Another good column from Guardian pundit Michael Tomasky. He’s inclined to see Republicans gaining control of the House this fall. And he spells out the reason why:
But the bottom line is this: the Democrats are afraid of the Republicans. They – all of them, from Obama on down – are afraid of Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann and you name it. You hear Democratic operatives talk strategy, and there’s always a “logical” reason why this or that aggressive attack might not work. But it’s nothing to do with logic. They’re just afraid. Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who wants the government out of everything, is a good case in point. It’s been revealed that her family farm has received $250,000 in federal subsidies. If she were a Democrat, the Republicans would make sure the entire country knew it.
But the Democrats won’t do things like that. If they had for the past 20 months, Americans would be talking about a president who, all things considered, is doing his best against quasi-insane and hypocritical opposition. But they’re telling each other a different story. And the Democrats will go on not learning the lesson of the price of their fear.
I think he’s right, the Dem management does fear the GOP. But this is just a single opinion column–in that kind of space you just can’t cover all the reasons why the Dems plays defense instead of offense.
First: there’s the mismatch in getting the message out. I mean, the Dems have money. The trad media reports Dem advantages in fund raising this year wherever these exist–but trad media focus on that distorts the elections picture. Because it ignores a key conservative strength throughout the last thirty years of election cycles: conservatives have their own national and local broadcasting media. That represents hour after hour of conservative propaganda going out all the time, all over the country. (Anecdote: just today, Sunday, I was punching the radio buttons and got a Rush Limbaugh tirade rebroadcast, the local clone on another station, and an evangelical speaker arguing that Americans had a duty imposed by God to support the government of Israel. All of that; in the space of five minutes in the Minnesota radio market.)
Dems and liberals and progressives have nothing comparable to that; nothing at all–Maddow, Olbermann and Schultz and their ilk are a niche market by comparison…they reach a fraction of the voters that their conservative opponents reach, and their conservative opponents outnumber them by the hundreds.
There’s the “secular” conservative broadcasting (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage and the hundreds of local knock-offs that follow them in local time slots)…but you must add to that the evangelical conservative broadcasting, which also broadcasts the conservative propaganda. And adds to it the authority of Christ.
How much do you think it would cost the Dems to match that machine, to get their message out to compete with that of the conservatives? If you think about that, you’ll probably realize that the money contributed to Dems–critical to keeping the conservatives out of power–is actually dwarfed by the media power that conservative *don’t need to buy.*
So there’s another reason why the Dems don’t go on offense. Still another is the one that Tomasky highlights in his column: the unemployment rate is too high. Nothing to misunderstand there–you don’t fix that economy and keep the American middle class feeing good about it…and you can expect to lose elections, lose the advantage. It’s kind of funny to hear people on progressive blogs arguing about the administration’s failure on this or that important issue (environment, identity politics, whatever)–because they don’t seem to realize that whole game slips out of our control if the people who vote don’t feel good about their financial prospects.
I mean: you can’t say you weren’t warned about that, right? It wasn’t the endless wars or the endless lying or their role in the Katrina disaster that did in the Bush admin and the GOP Congress and led Obama and the Dems into power. All of those Bush disasters hurt, badly–but it was the Wall Street meltdown and another reach around recession (that would have become a world wide depression) that crushed conservatism.
Temporarily. They were down as low as twenty four per cent but the conservative media advantage I mentioned above will keep them in play as long as it exists. (Just because you don’t listen to that crap they broadcast, doesn’t mean that millions of Americans are rabid fans.)
That conservative media advantage, plus Dem fail to produce a strong economy prior to the elections–is gonna hurt. It will hurt very bad, because the GOP that is now positioned to take over is well and truly nutty (remember who I write about regularly, and her current status in the party and the conservative movement nationally.)
So that’s why Dems are on defense…to go on the attack (in terms of getting your message to the public and discrediting the opposition)–you have to have the means to go on attack. The conservatives have those means, every day; the Dems…lack the means.
I guess they could craft a more aggressive *message* and use their existing means to get that out…They might try terrifying the voters with the prospect of a Bachmann type GOP in power, visions of that kind of government overseeing the mass impoverishment of American working families, more wars, extremist reforms.
It’s very hard to get them to do that; to get Dems to carry the fight to enemy. I spent years bitching at local Dems and media to (correctly) characterize Bachmann as an extremist. They didn’t want to do that; they wanted to run on “the economic issues.” What will incumbent Dems run on now, with the perception of the economy being what it is?
It would be the good fight to point up that the other side are liars and crackpots who ran the country into the ground the last time it was handed to them. And it would be true; that message would be true–there’s a lot of material there. And they may as well try it–because when the voters are being told how bad the economy sucks, every day and all the time: keeping your head down, bending over and hoping for the best is not a good strategy…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/22/us-democrats-fright-club
ACTION LINK:
Tarryl Clark, Bachmann’s opponent, needs your help. If Bachmann wins again and the GOP does take over the House: Bachmann will be making policy for *you,* my friend.
