Top Tier Dems Offer Three Visions of Electability

[Analysis] Iowa Democrats are sophisticated creatures.  We’re smart enough to realize that, for all the dance over the minutia of their policies, there really isn’t a lot of substantive issue difference within Democratic field, not compared to the GOP’s differences with Rudy Giuliani on choice or John McCain on immigration or Ron Paul on just about everything.  The top six Democrats all want some sort of health care plan short of single payer that retains the private insurance sector, they all want to end the war with varying degrees of speed, they all favor civil unions but not gay marriage, and so on, and so on.

The important issues in the Democratic race at end game, rather, are the meta-issues: persona, rhetoric, the identity politics of race and gender, and most of all electability.  Iowa Democrats know they’re choosing the nominee almost single-handedly again, and they want someone who can win.  The top three Democrats — be real, none of the second tier broke through — all offer different cases as to why they’re the most electable.Barack Obama makes the most traditional electability argument, with his message of bringing people together and rising above partisanship.  “Remember the Reagan Democrats?” he says on the trail.  “I want to see some Obama Republicans,” citing polls that show him as the most popular Democrat among Republicans and independents. 

But will that last?  To some extent, Obama remains a blank slate, yet to be defined.  And Republicans remain very, very good at defining Democrats.  People read into him whatever they want.

Also important to Obama’s electability case is the expand-the-electorate argument that had been made by every progressive back to George McGovern.  I, says the candidate, am the one who can finally get those non-voters to the polls.  Usually this refers to the unreached underclass, an invisible proletariat that the left has always dreamed will rise up.  And there is the notion that the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy will maximize black turnout and bring in new young voters.  But at the core of Obama’s vision of the American non-electorate is something different and probably more accurate: the turned-off middle.  People are tired of the fighting, he argues, and want compromise. 

But what if the reason for the bitter fighting in American politics is substantive, not petty?  What if the argument is heated because of fundamental, irreconcilable differences?  That’s the core of John Edwards’ case.

Twenty years ago the economic leftist message was coming from African American Jesse Jackson, while the centrist voice was Southern white male Al Gore.  (Now that he’s Saint Global Warming, everyone forgets that Gore got his start in presidential politics as a Sam Nunn conservative, the South’s Great White Hope against Jackson.)  Today those tables have turned, with Edwards rousing the masses as Obama preaches conciliation.  Edwards openly mocks Obama’s Politics of Nice, saying it’s a “fantasy” or, sometimes even, a “lie” to believe that Big Insurance and Big Drug will negotiate away their own power.

By putting economic populism at the center of his message, Edwards is hoping to persuade the working class Tories of America to vote their pocketbooks and abandon the God Guns and Gays politics of the Karl Rove era, as he takes the stage to John Mellencamp’s “Our Country” — a song prominently featured in a pickup truck ad.

Edwards argues his electability in terms of the electoral math.  “I’m the only candidate who’s won a red state,” he says.  That refers to his Senate win nearly a decade ago.  As the nominee for vice president, he lost North Carolina.  Implicit in the argument as to why Edwards can win red states is the reasoning that a black man or a woman can’t.  This is never, ever, ever spoken out loud by the Edwards campaign.  But once in a while it’s quietly whispered at the backs of halls by rank and file supporters – never with a tone of racism or sexism, but more in a sense of regret and fear.  Phrases like “just not ready” and “don’t take a chance” pop up.  Is it racist or sexist to implicitly argue the racism or sexism of the American electorate, to argue that Southern white men will only vote for a Southern white man?  Name the last three Democratic presidents.  Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s electability is the central issue of the Democratic dialogue.  She’s the most polarizing figure in presidential politics, and has been fortunate that Obama and Edwards have largely and roughly evenly split the opposition.  Polls consistently come to the same conclusion: roughly half the electorate says that they would never, under any circumstances, vote for her.

Yet Clinton has taken this Achilles’ heel and forged the most creative electability argument in the field, arguing that her weakness is instead her greatest strength.  She argues that whoever the Democratic nominee is, the Republican attack machine will hit with everything it’s got, the way John Kerry got Swift-Boated.  (Remember how electability was Kerry’s ace in the hole?  “They can’t go after Kerry — he’s a war hero!”).  They’ve thrown everything in the world at me over the last 16 years, Clinton continues with the argument, and I’m still standing.  She points to steady attacks in the Republican debates and says that proves her strength. 

The point has some merit in its contrast with fresh face Obama, though Edwards weathered the intense scrutiny of number two on the ticket far better than some past contenders like Geraldine Ferraro and Dan Quayle.  But ultimately, Clinton makes a status quo argument.  While Edwards argues for persuading people to the Democratic side, and Obama hopes to expand the electorate, Clinton tacitly concedes that the slash and burn politics of the Rove era will continue, and she’s the candidate most fit to survive that political Darwinist environment. 

Clinton also says she’s “the least known famous person in America,” and that once people get to know her, her negatives will drop as they did in upstate New York.  On substance, she has the most moderate record of the top three and the support of the Democratic Leadership Council.  To the DLC, “electable” means “moderate,” with Senator Clinton’s husband as case in point.  This strategy forgoes gains on the left margin in hopes of winning over the muddled middle.

A generation ago, as much as a quarter of the electorate was persuadable in a general election.  Both parties won three out of eight voters at their low water marks, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern.  As American politics has polarized, the center has gotten narrower and narrower.  Today, probably as little as ten percent of voters are truly up for grabs.  Looking ahead to November, it’s hard to imagine the GOP dropping much below 45 percent, barring some sort of Ron Paul splinter candidacy. 

So who’s truly taking a chance on electability?  John Edwards and Barack Obama are making a case for the politics of 55 percent, a relative landslide that could help carry down ballot races in its wake.  But Hillary Clinton is betting on inside straight politics of 51 percent, the margins of field work, the minutia of better get out the vote efforts in Ohio and Florida, the hope that no Nader-like, two percent lefty peace candidacy happens.  This time, she argues, on the third try, the Democrats can thread the needle.