By Dave Anderson:
This is a follow-up on the Altmire wants to lose post from yesterday. His basic argument is that last night would be an indicator that Democrats should further trim their policy sails so as to attract more Republican votes because the Republican base is more energized than the Democratic base. He argues that this will reflect the will of the country better and coincidentally improve the probability of him retaining his seat in 2010.
I disagree with this argument because as we saw in Virginia, when the Democratic headliner is throwing the Democratic base under the policy bus on a weekly basis, the Democratic base rationally decides to not care to vote. This is more true for activists who are campaigns' cheap door-knockers and phone bankers.
My experience as an on the ground activist leads me to ask where would Altmire's door-knockers come from next year if the Democrats fold on healthcare reform of some sort, gay rights, climate change and escalation in Afghanistan? I don't see any activists getting motivated.
Door-knocking and phone-banking is a grind, especially when it is being done in June, July and August which is when the early IDs are needed for a really good micro-targeted GOTV plan. The people who are doing that early work are making a series of calculations. The first is whether or not there is a race that they can impact, next is whether or not they care about the outcome which means are there real and tangible differences between the multiple candidates. After that the activist figures out if there are competing races which pass the first two filters (and there are almost always are as state and local races compete with the federal election activist pool.) And then the who-cares question comes into play --- does devoting X amount of time and energy make sense given all the other life commitments that the activist needs or wants to uphold?
Slamming the base on major policy items is a great way for activists to start answering several of those questions in a negative manner.
As I noted last December when the rumor mill was attempting to clear the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary for Chris Matthews, motivation matters:
I'll have an almost 2 year old by then. Potty training and making
poop jokes will be a whole lot more fun than getting shat upon
politically.
For Altmire at least, poop jokes and potty training my daughter will be far more important than door-knocking for him.
A little historical perspective would help here. In so-called "off-off" election cycles, the winner of the Virginia gubernotorial race has come from the party opposite the President's party in every election since 1977.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't put too much effort in extrapolating what the entire country is going to do in the 2010 midterms from three media-driven horseraces in 2009.
Zach --- I'm responding to Altmire's desire to extrapolate off of three random data points that historically have little meaning. Altmire's political/policy desire is to shit on the policy priorities of the people who make up his unpaid or minimally paid activist pool, and I think this is amazingly dumb and counter-productive from Altmire's perspective if his priority is to be re-elected.
ReplyDeleteI supported and contributed to Altmire in 2006 largely because I wanted Hart gone. I did the same in 2008 because I wanted to make sure Obama had as large a majority as possible to work with in the House. This history shows that I had little enthusiasm for Altmire personally. What little I had, however, is pretty much gone. Like the author, I'm sure I'll be able to find better uses for my time and money next year than in working for a guy who wants to do everything he can think of to garner Republican favor, even if it means undermining important priorities of his own party's base.
ReplyDeleteBesides, what is the point of garnering favor with voters who aren't going to vote for him anyway? Altmier won by getting the Democrats and Independents. Republicans didn't, and still wont vote for him.
ReplyDelete