Here is another danger of thinking there is an all-powerful strategist at the top of your political machine:"Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed Newsweek his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House -- enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists -- to study just how wrong the polls were." Republicans thought that they could defy everything, and that their strategies, tactics and political leaders were all-powerful. They thought that polls didn't matter. They thought that the country's desire for change didn't matter. They thought their political machine could trump it all.

They failed, and badly. They had more money, more voting contacts, and more early voting than ever before. They followed the same strategy of trying to endlessly pump up the base, and to campaign on fear and hatred. And they still lost, badly. The important thing to remember is that they were matched not only by the voters and American democracy, but they were matched by a far more varied opponent running numerous types of campaigns at once. It is better if everyone takes credit not only because everyone deserves credit, but because it is important to maintain strategic debates in our own party. After 1992, the Democratic Party concluded that its strategic debate was settled, and it was triangulation, moderation, mushy middle, low-information voters all the way. When that strategy failed miserably in 1994, we still never bothered to develop a backup plan or a set of competing strategies to employ. It was only when we started deploying a wide variety of strategies in 2006 that we were able to win. Our own competition of ideas allowed many of our better ideas a long-needed shot in prime-time

Paul Kennedy's classic The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, argues that smaller, often less advanced European nations were able to surpass much larger, more advanced Asian nations from the period starting in 1600 to the period ending in 1950 because there were multiple, competing European nations and no one, single poor ruler could set the entire continent backward (and the varying geography helped Western Europe in particular). The problems Republicans now face is that they have one strategy, and one leader. If that strategy or leader fails, they have no backup plan whatsoever. Having multiple, competing ideas on the Democratic side on how to run campaigns is a major intelligence asset that should help us for a couple cycles. If we instead choose to subsume everything into a single leader, a single political genius, and a single electoral strategy, then we will be similarly up a creek should that plan fail, ala 1994, and we would be once again doomed to a long electoral backward slide.

Embrace that we have a big tent and multiple factions in many areas, including electoral strategy. What if the fifty-state strategy failed--would the progressive movement insist on continuing it indefinitely anyway? That strikes me as just as bad an idea as endlessly continuing triangulation after multiple, repeated failures of that strategy. If you don't have multiple plans and multiple fail-safes, one failure could doom you for a long, long time. Given this, pluralism should not just be considered a core value of progressive ideology, but of progressive political strategy as well.

I have been pondering the question from Americablog that Matt posted yesterday: should we stop criticizing Democrats until after the 2006 elections? Here is my response:

• For starters, whatever criticism we make of Democrats, whether before or after any election, it should never replicate Republican criticism of Democrats. That closes Peter's Triangle, and is an obvious no-no.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing voting habits, we were never criticizing all Democrats, or even most Democrats. As I have noted in the past, the vast majority of Democratic votes complicit with bad Republicans legislation come form a small segment of Democrats in Congress. In terms of voting, nearly all of the time we are criticizing that small segment, not the party as a whole. When possible, we run primaries against that small segment. The vast majority of Democrats in Congress are loyal progressives who vote quite well. Our ire is typically directed at a select few.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing the leadership, maybe we should restrain ourselves for a while. Certainly, as Howard Park said in the comments, we should definitely retrain ourselves form Labor Day until Election Day, since that is when the public will really be paying attention. Part of appearing as a credible alternative to Republicans is having credible alternative leadership. If Harry Reid, Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi look very weak in the eyes of the public, our chances of taking back congress and the states will be greatly diminished.
  
  
• When it comes to criticizing electoral strategy, I fail to see why we should ever pull back. What would be the point of restricting our criticism of Democratic electoral strategy until after the 2006 elections? One of the major goals of the netroots is to try alter the course of the Democratic Party and progressive movement in terms of electoral strategy. We have already had some success on that front with the fifty-state strategy. I believe we can have even more success, but not if we stay quiet about strategic matters during the election season itself.

Over at Political Wire, I saw a poll today that crystallizes many of my thoughts on this matter, and points to a segment of the Democratic Party that I cannot imagine I will ever stop criticizing: The poll is of political insiders, both Democratic and Republican, and the second question in the poll really caught my eye:Would congressional Democrats be helped or hurt politically by compromising with Republicans on major legislation this year?

Democrats (67 votes)
Helped: 27%
Hurt 63%
Depends: 10% Most Democratic insiders take the viewpoint that is in obvious agreement with the consensus netroots opposition and electoral strategy. As one insider said in the poll: "Major compromises in the '02 midterms--read Iraq--cost us our credibility in '04. Our Democratic base is tired of compromise in D.C., and in state politics. The Republicans hold the power; let's hold them accountable for their bad policy." That passage could have been taken directly from any number of progressive blogs. Being complicit with Republicans on major pieces of legislation makes it extremely difficult for the country to take you seriously as an alternative when those pieces of legislation lead to their inevitably disastrous results. See the difficulties we had on Iraq in 2004, after we tried to Take it off the table" in 2002. If the netroots are childish, then so is the Democratic insider who gave this quote.

I am glad that this is the majority strategy within the party, and I take that as an encouraging sign that we are moving in the right direction. However, I will not hold my fire against Democrats who hold the opposite view. Take the view of this insider: "The only message the GOP has this year is that the Democrats have nothing to say or are standing in the way of results. If we take that away from them, they are naked. And a few successes in passing legislation in Congress ain't gonna change the overall sour public mood." This is an insider who has clearly learned nothing form our past failures. This is someone who suggests that we tailor our electoral strategy to be primarily reactive against Republican attacks. What else should we do because Republicans will accuse us of not doing it? The Democratic leadership knew in 2002 that Republicans would try to make the election about national security, so they decided to react by taking "national security off the table," and agree to whatever Bush wanted. That worked well. Even beyond that example, the notion that we should base our strategy around Republican attacks accepts the premise of those attacks to begin with, demonstrates that we have no strategy of our own, and suggests that we don't, in fact, actually stand for anything.

This is a minority position in the party, but there is no way I can ever hold my fire against such a position. I will always temper and tailor my criticisms of Democrats in the manners I stated at the start of this post, but the notion that Democrats need to vote with Republicans in Congress in order to win seats form Republicans on Election Day deserves to be harshly criticized year-round. As long as any Democrat in the party leadership, or any elected Democrat in a blue district argues that compromising with Republicans on major pieces of legislation will somehow help our electoral fortunes, they should not expect any love from the netroots.