When You Don’t Deliver for Your Base, Your Base Stays Home.
Exit polls suggest that voter turnout tonight was low among people under the age of 30, as well as minority voters — i.e., the people who gave the president his margin of victory in 2008. Some of that is just inevitable — college kids are just not going to vote at the same rate as 60-year-old Glenn Beck watching couch potatoes in a non-presidential election, no matter who’s on the ballot. But it would help if Obama and the Democrats would give young voters and the rest of the party’s base something to get excited about; so far the White House’s brand of incrementalism and its tail-chasing bogus pursuit of bipartisanism is simply not going to cut it.
Bunch nails it. Even with majorities that have only grown since 2006, the President and the Democratic Party has not only failed to deliver on its major campaign promises and party platforms, they have done so in a way that has angered, and worse, demoralized, the very people they spent the past couple of years cultivating. This Virginia union leader echoes Bunch, in spades.
“Delivering to the base” is something that the Democrats don’t seem to have understood in a long time. They act as if they think lip service alone is enough, a behavior that probably originally stemmed from the country’s shift to the right during the Reagan years and metastasized into full-scale collusion during the Clinton and Bush years. And while lip service was enough when the Democrats were in the minority, screaming “Just wait ’til next year!” like Charlie Brown at the end of another losing baseball season, it’s not credible after 3 years in the majority, and certainly not when we have the White House too.
Say what you will about the Republicans, as the majority party, they were DOERS. Of course, everything they did was bad, but that’s beside the point for now. You want an irresponsible tax cut? The GOP could do that for you. You want a war or two? No problem. You want to dismantle America’s social programs? You want to drown a major American city? Sure, the GOP can help. And that says nothing about setting up a massive surveillance state, deporting immigrants, and making sure kids get sick and die. The GOP did all of that, and they did it for the base of idiots they cultivated and venerated. In fact, the GOP’s success at doing things that make stupid people happy is pretty much what got them in trouble with the teabag Frankenstein they’ve created. Their base got so used to getting whatever they wanted, that their demands got more and more insane, because they don’t actually understand what government is or how it works.
I can tell you that with no small measure of authority because I know teabaggers. One of them was recently emailing me complaining that Obama won’t quash Attorney General Holder’s inquiry into torture. when I explained to him that Obama doesn’t have that power, and furthermore SHOULDN’T have that power, he refused to believe me. In fact, a lot of teabagger frustration with the GOP is that they want things done that simply can’t be accomplished in the US without tearing up the Constitution and establishing an outright dictatorship.
Now compare this record of DOING THINGS with the Democrats. The reluctance of so many Democrats to vote for health care reform has been obvious since day one, even though the party platform is clear: “Democrats are united around a commitment that every American man, woman, and child be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive healthcare”
It’s all talk though, as we see people like Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Joe (not really a Democrat) Lieberman, Anna Eshoo, and dozens of others doing whatever they can to protect the interests of corporations, some going to the extent of promising to oppose a bill with a public option. For that matter, even the public option itself reflects bad faith: talk to ANYONE who works with the sick, the poor, the insured, and the uninsured and they will tell you what we need is universal health care. But there are the Democrats, posing the biggest obstacle to their own bill. It’s the one they’ve talked about for 50 freakin’ years, but taking action? Whoa there, cowboy.
And so, after 3 years with majorities in the House and Senate, and a year after a historic election, the Democrats STILL don’t understand that talking isn’t doing. The strategy for 2010? “Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association… advised that candidates talk about jobs, the party’s ability to govern and local issues.
Let me tell you this: people didn’t come out because the Democrats didn’t TALK enough. They stayed home because Democrats didn’t DO enough: the health care bill is way past deadline, and may get pushed to next year. Wall Street was bailed out, but ordinary people got nothing. The credit card bill of rights was watered down. The administration didn’t deliver for gay people and their allies, but Obama sure TALKS a good game. The same can be said of civil liberties: “Obama’s speech this morning, like most Obama speeches, made pretty points in rhetorically effective ways about the Constitution, our values, transparency, oversight, the state secrets privilege, and the rule of law. But his actions, in many critical cases, have repeatedly run afoul of those words.”
So what it boils down to is you have to deliver for the base, especially in off-year elections. This energizes and excites them, and motivates them to VOTE for you.
This is a lesson I do not expect the Democrats to grasp.
