Posted on 01/25/2004 3:10:34 PM PST by gitmo
For many Democrats, the "issues" are no longer the issue. What counts this year is winning.
Unified by their distaste for President Bush, the party faithful have adopted pundit-ese in their search for a 2004 Democratic nominee. The key, they say, is "electability."
"The only issue that matters to me is whether they can win in November," said Suzanne Whitley, a 34-year-old mother of two from Orangeburg, S.C. "That's what I'm looking for -- someone who can go all the way. We have to get that man out of the White House."
Dick Bennett, president of American Research Group in New Hampshire, has conducted polls for 24 years and says he's never seen anything like the 2004 phenomenon. The candidates who tried to focus on issues failed and retooled their messages.
"I can get people to say health care and the economy are important, but when it comes to choosing a candidate, they don't care," Bennett said. "Anyone's better than Bush."
Candidates get the message, incorporating Electoral College math and practical politics into their speeches.
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, for example, is trying to twang his way into the White House. Speaking to hungry Democratic voters who scorn their president and know their political history, Edwards points to his mouth.
By "talking like this," he says in his Carolina-bred accent, he can beat President Bush in the South.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut says he won't alienate cultural conservatives.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts plays up his military experience in Vietnam.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean promises to give Bush the straight-up fight Dean thinks he deserves.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark will hold an "electability rally" in New Hampshire today featuring former S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges.
Republicans may have trouble understanding the venom directed toward the president, but for the hard-core Democrats who choose their party's nominee, Bush is the unmistakable enemy on everything from Iraq to the environment to tax cuts.
Starting with the "stolen" 2000 election, Bennett said, Democrats have united behind their desire to oust Bush.
Jamie Mieghan, 32, of Bedford, N.H., heard Edwards speak at a Manchester public library last week. Mieghan, who owns a small furniture manufacturing business, measured Edwards with a common field test.
"I want to see if he's viable to beat Bush," she said.
Democrats haven't always focused on electability, preferring passionate stances and liberal stump appeal to pragmatism.
The results: landslide losses for George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984.
This year, said professor Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University, "No one has really captured that imagination, and so therefore if there's not an unusual attraction at this time to any one candidate, why not use electability as the prime reason for deciding who to vote for?"
That's happened in the past, too. Bush benefited in 2000 from his presidential pedigree and fund-raising skills, persuading party leaders early on that he was the best candidate for the fall.
Sometimes, the "I can win" strategy fails. In 1996, Lamar Alexander's ABC campaign (Alexander Beats Clinton) never energized Republican voters.
In other years, candidates have overcome doubts about their mass appeal. By March 1992, Bill Clinton was hounded by hints of scandal, but he kept his primary-season lead and won in November.
Last week's Iowa caucuses demonstrated the importance of electability. According to polls, more than a quarter of caucus-goers cited the need to back a winner as their top priority.
That hurt Dean and helped Kerry and Edwards.
Betty Carlson of Long Grove, Iowa, said she found Dean too cocky. She decided the positive message from the two senators would work better in November.
"People who like Dean because of his stand on the war realize that he truly is a god with clay feet, that he has potentially self-destructive capacities on a campaign trail that would work against him," said Denison University professor Emmett Buell, an expert on the presidential nominating process.
Voters' focus on electability forced Dean to retool his campaign after his third-place finish in Iowa, which he capped with a now-infamous shouting speech. Now, as he prepares for Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, he's touting his record as governor, auditioning the chief-executive moves he hopes to try against George Bush.
Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said electability arguments can come in many forms, from crowing about foreign-policy experience to boasting of a motivated base of volunteers and donors.
"It's never not been there," she said of electability. "It's been there as a salient issue, but now it's more of a message point."
Exactly. When I hear these single issue zealots who are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face, simply because they don't like something about Bush, it amazes me.
They would prefer we be WORSE off under a Democrat just so they can throw their little tantrums.
The only comfort I get from knowing they might help Bush lose in November, is knowing how much more miserable they will be with a Dem in the White House.
Haven't you heard? On another thread, a 'Freeper' has already said you don't figure into Karl Rove's political calculus ( in other words, you aren't needed ). We'll find out just how faulty Rove's math is in November if things keep up.
Like Newt, I think the prescription plan might actually save us money in the long run because Medicare is already paying mucho dinero for conditions that could be more economically treated by meds.
And though I don't agree with every provision of it, campaign finance reform has turned out to benifit Republicans far more than the Dems who initially promoted it.
And Bush isn't proposing any blanket amnesty program to begin with, and it probably won't get through congress anyhow so that is a moot point.
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