[lbo-talk] Karl Rove's Strategy

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Thu Nov 4 10:53:46 PST 2004


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>That's precisely the strategy that leftists should use: use the
>issues that matter to your base -- class issues like the Iraq War,
>universal health care, public works jobs with living wages for the
>unemployed, shorter workweeks, etc. -- to split the people and then
>win on turnout -- except that leftists can't do this through the
>Democratic Party.

-Nevada & Florida both passed the minimum wage increase by large -margins - and went for Bush. People voted for Bush not because of -"issues," but because of crap like "character."

I think that's too simple, Doug. "Character" is often seen as signalling what kinds of issues will be enacted by a candidate, especially for folks who don't feel they can wade through the piles of competing statistics and partisan propaganda. If you trust that a person is a good person, you assume they will likely enact good policies. The question is not "good" in the sense of morally virtuous-- since lots of scoundrels win-- but on whether you think they have the best interests of the voter at heart. Clinton won on "character" because while people thought he was sexually promiscuous and "slick", they also thought he cared about "people like them", as the polls put it.

Now, it's not just peoples presentation of self that gets you to that point in character, so Kerry's patrician style need not have harmed him. And Bush never was seen as really down with the average person, but by seeming to act decisively in responding to peoples fears of terrorism, he created idea he cared about them, at least as potential victims of terror.

Having said what Kerry did right, I think he did need more of a populist tone, which is not his style. We do need to "wedge" socially conservative working class folks, to encourage them to vote their pocketbooks rather than their fears of cultural change. Part of doing that is not rhetoric, but concrete day-to-day work. We need more organizers in "red areas", organizing unions, doing community politics, so that folks don't look on liberals as an alien species but as someone who they may disagree with on some issues but trust on other economic and political questions.

The fact is that most progressive folks have little strategy for engaging theologically conservative folks in an organized manner, and that has to be a major focus after this election.

Nathan Newman



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