Kevin Phillips: How Kerry can win

[glitch]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20040802&s=phillips
Kevin Phillips: 'How Kerry can win'

John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican "unbase"--the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or why it has beaten the Democrats most of the time since 1968. Nor do most understand the convoluted but related role of Bill Clinton in aborting what could have been a 1992-2004 (or 2008) mini-cycle of Democratic White House dominance and in paving the way for George W.

Elements of this shortsightedness are visible in both the party and the Kerry campaign. While attempts to harness "Anybody but Bush" psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform.

...

To win this election decisively, John Kerry is going to have to feel the same outrage that Howard Dean felt, and he's going to have to express some of it with the same merciless candor that the Republican dissidents have employed against two generations of Bushes. In today's circumstances of a nation on the wrong track, most swing voters--especially wavering GOP men who grew up on John Wayne movies--will not be content with pablum. The Edwards selection seemed assertive, but if Kerry reverts to equivocation, he could face the ultimate epitaph on a political tombstone: Here lies John Kerry, the first Democratic nominee to lose to a Bush President who'd already dropped fifty points in job approval and earned the snickers of half the world.

[jean]

1. No one nails it like Kevin Phillips - love this paragraph - -

'However, let it pass for the moment that Bush was put in office only by a 5-to-4 decision of the Supreme Court, hijacked the Democrats' mini-cycle, fought and botched the first father-and-son war in US annals and convinced 55-60 percent of Americans that the nation is on the wrong course. There is a more stark yardstick that even cautious Democrats should understand: In 1991-92, George H.W. Bush, prior to his defeat, fell from a record high job-approval rating of 90 percent after the Gulf War to a low 30s summer bottom before the election. His son, who hit the low 90s right after 9/11, by early June had fallen to 42-43 percent, another fifty-point decline. No elected President has ever done this; the Bushes have done it twice. Maybe it's the gene pool.'

[Demeter]

2. So Sorry, Kerry: This Nation NEEDS Progress Social Reform Badly

So you are going to have to get off that fence and become a strong leader for America. Just as Howard Dean promised to do.

What I would do (If I were campaign manager):

I would take the convention in Boston as a chance to remind everyone about how and why America came to be; who our Founding Fathers and Mothers were, why Religions and the State were to be kept entirely separate, maybe even screen the fantastic and authentic movie 1776. A basic history lesson for the unschooled, in other words.

Then I would move to the basic economics lesson: how democracy cannot exist in an oligarchy, that the US Constitution was set up to prevent the formation of hereditary power and the income tax was set up to prevent hereditary wealth; how there is no middle class if there is unceasing accumulation of wealth and power. Another bit of history would be necessary here, including the Muckrakers, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Then I would move into current events: start at Nixon and Vietnam and Watergate, Carter, Reagan, Iran hostages and Iran/Contra, designer wars in South and Central America, Desert Storm and its lies and serious health effects, the Gingrich/Limbaugh/PNAC progression, the Clinton Enlightenment, and Bush II (the destroyer)

Finally, I would talk about turning America around, bringing it back to first principles; not the "Federalist" crap that Scalia pushes, but the real thing. And then I would call for a march on the seats of government to take the country back.

Leave out any of these steps at your peril! This is the foundation upon which you can build. Your personality will not win any election: your vision will.

[KoKo]

4. Excellent statement Demeter. If I wasn't so worried about his campaign

managers I think that would be the statement that would win everyone over. Why our party refuses to go against "Big Business" is still the puzzle. But it seems to still be a "no,no." We have a great history and as Philip's mentions we've worked with GOP reformers in the past.

If Kerry doesn't do this, I fear we will have such a close election that
the Bush Crime Family will have no problem squeeking another winner.

Plus those of us on the Left have felt we were "hung out to dry." Forced to look at a candidate who seems to support Bush's every policy. Although much is "media spin" on what Kerry says, the fact is he doesn't refute it in a way that we on the Left can take any confidence that he wont leave in place many of Bush's reforms which have been to allow a Monarchy, while removing some of the most agreggious. If Kerry does get into office he will be handed a government which now knows it can stonewall and claim "Executive Privilege" every time there is a question.

It's a great temptation for an President to keep the Monarchy and not do much but "surface" reform to undo what the Chimp/Cheney/Asscroft/Rumsfeld have done to dismantle our system of "checks and balances."

[nightperson]

3. I think Phillips is giving

the old advice that's worked for me: "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything", and "If you always tell the truth, you only have to remember one story":

In today's circumstances of a nation on the wrong track, most swing voters--especially wavering GOP men who grew up on John Wayne movies--will not be content with pablum.

Doug Ireland to David Corn recently:

You recently wrote that Kerry “has as much of a plan as Bush.” Well, as Joe Biden said the other day, Bush has no plan — and neither does Kerry. Apart from wanting to send more troops, all Kerry can bring himself to say is, NATO-ize the occupation. NATO is riven, many countries already said they won’t participate, and NATO is a Cold War relic of outdated Atlanticism whose expensive existence has been rendered even more unnecessary by the new European Union constitution, which gives the EU a common foreign and defense policy. The Senate Intel report handed Kerry a unique chance to define himself differently from Bush on Iraq — to say, as Jay Rockefeller did, “we would never have voted” for war if we’d known what the report reveals, and announce a speeded-up plan for U.S. withdrawal that conforms with the convention platform plank the platform committee was just forced to adopt by progressives. Israel-Palestine? JFK has been as slavishly pro-Sharon as Bush. He could have used the World Court decision for tearing down the Wall to move to a bolder, more critical stance — instead, Kerry attacked the decision!