Why Can't Democrats Win?

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/books/review/26beinart.html?pagewanted=print

March 26, 2006
'Crashing the Gate,' by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga

Why Can't Democrats Win?

Review by PETER BEINART

IN early 2004, journalists began noticing something strange about Democratic primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire: they talked like political consultants. Instead of gushing about which presidential contender had won their heart, they analyzed who could attract swing voters in the general election. Large numbers said "electability" was their greatest concern. Expecting to speak to birds, the journalists found themselves speaking to ornithologists instead.

In retrospect, this phenomenon is not hard to explain. First, the long exodus of conservative white Southerners has made the Democratic Party more ideologically homogenous. As late as 1976, when Henry (Scoop) Jackson and George Wallace sought their party's presidential nomination, the ideological differences among Democratic primary contenders exceeded those in the general election. Today, by contrast, a liberal primary voter can focus on electability, secure in the knowledge that anyone his party nominates will be far more ideologically congenial than any conceivable Republican opponent. Second, cable television and the Internet have made do-it-yourself punditry much easier. Now everyone has access to the polling data and fund-raising numbers that insiders have long used to gauge electoral horse races. By the time a voter decides whether she likes a candidate, she usually knows who else likes him too.

If the 2004 Democratic primary represented one milestone in the democratization of strategic thinking, "Crashing the Gate," by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, is another. Armstrong and Moulitsas are self-conscious outsiders, successful liberal bloggers determined to overthrow the "Beltway mafia" that runs the Democratic Party in Washington. And yet they have written a manifesto devoted almost entirely to political procedure. Behind their indignant, even revolutionary rhetoric, Armstrong and Moulitsas seem angry about just one thing — that the Democratic Party continues to lose.

As a critique of how the party organizes itself, "Crashing the Gate" is persuasive. The authors detail how unmeritocratic the world of Democratic political consultants actually is. They argue convincingly that the party hasn't adapted to a newly diffused media environment, in which campaign messages must be far more narrowly targeted than in the past. They call on single-issue groups to abandon their litmus tests and band together in common cause. They even criticize liberal organizations for not paying their employees a market wage, and thus failing to nurture political talent as effectively as their counterparts on the right........

[bluestateguy]

1. Iowa caucus voters are professional voters

Maybe a little too professional.

[brmdp3123]

2. Excellent article.

[ThomasNewton]

3. They are winning

The Dems in office have their jobs, their pockets are full and all the heat is on the republicans.
Republicans = fascists. Democrats = compassionate fascists. Ultimately they both want the same thing, the Democrats just aren't quiet as cruel in how they go about getting it.

[TheBaldyMan]

4. They did win in 2000 & 2004, remember ? Chimpy stole it twice.

no mention of electoral fraud in the quote. I wonder if the book mentions it at all.

Could someone please post if they have read it.