Chris Bowers thinks the changes taking place under Tim Kaine's DNC mean the party is going to be concentrating on re-electing the President instead of building the broader party for the next four years:

In short, the DNC will be moving away from the long-term, decentralized, fifty-state strategy of Howard Dean's tenure, and toward serving as a short-term, centralized re-election effort for President Obama in 2012.  It will continue the move away from paid media ushered in by Howard Dean, maintain or increase the amount of resource expenditures in most states, and the number of states it targets will be a broader effort than the narrow focus we saw in 2001-2004 (but more narrow than 2005-2008). However, it will return to the traditional role of the DNC as a supplement for the sitting President's re-election campaign, rather than as the long-term, localized institution building operation that is was from 2005-2008.

I don't disagree, but there may also be another, concurrent interpretation for the changes we're seeing. Changes like increased centralization and more focus on swing states might also be the Democratic Party shifting to defense for the 2010 midterm elections.

The last few Democratic Presidents have had a tough time during their first midterm election. Clinton lost Congress, and Carter also suffered. So maybe the DNC's expected focus on swing states as opposed to expanding the map Dean-style is a strategic shift to maintain the Democrats' Congressional margins through Obama's first term.

If true, this strategy makes a certain kind of sense. Different strategies are appropriate for different times. As a party out of power in 2004 and desperately searching for new constituencies and messages, Dean's 50 state strategy fit the times perfectly. By competing in all 50 states, Democrats were able to expand the map, raise their profile, and reach out to voters who hadn't heard from the Democratic party in decades. There's no doubt that Dean's strategy helped flip Congress in 2006 and propelled Obama to the Presidency in 2008.

Now, as the party moves from offensive to defensive mode, the new DNC strategy is more in line with the political climate.

However, looking at this another way, the strategy doesn't quite add up. Isn't the best defense a good offense? The Democratic Party arguably has more money and resources than ever, so some energy can be spent on map-expanding activities, even if more money is pumped into swing states. Important new constituencies like the Western states and Latino voters are not yet yellow-dog Democrats. And Obama needs to hold onto and expand the broad constituency that handed him the Presidency, and isolate the Republican politicians and their supporters that will pose a threat Congressionally in 2010 and Presidentially in 2012.

There are a myriad of reasons to stay on offense. I think the Democratic party has the resources to keep up the pressure and defend its gains. Let's hope Tim Kaine's stated devotion to the 50 state strategy is more than just words.

There's more...

Yesterday, Tim Kaine was officially elected DNC Chair. During his acceptance speech, Kaine had much praise for his much loved predecessor as well as some reassuring words about the 50 state strategy.

As I posted in my liveblog yesterday, this is what appeared in Kaine's remarks as prepared for delivery:

There's no question it'll be hard to match Howard Dean's record as chairman of this party. His 50-state strategy was simple and powerful. The Obama campaign adopted it and the results speak for themselves.

The basic point-and the principle I'll carry with me as DNC Chair-is that everybody matters...

...You don't have to be a big donor for your donation to matter.

...You don't have to be an expert for your idea to matter.

...You don't have to be a full-time campaign worker for your effort to matter.

I will be true to that strategy-every state, every community, every person matters.

Together, we'll do some new things-because we can never rest on what worked yesterday. But we will never again as a party write off states or regions or people.

Kaine added a line that was not in the prepared remarks.

The 50 state strategy is now and forever what Democrats do.

He's clearly feeling pressure from the netroots but even more important to Kaine, as he spoke to that room yesterday, is the pressure he's feeling from state party chairs who are seeing their funding cut and fear Kaine will not be the second coming of Dean.

At a press avail after the meeting, Kaine was asked about the concern that state party officials were expressing. Kaine offered no specifics of how the 50 state strategy would be implemented under his stewardship but again offered reassurance.

We're going to play strong in all 50 states. We're going to have an intense strategic plan but exactly how we make it work in each state still needs to be assessed.

He said details would be coming out over the next couple of months.

Kaine is saying all the right things. We need to keep the pressure on to make sure he does as he says he will do.

There's more...

Cross-posted from Future Majority.

Via Marc Ambinder, I found this memo from Cornell Belcher - pollster for the Obama campaign and the DNC - to Howard Dean.  The memo describes the arc of Dean's tenure as Chairman of the DNC, noting how the political landscape has changed, how the Democrats' new "pluralist majority" arose, and what the DNC must do in the coming years to solidify those gains.  

Belcher identifies three main trends behind the Democrats rise to power in 2006 and 2008:

• Democrats eroded the Republican brand on key issues (culture of corruption).  This was especially potent in 2006.


• Democrats competed more broadly and successfully in moderate and Republican areas - aka the 50 State Strategy.


• Democrats performed better among a range of demographic groups, notably in communities of color and among youth.

There's more...

cross posted on DKos:

There is an interesting diary on the rec list right now, posing the question, "what should be the future of DKos?" I think their take is interesting, and I support it, but I also wanted to suggest a different variety of change - specifically, what if DKos and the netroots in general were to link up with like-minded communities, and create a different arm of the website devoted to political organization?

In Brief:
-use DKos as a hub for a political organization in parallel with Obama's, including fundraising, targeted advertising, targeting crappy democrats in primaries, voter outreach and registration, policy creation
-hire the people laid off by the abandonment of the 50 state strategy, to coordinate a national grassroots power base (they know how to do this, and they are not even that expensive!!)
-have a public discussion about which Democrats we are going to scalp (STENY HOYER PLS)
-build a decentralized grassroots political organization which answers to the grassroots and pursues goals decided upon by the grassroots.

In other words: BUILD PROGRESSIVE MUSCLE. More below.

I think that the unnamed "Democrat" who claimed that we have no pull on the hill because we have no scalps in our pocket hit the nail on the head. Tragically, this is how the idiots on the hill think, and because we (I would hope) are not quite as brain-dead, we assume that grassroots organization and enthusiasm for the party, coupled with demonstrably good ideas would be enough to convince our "representatives" (I prefer to think of them as leeches). Not so. Solution?

Well, lets take a page from Obama's book. After all, he went up against those same people, and although he is now doing a balancing act which I believe is misguided, he DID beat them, and he did it by organizing. Given that DKos and related communities (OpenLeft, Thinkprogress, Mydd) are among the most politically engaged in the country, it seems like it shouldn't be all that difficult to turn these fundamentally news-based sites into hubs for a larger, **grassroots controlled** political power base, that acts on the interests of the grassroots.

We have 2 years to put this together, if we so choose, and I think it would be EASY. The 50 state people are looking for work, their work is not that expensive, and we are quite capable of raising the necessary amounts of money. Furthermore, we could have a public discussion about which 2-3 shitty democrats we want to defeat in a primary in the Senate and in the House (2-3 in EACH, and I think Steny Hoyer is a lock for target #1).

Also, a little bit of bloodletting on an off year would be mostly harmless, as it would not damage us in a presidential election. We have a wave of political engagement post-Obama, and all we have to do is channel it. Experienced hands are available and out of work, and the fundraising capacity is there. Why can't we do this? I see no reason.

There's more...

Clearly what we're seeing with the new electoral map is a repudiation of the received wisdom that certain states simply don't matter anymore. Case in point, in the south, Obama's victory in Florida secured his win - and gains in Colorado, and Virginia helped his campaign to turn a corner.

So, the 50 state strategy worked. Dean was right.

Whats interesting is not whether it worked, given that there was 600 Million dollars from the largest donor base in the history of American politics - fed into the system. Instead, I would argue - why.

America is no longer a collection of Red and Blue states.  Thats what Obama said. But there's more. We are also a country that utilizes the Internet to help guide our voting decisions.

Think for a second , how the internet so easily traverses borders. If we write a good post here at MyDD, it could be read in restrictive areas of Communist Nations, argued about by someone in North Korea, with comments from London, Germany and Australia to follow.

Why not, the 50 states? Here in Atlanta, we see alot of people from Florida flying through to their destination. Georgia does alot of business with Florida.  

My point is that the United States, is now like the Internet.  Although different states follow different ideas, a bit like different websites focus on different things - the idea of a "blogosphere" where the facts are ferreted out and subjected to fact-check and scrutiny - has caught on in a big way. Just as inter-state voting patterns - such as Colorado, and New Mexico- can affect even places like Arizona (which ultimately went to McCain, no surprise - but by how much - this was the Senators +home state+ no less). Every campaign here on out is an internet campaign, every voter an internet voter, and every presidential race, a 50 state strategy.

What do you think?

There's more...