. Made the Types A feel all official and wanted and stuff. (Honestly, is it really that easy for some people: give me a title and I'll be very happy.)

[karynnj]

3. Very interesting

It's interesting that the Dean/Kerry forces were not joined by the party insiders. This may suggest that the Reid/Pelosi story has some validity. It's interesting that division that likely exists on the politician level (with Kerry clearly not being given an appropriate role by the Democratic beltway people) exists at lower levels of the party.

In a way the fact that the insiders prefer to blame Kerry and the Kerry people, rather than their own actions is good for us. It hurts that they are writing their books and making their nasty comments, but it means they aren't looking at their own assumptions.

In 2004, Kerry pulled off an upset. Before Kerry did, the Deaniacs basically were possibly on track to do the same thing - until their candidate imploded under the strain. Leiberman, Clark and possibly near the end, Edwards were likely all preferred candidates. What surprises me is that there seems no interest in the MSM about how this happened. It does suggest a surprise is possible again.

I wonder if we will see Kerry with Dean later this year at something, just to show he is not part of the push Dean out crowd.

[TayTay]

4. BTW, there are thorns in this rosey scenario.

If we are all for grassroots and bubbling up info and all that, then that puts Saracet's question back into play: why are they 'The Dems' blowing up the Hackett's and Cegelis' of the world? Aren't they 'grassroots' candidates? Isn't the 'fighting Dems' strategy a top-down imposition of people on local districts, in some cases? (Not all cases, obviously.)

So, that civil war is also, not so clear at all.

[karynnj]

5. Good point

Neither is a complete contradiction.

Hackett: What was wrong was that (at least per charges) Schumer tried to dry up Hackett's funding. But, even this doesn't ring true as Hackett supposedly was funded by the netroots - Schumer couldn't turn this off. Officials endorsing in the primaries - it has always existed. Hackett opted to withdraw. He was already behind in the polls and had less money. It may well be that Hackett's support was from the netroots and that he hadn't been able to convert that to grassroots people in Ohio. (Here you almost picture Hackett like Dean in Iowa, with many out of state supporters (and if some were like their representatives on DU, they might not be good at winning others over) but not enough Ohio supporters.

Cegelis: This may be more a case with party leaders finding a candidate. It sounds like Durbin, impressed by Duckwoth's story, post war work, and testimony before the house encouraged her to run. Here, there is a primary. It may well be that Durbin saw Cegelis as a candidate who couldn't win. We will see if Cegelis IS a grassroots candidate. In a primary, I would define a grassroots candidate as one whose support is so solid and personal that ads, events or distant politician's endorsement could not change it. (For example all of us are JK grassroots - in 2008 could any endorsement by anyone or any number of ads convert you to vting for say Hillary in the primary?) That said, I am much more comfortable with supporting a candidate out of district in the general elections - which is why I haven't responded to Kerry's appeal.

[TayTay]

6. I agree

I was afraid I was making this sound too chummy and stuff. It's not. There are national pressures to go find good candidates and convince them to run. The candidate that the DSCC, incluidng Sen. Kerry, strongly worked on to get her to go into the Missouri race against Talent was just quoted as saying that she would not vote with the Clinton's Kennedy's and such in the Senate but would be her own person. (Ahm, Teddy helped to recruit her, John Kerry has done fundraising online for her.)

No wonder people hate politics and can't figure out what is going on. (I do have sympathy for this.)

[ProSense]

7. That's impossible

Chummy? This is fascinating stuff. The problem with people is they think constant conflict is a good thing and is synonymous with change. It's possible to acknowledge come underlying problems and offer solutions without fanning the flames. Of course, some issues will require rigorous debate, but lately it seems that some want to have a divisive public debate on every issue. That's chaos: everyone screaming about a negotiable or easily resolved point.


Anyway, I think the 50 State Strategy is grand, and the OP lays it out clearly.

McCaskill? Portraying herself as independent? This is the term of the Rubber Stamp Republicans. After seeing that Moonie Times article (from the campaign) with a direct quote attributed to Kerry that he didn't make, I'm inclined to believe she said this in a different context than the article suggests.

[TayTay]

8. Oh, there's a ton more

I had hours and hours of stuff this weekend. I have a funny memory, I tend to remember more as time goes on, I just need some 'alone time' to think about it. I could not have written the OP last night, it hadn't marinated enough for me to be coherent about it. (Sigh!)

Lots more stuff. It is always strange to go to these Massachusetts forums and talk about local, state and then national elections. The people in the room now know them all intimately and I get whiplash trying to figure out which hat is being worn at what moment. (And then I am trying to decide if anyone outside of MA finds this interesting and if I should find a way to write this on DU in general.) There were also moments that I can try and talk about, but I have to be careful. There was criticism of the Kerry campaign, but again, this was held in Massachusetts and these are also 'in the family' type thing. (We are all among friends here, so let's tell the whole truth, type thing. Again, not sure what to make of this, not sure how to make that feeling known. These are people who were there 3 years ago or so and there criticisms were extremely interesting to hear. But they are not critical just to be mean, but they are critical of some stuff. I have to figure out if I want to post that. A lot of it feeds this postive outlooking going forward. Yup, I meant that, the criticism didn't depress me, it was heartening to hear how much was learned.)

[ProSense]

9. Interesting!

I would love to hear more. Constructive criticism is a good thing. I prefer when the emphasis is on the postive. With all the detractors out there, whether they're focused on Kerry or the Democratic Party, inventing criticisms and taking positives and spinning them into negatives, thoughtful assessments are definitely due.







Disclaimer: Not intended to be an endorsement of forthcoming critique. :P

[TayTay]

10. See this Will Pitt article in Truthout

Yeah, that's the thing that the DNC is trying to get going between now and oh forevermore.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606J.shtml

[jenndar]

11. Oh, wow.

Thanks for posting. That was really inspiring.