Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Lee Haslup <biglee AT haslups.com>]

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

-------- Original Message --------
From:   - Wed Nov 10 20:13:08 2004
X-UIDL:         4712111a773f330cf3e95ec176430d3f
X-Mozilla-Status:       0201
X-Mozilla-Status2:      00000000
Return-path:    <joel AT joelhaasstudio.com>
Envelope-to:    biglee AT haslups.com
Delivery-date:  Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:58:17 -0800
Received: 	from [66.152.97.38] (helo=mail05.powweb.com) by 
xanthe.lunarpages.com with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1CRvnV-00038W-8h for 
biglee AT haslups.com; Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:58:17 -0800
Received: 	from joelsnotebook (rdu74-150-058.nc.rr.com [24.74.150.58]) 
by mail05.powweb.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20A4158E4; Wed, 10 Nov 2004 
08:35:41 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:     <002801c4c743$57574590$8301a8c0@joelsnotebook>
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
MIME-Version:   1.0
Content-Type: 	multipart/alternative; 
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0025_01C4C719.63EA8440"
X-Priority:     3
X-MSMail-Priority:      Normal
X-Mailer:       Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
X-MimeOLE:      Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180


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