We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own." Who's right? Well since 1961, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our economy produced 66 million private sector jobs. What's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million! --Bill Clinton in Charlotte
I want the Democrats to win, not because I think the national party has the best interests of the country in mind, but because I think the Republicans are as a group irresponsible at best, and crazy at worst. While I think Bill Clinton is loathesome on so many levels, I also think he is one of the best political communicators ever. While Obama is no Clinton, he doesn't have to be. Romney makes him good enough.
I assume that the Dems will win this one because with Romney candidacy the GOP seems to be mailing it in. They'll concede this one to Obama, keep their House majority, obstruct for the next four years, and then get the far more appealing Chris Christie or Jeb Bush to run and probably win. While I won't be spending much time watching the cable campaign hype, I'll be following the presidential campaigns as most Americans will be. My interest lies primarily in parsing the respective advantages and disadvantages of each party in the long and short runs:
So here's my assessment of the way I think this will play out:
The Republicans' Advantages--First, the traditionalist values/free-market/small government narrative resonates with a lot of Main Street Americans. There is a very strong tribal story about being a "real American" that appeals especially to American white Christian males, who feel they are an endangered species.
The GOP has captured this fear, and it has given an adrenalized quality to the base, which believes it's cornered and in a fight for its tribal survival. The Republican base is far more energized and committed than the more diffuse Democrat base. But while cosmopolitan Liberal types dismiss at these people as fanatics, there are a lot of moderates, especialy among ethnic Catholics and blue collars, who feel more at home in the GOP traditional-values ethos than they do in the "anything-goes" ethos that seems to define the Dems. They lean GOP unless there is a compelling reason not to.
Second, the GOP has access to enormous amounts of money for messaging, and Republicans are very skillful, effective propagandists. They find ways to legitimize crazy ideas and the crazy people who hold them, as was exemplified in the Birther nonsense. They unselfconsciously profess that they won't let their "campaign be dictated by fact checkers".
Republicans don't believe their facts free stories are lying. They admit that they might be stretching the facts or exaggerating to dramatize a larger truth they sincerely believe to be the real story. The facts are incidental to the bigger truth they are trying to tell, and the narrative works or seems "truthy", to use Colbert's word, because it fits with stereotypes about Republicans and Democrats that pre-exist in the mind of those who aren't paying a lot of attention. They are, therefore, given far more MSM credibility than they deserve, and they get away with propagandistic distortions that forty years ago would have been dismissed for the absuridities that they are. This is a tremendous advantage.
Third, the economy is still weak and fragile; lots of people are hurting, and that's always an advantage for the challenger. There are positive signs, but hardly anyone is feeling confident and optimistic, unless they're in the 1%. The GOP owns the populist narrative through its identification with the Tea Party. It has done a good job of making the case that the Dems are in bed with Wall Street, and this aids them in the promotion of their Main Street resentment of eastern financial elites, whom the traditionalist narrative has always held in contempt.
The Republicans' Disadvantages--First, their candidate is a weak, clumsy, panderer whom the adrenalized base does not like or trust. And because he is forced to continuously shore up his base, he has a hard time reaching out toward the middle, which he must do if he has any chance of winning. Yesterday's clumsy statements about Obama's handling of the attack on the Libyan embassy illustrate his dilemma and disclose his campaign's desperation. This plays to the base, but alienates those in the middle.
The Democrats' Advantages--First, they have the more appealing candidate. If the goal is to capture the rather small segment of undecideds, this alone might be enough to give him the 52 to 53% that, barring the unforeseen, I think he'll probably get.
Second, the convention last week shows that the Dems understand their advantages in winning the middle, and are doing what they can to reinforce that advantage.
Most of the Democrats' speakers all week were values speakers, trying to define how Democrats' values align with the values of most Americans. The rhetorical objective was to win over the ambivalent middle. This is not easy, because selling a pluralistic values, or big-tent ethos, does not have the visceral appeal that the traditional values ethos has for the GOP. It is rather abstract and hard to grasp, except if you already consider yourself a pluralist. So the Dems' talk about tolerance and the big tent, and they hope that there are enough voters, especially young voters, who work with, go to school with, or are neighbors with Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Muslims and other "non-traditional" Americans. I thought the convention was very effective in executing this messaging strategy.
Michelle Obama's speech was particularly good a merging her family's story with the larger traditionalist "American Dream" story. Her rhetorical objective was to communicate to the ambivalent people in the middle: "Hey, I'm just like you. My values are your values." It was pretty effective.
Bill Clinton's speech was masterful for its balance of values and facts. See the quote above. It hit with an ethos left jab, and then followed with a logos right roundhouse.
President Obama's speech seemed to have the most modest objectives, which were primarily to lower expectations: "I'm the president. Stick with me; I inherited a mess, and I generally have things moving in the right direction." This is a message that is designed primarily to appeal to the middle and to remind people further to the left, who think in some respects he did make things worse, that "Even if you're not crazy about me, I did some good things in very difficult circumstances. Do you think you could have done better?"
The Democrats' Disadvantages: The Democrats as a party are like the Whigs of the late 1840s/early 1850s. They have lost their compass. Apart from their politically correct appeals for tolerance and the big tent, they don't represent the values and real concerns of ordinary Americans. They pander to Wall Street. They are on the wrong side of education reform. They have not resisted the post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties and the growth of the surveillance state. They come off as feckless and weak. They can't hold a house majority, and if they win the white house, they will get little done in the next four years, and they will be ripe for an ass-kicking in 2016.