blatham wrote:Nod to Dean deserved. My understanding, not very complete, of the internal debates in the party is that Dean hit a lot of disagreement as to this 50 state strategy.
Yep. The 50-state strategy meant that:
- the DNC money was spread over far more races/candidates than before, at the cost of the more traditional singular focus on battleground states/races;
- and that a far larger proportion of it was spent on basic organisation building, rather than on the traditional, singular focus on the peak of campaign ads and GOTV in the final weeks/days of the campaign.
Incumbent Congressmen who seemed at risk themselves, especially in the Senate (where, on the Dem side, there were more of them), were pretty edgy/nervous about that, and with them the DSCC was too. I think thats what helped to spur the DSCC on to record fundraising and -spending of its own.
It seems now that Dean has been firmly vindicated. Dems were acutely competitive in the most unlikely places, in Republican enclaves across the Northeast and Midwest but also all across the Rockies and Plains.
Its true that Dean had some luck. The nervousness of the Congressmen who suspiciously eyed the perceived diversion of funds to untried, experimental long-term stuff - when imminent control of the legislature was at stake - springs from the instinctive assumption of a zero-sum game. But as the Democrats raised far more money than in previous mid-term races, it wasnt a zero-sum game - there was extra money to spend. So they could have their cake (battleground state campaign funding) and eat it too (building new competitive districts). Also, in the end the popular mood was so anti-Republican that incumbents turned out not to have needed to fear anything anyway.
But even so - I think that Dean plotted out the only right longterm course. Strengthening the blue-state bulwark and hoping to edge out a narrow victory next time by nicking just the one extra state (Ohio, Florida) is no sustainable way to build future chances. The Dean alternative, meanwhile, was embodied in the landscape of this election night - even though most of the races in the Rockies and Plains in the end were narrowly lost, they were so often lost by just 1, 3, or 5 percent that Republicans were forced to play defense in some 50 House races alone.
Striking behind enemy lines and popping up in ever new places is not just a better strategy for winning - and it doesnt just open up real opportunities for bridging that last 3 or 4 percent in 2008, in places that in '04 would have been laughed off - its also simply better for the country. It substitutes a "purplisation" of the US for the mutual building up of respective bulwarks, and that must be a good thing.
Moreover, it's good for
democracy, for civic culture. In '00 and '04, you had the impression that anyone who lived outside this handful of battleground states was basically completely irrelevant to the political process, to the outcome. This time, voters in all the states outside the Deep South had the chance to cast potentially decisive votes.
Sorry, I didnt mean to go on like some kind of lecturer - all this might already be covered in the article Soz linked in, and you already know half of it, anyway. But in the face of 55 pages of Dean-bashing in this thread - and undoubtedly newed discussions in the Dem party about how to prepare the way for '08 - it sure seems worth repeating...
