Golly, doesn't Hillary look commanding?
Posted on 08/22/2007 8:38:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Michael Dukakis has seen this script before: a Republican administration besieged by scandal and running out the clock on its second term, while wide-eyed Democrats confidently lick their chops, knowing there’s no way in hell voters will reward the G.O.P. with four more years in the White House.
It was around this very moment 20 years ago, the summer when Oliver North told Congress he was “authorized to do everything that I did” and Reagan fatigue took hold, that Mr. Dukakis, then the 53-year-old governor of Massachusetts, emerged at the head of a crowded Democratic presidential pack. By the time he was formally nominated in Atlanta the following July, he’d opened a 17-point lead over Vice President George H.W. Bush.
“I can handle this guy,” Mr. Dukakis supposedly replied around that time when John Sasso, his consultant in exile, asked to return to the campaign. “You worry about the first 100 days.”
So you can understand why the numerous harbingers of a triumphant 2008 for Democrats—George W. Bush’s Nixonian approval ratings, polls that show voters favoring a Democratic White House candidate by double-digit margins, the electorate’s historical aversion to three-term rule by one party—haven’t prompted Mr. Dukakis to begin planning his trip to the 2009 inaugural celebration.
“We’re not going to outspend the other guys,” he said during an interview in his modest office in the political science department at Northeastern University, where he was the first to arrive (at 7:30 a.m.) on a recent midsummer morning. “We’re probably not going to outstrategize them. And some crazy guy will blow up a building with three weeks to go, you know, and then we’ll be back in Bush-land again.”
Since his fall collapse was made official on Nov. 8, 1988—an eight-point, 426-to-112 electoral-vote loss to George H.W. Bush—Democrats have held up Mr. Dukakis’ general election campaign as a case study in the perils of not hitting back. In 1992, Bill Clinton, with his rapid response team and pitch-perfect shaming of Mr. Bush in their first debate, showed he’d learned the lesson; in 2004, John Kerry showed that he’d forgotten it.
But while Mr. Dukakis readily indicts himself for fatally ignoring the 1988 version of Swift-Boating—the G.O.P.’s success with Willie Horton, he said, “was my own damn fault; no one else’s”—he worries that his party has oversimplified the lesson of his defeat, and of Mr. Kerry’s and Al Gore’s, too. And if Democrats don’t learn the right lesson soon, he fears they’ll be locked out of the White House for a third straight time in 2008—no matter how rosy the electoral math now looks.
“We have to organize every damn precinct in the United States of America—all 185,000,” Mr. Dukakis said. “I’m serious. I’m deadly serious. I didn’t do it after the primary [in 1988]. Don’t ask me why, because that’s the way I got myself elected from the time I was running for town meeting in Brookline to the time I ran for governor.”
And when he talks about organizing, he doesn’t mean the legions of eager college students—think the orange-hat-clad “Perfect Storm” that Howard Dean sought to rain down on Iowa in 2004—who are shipped off to key states for crunch-time grunt work. He also doesn’t mean limiting the outreach to “likely” Democratic voters, because—especially after seven years of George W. Bush—“there are huge numbers of disaffected Republicans out there. Who says they won’t vote for us?”
“I’m talking about every precinct,” he said, “with a precinct captain and six block-captains that make personal contact with every single voting household. And I mean starting a year in advance. I’m not talking about parachuting in with two weeks to go. That’s baloney. And these people are people who’ve got to be from the precinct, of the precinct, look like the precinct and talk like the precinct.”
The way he tells it, this was the missing ingredient in his 1988 effort—a powerful and utterly economical tool that, if properly deployed, could have blunted the Bush campaign’s character-assassination-by-paid-media, and one that could spare Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama his ultimate fate.
True to his technocratic roots, Mr. Dukakis has the idea of replicating, on every street, avenue, and rural route in the country, the kind of personal relationships that once powered big-city political machines—with precinct captains calling on their neighbors every few weeks, asking them about their concerns, talking up their candidate and following up on any questions they might have. Mr. Dukakis’ vision is rooted in good government—making sure, for instance, that a neighbor’s concerns about school vouchers are satisfactorily addressed.
That kind of personalized operation early on, Mr. Dukakis believes, can keep voters from believing the worst when the Willie Horton and Swift Boat campaigns begin.
“There’s a chemistry there, which is hard to describe unless you’ve done it,” he said. “Otherwise, it permits your opponent to paint you as something you aren’t. It happened to me. It happened to Kerry. They tried to do it to Clinton. They’ll try to do it to anybody.”
Here’s how Mr. Dukakis broke down the struggle that Mr. Kerry—Mr. Dukakis’ lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1985—faced three years ago.
“You never had a sense that people felt personally connected to the guy, right? Had he had that kind of operation going nationally, there would have been a much stronger feeling of personal connection. Why? Because average folks in the neighborhood are out pushing him.”
Mr. Dukakis says he pleaded with Mr. Kerry to build a meaningful precinct-based organization in 2004, but couldn’t break through. Now he’s working informally with the Democratic National Committee, where Chairman Howard Dean—he of the 50-state strategy—is much more receptive to the concept. But so far, Mr. Dukakis said, none of the 2008 Democrats seem serious about his brand of organizing.
“The guy who ought to be doing it, above any of them, is Obama, because he’s probably got 300,000 contributors,” he notes. “Every one of those people, as soon as the contribution comes in: ‘Thank you and will you be a precinct captain?’ Or, ‘Thank you, this guy is your precinct captain—will you be one of his block captains?’”
**************
What a gracious man.
Dukakis' whiny, drug-addicted wife was also supposed to have contributed to his defeat. Right?
If either party organized like this today they’d win in a landslide. However neither party does, those sorts of organizations died when Television came to prominance.
There was a time being in a party was more than voting every couple years.
With no TV to distract, they literally sponsored all sorts of events... sporting, singing, etc.. no matter what your personal interests were, there was a group run by the party to support you.. you like basketball, the local republican or democratic party would have pick up games at a local gym on certain nights... liked to sing, same thing with a choral group, etc etc etc...
This is all dead and gone now, all the DNC and RNC spend money on is media ads.... the grass roots politicing is gone.
Golly, doesn't Hillary look commanding?
Thanks for the pic. I was going to ask for that one.
The pic and his ‘no death penalty’ answer sunk him.
Thankfully
Hopefully someone has something on the dems, but I don’t think it is Rudy. He might have used that to keep her out of the Senate... but didn’t.
But whatever, waiting until the Dems draw blood from each other might be the smartest thing right now. Then it will be easier to take out whoever is left.
If CA passes the new electoral vote split thing it would also be another spike in the dems tires.
Combine that with a really quick Swift Boat type thing on whom ever is left and we might just have a chance.
If I was forced to guess, I think Fred might just have the goods from the senate hearings on the Chinese stuff.. or...
Rove left, but under no real clear circustances..what is he up to? Is he and Bush maybe going to be behind some surprise yet to come for the dems?
Did they get their own FBI files? Also the Bush justice department has steadily but quietly taken down a number of dems for election fraud...
Hmmmm.....
I think the Southern district of NY has cases against the Clintons that they have not brought. They investigated the votes for pardon and the Whitehouse silver heist. Since Rudy worked out of that office, he has real good contacts. Bush senior tried to make a respectable ex president out of Bubba, but he is not a quick study. The Mormons in Utah might well get Romney to reveal that the national monument that locked up their coal was a quid pro quo for foreign campaign contributions. In my own mind Hillary's worst drawback is the awful way she treats others.
the republicans only hope is that the pathetic dems are running hillary and obama, gulliani and romney are very har to vote for but the dems are worse
rubbing alcohol and coke, the drink of the year that never really took off
Now, Dukasis had nothing on the junior senator from New York in the creepiness department.
Heheh-——yeah, that musta been the year the Dims switched to drinking purple Kool-aid. LOL.
And who can understand why he put on a helmet and got into a tank.
This was HIS idea. ROTFLMSO.
According to the omniscientent Howie Carr, it was John Sasso's idea.
Weirder Sasso story is that shortly after the election disaster, he was at Martha Vineyard airport Hertz counter demanding they rent him a BMW. The counter person explained that they didn't have one available. Sasso grabbed a set of keys on the counter and jumped into a BMW parked outside the office.
Turns out the BMW belonged to a customer (who was obviously careless with his keys). The BMW was found abandoned in Boston, not far from Sasso's digs. The owner declined to press charges (my read: out of fear, not sympathy).
Creepy attracts creepy.
Howie's advice to politicians: never put on a hat.
That Sasso BMW story IS weird.
Hey, they’re Dims-—go figure-—creeps.
So I guess the Duke is laying off the tank snafu onto Sasso. LOL.
True.
Everyone who is not the quarterback. Primarily though, the Full Back, Half Back, and tight ends often play a blocking role. Of course there is the offensive line.
Now on to the rest.... do you really thing Bush senior will come out with anything? Rudy now may pull something out of his connections but I don’t trust DOJ folks that might possibly endanger their lucrative gov jobs or retirements.
Remember, the admin folks have a union that is mostly dem and the majority of them will follow their dem masters and high preists of their union.
Therefore I hold little hope anything will come from Rudy for Rudy. And he did not come out with anything to hep Bush in the last election.
Now I might see him help Fred but Rudy he will not risk the wrath of the MSM and do so in a public manner.
Something seems to be in the air but I can not place it yet. Possible changes in electoral delegates could be one huge piece through.
Additionally I really think the Immigration vote and rest of issue is still simmering and no politician was learned from it.... yet. A candidate who plays on that SINGLE issue would already is in agreement with 60-70% of the electorate. So far all the politicians have missed it.
Will it be a dem or a pubi that will look at the statistics and read them right? Whoever bases a large part of their campaign on it will grab a bunch of cross party support.
If they play it the right way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.