Running Against Yourself

by digby

Remember how just a week ago the Democrats were saying that they were finally going run against the catastrophic Republican policies of the Bush administration? Think again. From MSNBC this morning:

Andrea Mitchell: Bashing former president George W. Bush? That’s no longer a winning strategy for Democrats. The tactic seemed effective in 2006 and 2008 but now the blame game has lost its power. Democrats tried playing the Bush card in all three of the recent statewide races they lost all three times.

John Harris editor of Politico joining us now. What’s going wrong with that?

Democrats thought this was a horse they could ride for a good bit longer, through the 2010 elections and still riding the old mare into 2012. Turns out it’s just not the case. Running against president Bush, as unpopular as he was when his term ended, just doesn’t seem to be getting political juice in these races.

A good story today we had in Politico today Jonathan Martin, talked to a bunch of Democratic consultants. It’s time to throw out this strategy, it’s just not working.

Right. I think a far better approach would be for the Democrats to take the blame for the economic downturn themselves. Americans will respect that and reward them for their honesty.

And the political media is there to help them do that:

Mitchell: The other strategy they seem not to be able to have is, here they have people concerned about jobs, and the economy yet they don’t have an economic advisor they are prepared to put out on the Sunday talk shows?? I understand the white house political types going out, but what about the fact that neither their treasury secretary or their economic advisors are politically acceptable to them to be a spokesperson for the administration?

Harris: Well at the moment, those guys and their presence themselves seems to be a little off message. The administration itself is trying to strike a more populist note, saying we’re getting tough on big banks we’re not the administration of Wall Street. But those two people because of their actions early in the administration are seen by the base of the party as representatives of Wall Street. Whether that’s fair or not fair, their presence does not send the message the administration wants right now.

Of course, they blame that perception on “the base” and leave the question of whether it’s true or not up to the viewer. In the end one concludes that the administration is hiding its economic advisors because they want to pander to their base which unfairly sees them as beholden to Wall Street. Therefore, both the president and his base are weak, stupid and craven.

Mitchell then interviewed Michael Isikoff about the bin Laden tape from this week-end. And you’ll be shocked to learn that the president has to move right on national security as well:

Mitchell: Let’s talk about the political impact here because I’m beginning to hear from a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans that they do not want to go to civilian trial that they do not want to see Khalid Sheik Mohammed tried in New York City.

Isikoff: We talked about this last week. The trial of khalid Sheik mohammed may now be in doubt because of the shift in mood in the congress. you also had the testimony last week from Director of national intelligence Dennis blair that seemed to raise questions about the approach taken with the nigerian suspect, about putting him through the civilian court. A lot of congressional Republicans have jumped on that.

The basic premises of Obama’s approach to counter terrorism policy have come into question since this Detroit incident and are now up in the air.

So, the upshot is that Democrats not only cannot run against Bush, they must adopt his policies. And if they are hiding the unpopular economic advisors it’s because they are pandering to their unreasonable base, so that’s a problem as well.

Can a Villager draft Cheney movement be far behind? (And I’m talking about the Democratic ticket.)

BTW: The Republicans have run against Jimmy Carter for the past 28 years. In fact, they’re still running against him. Here’s Rush from a couple of years ago:

RUSH: … President Carter wanted to turn things around. He warned that rising materialism would not ‘fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.’ He said it was a crisis of American spirit. In response to this crisis, Carter wanted the authority to ration gasoline, form an ‘energy mobilization board,’ create a bureaucracy to guarantee that we would ‘never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977,’ set oil import quotas and develop solar power. ‘These efforts will cost money,’ Carter explained, ‘a lot of money….'” Now, this was a genuine malaise. He was right. The country was dispirited, but it was because of him! Coming out of Watergate, he puts all these things out there. It was an absolute mess. It is not a mess today, but Democrats are trying to recreate the same mind-set.

Republicans understand two simple things. You must name your enemy and you must imbue that enemy with the characteristics people hate about themselves. The Democrats used to do it quite well themselves, but after Carter they lost their nerve. (I think the Villagers joining the Republicans with their utter disdain for anything that smacks of liberal idealism completely spooked them and they have never recovered.) If the party cannot run against the catastrophic failure of Bush governance, much less against the catastrophic failure of Republican ideology, then they literally have nothing to run on but empty slogans. And that doesn’t cut it once you’re in office and you haven’t delivered. They need to name the culprits — if they don’t, they’ll become the enemy themselves, by default.

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