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  • From: Lee Haslup <biglee AT haslups.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [internetworkers] A blog that might interest the group...
  • Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:33:45 -0500

Below is a note that I received from my friend Joel Haas, a local sculptor. [Joel made the metal gates for the amphitheater in Regency park and has done work for the Cancer Center and several local churches.] His brother is starting a Blog about Democratic strategy and is eager for people to read and comment. Since the topic seems to be in line with the interests of many of the Internetworkers I thought I'd send it along.

BigLee

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From: Joel Haas <joel AT joelhaasstudio.com>
To: Joel Haas <sclptrjoel AT aol.com>
Subject: My brother John and Democrats of the future
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 11:35:33 -0500
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The following letter is the first posting to a new web log --a blog--my youngest brother, John, has started to invite Democrats to discuss their future. Republicans are invited, too, to state what would make them consider the Democrats in the future.

This is not a blog for nutcases and rants.

My brother has always followed politics like other people follow basketball or baseball. He can recite statistics for New Mexico's legislative races or analyze a Senate race in South Dakota. He travels and listens a lot. Visit the blog and there will be an outline of his background and jobs.

You can post comments on the blog about various parts . Click on *Comments* under each section; click on *post a comment*; then *IF* a membership for Blogger window pops up, just click on *post a comment anonymously* and you'll be able to post your comment. All comments are emailed to one of my brother's email addresses, and you are likely to either hear back from him or to see part of your comments incorporated into the next posting. If you want to post an essay etc. to the main body of the blog, feel free to email him at JThompsonhaas AT mindspring.com <mailto:JThompsonhaas AT mindspring.com> . I and my brother, encourage you to email this around to others who are seriously interested in political futures not rants about the past.

The web log is at http://demsforthefuture.blogspot.com

Here is the opening post and the general rules of participation for my brother's blog.

Joel Haas

Why is this blog here?

A large part of the country voted for Bush. But not just voted for Bush, but voted for the whole Republican stable of candidates. Clearly we as Democrats are not connecting to America. The purpose of this blog then, is for Democrats all over the country to share ideas on what we need to win in 2006 and 2008. Here are the rules of the blog:

Posting should:

* focus on the future
* discuss what we need to do to rebuild a majority party
* not Bush bash or create conspiracy theories

Questions to explore here:

* What does it mean to be a Democrat? What do we stand for?
* Should our message change?
* Should we keep the same message but present it differently?

*Random Thoughts:*

* *

Here are few thoughts on what happened to us in the 2004 election. Please comment with your views.

*/The Fahrenheit 9/11 Syndrome:/*

We spent so much time hating and bashing Bush - discussing how the 2000 election was stolen - we forgot to develop a message. For us, 2004 became an election about settling a score, not presenting a vision. We made Bush the issue, but did not present a compelling alternative. In 2000 the majority of America voted for the /liberal/ agenda (Gore and Nader). Unfortunately, in our Fahrenheit 9/11 frenzy, we did not take that opportunity to build a liberal foundation.

*/Demographics:/*

Demographics are also working against us. For Bush to win all he had to do was hold on to his 2000 states. Why? Because population has dropped in the Gore states and moved to the Bush states. Indeed, Bush could afford to have a state flip, (NH) but Kerry could not. Our votes are moving away from our base. In these circumstances, the R’s can run any candidate, and they will start out with the electoral votes of the Midwest, the old confederacy and the southwest. It will only get worse in 2008 and 2012.

With this population drift, we also need to understand that it is not Red State vs. Blue State, but Red /counties/ vs. Blue /counties./ Anyone who followed the vote election night on a county level (CNN provided the means to do so on their site) could see this happening as the votes came in. The Votemaster on http://electoral-vote.com/ has a great map illustrating how the vote broke down by county. You can easily pick out the big urban areas – blue islands on a sea of red.

A chart in the New York Times of 11/07/04 puts numbers to the illustration. The Dems won 60% of the vote in cities with population over 500,000 – which are 13% of the electorate. They lost every other urban grouping. For the first time since 1988 (the first year shown in these statistics), Dems were under 50% in cities of 50,000 to 499.999 in population (19% of the electorate, Dems 49% and R’s 49%). The suburbs make up 45% of the electorate. We got our heads handed to us there, getting only 47% of the vote.

Blue states went blue only because the inner urban areas outweighed the rural and suburban areas. With this trend, we can see as the cities continue to empty, more old industrial states like Michigan will flip and become regular red states. In short, we cannot pitch to states any more and expect the urban voters will carry the Dems past the rural/suburban votes. We must fine-tune our message to the non-urban voters.


/Value Votes/

Much has been made of the “value voters.” But really folks, the R’s have been thumping the family value drum for a long time. Who can forget Pat Buchanan's speech in the Republican convention of 1992 on the cultural war in the US? What was the difference this time?

This time they went looking for votes where we weren’t. Senator Schurmer (D-NY) said it best on Jon Stewart, the night after the election to “They did their get out the vote drives in places we had never even heard of – /like the churches./” (emphasis mine). In other words they went right to where the voters were in areas Dems tend to ignore. They were very successful. Their /message/ wasn’t new – their /organization/ was. Our get out the vote was effective, but we were mobilizing a smaller base. The R’s had a larger base and got them to the polls.

Finally a lot of ink was spilled about how much of the African American vote Bush got in 2004 vs. 2000. Many articles point to this as evidence that African Americans are increasingly in tune to the Republican “value voter” message. This is not quite the case. Again the 11/07/04 edition of the New York Times had some interesting insight on this. According to a table they ran, in 1976 the R’ received 16% of the African American vote (Carter). In 1980, (Reagan.1) 11%; in 1984, (Reagan.2) 9%; 1988 (Bush) 12%; in 1992 (Clinton.1), 10%; in 1996 (Clinton.2), 12%; in 2000 (W.1) 8% and 2004 (W.2) 11%. The African American vote simply returned to its historical proportion of Republican vs. Democrat - a shift of 3%. Kerry got more of the African American vote than Clinton did in his re-election campaign. It is hard to argue Clinton’s popularity in the African American community. So neither side should get too excited about how Blacks voted in 2004. It was simply the normal break.


/Our Image/

The Dems played into the image of being elitist and out-of-touch with the average voter. We derided the President as stupid. We derided his supporters as stupid. We pat ourselves on the back as to how smart, and with-it we are. But we made little or no effort to figure out why supporters of Bush were so rabid in their support. What did he speak to in these voters? Could all those people be idiots? Dems certainly made them feel like we thought they were. When you were in High school, who did you like to hang out with? The smart rich kid on the debate team who lorded his good grades over you? Or the laid back C+ B- student who would take a hit for his pals, and was fun to hang out with? In a larger sense this is what is going on in the US. Gore and Kerry couldn’t help reminding people how smart they were – how much they knew and any one who wasn’t for them, was not that bright. Indeed we got so caught up in that mentality we did not even notice we /lost/ the third debate. While Kerry was showing off his statistics, Bush was busy reaching out, drawing a larger picture of his vision, a vision most voters were comfortable with.


/Charming Bush/

Bush’s charm is that he /is/ inarticulate. He speaks in the halting fractured way most people who are focused on survival and not the latest position papers, use when talking about the world. Clinton was great at talking to the average Joe and not talking down to them, so was Carter. Notice they won. We first need to understand that many of our dreams and the dreams of many who voted for Bush are similar. To succeed we need to learn to speak to those dreams.


/So where do we go from here?/

Good question.

First we need to build on what went right. We had the best get out the vote organization that we have had in several elections. We were unified like never before. Even though he lost, Kerry did get over 51 million votes. That is a block that cannot be ignored. We need to build on that base. For the first time, Dems were also /financially /competitive. In 2000 Gore had to make hard choices on where to campaign based on money. Lack of money did not drive Kerry’s end-game.

Second, we need to define what makes us Democrats and see the points of intersection with the concerns of voters in the red counties. Off the top those would be fiscal responsibility, (the deficit), Social Security, and genuine healthcare reform.

Third, we need to continue our social stances. These worked for us in the past and they will work for us again. But we need to address them in a broader, less urban context. Pro choice for example is also a privacy issue. We can run on this, by talking about keeping judges out of your medical choices.

Fourth, Iraq. We should maintain our loyal questioning of Bush’s policy. Iraq will continue to spiral out of control. Win or loose it will be Bush’s and the R’s responsibility. If Kerry won the R’s would be blaming him for its situation in ’08. We should question, and not cave in.

Finally, and most importantly we need to reach out to the red counties and understand what they are thinking, hoping and dreaming. We can’t write them off as stupid.

Remember in ’08 we won’t be running against Bush. We may need them for our comeback.

John Thompson-Haas

Joel Haas, sculptor
3215 Merriman Ave
Raleigh, NC 27607
919-828-8836 studio
919-828-8829 home
919-754-9118 fax
www.sculpturewalk.org
or
http://artistsregister.com/artists/NC4
or
http://www.joelhaasstudio.com




  • [internetworkers] A blog that might interest the group..., Lee Haslup, 11/15/2004

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