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Edited on Sun May-02-04 06:28 AM by Lexingtonian
First, I am not so much interested in an issue tit for tat ad war
All in good time. Let me point out that the Cold War has been over for a couple of years, though- this stuff doesn't play as well as you think with the general electorate anymore. A much small portion works in the military-industrial complex these days and the Red Scare is on the limits of memory. Weapons aren't magical stuff to people who came of voting age after Vietnam. They see things through a pretty economic-centric lens and, in my experience, see weapons progams as mostly simply highly bloated big ticket spending items that fund jobs and CEO McMansions in other parts of the U.S. And, as tools, only work as designed in their third or fourth versions.
Don't forget the basic doctrine of Bush-Cheney 2004: they're not making the least effort to go after voters they see as liberal leaning, figuring that if Gore was able to pick them off as effectively as he did they're not worth any effort since Kerry is going to get them for very little. Liberal-leaning voters are simply resilient after this many years of losses, abuses, and the wedging off of the last conservative Democrats and Perot voters. (Well, I have to qualify that: the ones that haven't been through an election cycle can be fooled to some extent- but their elders tend to supply correction to a sufficient extent.)
Second, If really isn't going to invest in Ohio he should let us know that.
I think you're going to get drowned in ads, at very least. Kerry has been a little slow to pick people, but decisive and sharp in spurts. The best explanation I can come up with is that they're either not finding a person they can trust to do the job the right way, or they're having an internal argument about two or more people. As I see the numbers, Ohio looks like electoral votes 265 to 286 to them and the second, crucial, Red State they can tip (following New Hampshire). I'd figure that their perspective is that getting an exceptional person to run the effort in Ohio is more important than getting a somewhat lesser person with an additional week or two in April or May. Which supposes, I guess, that they don't expect significant movement in Ohio polling numbers before September or October.
Third, On gay marriage, my problem is as much political as it is positional. For the short term most people's minds are made up on gay marriage itself. The only argument people are entertaining is the extent to which we should go to ban it and what, if anything, should be offered in its place. Kerry has given up any principled argument in regards to the sanctity of Constitutions by agreeing to amend his state's. And he did so for nothing in return. That was the one effective argument with swing voters on this issue. Basicly he took about the worst position he could on this issue from a political stand point. He gets all the blame for pandering to gay voters in the general public thanks to his DOMA vote but none of the benefits of actually having pandered thanks to his position on the MA amendment.
I'm not convinced that that's how it works. He endorsed the proposed state amendment to buttress his stated position of voting against the proposed Allard-Musgrove federal amendment should that come before the Senate. But at bottom he has to take a nominal position for civil unions and against gay marriage so that his cred as an averagely Church-compliant Catholic stays intact. (Notice how they've tried to pry at that via ginning up the communion/pro-choice politician matter.)
And speaking as a Mass. resident following the game pretty closely, we're going to have another, though quite short, popular support spike against gay marriage during the next three weeks. We're going to have a three way fight involving Romney, the Legislature, and the SJC about crucial specific law changes since the Goodridge verdict court order is not specific- the SJC wins, of course.
The baseline support trend in-state is, however, such that by August or September it'll be clear to everyone that the state amendment is dead. Believe it or not, but my reading of the polling is that it's losing support of approximately 3% of the Mass. electorate a month. It's around 50% support at the moment, the fighting and first images of the actuality will drive it to 60% or 65%, that will collapse back to the baseline by mid-summer (then, at 45% or so). When it's under 40% state politicians will feel safe enough to declare it dead at the next session of the Legislature (where it requires another vote). (Our state's political Right is pretty firmly pegged at 32%, our Left/liberals are firmly at 44%.)
Bob Travaglini, the president of the state senate, admitted almost overtly on local TV talk shows (and Arlene Isaacson said as much during March) that a good majority of the Legislature- 120 to 130 of the 200- individually at this point find the arguments against gay marriage legalization ridiculous. He points out that the proposed constitutional amendment is absolutely minimal restriction (the legal distinction is only the name) and between the lines says it was all just a manouver intended to save a bunch of individual members of the Legislature from upset elderly voters this November- which is to say, until these folks find more important things to worry themselves with. (Vermont gave the Legislature a lesson in that regard.)
So as I see it it's quite possible that Kerry is gambling correctly- he may well be able to say in September that he's against the FMA and DoMA on principle as governmental intrusion and discrimination, that marriage is a right reserved to the states, and that if Massachusetts voters reject the Travaglini-Lees Amendment and tolerate/accept gay marriage as part of their package of civil rights it's not for him to tell them otherwise- where's the harm done. He'll get crap about enforcing DoMA if/when in the Oval Office but can say it's the law of the land and up to Congress to change, and also point out that the USSC will probably get a word in about it too. I doubt that gay voters are going to care much about his statement of March if the Massachusetts amendment does look likely to bite the dust in October.
Btw, Rhode Island is probably the next state to legalize gay marriage- I imagine right after the November elections. And chances are gay activists are probably brewing up a test case to federal DoMA as we speak, I'd be very surprised if we don't see a federal lawsuit filed in June or July after Massachusetts happens to marry an appropriate willing couple or two or five. Maybe we'll see the Goodridges and their kids in front of the TV cameras a couple more times.... And if/when the federal DoMA gets overturned the individual state DoMAs will necessarily come under attack. But that's another thread.
Fourth, I know he needs to go around our state party. It is on an epic losing streak....
Losing is not per se why. The Ohio Democratic Party simply seems to one of the ones that hasn't really renewed, internally, to the point that the better political talent finds them reliable and useful and relevant enough yet. There are Democratic state parties stuck in pre-1980 politically and Democratic state parties that have successfully renewed themselves since 1994/96 into the form described by Judis and Texeira. The former are treated as hopeless and as millstones by national Democrats, probably for good reason, the latter seem all to be kicking butt. But to be seen as part of one of the former tends to be fatal- it did in Mondale and Jean Carnahan in '02, poor fellows, if not Cleland and some others as well.
But that is why it is all the more important that he have his own grassroots effort because our party sucks.
Fifth, Ohio should be in play. Bush won an ungodly percentage of the vote in rural, southeastern Ohio. Virtually every county down there has double digit unemployment now. Some as high as 25%. This should be easy pickings for Kerry. Bush won this state in 2000 with that rural vote. He actually lost Columbus, was obliterated in Toledo, Youngstown, and Cleveland and did worse in Cincy than his dad did against Clinton. Had it not been for close to 70% in these rural counties he would have lost Ohio. He shouldn't even win those counties now.
You're implying that this rural vote is due to a secular rationale. I'm not inclined to see it that way. In the present Identity Politics the sort of Christianity that is most pervasive in rural, especially southern, Ohio tells its members to be Republican or non-voting. The best we can hope for is that they don't vote, I believe. I'm pretty sure they see Democrats as people representing a psychological force that will take over and secularize- effectively destroy- their subsociety if not resisted with a certain amount of energy. (At least this is what I hear is being said in the Ohio offshoot of my own religious denomination. Along with a lot of other bizarre foolishness.) This problematic, insular, deeply paganized Christianity is what they hold to be distinguishing for them themselves and unable to survive much more contact with Modernity. It's more important than prosperity to them though less important than survival. As long as they think Bush doesn't threaten their survival the opposition to Democrats won't change.
But the people who get out of that or get hostile treatment from it and its various emissaries and minions vote against it. That's one source of Democratic votes. But on the whole, in places like southern Ohio the great majority of Democratic votes simply have to come from urban and suburban areas disgusted with the conservative Christianity-derived and Industrial Age corporation-derived failures of a socioeconomic order being foisted upon them. It's the people who have gained some political distance from both that are going to vote Democratic, not people who agree with one and dissent from the other on the Democratic positions on them. So single issues can be pushed, but I don't see people changing their votes on the basis of a single issue this time. A good number will say so, but I think closer questioning will show that they broke away from a second Republican-embracing political line in the other realm, economic or cultural, some time before.
So I think your idea that pure energetic hammering by Kerry will yield ever more converts isn't quite how it works. It might be more effective to make multiple passes that plant seeds of doubt and give each latest willing set of people a welcome in, that pry a bit on the jobs angle and let people abandon their 'religion'-derived political attitudes and miscommitments as they discover they can afford to.
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