Democrats Should Target the Limbaugh Vote, and Other Brilliant Ideas
by Chris Bowers, Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 08:30:01 AM EST
Tom Schaller discusses one of my greatest frustrations:Did you hear that Karl Rove is advising Republicans that they need to figure out ways to communicate and connect with secular, professional single women of color living in eastern seaboard cities? Stunning, yes, but let's face it: This wise man knows of what he speaks when it comes to building national party majorities.
OK--you caught me: I'm joking. Obviously, Rove would be laughed out of Washington and his party if he suggested that the key for Republicans to building a lasting, unbreakable majority is to start with a group that is, by every component demographic feature (gender, region, religious, race, urban/suburban), among the least-likely to be conservative or vote Republican.
I offer this little allegory as preface to pondering why some Democrats, most notably Steven Waldman and Amy Sullivan, continue to assert that Democrats must make the equivalently absurd overture--i.e., that Dems must "get right" (so to speak) with evangelicals, who are more likely to be white than not, male than female, rural than urban, and southern more than any other region (including the Midwest). Of course, what happens when self-abnegating Democrats and Democratic-hating media muddleheads hear this advice? Without pausing a moment to think through the logical implications of this advice, or the glaring partisan double standard it implies, in near-unison they respond: "Yeah, that's the ticket!" Internalizing and following the obviously poor election strategy offered up for Democrats by pundits within the established news media is one of the greatest problems we face when trying to win elections. The basic problem is that we are repeatedly told, and repeatedly believe, that in order to win, we must not go after either swing votes or rev up our own base, but instead focus our main strategy on actually trying to win over the Republican base itself. I call this the "Democrats Must Court The Limbaugh Vote" strategy syndrome, both because we tend to follow the election advice given to us by Rush Limbaugh types, and because that advice invariably means that we must target the hard-core Rush Limbaugh audience. We have this bizarre belief that wherever we are getting beat the worst, that is where we must concentrate our resources the most. I have complained about this in the past:
OK--you caught me: I'm joking. Obviously, Rove would be laughed out of Washington and his party if he suggested that the key for Republicans to building a lasting, unbreakable majority is to start with a group that is, by every component demographic feature (gender, region, religious, race, urban/suburban), among the least-likely to be conservative or vote Republican.
I offer this little allegory as preface to pondering why some Democrats, most notably Steven Waldman and Amy Sullivan, continue to assert that Democrats must make the equivalently absurd overture--i.e., that Dems must "get right" (so to speak) with evangelicals, who are more likely to be white than not, male than female, rural than urban, and southern more than any other region (including the Midwest). Of course, what happens when self-abnegating Democrats and Democratic-hating media muddleheads hear this advice? Without pausing a moment to think through the logical implications of this advice, or the glaring partisan double standard it implies, in near-unison they respond: "Yeah, that's the ticket!" Internalizing and following the obviously poor election strategy offered up for Democrats by pundits within the established news media is one of the greatest problems we face when trying to win elections. The basic problem is that we are repeatedly told, and repeatedly believe, that in order to win, we must not go after either swing votes or rev up our own base, but instead focus our main strategy on actually trying to win over the Republican base itself. I call this the "Democrats Must Court The Limbaugh Vote" strategy syndrome, both because we tend to follow the election advice given to us by Rush Limbaugh types, and because that advice invariably means that we must target the hard-core Rush Limbaugh audience. We have this bizarre belief that wherever we are getting beat the worst, that is where we must concentrate our resources the most. I have complained about this in the past:
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