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Edited on Wed Nov-19-03 09:48 PM by Ksec
Gore ignored Ohio and only lost there by 3.5%
Who Can Win Ohio?
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, November 19, 2003; Page A27
The Democrats' scenario for picking up the White House next year looks
increasingly like drawing to an inside straight.
That doesn't mean they won't be able to do it. A number of states could fill
their hand. But with the continuing rightward gallop of the South, the
Democrats are going to have to perform near-perfectly in the swing states of
the Midwest.
Like Richard Nixon before him, George W. Bush has waged a war in a way that
has polarized the American people -- infuriating Democrats while
strengthening his support among conservatives. But as a recent mega-survey
from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press makes clear, the
American people were drifting apart -- and the South was going south for the
Dems -- even before Bush used his war as a wedge.
The survey documents a widening rift between the political beliefs of
Democrats and Republicans, as well as a post-Sept. 11 shift in party
registration toward Republicans and independents. The gap between the
political attitudes of Democrats and Republicans has risen to 17 percent,
the highest level since Pew began polling in the late '80s. The gap between
the number of Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, has shrunk to naught:
Democrats constitute 34 percent of the electorate, Republicans and
independents 33 percent each.
The shift to the GOP has been spearheaded by white evangelical Protestants,
8 percent of whom have dropped their Democratic registration and 10 percent
of whom have moved into the GOP ranks in recent years. These mobile
evangelicals are the largest group within the electorate to be realigning
Republican, and they are clustered disproportionately in Dixie.
Meanwhile, the Democrats have become more liberal -- in part because more
conservative Democrats have been re-registering Republican. Pew shows
support for governmental intervention to help the needy clearly on the rise
and support for foreign military intervention in decline.
This Democratic move leftward is key to understanding the rise and
repositioning of Howard Dean. A somewhat truculent centrist in his years as
governor of Vermont, Dean has now embraced economic and trade policies well
to the left of those he favored as governor (while losing none of his
truculence).
But his stance on the war was key, and in this, he does indeed resemble
George McGovern. In 1972, with the Vietnam War still raging, Democrats went
for McGovern because none of the other candidates had opposed that war as
early or as completely as he, and because he offered an implicit critique of
their own, more passive party establishment. This year, Dean has surged into
the lead for largely similar reasons -- except that his critique of his
party's establishment has been explicit and forceful, which resonated deeply
with Democrats appalled at the inability of their congressional delegation
to duke it out with Bush.
In the primary season soon to be upon us, Dean looks strongest where
Democrats look strongest -- on the coasts. The decision of the Service
Employees International Union to endorse Dean, for instance, was in large
part due to the prodding of the union's New York and California locals. The
Midwestern locals were, with one exception, distinctly less gung-ho.
Perhaps the key question for Democrats who vote strategically is whether
Dean can do well in the Midwest against Bush next November. With the South
out of play, and with Florida looking like a formidable challenge (according
to Pew, Republicans have gained 6 points against the Democrats there since
2000), the Democrats will have to hold the states that Al Gore won and pick
up at least one northern swing state that he lost -- the biggest of which is
Ohio.
In one of the most dunderheaded decisions of recent political history, the
Gore campaign deemed Ohio unwinnable in early October 2000. Gore neither
visited the state nor spent any money there in the campaign's closing month.
Yet he lost the state by a scant 3.5 percent, and the Democratic margin over
Republicans among Ohioans has actually increased by 1 percent since that
time.
Ohio has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs during the Bush presidency. It is
also on Pew's list of states with the most "traditional social values,"
alongside most of the states of the South. This suggests that the kind of
Democrat best positioned to win Ohio would favor a trade policy that takes
labor standards and worker rights seriously, and wouldn't be too closely
identified with issues such as civil unions and gay marriage.
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