Pundits claim the 2010 elections will be good for Republicans. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen. The behavior of the Republicans in Congress these past 2 years has been despicable. They do not deserve to be rewarded this November. Sadly our side seems to have already accepted the conventional wisdom, and chosen to play defense instead of offense. I don't accept it. I want to see Democrats gain seats in Congress. My goal is 61 Democratic Senators next year. If we fall short of 61 then we failed. There's no reason not to go for 61. Most of the Republican challengers for the Senate are pathetic jokes, and Democrats have 4 open seats to pick up. Here are my strategy ideas, I hope our candidates use them.
1. Don't call them racist even if they are. Calling someone racist can be perceived as all you have left after you lose an argument. Also we don't want to give an impression that Obama needs us to protect his feelings from getting hurt. You have to pick your battles, and this is one to stay out of. Let obvious racism speak for itself.
2. Stop saying foreign oil. We need to get off oil period. The spill in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by domestic oil. Also we need to put an end to the Republican lie that American oil production could equal American oil consumption if only those big bad environmentalists would let us drill in ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico. American oil production peaked in 1973(?) and decreased every year since then, because all of the easy-to-extract oil was already gone. As long as Americans believe that lie, Republicans will win the energy debate.
3. Promise to end the filibuster. It doesn't prove your bipartisan cred if you support the right of the Republicans to sabotage everything the Democrats try to do. Promise to let bills pass with 50% of the vote, like the founding fathers intended. Call out the hypocrisy of self-proclaimed strict constructionists who filibuster. It doesn't take legislation to end the filibuster. At the beginning of the session (January of odd number years) the rules committee sets the rules regarding the filibuster. Promise there will be no filibuster next year. Promise it will not be contingent on election results. Democrats will end the filibuster regardless of whether next year's Senate has 51 Democrats or 68 Democrats. And then come January actually make good on that promise. If there had not been a filibuster then there would not be a Louisiana purchase or cornhusker kickback in the Health Care Reform bill. (Those things weren't in the bill anyway, but keep your talking points short and sweet). If you're in a pro-union state, talk about how the filibuster killed EFCA. If you're in a pro-environment state, talk about how the filibuster killed cap and trade. No matter where you are, talk about how the filibuster empowers corrupt fence-sitters who hold out until you attach pork for their state to the bill.
4. Don't let Republicans claim fiscal responsibility. The media, in their quest to be fair and balanced, decided they had to declare the Republicans better than the Democrats at something, and they decided that something is the deficit. Winning this argument should be easy. 80% of the national debt came from Republican presidents. The high spending in FY09 was a one-time event due to extraordinary circumstances, it's not going to happen every year. That shouldn't be too hard to understand. Reagan, Bush, and Bush all huge record deficits, each one bigger than the last. The only recent president to balance the budget was Clinton, and it took him 4 years to accomplish that. Give Obama 4 years and he will balance the budget too. Republican candidates like to rail against out of control spending, but if you ask them what they would do about it they only answer vague platitudes like "make hard decisions" and "end government programs that have outlived their usefulness" (we already do that). Also they want to cut taxes which, duh, increases deficits.
5. Playing Waterloo. Jim Demint famously said "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo, it will break him". Waterloo is a childish game where Republicans vote in lockstep against everything the Democrats try to do, hoping it will make the Democratic-controlled Congress look incompetent, and hurt them in the next election. Every single Republican who voted against health care was playing Waterloo. They could have negotiated to make the bill more acceptable to them, but instead they chose to play Waterloo. When Mike Castle amd Mark Kirk pretend to be independent, remind voters that they played Waterloo. Republicans will play waterloo with financial reform and anything else the Democrats try to do before November.
6. Regulation of blank does not equal government takeover of blank. Republicans seem determined to call anything government does a government takeover. Health care reform is called government takeover of health care (even though it's still just as much private sector as it was before). Financial reform is called government takeover of the banks. Some boneheads on the right are even calling net neutrality a government takeover of the internet. "Government takeover" probably got them the reaction they wanted from a focus group. Call them out on it. Repeat the phrase regulation of blank does not equal government takeover of blank.
7. Poison pills. Every voter needs to know what a poison pill is. It's when Republicans insert something controversial and unrelated into a Democratic bill in order to stop it from passing. For example a bill that would have given DC voting representation in Congress was sabotaged by Republicans who attached a provision about gun rights. The Stupak Amendment is also a poison pill. You might think it's not, because abortion falls under the general umbrella of healthcare. But the bill was about how to pay for healthcare, not whether abortion should be legal. Stupak is retiring so there is no need to defend what he did. Republicans who claim to be pro-choice vote for Stupak because they thought it would hurt healthcare reform. Attack them for it. Another poison pill was the porn provision in the Competes Act. Poison pills are not too complicated to explain in a 30 second commercial. All you need to do is explain what they are and that you're against them.
8. Don't blame Bush. We can't afford to let one guy take the fall for the failures of the conservative ideology. The failures are 2001-2008 are not the failures of one incompetent president, they are the failures of the conservative ideology. And Republicans still cling to their conservative ideology, and promise to bring it back in an even purer form next time.
9. Let the Bush tax cuts expire. It was a winning campaign promise when Obama made it in 2008. There's no reason it shouldn't still be. If you combine the new stimulus tax cuts with ending the Bush tax cuts then you get a tax cut for 95% of us and a whole lot more revenue for the federal government. Federal taxes are the lowest they have been in 60 years. If you didn't even notice then chances are a 2% fluctuation in the tax rate doesn't affect your standard of living, so stop complaining.
10. Attack members of your own party when it's politically expedient. If you're a liberal challenger in a liberal district then argue they need you in Congress to take the power away from self-interested fence sitters. Even call them out by name if that helps you. If you first got elected in 2006 because you were antiwar then keep up the pressure on Obama to end the war in Iraq and if applicable, Afghanistan. You just know conservadems will criticize Obama from the right, and they shouldn't have all the fun.
Case Study #1: NJ-07 -- Ed Potosnak (D) vs Leonard Lance (R)
If Democrats want to remain a political force in this country then they can't concede districts like this one. However the Democratic powers-that-be decided to write this one off. They're afraid to take on a first-term Republican in a district that Obama won. Leonard Lance voted for cap and trade, but since then he has been a lock-step Republican. He voted against HCR, not because he's against universal healthcare but because he was playing waterloo. He voted agaisnt repealing DADT and he will vote against financial reform. However he gets a lot of favorable coverage from the local press. They call him a principled moderate, and a statesman (yuck!). The Democrat challenging Lance is chemistry teacher and Congressional staffer Ed Potosnak. Unfortunately Potosnak's campaign needs some work.
I want him to stop saying common sense. Saying common sense communicates that you're not qualified for the job and you think any idiot can do it. After all, not everything is common sense. Some things are counterintuitive. And Ed Potosnak is qualified. He is an Albert Einstein Fellow, which means he was chosen because of his excellence in the classroom to work for Congress creating science policy. I've met him, he's a brilliant guy but he needs some work as a candidate. If the 7th district was represented by a public option supporter instead of a guaranteed no vote then we would have had a better healthcare bill.
Case Study #2: NH-Sen -- Paul Hodes (D) vs Kelly Ayotte (R)
In 2008 Paul Hodes was reelected in his district with 56% of the vote. Obama also got 56% of the vote in NH-2. Extrapolate that over the whole state and Hodes should win with 54%. However polls show him losing to Kelly Ayotte. Ayotte is as generic Republican as you can get (although less Jesusy). Her campaign is nothing but lame Republican talking points. She opposes "runaway spending" and promises to "make hard decisions" about controlling spending, without any specifics. She hopes to tap into voter anger against the bailouts. Never mind that the bailouts were a hard decision, no one wanted to give billions of dollars to the people who ruined the economy. Another hard decision to balance the budget would be to raise taxes, but she immediately rules that out. Her campaign has a Palin-y vibe. About 1 in 4 of her blog posts are about guns. She criticizes Hodes for being in Washington (for all of 4 years), and having the taint of Washington. He needs to tell voters about all the good he has done there. He cracked down on contractor fraud; contractors were billing the government for work they never did and he cracked down on it. Put that up against Ayotte, who has nothing to offer but worn out Republican talking points. A half-decent campaign should blow her sophistry out of the water and put him ahead in the polls by double digits.
Kelly Ayotte is another moron I'd like to forget.
Case Study #3: DE-Sen -- Chris Coons (D) vs Mike Castle (R)
Mike Castle has a better reputation than he deserves. Sure he was a popular governor once upon a time, and gets reelected to his House seat with 60%+ every time. But let's talk about his voting record in the last 2 years. He voted against everything important except cap and trade. While he should be commended for cap and trade, that alone isn't good enough. As for health care, the stimulus, DADT repeal, etc, if he actually opposes those things then he is farther right than his reputation. If he doesn't oppose those things, but just wanted to hurt the Democrats then he's guilty of political gamesmanship, playing waterloo, and he doesn't deserve a Senate term. Chris Coons isn't a nobody. He is the County Executive of 2/3 of the state's population. And he's campaigning, defending his record. Coons can underperform Obama by 10% and still win. I didn't want to have to defend a Senate seat in Delaware. I hoped Castle would decide to retire after dealing with crazy birther lady.
Conclusion
Any one of these paragraphs can be made into a 30 second campaign ad. The Democrats would not have made big gains in Congress in 2006 and 2008 if they had been cautious and defensive like they are now. If Democrats campaign aggressively again in 2010 then they can gain more seats. They clearly need more seats because the health care bill fell way short of what we wanted, and too far too long.