A Look Into PA-08
by Chris Bowers, Mon Sep 26, 2005 at 06:55:59 PM EST
I see from PAProgressive diary that
the Patrick Murphy campaign has just conducted their benchmark poll in PA-08. It has some bright points to it. For starters, Democrats leads the generic ballot test there by four points (40-36), whereas in last year's benchmark poll by the Schrader campaign,
the generic ballot lead was only one point (42-41). Further, with extremely low name ID, Murphy starts within 11 points of Fitzpatrick (46-35), which is somewhat closer than where Schrader started (
down 16 points, 46-30). Overall, that could mean a slight bump of three or four points for the next Democratic nominee in the district, unless the difference is just statistical noise. Of course, since the district has been trending blue for a while now, I don't think that it is entirely statistical noise. This district is definitely winnable.
However, I do want to emphasize something that worries me greatly about the benchmark poll. Like the one conducted last year, again I see what strikes me as a tremendous over-emphasis on trying to win the campaign on reproductive rights. Fitzpatrick does indeed have a true wingnut position in this area that is out of step with the district, but that does not mean that it is a winning issue for the campaign. Last year, almost certainly as a reaction to the numbers in the benchmark poll, the DCCC sent out several mailers attacking Fitzpatrick for these stances. The problem was that they sent them pretty much everywhere in the district, including the heavily Catholic areas of the district that are definitely not pro-choice. So, in some parts of the district, money was spent by Democrats and Democratic campaign committees in order to actually advertise on behalf of Fitzpatrick. With this attention to detail, it is no shock that we end up losing districts where we could win.
This isn't even to mention the fact that this is a congressional campaign, not a Senatorial, Gubernatorial, or Presidential campaign. With no control over the judiciary or local laws, the House actually has relatively little impact on reproductive rights. Thus, making reproductive rights the focus of a House campaign makes about as much sense as running for mayor of Philadelphia on a "Bring the Troops Home Now" platform. It is not a high priority in this particular election.
What is a high priority for voters in PA-08 is energy and environmental policy. This is Michael Fitzpatrick's big selling point, and apart from $2.5M in slime ads accusing Ginny of raping young girls in Afghanistan, this is what he based his campaign on in 2004. It is the only issue that Fitzpatrick uses to emphasize his independence from Tom DeLay and the wingnut majority within the Republican Party, a majority from which many Bucks county Democrats cannot run away from fast enough. One of the main keys to winning this campaign is going to be to take this strength away from him.
Now, Fitzpatrick is going to point out that he voted against the Energy Bill, thus trying to make him look both independent and a defender of the environment. However, he was on the wrong side of many big amendments to the Energy Bill, and hammering that home will get you a lot further than pointing out that he is on the wrong side of a political issue over which his elected office has little power to legislate. For example:
- Fitzpatrick voted against punishing energy companies who defraud the public by overcharging for electricity and gas (Dingel Amendment);
- he voted against granting local authorities control over where new natural gas facilities are located (Castle Amendment);
- he voted against punishing polluters for dumping on minority and low-income neighborhoods (Hastings Amendment);
- he voted against greater investment in cleaner energy (Bishop Amendment);
- he voted against including alternative fuels in our strategic energy reserve (Kaptur Amendment).
This really isn't a surprise. The entire reason he did not win the endorsement of any environmental groups last time around was because he did not answer all of the questions on their application sheets. Had he done so, he would have actually been required to make many of his anti-environmental views known to the public. Instead, we had to wait until he entered Congress and started voting against the environment for everyone to know what his true positions were. Now we all know that Mike Fitzpatrick is clearly not a friend of the environment. Hammer that. Repeat that. Put that in your stump speech. Stick in on your direct mail and put it in your TV spots. Take that away from him, and not only does he seem like a fraud, he also loses any sense of independence from the wingnut Congress. With Fitzpatrick on the wrong side of the issue that brought him into office in 2004, PA-08 becomes extremely vulnerable.
My favorite in this race may not be around anymore, but to see another Democratic candidate in that district walking down the same failed path that was taken in 2004 is extremely worrying. If you have actually spent time in that district watching its politics, you can learn a lot more about it than any cookie-cutter benchmark poll can ever tell you. Emphasize the issues that are relevant to the office you are competing for, and that really matter to the people who live in that district.
And one more thing. If you are going to support the war as a Democrat, please stop pandering to anti-war audiences with lines about faulty armor, poor planning, and firehouses opening in Baghdad but closing in America. As I have said in the past, that position is reflective of almost no one's actually position on Iraq:
Since 2002, there has been few things more frustrating and empty sounding than Democrats who favored the war going on about how the war was a good idea and we should continue it, but Bush conducted the war badly because he didn't bring in our allies, because our humvees don't have enough armor, because the intelligence was bad, or because firehouses are opening in Baghdad while they are closing in America. Have such statements ever influenced anyone when someone who supports the war speaks them? Do such statements represent anyone? Consistently, according the trend-lines in the CBS poll currently up at the top of
the Iraq section of polling report, only around 5-10% of the population thinks the war was a good idea but disapproves of Bush's handling of the war.
That sort of lame "I support the war but not the way it was conducted" stuff barely worked for anti-war Kerry voters in 2004, and it certainly isn't going to work for anti-war voters in 2006. By that point, the debate will have shifted entirely away from poor planning, bad intelligence, half-hearted diplomacy and the like, and it will instead be focused squarely on withdrawal. If you support the war, just say so, and stop coming up with any way you can think of to tell anti-war audiences otherwise. At least voters will respect you for standing up for what you believe in, rather than just trying to tell people what they want to hear.
Tags: House 2006 (all tags)
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