Is Dean’s 50-state strategy coming together?

July 18, 2006

The simmering debate between [tag]Howard Dean[/tag]’s [tag]DNC[/tag] and [tag]Rahm Emanuel[/tag]’s [tag]DCCC[/tag] over how best to allocate the party’s resources probably won’t end, at the earliest, until Wednesday, Nov. 8 (the day after the midterms). Emanuel wants to focus limited resources on the most competitive races as part of a drive to win back the House this year. Dean wants to spread resources around as part of a [tag]50-state[/tag] [tag]strategy[/tag] that will help the party in the long term. Emanuel thinks Dean is gambling on long-shots in solidly-red states. Dean thinks Emanuel should look beyond one cycle.

Who’s winning? As of now, Dean isn’t yielding to pressure — and there are signs the investments in the states are paying dividends.

[tag]Mississippi[/tag]’s [tag]Democratic Party[/tag] hasn’t trained precinct captains for more than a decade. Until recently, the state party consisted of a single full-time staffer. In 2004, the Democratic National Committee invested so little here that activists shelled out thousands of their own dollars to print up Kerry yard signs. That all changed last summer. […]

The gambit has remade the Mississippi party with four full-time, DNC-paid staffers and a fundraiser. In four months, finance director Wendi Hooks has tripled the number of $1,000-plus donors to 24 and expects to more than double the party’s budget this year, to $400,000. Two field representatives have recruited captains in more than 500 precincts so far, along with volunteers for phone banks and canvassing. “I’ve been trying to contact the party since I moved back here in 1992,” says Harold Terry, 43, a Jackson native who volunteered last week at a phone bank. “Someone finally got back to me three weeks ago.”

The new DNC hires tell similar stories. Rita Royals is a 57-year-old former rape crisis counselor who paid to print her own Kerry signs in 2004. That same year, DeMiktric Biggs, a student at Jackson State University, sent a county-by-county voter analysis to almost everyone on the state Democratic committee–and never got a reply. Now, the party is using his work to plan its ground game.

Anecdotes like these keep coming up. While it may have been easy several months ago to dismiss isolated incidents about red-state Dems who were just happy to get some attention for a change, the broader trend is hard to ignore.

It’s not just Mississippi where Dems have a new-found sense of excitement. Also consider [tag]Arizona[/tag], one of the nation’s fastest-growing states.

In Arizona, Republicans are three seats away from veto proof majorities in the state House and Senate. The state Democratic Party there has used its DNC field organizers to do aggressive outreach to American Indians and Hispanics, particularly during the huge immigrant rights protests earlier this year. “The DNC has enabled us to become part of the fabric of these communities,” says Arizona party chair David Waid. “There used to be this sense of coming around only when we wanted your vote.” […]

In Arizona, Democrats have candidates in every legislative district for the first time in a decade. “Successful candidates for Congress come from winning offices at the county or municipal level,” says Arizona’s Waid. “We build that farm team, and it enhances our chances for taking back [tag]Congress[/tag].”

For that matter, the Boston Globe recently reported similar perspectives from states like New Mexico, West Virginia, and Ohio, all of which backed Bush in 2004, but all of which are showing signs of Democratic life again this year, and are being cultivated for future years. As the Globe noted, “[T]he DNC’s new employees are building voter lists, organizing county-level Democratic caucuses, and installing precinct chairmen in rural portions of the state that have voted overwhelmingly Republican in national campaigns.”

Dean is taking a big gamble, but it’s not as if the strategy from recent years was working. People have been talking about DNC infrastructure for a long time, but Dean is executing a well-crafted strategy. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Dean’s right. Emmanual needs to do his best but he needs to stop complaining about how Dean spends money. The DCCC has it’s own coffers, and they could show some spine and keep their ads up. These guys wilt at the first criticism.

The DNC seems to be doing a better job. Do they take their ads down?

America wants a Democratic party that:
Doesn’t allow the Republican’ts to leave the ‘-ic’ off,
Doesn’t cave to Republican’t pressure on OUR message,
Doesn’t play touch football while the opponents play tackle.

  • I think Dean is right. No wonder the GOP has a lock on so many states, the DNC gave it to them by not even bothering to try and fight. This just shows why the GOP has such low regard for the DNC they were wimps. It is about time someone was thinking strategically over at the DNC. The GOP did not build its machine overnight.

  • I would split the difference between Emanuel and Dean.

    I think the 50 State strategy is a good long term goal. But let’s face it: the Dems are not going to win soon in Utah and Mississippi. We need to win the House NOW, because GOP domination is endangering our country. Taking the long-term strategic view is important but not as critical as winning now.

    For 2006, I would have diverted the funds from those two red states and used them for competitive House races.

  • I’m a big fan of the 50 state strategy, but then again I consider myself a member of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic party. Seriously, I think that this strategy is making it acceptable to admit that you are a Democrat in the red states. I used to work in the defense industry and I used to just keep quiet about my political beliefs because I felt like I was alone. Had I known that there were other lefties (and there probably were), it would have been easier to speak up. If your friends and neighbors are good people and Democrats and not afraid to speak up, then it’s much harder to believe the lies about them that that Rush and O’Liely tell.

  • Rahm and the rest of the Beltway/DNC crowd can go fuck themselves. Didn’t we just get finished talking about how they pulled their ad in the face of rightist bullying? Gutless pieces of shit like these clowns don’t deserve anyone’s support. Go Howard!

  • For the Democrats to take power, they need to split the vote, nationally, ~60-40, instead of the current ~50-50. That means moving 10-15% of voters — “conservatives” all — out of the Republican Party and into the Democratic Party. In other words, the key to power, is building a New Democratic Right.

    If it is going to be useful, that New Democratic Right cannot resemble the racist populists, who supported Woodrow Wilson and FDR, nor can it consist of collaborationist Vichy Democrats like Lieberman. Blue Dog Reagan Democrats and Vichy DLCers need not apply. The New Democratic Right has to be able to channel the resentment, which seethes among the white middle class, and it has to be more hostile to the corrupt liars of the Republicans Party than to the liberals of the Democratic Party.

    The New Democratic Right is the key to overcoming Republican gerrymanders in the House and the anti-urban bias of the Senate. And, it is the key to restoring democratic deliberation in Congress, by creating a power base for honest conservatives, willing to negotiate with liberals over progressive reform.

    If you understand the 50-state strategy as a means to creating a New Democratic Right, and you understand the impossibility of governing without creating a persistent Democratic majority, then I don’t think there is any doubt that the Democrats have to be willing to risk falling short in 2006.

    At best, Rahm is talking about capturing the remaining liberal Republican seats in the Northeast, a task, which may well prove far more difficult than it seems. Liberal northeast Republicans are irrelevant to the Republican majority in Congress, and make themselves useless to the Democratic minority, and so are powerless. But, many are locally quite popular. And, eliminating them from the Republican Party, at this late stage, does not change the basic 50-50 split in the country, even if it gets the Democrats a razon-thin margin in the House.

    The 50-state strategy supports pursuit of the main prize, which can only be achieved with the emergence of a New Democratic Right, able to win House seats in the mountain West and the periphery of the South.

  • Great post, Bruce.

    It would be nice to see Jim Webb and Harold Ford win; they seem more likely to lead a “New Democratic Right” (and there, you could probably leave the “-ic” off; they’re New Democrats, in Webb’s case quite literally) than anyone else out there, perhaps along with some of the red state-Dem governors.

    But I wouldn’t discount the NE Republican die-hards. It’s really the same story as the Democrats in the South; as these guys age and retire or die off, they’re generally not replaceable. Whether or not Chris Shays wins again this year, I very much doubt the next holder of that seat will be a Republican. Same with the RI Senate contest. The sooner we really create a “solid Northeast,” the more margin we have to make forays into what’s currently hostile territory.

    Nobody ever asks whether or not the Republicans are really a national party. Maybe Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign will surface the question, which I think is a valid one.

  • Dean is right on the money with the 50-state plan. It’s fairly obvious now that, in places like Mississippi, the Republikanner beast has had its way only because it has been free to do so. It bullied its way through token resistance, year after year, and cycle after cycle. But the bully cannot win, if it is countered by force that exceeds its own force….

  • Barry says
    “Taking the long-term strategic view is important but not as critical as winning now.”

    The problem is this will be true in every election cycle. So unless you are willing to risk an election cycle or two, you will never make the long-term strategic moves needed to counter the Rethugs. And Dems will be a permanent minority.

  • When Dems don’t contest any Republican states, Republicans have more money to spend to against Dems in toss-up states and solid blue states too.

    50 state strategy is surely smarter than the current plan.

    The current plan seems to assume that Dems have what they have and only need spend on areas that they think they can get. It’s just that the potential margin in that strategy is steadily shrinking.

    I like the farm team analogy. Dems spend most of their money on trades for veteran pitchers. Not being the Yankees, they have little money left afterwards for anything else. Some veterans stumble and their utility is limited to the race they are running in. Meanwhile, without a farm team, less talent is available from the minors. Worse still, without that farm team, all the talent is coming from elsewhere. Nobody knows how the organization works, has any loyalty to it or knows its message.

    The sad thing is that the congressional wing of the party seems to act like if they can just eek out a 1-seat victory margin, that America will remember that its loyalty and keep electing Democratic majorities in Congress like they did in the good old days. It’s not gonna happen that way.

    Their must be long term and short term plans. However, the short term plans shouldn’t be taking the place of long term plans –the latter is always necessary.

  • With an unpopular war, an unpopular president, an unpopular Republican-led Congress and the Middle East, high gas prices a nasty heat wave and other bad news on the way Dean is doing absolutely the right thing. Quit discounting the mood of the electorate and saying “that’s not my hill to die on.” The Dems in Washington have been enablers for Bush by tolerating so much crap and rolling over when there’s a fight to be had. If your goal is to try not to lose, you’ll never win. Rahn doesn’t get that.

  • I vote for Dean, too. I respect Rahm Emanuel’s sincerity but his is a failed strategy and we have to break out of the same-old-same-old box if we’re going to save ourselves from the darkness that has swept the world under the Bush/Cheney/Rove cabal.

    The thing to remember is that given the hideous conditions outlined by petorado in #13, we have to keep reminding ourselves that we can win this. We just have to fight hard on a nationwide scale, as Dean saw long ago. The people are ready for change, all they need is real leadership to make it happen.

    Go, Dean!

  • “Rahm and the rest of the Beltway/DNC crowd can go fuck themselves. Didn’t we just get finished talking about how they pulled their ad in the face of rightist bullying? Gutless pieces of shit like these clowns don’t deserve anyone’s support. Go Howard!” – Farinata X

    I’m with you, Farinata X (#6). Emphatically. If there ever was a time when the 50-state strategy will work, now is that time. Republicans everywhere are in dismay over the path taken by the Bush Crime Family and the Regal Moron. If we don’t open our doors to them (and that doesn’t mean becoming GOP or Taliban “Lite”), we ought to have our heads examined. Americans — not just “blue staters” — tend to favor the underdog; they’re getting bored with the homogeneous MSM; and they’re fed up with squandering resources in Bush’s bankrupting quagmire (not to mention future adventures in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, North Korea) and with his failure after Katrina. They see Bush for what he is: an AWOL, camo-uniformed, empty codpiece who has the hollow audacity to proclaim “I’m the decider!” Now is precisely the time to strike with full force, everywhere, all 50 states.

  • We need to win the House NOW, because GOP domination is endangering our country. Taking the long-term strategic view is important but not as critical as winning now.

    For 2006, I would have diverted the funds from those two red states and used them for competitive House races.

    Comment by Barry — 7/18/2006 @ 11:16 am

    It took decades for the Republicans to build their machine to deliver the electorate. It will take about half as long for the Democrats, because the template is already made, and the Republicans can’t effectively lead. The DNC 50-state strategy that Dean has put in motion will take two, perhaps three cycles to bear real results. Looking for the DNC to make a big splash in ’06, or even 08, is in my opinion misguided. If Dems are really, really lucky, they may achieve the slimmest of majorities in ’06. Whether Dems take one house, both houses or no house in November is almost irrelevant as long Chimpy McFlightSuit and his band of unitary executives are running things into the ground. They’ve given the CIA, the DoJ, the evangelicals and most of the world the finger already – do you really believe a Congressional subpeona will keep Karl or Dick or Chimpy himself up at night? Hardly.

    DCCC/DSCC have their own fundraising arms, and can do pretty much as they please. Judging from what I’ve seen from Rahm, he and his beltway brigade can go fornicate themselves – the pleas for money from that quarter go in the trash, I give my donations directly to candidates. Howard Dean is saving all of our backsides by banking on the future. This is how the Republicans got into, and have managed to stay, in power.

    ’06 will change very little.

    -GFO

  • Democrats can’t win in Mississippi or Utah? Half of Mississippi’s delegation to the House is Democratic, and Rep. Matheson of Utah is a Democrat. Not the most liberal of Democrats perhaps but anyone voting Pelosi for Speaker of the House instead of Hastert is our friend. How much easier is it for them to stay in office and maintain the dialogue with a strong state party behind them?

  • Good for Dean. A 50-state strategy is the right long-term strategy and very possibly the right short-term one, as well. There are many frustrated angry people out there — the party can put them to work, now, while they care this much. The conservatives put a lot of time into creating a solid infrastructure — it’s about time we did the same.

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