Take It To The Wingnuts

by digby

Most of you have probably already read the fascinating polling data from MYDD that challenges the conventional wisdom about the Busby race in CA-50 (if you haven’t, be sure to do it.) If you don’t want to slog through all the numbers, here’s an interesting article from the LA CityBeat that gives the basic overview.

Busby’s campaign turns out to have been far less effective than the media suggested. While she certainly galvanized Democrats in the 50th Congressional District, and while Republican turnout was markedly lower than usual because of disenchantment with the status quo, she failed to capture the one constituency she desperately needed to put her over the top, which was independent voters. Her promise to push for better ethics in Washington fell utterly flat with them, because they were almost as suspicious about the integrity of the Democratic Party as they were of the Republicans. Things might have been differenBt if Busby had been running against Duke Cunningham himself, but the man was in prison, not on the ballot. Independents, according to the survey, either stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate.

What might have induced those independents to vote for Busby? According to Rick Jacobs, the Courage Campaign’s chair, all it would have taken was a simple promise to hold the administration’s feet to the fire. “Voters want a candidate to say, ‘I will hold George Bush accountable,’” Jacobs told me. “They think the country’s heading in the wrong direction, they disapprove of George Bush, and therefore they want to know: who is going to be most likely to call him to account and put the country on a better path? I don’t think Busby did any of that.”

[…]

Busby herself appears to have taken some of these lessons on board as she gears up for a rematch against Bilbray in November. Curiously, it might actually be easier for her to win this time – if she can use Bilbray’s few months’ tenure on Capitol Hill as ammunition to suggest that a Republican representative will do nothing to force the Bush administration to change course. According to Rick Jacobs, the party as a whole would do well to approach the midterms in a similar spirit. “This is how the party can define itself, nationally,” he said. “Bush is taking the country in the wrong direction, and Iraq is exhibit number one. Vote for us, and we are going to force the president to come up with a plan to get us out of the there. A Republican congress won’t do anything. That’s the message.”

That was certainly Ned Lamont’s message, and it worked. Now the Democrats need to stop fighting among themselves, and take the message to a broader national audience. They might not have had the courage to stand up against a popular Republican administration. Now all they need is the courage to oppose an unpopular Republican administration. Really, how hard can that be?

Democrats have been demonized as being weak and ineffectual for so long that Independent voters naturally figure that they can’t or won’t do anything to stop the Republicans. Democratic partisans may believe, but in order to get a robust turnout throughout the country, even many of them still need to be convinced that their party leadership will follow through. Democrats must make the case in no uncertain terms that they are prepared to hold Republicans accountable — which means that they must be willing to talk about the lack of oversight and they must promise to hold hearings into specific issues.

The Republicans will scream like banshees, but that actually plays into the Democrats’ hands if they have the nerve to just stare them down and tell them to bring it. Rove’s tried to innoculate against this with his little “omg! they’re going to act just like we did and impeach the president!” message but its primary purpose was to get Democrats to back off. He knew that if Democrats ran on holding his boy accountable they would win. Now we have the data to back that up.

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