Strategery

In response to my post on Feingold’s censure resolution, wherein I reveal that I have one good nerve left and everyone who keeps implying that I just don’t understand The Big Picture is gettin' on it, Neil the Ethical Werewolf (who, it should be noted, is not someone at whom I’m directing my ire regarding tendencies toward condescension; Neil and I manage to disagree, on the rare occasions we do, quite agreeably) replies:

As you know, I have mildly positive feelings towards this censure thing. But let me make it clear what Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of the big folks are thinking.

Look at the issues currently on the table. Polls show us winning 60-30 on Iraq. Lots of states have minimum wage initiatives that have 80% support. We're perfectly set up to whack the administration on port security. Nobody likes corruption, and that looks to be the big story of this election cycle. Then there's all the cuts in college money and veterans' benefits, which are similarly hated by the entire American public.

In short, we have huge advantages on everything else that's on the table.

Having an actual advantage on the issues does not automatically translate into having the perceived advantage, which is a lesson the chronically marketing-impaired Democrats never seem to learn. But I digress. Back to Neil:

So why expend effort introducing an issue where we have a slight advantage (if any), rather than twisting knives we've already sunk into the Bush Administration? And realize that this is a "rather than" issue. A minority party has limited resources to control the debate.

I’m not convinced it needs to be an either-or issue, particularly when Feingold’s introduction of a censure resolution was, for all intents and purposes, free, and it generated a lot of press coverage, which seems to bring the Dems out ahead, resources-wise. If the unfortunate spinelessness of the rest of his party hadn’t necessitated their disavowing his proposal or damning it with faint praise, the Dems wouldn’t have halted their own possible momentum yet again. That’s not Feingold’s fault for circumventing the party; that’s the party’s fault for shying away from bold maneuvers and leaving a void that someone needs to fill. Ultimately, what this argument comes down to is whether Feingold was right or wrong to fill that void in the way he did, when he did. And one’s answer to that question is likely predicated on one’s impression of what else the Democrats are doing. Neil continues:

In short, we're not arguing for inaction. We're arguing for action everywhere else. Take a look at the ads that Rahm Emmanuel wants to buy. Let's make the elections about those things, because there are easy wins there.

As I said, I’m open to persuasion, so I went ahead and took a look, as requested, and I found:

Just as Harry Truman ran against the "Do-Nothing Congress," Democrats will run against the "Rubber-Stamp Congress," which pimped for K Street, took a dive on its critical oversight duties (particularly on Iraq) and helped the president bankrupt the country by shoveling money toward the rich.

Emanuel won't say yet which votes supporting Bush he plans to wrap around the necks of incumbents. But look for gut-punch ads that highlight the incumbents' 90-plus percent backing for Bush on issues like cuts in college loans and veterans benefits, privatizing Social Security, selling out to Big Pharma on prescription drugs and halting stem-cell research. Republicans are now scurrying away from Bush, but it may be too late. They can't take those roll-call votes back.

Clunk. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The only way I could be less enthusiastic about that is if I were dead, which, ironically, may be Democrats’ new ploy to squelch a lack of enthusiasm among progressives, because that plan nearly killed me with boredom. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.

One of the Democrats’ most unattractive features is their bull-headed insistence that being right on the issues is all that matters, and someday Americans will wake up and start making the distinctions about specific policy that the Democrats want them to make. I expect any day to be issued a mind-numbingly tedious rulebook outlining exacting how I’m supposed to respond to the Democrats’ campaigns, because they seem immutably resistant to the idea that candidates are meant to campaign in a way that appeals to voters.

That’s not to say I disagree with the above-described campaign plan, but it can’t be the only—or even the main—plan. We aren’t living in a world of highly engaged, nuance-interested voters, nor in a world where knowing a candidate voted “wrong” on an issue or two about which one cares automatically means that candidate will become unappealing enough to vote against. If we were, Kerry would have won. It’s just that simple.

As repellent as the notion may be that voters are looking for some pizzazz—call it balls, call it a show of strength, call it a grand gesture; it doesn’t matter—turning up one’s nose at the reality that it’s going to take more than plodding rightness to win elections doesn’t make it not so. The longer the Dems fail to provide something to vote for, rather than relying upon our votes against a more odious alternative, the greater our diffidence.

Given what the American people already know, it's going to be a lot easier to whack the GOP as the party that screwed up Iraq and is massively corrupt, than as the party that lets the president break the law. So let's take the obvious route to victory.

I get where this sentiment is coming from; I do. Yet, more than anything, it calls to mind the dull and dreary high school comp classes where I learned to write a term paper. Thesis, body, conclusion. No rhetorical questions. Never start a sentence with and or but. This is what they expect in college. If you’re going to succeed, you’ve got to do it right. I got As in those classes, because I did it they way they expected, but when I got to university, I sat before wild-haired professors who smoked in class, and took the class outdoors on sunny days, and wrote on the cinderblock walls when the chalkboard got full. They, I thought, didn’t want a paper that was right; they wanted a paper that was interesting.

I used music magazines as my sources; I went over the word limit; I buried my thesis in the middle of the second paragraph; I put in photos; I wrote with passion and threw technique to the wind. I still got my A, and my professors thanked me being a breath of fresh air.

Sometimes being right just isn’t enough without being interesting. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde—who may not have been a great political mind, but certainly knew a lot about people—there’s no such thing as good or bad; just the charming or the tedious.