[lbo-talk] No, actually, I don't believe it.

[Seth Ackerman]

From: "Nathan Newman" <nathanne at nathannewman.org>

> Kerry had his weaknesses but he also had his strengths.  He ran on a very
> progressive platform-- pro-union, anti-death penalty, pro-choice,
> pro-education-- with concrete goals to improve the lives of people we all
> care about.  And he never pulled a Sister Souljah maneuver or screwed
> welfare moms as a political ploy, as Clinton-- a far better politician
> admittedly -- did to gain moderate support.
>
> There are many things we all need to do better as progressives, especially
> engaging the religious population in a vigorous and respectful way that
> will pull them away from the Bush-GOP embrace.  That takes real organizing
> over years, not just rhetoric from a candidate, so that's a big project
for
> progressives to take on in coming years.  There are groups working on it,
> but they are underfunded and not strongly supported, so that needs to
> change.

I agree with much of this. As a candidate, purely stylistically, Kerry was a
mixed bag. Until the debates, most of the criticisms of him are valid - he
couldn't put out a sentence without qualifying it, he totally lacked the
ability to communicate to those who don't live in the
think-tank-policy-business-management world. Later, though, I thought he
improved a lot in this area. The main thing Kerry could have done to improve
his chances - in hindsight - would have been to oppose the war from the
beginning. His perceived changes of mind hurt him a lot with the amazingly
large number of undecideds who bought into the flip-flopper idea. But I
think the deeper reasons Kerry didn't win decisively are things he couldn't
have don anything about in the time-horizon of a 12-month-long campaign.
They're longer-term issues.

Nathan's right about religion. When people were asked what the most
important issue was, 75% gave one of the following four answers: 1. morality
2. Iraq 3. terrorism 4. the economy. Those who answered (1) or (3) went for
Bush by about 80-20. Those who said (2) or (4) went for Kerry by about
80-20. People who live in Podunk and are worried about being blown up in a
car bomb will probably never vote for a Dem - they're probably die-hard
nationalists.

But people concerned about "morality" or "values" I think can be won. A lot
of those people are anti-gay bigots, yes, but many get the generally feeling
that Dems don't work from a deep ethical framwork. And issues aside, the
style and rhetoric of mainstream Dem politics gives them reasons to think
that. As Lakoff always says, Dems tend to speak in problem-solving
professional jargon, Repubs more often use language inspired by some ethical
system. I think this is part of a long-term Dem trend to see a big part of
their base as upscale professionals - urban or suburban  - the kind who deal
with numbers and statistics in their daily lives. Dems are deeply dependent
on downscale union members and blacks but Dem politicians almost never 'look
the part.' Bush really comes off as an evangelical Christian; Kerry doesn't
come off at all as anyone who's ever hung around people who do routinized
work for a living. The one exception is Clinton, who had a dual persona - he
was wonk in chief but could also talk convincingly about the moral basis of
his politics. I think that's why he won in 1992.

Unfortunately, I think the policies and ideas the Dem leadership are wedded
to - politicians but also, especially, the Dem think tanks/media outlets -
don't help them. The obsession with the deficit, the refusal to firmly
embrace the idea that people should have economic rights (thus wonky,
hard-to-explain health care plans that are rhetorically oriented toward
simply 'fixing the problem' instead of being based on some compelling moral
vision, like single-payer.) I think the general image the Dems needs serious
readjusting. We can't look to one candidate or one campaign to do that. It's
a long-term project that will have to take place largely on the terrain of
extra-parliamentary politics.

Seth