Democrats Afraid of Democracy?

On the 13th, the day Karl Rove had announced his resignation as Chief White House Strategist, Ron Fournier from the AP had written a deeply disturbing article that, as far as I can see, has gotten no feedback from anyone on our side of the blogosphere. At least, if anyone’s addressing it, they’re not getting to the heart of the matter.

The article states that 40 Democratic consultants, party chairmen and so forth are worried that Hillary’s skeletons will come dancing out of the closet and send Republican voters to the polls in droves.

OK, let me switch gears here for a minute and I promise this is all germane to the point that I’ll get around to making:

There’s an old saying in baseball: Games aren’t won; they’re lost. That could apply for all sports. The meaning behind that is simple: Capitalizing on your opponent’s mistakes plays at least a part of a sport as native athletic ability or strategy. And major league managers or NHL, NBA or NFL coaches never go to work hoping and praying that the other team doesn’t show up or that their fans won’t be there to support their home town team. You tune out the jeers and the noise and play the game.

The Boston Red Sox can be used a role model here for Democrats: Where ever they go, their fans are legion. Some follow the team, others are transplanted or converted citizens of Red Sox nation. In cities with bad teams, the stands are often awash with crimson Red Sox jerseys and when a Sox pitcher gets a strikeout or a crucial RBI hit, you could close your eyes and swear you’re sitting in that “lyrical little bandbox”, to quote John Updike, of Fenway Park.

A little under 15 months from Show Time and we’re already fretting that Hillary Clinton will polarize battleground states (such as Indiana) and hurting the campaigns of Democrats who’d be running under her, should she get the party’s nomination. Republicans would come out in droves, the zeitgeist is muttering, and Republicans could get swept into office in a virulent backlash of anti-Hillary votes.

Next thing you know, there’ll be democracy busting out all over our republic and we can’t have that, now can we? Throw in an improbable Al Gore candidacy and you’re talking about a possibly even more polarized set of purple and red states as Gore would be the other major refugee from the Clinton years. However, there are two problems with this doom-n-gloom Democratic scenario:

Number one, Republican voters storming the polls next year is something that, frankly, we can afford to not worry about. Mitt Romney’s popularity contest in Iowa last Saturday didn’t prove his popularity so much as prove the GOP’s unpopularity in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Romney spent $5,000,000 on 14,000 votes, less than half the expected 29,000 and far less than half the 33,000 voter turnout of the last Iowa GOP straw poll.

Secondly, if the national Democratic strategy for victory heavily involves praying that Hillary won’t tempt Republican voters into leaving their homes, then we should all just pack it in and have our names legally changed to Sean fucking Hannity.

Because remember when Sean Hannity got on the radio just before the mid term elections and told Democrats to “stay home on election day”, that our votes didn’t count and how we all laughed and laughed and pointed our fingers at him like Nelson Muntz and ridiculed him for how desperate he’d sounded? Well, 40 Democratic campaign managers, candidates, party chairs and various and sundry other pundits are coming thisclose to saying the same thing less than a year later, even though we have the majority in both chambers of Congress.

Republican voters have every bit as much of a right to vote as Democratic and Independent ones. And if we’ve turned into a party that prays for conservative voters to stay home in order to keep our majority in Congress and win back the White House, then that just points to a fundamental flaw in the national Democratic campaign strategy, one that I suspect isn’t shared by Dr. Howard Dean.

That isn’t winning: That’s capitalizing by default.

Republicans voting for the candidates of their choice is part of what’s known as Democracy. You remember that, don’t you? If they come out and cost Democrats some elections, fine. In a perfect world, Dunkin’ Donuts would deliver, the Three Stooges would’ve played the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion and everyone of voting age in America would be politically active or at least aware.

We used to be that nation, people who made time for town hall meetings (before they became pre-screened mini GOP conventions), a people who used to know who stood on what side of what issues before we began electronically anesthetizing ourselves watching American Idol or Cops.

We and our ancestors helped bring into being brief, shining moments of Democratic leadership such as getting us out of the Great Depression and getting through WW II, the creation of the Peace Corps, the launching of the Apollo space program, the War on Poverty, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

Now, we’re the party that hopes the bad guys stay home on Election Day. Just like Sean Hannity.

Sure, we could field a candidate who’s just as strong as Hillary in the polls, has as much money as her and doesn’t bring out the wingnuts like sugar attracts cockroaches. Don’t be put off by the fact that such a candidate doesn’t exist, yet.

Or… we could let the Republicans have their fun at the polls and still beat them by putting out candidates that actually don’t suck, whose campaigns aren’t run by nervous Nellies who are fearful of a legitimate democratic electoral process.

I keep driving home the point that in both 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush was voted for by 20-25% of the voting age public. There are approximately 101,000,000 registered voters in a nation of roughly 220,000,000 adults. 75-80% of the electorate said through their actions or inactions that they did not want George W. Bush to be their commander in chief. Unfortunately, two thirds of that demographic chose not to say that out loud at the polls.

Think of what we did with just 40% of the vote last November. We took back both houses of Congress and sent the GOP a clear (yet still misunderstood) message that we’re sick of Iraq, we’re sick of Bush and Cheney and we’re sick of you. Think of what we can do with 50%. Or 60%. Or…?