Democrats running as Republican

Dems Seek the House by Running for Mayor

Unlike in 2006, the party tells candidates to come up with their own message.

By Ted Rall
http://luxlibertas.com/dems-seek-the-house-by-running-for-mayor/
August 23, 2018

The 1994 Contract with America revolutionized congressional midterm elections. A potent conservative message nationalized campaigns between local incumbents and challengers. Republicans took the House and held it for 12 years—until Democrats did something similar in 2006.

Democrats would probably take the House if the midterm elections were today. Historically, however, Democratic leads tend to shrink as November draws closer. And this time the party is taking the opposite approach. It’s advised candidates to come up with their own message—“like you’re running for mayor,” in the words of Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois.

The Contract with America was specific. It promised a floor vote on eight internal reforms and 10 bills. The Democrats’ 2018 equivalent, blandly called “For the People,” offers what the New York Times calls “a relatively anodyne agenda—lowering health care and prescription drug costs, increasing worker pay, cleaning up corruption.” Absent are issues that captivate the progressive base—abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, impeaching President Trump, “Medicare for all” and even abortion.

Could the party leadership’s memory be dimming? National messaging was key to the Democrats’ 2006 sweep—specifically, the slogan “Rubber-Stamp Congress.” In a 2005 memo, Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, called the rubber-stamp message “a strategic lynch pin [sic] in our goal to nationalize the elections.”

Three years after the invasion of Iraq, the war had become so unpopular that a senator from Illinois was making a name for himself by calling it “dumb.” Five years after 9/11 the glow of the global war against terror had faded. The administration botched the response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush fatigue had set in.

Democrats nationalized the 2006 midterms around a simple message: America needs checks and balances. “From all we know from the exit and opinion polls, it is safe to conclude that far from being about social values, or other broad ideological issues, this year’s midterm elections were a referendum on Bush and GOP control of Congress, a judgment about performance, not ideology,” the Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut concluded at the time.

So why have national Dems denationalized this year’s midterms? Because they’re still riven by intramural conflict. The progressive Bernie Sanders wing is faster-growing and more energetic, but the corporatist Hillary Clinton elites are still in charge of the Democratic National Committee. So they’ve put their hands up, walked away, and decided to hope that Tip O’Neill was right when he observed that “all politics is local”—never mind that he was wrong in 1994 and 2006.

The Democratic centrists, led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, are going with what they believe to be the lesser of evils: bland and vague over exciting and specific. In the age of Donald Trump —who is nothing if not exciting—playing it safe is a gamble.