Winning the margins
"Dammit, I earned that pony!"
When politics are done right, everyone who deserves a voice in the debate gets a seat at the table. There’s discussion and disagreement, but the climate is inclusive, even empowering.
However, when politics are at their worst the landscape is darker. It’s divisive, derisive, exclusionary. Not only are voices kept from being heard, they’re shouted down, sometimes even locked out entirely.
This is how you know things are bad politically right now. Not just in Washington, but all across the country because the conversation is a mess. It’s visible on both sides of the aisle, but amongst liberals and Democrats it’s particularly easy to spot.
The American Jobs Act is arguably exactly what our struggling economy needs right now. Economists say it will likely prevent another recession. Yet depending on the day, the arguments that get the most traction across the progressive spectrum are those about who’s criticizing the president, who’s being racist—or not, who’s being ‘progressive’ enough—or not, and on and on.
It’s mostly just one circular firing squad after the next and nobody ever wins no matter who gets voted off the island. If I worked for the re-election campaign I probably couldn’t say the following to you, but since I don’t work for anybody right now, I can.
Nobody cares if, how, or why you’re disappointed in President Obama.
I’m sorry to tell you that, but it’s the truth. It just is. And if you’re still participating in the pity party about how the president has yet to live up to the vision of him you created three years go, it’s time to let that go.
Why? Because the country needs you.
I wish I was kidding, but I’m not.
On Monday, Rev. Al Sharpton ran a clip of Karl Rove from back in June. He only ran the last 10 seconds or so of this clip, but watch the whole thing, it’s short. I’ll be here when you get back, I promise.
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Now, file the first 60 seconds of that clip away for a moment, focus instead on the final 10 and this quote:
“If, for example, African-American turnout in North Carolina is one point less than it was last time around, his margin is cut two and a half times over.” – Karl Rove (6/24/11)
Notice how Juan Williams interjects and says “he [President Obama] loses”? Yet, rather than simply agree with Williams, Rove chooses to stress the margin. Why? What’s the difference?
The difference is that the margin is what gets you re-elected or puts you out on the street.
In 2012, the margins will be where the average voter matters most—it will be where you matter most.
A QUICK TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE FOR SOME CONTEXT
In 2004 Karl Rove was credited with an innovative strategy that won President George W. Bush a second term. (No, not stealing the vote in Ohio, although that is a good guess.)
Iowa 2000 presidential results by county.
It’s called the Base Strategy.
The Bush team looked back over multiple elections and concluded that the value of ‘swing voters’ was overrated. And since the 2000 race was so close, if they could simply up the numbers of base voters (think: mostly evangelical voters who’d stayed home for whatever reason in 2000), Bush could hold all the states he took in 2000 and win re-election in 2004.
In short, they needed to persuade and attract new voters less far than they needed to make sure they got their definite supporters out to vote. So forget about swing voters and independents, just turn out the base by all means necessary.
This made sense, since there 12 states in 2000 were decided by less than 5% of the vote and another 10 were decided by less than 10%.
Let’s use Iowa as a quick example of how this worked.
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As you can see, Vice President Gore won Iowa, but barely.
Of Iowa’s 99 counties, Gore only carried 30 of them. Meanwhile, although Gov. Bush lost Iowa he did so by a whisker. Barely 4,000 votes separated him from winning the state despite losing Iowa’s major population centers.
This meant all Karl Rove and company needed to do was average another 100 Bush voters in the same counties Bush already won in 2000 and they could take Iowa in 2004 without even courting independent voters or talking much to Democrats.
Those extra 100 people in each county? That’s the margin.
Now fast forward four years when statewide turnout in Iowa jumped from just over 63% in 2000 to nearly 70% in 2004 and what happened?
John Kerry won 31 Iowa counties, more than Al Gore in 2000, but George W. Bush won the state by over 10,000 votes.
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Before you play the Nader card and write off the swing to Bush of nearly 15,000 votes from 2000 to 2004, take a quick look deeper into the state.
To be fair, let’s take three counties rather than just one.
The three Republican leaning counties that form an ‘L’ around the city of Des Moines are Dallas, Madison and Warren Counties. (Yes, that Madison County.)
Now look at the difference from 2000 to 2004 just in those three counties.
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The improved statewide turnout added roughly 100,000 overall votes to the totals of both Bush and Kerry versus the year 2000. But the shift in the third party/Nader votes was largly nominal, and the percentage of Democratic votes remained roughly the same in the major counties. It was the spike in GOP votes in GOP counties that was significant. Bush increased the margins.
This was the base strategy and it worked—and not just in Iowa.
In 2004 the GOP took two of the closest states in 2000 away from Democrats (Iowa and New Mexico) which offset losing New Hampshire—and they increased their margins of victory in Missouri and Florida. (full list)
Then they pretended their win was a mandate and we all know how that turned out.
OK, BACK TO THE PRESENT
What does any of this have to do with you seven years later? And if the base is so important, shouldn’t that back up all the bitching about why President Obama isn’t being a good enough boyfriend to those he should hold most dear?
A lot. And, no.
"I'm entitled to 'the' math."
Go back to the clip of Karl Rove.
Before he talks about how the GOP can win North Carolina if African-American voters just stay home, Rove ticks off a list of problems President Obama ostensibly has with other groups. Seniors, young people, three-toed sloths that need help to cross the road. Everybody in the president’s base has a problem with him, right?
That’s what you’d believe if you listened to the media right now, even if the numbers don’t exactly support the claim.
What’s going on here is the base strategy playing defense.
When the base strategy is on offense it is generating enthusiasm and making sure those base voters get to the polls, but when it’s on defense it seeks to do exactly the opposite to the other party.
Divide. Disillusion. Suppress.
So while Rove’s political action committees continue to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to turn out the conservative base, Republicans are also working to keep as many likely Democratic voters away from the polls as possible.
Thanks to their historic gains in state legislatures nationwide in 2010, Republicans in 40 states are now seeking ways to diminish access to the voting booth.
The plan is punishingly simple, and I mean that literally.
All of these Republican proposals focus on one apparent goal: restrict ballot access and shrink the electorate — often in ways that would decrease Democratic votes. – DLCC (5/15/11)
They’re trying to shrink the margins and if they succeed it nets them full control of Congress (removing President Obama would just be a bonus).
Next year there are 17 seats in the U.S. Senate currently occupied by Democrats up for grabs and every seat in the U.S. House is up for re-election again. Right now Congress has historically low approval ratings, only 12% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing and 54% of Americans would vote out every member of Congress if they could.
The Karl Roves of the world know that if they can get enough Democrats and independents to cross their arms and stay home like they did in 2010, a ton of money will be spent making sure the GOP vote is maximized.
Go back to 2004; Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire were all decided by roughly 10,000 votes, New Mexico was decided by less than 6,000 votes. And that was for president, races for Congress almost always get fewer total voters.
In 2004 there were multiple recounts for the U.S. House because votes were so close and that was with only 41% nationwide turnout.
It seems almost impossible to believe that 100 votes here or there could change the fate of national elections, but it happens in every election. Those spare 100 votes are the margin. They are the election.
The difference between a progressive Congress, a Congress that refuses to govern, and a Congress that goes which ever way the money tells them to go lies in the margins. And a unified Congress can make a president of the opposite party nearly impotent if they want to.
Remember, campaigns run on numbers. Numbers dictate where campaigns will spend money, where they’ll put resources, and where they’ll send candidates.
This is why Rove is preoccupied with the margins—because there are far more Democrats and Independents in this country than Republicans.
Karl Rove is worried about the margins because Karl Rove is worried about you.
You don’t like health care reform, you think it needs to be improved? It’s Congress that will improve it, go win the margins.
You think we need more regulation of Wall Street and better protection from banks, credit card companies and predatory lenders? That legislation will come from Congress, go win the margins.
You want to protect a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body? That’s going to be argued in the Supreme Court and while those nominations come from the president, confirmation comes from Congress. So go win the margins and, by the way, remember that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is currently 78 and will almost certainly retire within the next four years.
You want the DREAM Act passed? You want the DISCLOSE Act passed … are you starting to see a pattern here?
Is it any clearer why the disappointment with one person borders on irrelevant when compared to the impact we can have on the makeup of another 435 other individuals who actually write and pass our laws?
It doesn’t matter if you’re mad at President Obama, it matters if you’re mad enough to take back Congress.
The momentum that swept Democrats into office in 2008 produced the passage of health care reform, Wall Street regulation, and the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—but it didn’t start in the summer of 2008. It started in 2007 and it started with people just as frustrated and disappointed as so many are now, except those folks decided to do something about it.
The choice now is whether to build on that progress or let it be torn down.
The margins are where elections are won, if they’re big enough you don’t even need to worry about the election being stolen. And while those margins may be numbers to some, the reality is those margins are made up of people like you and me.
At their best, politics can give everybody a seat at the table. But for those of us who aren’t rich and powerful the price of that seat isn’t money, it’s work.
Luckily for us over three hundred of those seats will be available next year. This means that we can either work for them or, well, they don’t call it being marginalized for nothing.
