Building resonant themes, and articulating them confidently, is what I believe helps win elections, whether they be for president or the House of Delegates. Sure you need the ground troops to get out your voter. In a House race you can actually reach out and touch a sizable portion of your electorate. But to get people, especially independent voters and the moderates from the other party, you need to create an impression that you’re a good person who will work for what you can confidently articulate are the voters’ best interests.
Building that message takes time. Most folks know what Republicans stand for: smaller government, strict moral values, less taxes. But Democrats can’t put what they believe into simple themes, partly because they’re spending their time trying not to offend specific interest groups. Even if that weren’t true, it is a given in the media and, consequently, in the minds of the voters. To overcome it, they need a campaign to build themes, not wonkish policy ideas, that people can embrace.
This, from Joe Klein’s Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid.
[Karl] Rove’s assumption [in planning the Bush 2000 campaign] was that voters had three basic questions about a candidate: Is he a strong leader? Can I trust him? Doe he care about people me?
…Everything flowed from that; every paragraph in the stump speech, every radio spot and direct mail piece was vetted on its relevance to those questions. The last of these three–Does he care about people like me?–was always toughest for a Republican, and Karl Rove had spent the past fifteen years learning how to convince dyed-in-the-wool Texas Democrats, especially suburban women, that Republicans really did care about them. Yes, Bush would run on the same themes that every Republican had run on since Reagan: Military Strength, Lower Taxes, Traditional Values. Beneath these, however, was a Bush-Rove addendum to Traditional Values: “compassionate conservative.” Specific issues were adopted by the campaign only as they illuminated that theme–and this was the big difference from the Democrats.
[Bush friend and media consultant Mark] McKinnon could easily imagine his old [Democratic] colleagues hunkered down and sweaty, arguing over the precise details of Gore’s position on global warming–labor needed this, the tree huggers wanted that. Democrats had trouble seeing the forest for the tree huggers: Republicans didn’t sweat the details. Oh, the Republican business interests would get their wish list agenda–especially tort reform, a Bush-Rove favorite. And the religious right would get a nod–funding for faith-based social programs–and a wink on hotter issues like abortion and gay rights. And the National Rifle association just knew that Bush was with them all the way. But the essence of the campaign was the presentation of personality, not policy. Indeed policy was often merely a tactical reaction to Democratic initiatives. Gore had had an elaborate prescription-drug plan for the elderly; Bush was for that, too, and arguably with a better general principle–take care of the poorest old people first–but with none of Gore’s heavy sluggish details. Two or three national reporters might sift through the entrails of the competing drug plans and declare Gore more comprehensive. But there wasn’t a single, breathing swing voter in the fifty United States who would make his or her presidential decision on the basis of which candidate had the better prescription plan for the elderly.
McKinnon was amazed that Democrats had never quite figured this out. In fact, they had it ass-backwards. A guy like {Democratic consultant] Stan Greenburg would take a poll to learn which issues people cared about–inevitably, jobs, healthcare, education–and then the Dems would try to figure out the best ways to talk about those policies. They would use these abstractions–government initiatives!–to sell their candidate to the public that no longer trusted government. The character of the candidate, they believed, would be inferred from the quality of his policies. How quaint. In the television era, fleeting impression counted for far more than cogent policies. Fleeting impressions were all most people had time for. Presidential politics was all about character…or rather, the appearance of character. Did he (or she) seem strong? Trustworthy? Car about people like me? The utter simplicity of it was astonishing: it wasn’t about the economy, stupid.
It was about the appearance of caring about the economy, stupid.
Some may argue that the appearance of caring has been shattered by breathtaking incompetence. But the question still remains: How do Democrats deliver the appearance of competence?
For Virginia Democrats, the House GOP leadership has certainly demonstrated its willingness to let the state infrastructure crumble to hold fast to their principles. But what are the Democrats principles, other than we’re willing to spend taxpayer money to fix things?