Elizabeth Warren's New Book is the Moment to Change 2014

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/elizabeth-warrens-new-book-moment-change-2014




Conventional wisdom is congealing. Too many Democrats are becoming locked in a defensive crouch, fearing that a 2010-style monsoon season is upon us because Obamacare is unpopular, Republicans will be fired up to vote and Democrats won't. And they could be right, although if they are, it will mainly be because of their own fears. But it doesn't have to be this way.

There is still plenty of time to change the dynamics in the 2014 race, to make this election exciting for Democratic base voters and to put the Republicans on the defensive. It's been done before -- in fact it was done the last time a Democratic president was in the sixth year of his presidency, and all the pundits said it was impossible then. We will have a number of chances to change the 2014 dynamics, and one of our very biggest is happening this week with the release of Elizabeth Warren's new book, A Fighting Chance. This week, and in the next few weeks to come, progressives can help make Warren's book a central part of the political and economic conversation in this country. The book's populist progressive economic message -- about how the economic game is rigged for most Americans, and how wealthy and powerful special interests have taken over our government and are squeezing the middle class and the working poor -- is exactly the kind of message Democrats need to be pushing in the 2014 elections, and if her book's narrative becomes a major part of the year's political dialogue, that will help most Democrats.

But before I tell you more about this golden opportunity, let me take a trip down memory lane to that sixth year of the Clinton presidency. Although there are certainly some important differences (including the fact that 2014 is a far more populist moment politically because of how tough things have been for most people economically over the last decade), this cycle reminds me a great deal of 1998 in terms of the fearful way most Democrats are approaching the election. In 1998, the Lewinsky scandal was dominating the headlines, and Clinton's personal popularity was dropping sharply. Most Democratic strategists for the fall Senate, House, and governors' races were sure that the Republican base would be fired up to vote; that Democrats would not be motivated; and that swing voters would move the Republicans' way because they didn't like Clinton. Fearing another 1994-level disaster, many party leaders were advising Democratic candidates across the nation to distance themselves from the president; avoid mentioning him or how they would vote on impeachment; and run on local issues or modest-sized popular parts of the Democratic agenda. The pundits were predicting that the Democrats would lose at least 30 seats in the House, several in the Senate, and be swept in the competitive statehouse races.


But cautious, reactive strategies that avoid mentioning the elephant in the room, especially one that was featured in the paper every day and that Republicans were talking about every day -- in other words, strategies that keep your candidates in a defensive crouch -- are destined to lose. If the conventional wisdom had been followed, 1998 might well have been another 1994 sort of Republican landslide. But a coalition of people and groups willing to go against the conventional wisdom was willing to create a different, more aggressive strategy that was built around the idea of punching back on the impeachment issue and pivoting to the broader economic issues that really mattered to people. Our case was that, rather than obsessing about Clinton's sex scandal and rehashing it over and over, the country needed to move on and talk about the economic issues that mattered to voters' lives. Stan Greenberg and James Carville did polling to shape that message; People For the American Way (where I worked) did TV ads and grassroots organizing to push the idea; Wes Boyd and Joan Blades started an online petition for the country to move on that garnered 500,000 signatures in a matter of a couple of weeks (a stunning number in those early days of email), and got thousands of those people to volunteer to go to meetings with members of Congress and volunteer for candidates. By the fall it became clearer and clearer that where candidates and organizations were using our message, Democrats were doing better. More and more candidates started running ads focusing on the 'let's move on' idea. We changed the political conversation, changed the dynamics in that election, and we shattered the conventional wisdom in the elections that year, picking up 5 Democratic seats in the House rather than losing the 30 that had been predicted by the pundits, and winning many of the competitive Governor and Senate races.