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Campaign Advice For Barack Obama: Forget About The Center?

July 3rd, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington has a list of seven things she feels Democrat Senator Barack Obama should do “to keep from blowing it” in the Presidential election. Some of the key ones touch on whether he should win over the center — a segment of the electorate past elections have shown is important but a segment which is often talked about with disdain by people on the right and left.

Here’s the section where Huffington advises on what stance to take with the center:

3) Get your campaign to give you a printout of the names of the over 1.5 million people who have donated to your campaign (at an average of $197 each). Give that list a read every day; feel the heft. And remember — sorry, Stu Rothenberg — that the tried-and-untrue swing voter strategy is what has led to the Democratic Party’s prolonged identity crisis. Forget the fence sitters. Instead, continue to speak to those who have turned their backs on the electoral process — those who are struggling without health care, without decent schools, without jobs, without hope.

That’s not an accurate depiction of the center.

The issue for the Democrats has not been that they tried to pander to the center and that Democrats don’t turn out to vote.

The issue for the Democrats is that in some past elections they offered inept or lead-footed candidates who were outclassed or outsleazed in (a) political nimbleness by Republican candidates, (b) the Democrats’ inability to get a cohesive message out on many fronts (just blaming it on Rush Limbaugh, weblogs or media coverage won’t do) and (c) falling into traps set by top Republican strategists and being unable to respond to and obliterate GOP charges against them.

It isn’t the center that has created the Democrats’ long vacation from the White House mandated by many America’s voters. It’s the Democrats’ performance as political professionals in matching and/or exceeding Republican strategists, countering charges, and detailing a compelling message for the future. In 2006, in fact, swing voters and centrists helped the Democrats win Congress.

She also says this:

7) Heed the old Texas advice of Dandy Don Meredith and Molly Ivins: “You got to dance with them what brung you.”

Voters longing for hope, inspiration, a new kind of politics, and fundamental change are “them that brung you” to the big dance. Don’t let the pundits, the advisors, and the cowards convince you to let someone else cut in.

This isn’t a matter of people cutting in. The problem in America has been two-fold:

–Some progressive Democrats consider it almost partisan treason if a candidate takes a position or tries to appeal to centrists and independent voters. They seek a campaign and government that gives them the policies they want, unfettered by political dilution. But dilution in politics often is often the product of compromise, consensus-building and aggregating interests — which create a more unified nation. We’ve already lived under a government that is of the party base, for the party base and by the party base. Do most Americans really want to see that again except this time with a “D” label in front of it?

–Some conservative Republicans consider almost partisan treason if a candidate takes a position or tries to appeal to centrists and independent voters. YES…this is the same sentence as above. So they want to keep their party as much veered to the right as possible.

In the past two months I’ve read blog posts and commentators who argued that independent, swing and/or centrist voters were really Democrats (Republicans who didn’t want their candidate appealing to the center argued that) or really Republicans (Democrats who didn’t want their candidate appealing to the center argued that).

In other words: there are intense pressures in today’s America to shove centrist and independent voters to choose between joining a political “sports team” that is either on the right or left, to embrace its total agenda and identify with it.

And if you don’t? Then you’re portrayed somehow as being part of the “mushy middle” — unless, of course you take a stand (and then it’s said you’re really a liberal Democrat or really a conservative Republican). REALITY CHECK: Most centrist and independent voters do not resemble blank-expressioned, neutral C-SPAN hosts.

Just look at the lead of this AP report:

They’re the most fickle voters, and potentially the most powerful. Thus, with party nominations secure, John McCain and Barack Obama now are pushing toward the center to win them over.

Meet “the mushy middle,” a complex chunk of people likely to decide the presidential election but difficult to reach and very hard to please.

“Yes, we can!” isn’t floating their boat. Nothing much is, from either candidate.

They aren’t uniformly conservative or liberal, and they don’t fit strict Republican or Democratic orthodoxy. They aren’t typically engaged in politics, and they don’t much care about the campaign. And like so many others, they are extraordinarily pessimistic.

The perceptions about centrists and independent is that they can’t take a stand, are too confused to take a stand and aren’t really following politics. And that to be centrist or independent they must somehow be neutral because if they take a stand they immediately are left, right, progressive, conservative, vegetarian, vegan — anything but centrist or independent.

But they do take stands, they are engaged — and American political history shows that candidates who’ve ignored them or not reassured them in national Presidential elections have often done so at their career peril. History also shows these voters can be passionate and do take strong stands once they evaluate both sides.

There is even a classic book that details it. It still holds up quite well — and really should be updated after 2008.



This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Independents, Democrats, Independent Voters, 2008 Elections, Centrists, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 17 Comments

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    So all the $ donated by those of us who are not progressive, or Democrats, or partisan -- and all the time spent writing / responding / reading / supporting by us same folks -- is, in Arianna Huffington's view, irrelevant? We weren't part of the dance? We had no role in Obama's becoming the (presumptive) nominee??

    Does she think the campaign was closed to people who were not Democrats? However much the partisans might have wished the campaign closed to people who were not Democrats, the Obama campaign was reaching right out us independents and moderates.


    I resent her thinking enormously.
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    Polimom

    This is part of the overall feeling Im getting from the country about Obama and his shift to the middle during the last week or so.

    There is a lot of anger and these people on the left have staked Obama as their own. Any move to the center for them is going to feel a betrayal.
    • ^
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    I think this misses a funadmental part of Huffington's premise -- the center has shifted toward Obama and he doesn't *need* to tack as far to the right.
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    Heed the old Texas advice of Dandy Don Meredith and Molly Ivins: “You got to dance with them what brung you.”

    This has been Obama's strength and weakness. He has formed a coalition of people that resent each other politically. The people that brung Obama is more then far lefteners. Way more. However it is going to be a battle of wills over who gets to influence Obama the most.

    That is why I opined just a couple days ago that Barak Obama is going to be a ping pong ball in the game of power to see which group gets to claim the majority of his attention in the next few months.
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    Sad, sad and funny at the same time. It seems people forget about the Reagan Democrats, the Clinton Republicans (Soccer Moms and all), and Ms. Huffington apparently resents the Republicans that have gone over to support Obama. What's even sadder, is that many Independents and Centrists (rightly) feel disenfranchised in the polarized environment of modern electoral politics. Where does the guy who values gun rights AND free Speech, IS pro-Choice, but doesn't favour expanded entitlements, increased taxes, or increased regulations belong? 'cause it ain't with the Republicans and their Kristchun Co'lishun, and it ain't with the Democrats and their knee-jerk "Legislate, Regulate, and Tax" agenda.
    For decades now, voter turn-outs have been rather lower, cynicism has been rather higher, and much of both can be rightly attributed the radicalization of both parties.

    It gets tiring voting for the candidate least likely to get everything they want.
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    This isn't a race to elect any old non-Republican.
    This isn't a race to elect someone to represent one wing of one party. If it were, Obama wouldn't be the candidate, and most Democrats would vote for someone else, that someone else likely being a Republican.
    Has Huffington noticed that the GOP's candidate isn't Dobbson? They, at least realize that someone so extreme can't be elected, because the country, as a whole, doesn't want someone so extreme. The GOP is being smarter than Huffington this year.

    Huffington lives in a world of those progressives who only know what's wrong. They have no clue about what it takes to make anything right.

    This is like Bill Maher giving campaign advice: good with the punchline, lousy on substance.
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    WOW

    For once I agree with you Runasim.
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    Cannonshop,

    The list of things your ideal candidate, and, by extension, your ideal coutnry AIN'T
    pretty mudh covers everyone and evrything, except you and the equally irresponsible. It negates the basic idea of one nation, because it allows for no diversity,
    You lay claim to all rights, but refuse to talke any responsibility. i.e.,
    "it ain't with the Democrats and their knee-jerk "Legislate, Regulate, and Tax" agenda."
    We are witnessing the results of don't regulate, don't tax and don't legislate even as we speak. You must be thrilled with the resulting current economy !

    You don't like entitlements, but you don't have anything to say about how to deal with the resulting social instability. Maybe we should give guns to the elderly and let them shoot their way our of their difficulties.

    The alternative to taxes to fund what the country needs, for those of us who still want to have one country, is to put everything on a credit card, things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we need to rebuild the infrastructue, from which you will be benefting. I guess it's time to whip out the credit card again,

    I'm looking for a realist as a candidate and am hoping for a realsitic country.
    Rights have to be balanced with responsibilities. One person's rights have to be balanced against the conseuqences tto others by the exercise of those rights.
    I'm not looking for paradise for ME. I'm looking for a fair deal for me AND for everyone else. It is a country for everyone, you know.

    There is such a wide gap between no taxes and too much of taxes, between no regulation and too much regulation. Only a realist can hope to find the workable balance needed. Extremists need not apply. for the job.
    ,
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    Spoken like a true tax and spender.

    But it did reveal the overwhelming underlying anger that the progressives have felt for 7 years.,

    is to put everything on a credit card, things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Yet in Obama's world he is going to raise taxes on the rich and give it back to the not so rich, and then hes going to welfare us back into the poor house.

    The only difference in your scenario Runasim is who gets the benefit of the debt.

    My scenario is how about we balance the budget, pay off the debt, Drill for oil, lower gasoline prices and let the economy take care of itself. Then when we get a healthy economy that is not riddled with debt we can take on the problems of Global warming or health care. Once weve tackled that successfully we can go on to something else.

    It is not the governments business to regulate peoples personal lives. Yet the nanny staters just can't resist the need to tell us what we can and cannot do. I laugh when the GOP talks abou