Poring over the 2004 electoral map has been a deflating experience for Democrats, what with all that red splashed across the nation's vast interior. But cartography need not be destiny -- not if Democrats finally get serious about rolling back the GOP's scarlet tide in America's heartland.
Just as Republicans pursued a Southern strategy in the late 1960s, Democrats should craft a heartland strategy that targets winnable states in the South, the lower Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain West. At the very least, a heartland strategy would wreak havoc behind enemy lines. Done right, it could help end the Democrats' cultural estrangement from their natural constituency -- the working middle class -- and start bringing them back home.
A Democratic heartland strategy would build on the Kerry campaign's big advantages on economic and domestic issues like health care; tap growing public discontent with a big-spending, debt-laden federal government controlled entirely by Republicans; offer a distinctly Democratic alternative on national security; and challenge the GOP's claim to be the party of moral and family values.
Some Democrats have called for a less ambitious strategy that writes off large chunks of red America, specifically the South and the Great Plains. They would concentrate instead on the Southwest, with its large Latino population and burgeoning metropolitan centers. Their electoral math works, but just barely.
For example, if Democrats spot their opponents the 11 states of the old Confederacy, they'd have to win 70 percent of the nation's remaining electoral votes to capture the White House. That leaves an awfully thin margin of error. And given that one-third of the nation's voters live in the South, it means Democrats would be likely to lose the popular vote even if they eked out a victory in the Electoral College, not to mention ceding the Republicans permanent control of Congress.
There's just no way around it: Democrats have to be competitive in every region of the country to be a true national party, and they have to win more states to have any hope of consolidating a durable governing majority in the future.
The heartland strategy begins by choosing likely targets for Democratic gains. Let's go to the map:
President Bush won 31 states, 14 of them with 60 percent of the vote or more. Take those 14 crimson states off the table. Of his remaining 17 states, Bush won nine by single-digit margins. These include three Southern states (Florida, Arkansas, and, surprisingly, Virginia), three Midwestern states (Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri) and three Rocky Mountain states (New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado). Altogether, those nine states have 103 electoral votes. To win the next presidential election, assuming no further erosion in the blue states, a Democratic candidate would have to win about 20 percent of those votes. And by targeting these states and contesting them vigorously, Democrats would enhance the prospects of boosting their popular vote and sweeping more Senate and House candidates into office.
Drawing on the same deep-pocketed investors who fueled the spending of "527" groups, the party should launch a concerted, four-year push to recruit and support strong candidates for statewide and federal office in those states. It should pump resources into state parties and concentrate advertising and voter registration efforts there. And to craft messages with proven heartland appeal, the party should pay special attention to the Democratic governors who have thrived in several target states: Mark Warner of Virginia, Tom Vilsack of Iowa, and Bill Richardson of New Mexico.
But more than anything else, a heartland strategy must grapple with the two biggest obstacles to Democratic success in the red states: doubts about the party's stances on national security and moral and cultural values.
National security gap. From beginning to end, national security was the overriding issue in the 2004 elections. It furnished Bush with his strongest argument for re-election, and it was why the Democrats turned to Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran and senator with deep experience in foreign affairs, rather than the anti-war candidate, Howard Dean. Concerns about terrorism and war undoubtedly contributed to Bush's sharp gains among women, especially a 10-point swing among white working women. It wasn't just "moral moms," but also "martial moms," that pushed Bush over the top.
While Bush ran mainly on his reputation for steadfast leadership in the war on terror, Kerry hammered away at the administration's costly blunders in Iraq. In the end, however, Democrats failed to make the race a referendum on Iraq. Exit polls showed that the voters ranked Iraq fourth in importance, after moral values, the economy and jobs, and terrorism. While most voters agreed that things were going badly in Iraq, they still approved the decision to go to war by a 51-45 margin. Nor were they convinced by the Democrats' claim that Iraq was a sideshow; by 13 points, voters said Iraq was part of the larger war on terror.
In fairness to Kerry, it's unlikely that any Democrat could have overcome two huge advantages Bush enjoyed on the security front. First, his party was united on Iraq, while Democrats, and especially independents, were divided. Second, the 9/11 attacks transformed Bush's presidency, enabling him to bank an immense sum of political credit for directing America's response to al Qaeda. By an 18-point margin, voters said they trusted Bush more than Kerry to handle the war on terrorism.
Fortunately for Democrats, the next GOP presidential contender won't have these historic advantages. But since the wildfire of jihadist terrorism isn't likely to be extinguished anytime soon, Democrats need to work hard over the next four years to close the confidence gap between the two parties on security.
In keeping such a tight focus on Iraq, the Kerry campaign missed an opportunity to offer voters a broader, distinctly Democratic vision for victory over Islamic fanaticism. The party needs more than a critique, it needs a credible alternative to Bush's belligerent unilateralism. It needs an updated version of the Kennedy-Truman tradition of muscular internationalism, which combined military strength and the will to use it with an equally strong commitment to collective security.
Let's face facts: America is at war, and the public isn't yet convinced that Democrats have the stomach for the fight. Democrats themselves seem unsure of their true identity: Are they the anti-war party or the party of tough-minded liberals, the party of Gov. Howard Dean or the party of Sen. Joe Biden? Resolving this ambivalence is essential to making headway in the heartland states.
Like the liberal hawks who fashioned America's winning Cold War strategy, today's Democrats must demonstrate that they are tough enough to wage an aggressive war on Muslim extremism, and smart enough to enlist influential allies and international institutions in that fight. Annual surveys by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations make clear that most Americans are instinctive internationalists. They agree with Democratic arguments that the United States should lead the wider democratic community and not go it alone in the world.
But Democrats must also recognize the limits of multilateralism. The quest for consensus often dilutes the international community's will to act, as we've seen in the Darfur region of Sudan. While Kerry was certainly right in pledging to rebuild America's strategic alliances, Democrats shouldn't just plead with our allies to support us on Iraq. They should also challenge our allies to join the United States in creating more effective ways to stop terrorism and proliferation -- for example, by creating a new anti-terror NATO focused on the greater Middle East, toughening their stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and launching a major trade initiative to bring the economically isolated and stagnant Middle East into the global economy.
Having alienated our natural partners and much of world opinion, Bush and the Republicans can't lead the democratic nations in building a new collective security system for the age of terror. Democrats can.
They can also reclaim their historic role as the party that stands up for individual liberty, human rights, and democracy around the world. It's true that Bush has made democracy his mantra for the Middle East, much as he has prescribed tax cuts as the remedy for whatever ails the U.S. economy. But it would be a huge political mistake, as well as a monstrous irony, for Democrats to cede Bush the high ground of liberal values in foreign policy. After all, he only stumbled on the democracy rationale belatedly, after weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize in Iraq. Now he risks discrediting democracy by offering it as a panacea for the region's ills, and by linking it with his administration's overreliance on military force to achieve its security goals, as well as its close ties to Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes.
Democrats understand that spreading economic and political freedom in the greater Middle East is essential to breaking the deadly nexus between corrupt, repressive governments and Islamic extremism. Unlike the Bush administration, however, they can offer resources rather than slogans, win the cooperation of allies and international institutions that can add legitimacy to such efforts, and apply a single standard for democracy and human rights throughout the region.
The right security policies, however, can only take Democrats so far. Heartland voters want to know what's in their hearts, not just in their heads. For them, patriotism and national pride are core cultural values -- and they associate those values more with Republicans than Democrats.
Most rank-and-file Democrats, of course, are just as patriotic and zealous about vindicating our national honor as any Republican. But let's be honest: Cultural elites with influence in the party often give off more than a whiff of fashionable anti-Americanism. They tend to equate patriotism with jingoism, see America more as a global bully than as a victim of a terrorist conspiracy, haul out the tired Vietnam metaphor anytime U.S. troops encounter difficulty abroad, and are as hypercritical of America's faults as they are forgiving of those of our adversaries.
Take Iraq. It's one thing to say, as many thoughtful Democrats do, that the war in Iraq was a mistake. But it's quite another to depict it as the expression of a new U.S. imperialism, or as a Bush family vendetta, or as a plot to grab Middle East oil, or, most ludicrously of all, as a pretext to enrich Halliburton. What leftish elites smugly imagine is a sophisticated view of their country's flaws strikes much of America as a false and malicious cartoon. And while heartland voters may be too reluctant to hear reasoned criticism of U.S. policies, they are essentially right in believing that America has mostly been an indispensable force for good in the world. So let the glitterati in Hollywood and Cannes fawn over Michael Moore; Democrats should have no truck with the rancid anti-Americanism of the conspiracy-mongering left.
Values voters. It's not enough to convince working families that Democrats will make them safer and take America's side in overseas conflicts. A winning heartland strategy must also
reassure them that Democrats share their values.
It's too much to say the 2004 election was won in America's churches, but "values voters" did turn out in strength on Nov. 2, sharply boosting GOP turnout in key battleground states like Ohio, Florida, and
Pennsylvania. Almost one-quarter of the electorate said moral values were their top concern, and 80 percent of those voted for Bush. The Republicans made gay marriage their wedge issue of choice and apparently used it effectively to mobilize Protestant evangelicals. But Bush also carried the Catholic vote (against a Catholic opponent) and made inroads among orthodox Jews, although that may also have reflected his staunch support of Israel.
The electorate divided along the same cultural fault lines as in 2000, as white men, the devoutly religious, and married families with children voted Republican, while secular and unmarried voters and minorities voted Democratic. The trouble is, there are more voters on the GOP side than the
Democratic side of those divides. If they want to avoid getting blanked again in red America four years from now, Democrats had better devise a strategy for narrowing these cultural gaps.
There are two things, however, that Democrats shouldn't do. The first is to embrace culturally conservative positions. On the contrary, Democrats should continue to press for stem cell research, block any Bush administration attempt to pack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges, and,
in general, stand up to a dogmatic and intolerant strain of religion that seeks to impose its moral vision on the rest of us. Democrats should keep in mind that Bill Clinton won a dozen red states in 1992 and 1996, with essentially the same positions as John Kerry. But Clinton's humble origins, overt religiosity, and cultural empathy with working families allowed him to bond with middle America in a way the Massachusetts senator couldn't.
The other pitfall Democrats should avoid is trying to trump cultural populism with economic populism. It drives liberals crazy that downscale voters who don't benefit much from GOP economic policies nonetheless backed Bush on cultural grounds. But since most voters don't neatly compartmentalize their ethical and economic concerns, simply turning up the volume on anti-business
and class warfare themes isn't likely to change their minds. And heartland voters aren't likely to miss the unflattering implication that they're too dim to realize where their best interests lie.
Instead, Democrats should do a better job of linking their economic interests and moral outlook. In his
1992 campaign, Clinton wove personal responsibility and middle-class opportunity into a single narrative that promised to reward families that "work hard and play by the rules" and to oppose policies that entrench unearned privilege. He spoke of honoring work and family by ending welfare
as a way of life and supplementing the wages of low-income workers. He called for national service as a way to balance the rights and duties of citizenship, and to replace the politics of entitlement with a new ethic of reciprocal responsibility. Four years later, Clinton's proposals for school uniforms and television V-chips struck a resonant chord with middleclass families trying to shield their kids from pop culture.
Since then, Democrats have had little success in challenging the GOP's claim to be the party of "family values" and its hold on married families with children. A heartland strategy should include a new progressive family policy that addresses both the economic and cultural strains on American parents. For example, to help parents juggle the demands of work and raising their kids, Democrats ought to champion paid parental leave policies as well as flextime arrangements with employers. But they should also talk more about reducing teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock births, which have led to an expansion of single-parent families beset by poverty, welfare dependence, and other social ills.
And there's no reason why Democrats should be apologists for or defenders of a consumer culture that targets kids with insidious advertising campaigns and deluges popular entertainment with sex and violence. Why is it that progressives are willing to go after corporate cupidity everywhere but in the entertainment industry?
People of faith. To speak to the heartland, Democrats also must be comfortable using the language of faith. Religious Americans believe, with good reason, that bicoastal elites look down on them as Bible-thumping primitives. Yet Democrats ought to be able to oppose the political agenda of religious conservatives -- on abortion, on school prayer, on homosexuality -- without dismissing people of faith in general as hopelessly "retro." They ought to be able to defend the establishment clause and religious liberty without getting in bed with the secular absolutists of the ACLU. It makes little sense for Democrats to be estranged from people of faith when their "base" consists of so many of them -- including many African Americans, Latinos, Jews, members of mainline Protestant congregations, and, yes, even some "freestyle evangelicals."
Just as religious advocates of the "Social Gospel" infused early 20th century progressivism with moral fervor, Democrats should couch their social initiatives in the language of faith and morality. The sad truth is that since Clinton's departure, Democrats have had little to say about growing poverty and inequality in America. Surely, they are moral issues no less than abortion and gay marriage, and they give Democrats an opportunity to speak unambiguously of right and wrong.
Democrats should invoke biblical authority in challenging religious conservatives to support initiatives to aid the working poor and protect the earth's environment. Following Sen. Joe Lieberman's lead, the party also should back a progressive faith-based initiative -- a real partnership between government and religious groups to tackle urgent social problems, not the Bush administration's cynical effort to steer government subsidies to religious congregations and skirt constitutional prohibitions on government funding for religion.
Finally, Democrats should give the culture warriors of the right and left a wide berth and instead adopt a stance of "values centrism." Again, Clinton offers instructive lessons. Rather than adopt a strident "us versus them" posture on cultural issues, he always sought common ground. While resolutely
pro-choice, he recognized the genuine moral complexities surrounding abortion when he called for making it "safe, legal, and rare." His "mend it, don't end it" stance on affirmative action acknowledged real flaws in preference policies, instead of labeling their critics as racists.
Closing cultural gaps. Public opinion on cultural issues isn't rigid and monolithic any more than on other issues. Most gun owners do not belong to the NRA, and many routinely vote for Democrats. Most Christians are not right-wing ideologues or homophobes. And white males may be a tough nut for Democrats to crack, but they aren't genetically predisposed to vote for Republicans. The party can close cultural gaps by targeting cultural swing voters with a message that affirms common values before plumbing policy differences, by being willing to engage people on the other side of our cultural divides, and by sticking to its bedrock cultural values of tolerance, social inclusion and equal opportunity, and liberty of conscience.
Above all, Democrats' heartland strategy should be calculated to confound red America's stereotypical views of the party. This won't be easy, as those views are deeply held, but Democrats have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying.
Bush's 2004 victory marked the second straight national election, after 2002, in which the GOP has won an ever-so-slight majority of the popular vote. His political guru, Karl Rove, says this "rolling realignment" is ending the long partisan stalemate in Washington and tipping the balance of political power in the GOP's favor.
He may be right. Bush and his party consolidated their hold on the red states, flipped New Mexico and Iowa, and made inroads into many blue states. But now Democrats should fight back with a realignment strategy of their own. They need to raid the red states, picking off enough to stop the Republican realignment dead in its tracks, and start building a new progressive majority.
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