This is about the Democrats -- for decades now -- not about Obama. Though Michael Tomasky also addresses some of Obama's mistakes in the latest New York Review, perhaps the most important points he makes are about the party in general.
He wrote the article at the end of September. Things change rapidly during a campaign. Still, Tomasky's analysis covers a couple of decades. Democrats, post Reagan, have lost the "narrative." November? Well, Democrats may not do that badly... but...
Tomasky writes:
There is a case to be made that November 2 might not turn out as badly for the Democrats as most pundits think. No one can say as yet just how the Tea Party movement may divide the GOP vote. But whatever happens, even if they maintain control of the House of Representatives by a slim margin and the Senate by a modest one, they must face a bleak truth. Once again, as was the case after September 11, and as has so often been the case recently in American politics, the Republicans have succeeded in branding the Democrats as not merely elitist but somehow alien and un-American, and the Democrats, from the President on down, have had almost nothing to say about it. One had thought, watching Obama’s well-run presidential campaign, in which his team responded to most attacks quickly and efficiently, that the Democrats would not let themselves be so misrepresented again. But here we are.
How did we get to this point?
My own answer to the question of how things got this bad has less to do with whether Obama should have been more liberal or more centrist than with his and his party’s apparent inability, or perhaps refusal, to offer broad and convincing arguments about their central beliefs that counter those of the Republicans. This problem goes back to the Reagan years. It is a failure that many Democrats and liberals hoped Obama could change—something he seemed capable of changing during the campaign but has addressed rather poorly once in office.
As countless analysts have pointed out, Democrats have lost the knack of persuasive politicking. The words and "frames" escape them. They are remarkably unpersuasive even though their beliefs are shared by many Americans. What's the Republican magic?
In American politics, Republicans routinely speak in broad themes and tend to blur the details, while Democrats typically ignore broad themes and focus on details. Republicans, for example, speak constantly of “liberty” and “freedom” and couch practically all their initiatives—tax cuts, deregulation, and so forth—within these large categories. Democrats, on the other hand, talk more about specific programs and policies and steer clear of big themes. There is a reason for this: Republican themes, like “liberty,” are popular, while Republican policies often are not; and Democratic themes (“community,” “compassion,” “justice”) are less popular, while many specific Democratic programs—Social Security, Medicare, even (in many polls) putting a price on carbon emissions—have majority support. This is why, when all else fails, Democrats try to scare people about the threat to Social Security if the GOP takes over, as indeed they are doing right now.
Bottom line: Dems just don't know how to connect with a great many people who would normally be among their voters.
What Democrats have typically not done well since Reagan’s time is connect their policies to their larger beliefs. In fact they have usually tried to hide those beliefs, or change the conversation when the subject arose. The result has been that for many years Republicans have been able to present their philosophy as somehow truly “American,” while attacking the Democratic belief system as contrary to American values. “Putting us on the road to European-style socialism,” for example, is a rhetorical line of attack that long predates Obama’s ascendance—it was employed against the Clintons’ health care plan as well.
Even in the arguments the left is most likely to win, we lose. We let the Republican arguments put us on the defensive We don't need to, but by doing this, we don't just lose, we throw victory away.
...One might argue, as a matter of economic policy, that more tax cuts aren’t what we need. Lost for the most part in the debate over whether the wealthiest Americans can bear to go back to paying 39.6 percent rather than 35 percent on all income over $250,000 is the fact that from 1950 to 1963, back when we were building a vast middle class and a society in which Democratic themes like “community” weren’t considered toxic, the top marginal rate on very-high-income earners, a rate that majorities of both parties supported, was just over 90 percent. In reality, there were ways of avoiding that rate, and those days will probably never return. But as long as Democrats permit Republicans to appear to be defending (and defining) what it is to be American, matters like that 4.5 difference will be attacked as un-American class warfare, and the attacks will resonate even more loudly from the perches of House committee chairmanships.
We need to start telling Republicans that they've lost what it means to be "real Americans." What they've become is something no American should want to be.
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Update 10/13/10:
One of the best, most effective, and seemingly unbeatable senators, Senator Feingold of Wisconsin, appears to be on the road to retirement. The New York Times offers a glimpse of a campaign that exemplifies Michael Tomasky's recipe for disaster. Russ Feingold is against a tea party candidate of no distinction -- Ron Johnson -- but a candidate who has mastered the use of the broad swipe of aggressive ignorance his campaign.
When it came to the actual details of governing, Senator Russ Feingold, a Democrat of Wisconsin, trounced his Republican challenger, Ron Johnson, in a debate in Wausau, Wis., on Monday night. He knew that the new health care law will not reduce Medicare spending but will slow its staggering rate of growth. He knew that a vast majority of small businesses would not pay higher taxes if rates went up on the wealthy and that global warming isn’t caused by sunspots. He knew that without the 2009 stimulus there would be at least 1.5 million fewer people with jobs.
Mr. Johnson, on the other hand, proudly proclaimed recently that he doesn’t “think this election is about details.” That’s as good an explanation as any of why — in Wisconsin as in so many states — candidates like Mr. Johnson are ahead in the polls. Insurgent Republicans don’t need details when they can play on the furious emotions of voters who have been misled into believing that positive changes like the health care law are catastrophic failures.
The public’s lack of attention to detail, and Mr. Johnson’s willingness to exploit it, could end the career of Mr. Feingold, who in three terms has distinguished himself for trying to bring fairness to campaign finance and decency to national security, among other achievements.
