Advice to Democrats: Actively go on the attack

There's a piece in today's NY Times by Carl Hulse saying the Democrats intend to take the issue of national security to the public in this year's elections.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — After being outmaneuvered in the politics of national security in the last two elections, Democrats say they are determined not to cede the issue this year and are working to cast President Bush as having diminished the nation’s safety.

“They are not Swift boating us on security,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader in the House.

Seeking to counter White House efforts to turn the reported terrorist plot in Britain to Republican advantage, Democrats are using the arrests of the suspects to try to show Americans how the war in Iraq has fueled Islamic radicalism and distracted Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress from shoring up security at home. They say they intend to drive that message home as the nation observes the coming anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks.

If it's true, it's about time. It's also good news that perhaps the public is ready to hear this. The Bushies have certainly proved themselves completely incompetent. Not only have they ignored homeland security from the start, but they have also screwed up all the other ventures (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc.) that they've actually attempted. Why anyone would continue to trust them is beyond me.

Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America makes a related point in today's Times [behind subscription wall] when he notes that the Democrats don't seem to be able to make the charges of Republican corruption stick. He attributes this to their inability to make people see that the route cause of this corruption is essentially Republican:

By now, even the most dedicated “values voter” is aware that an orgy of plunder and predation grinds merrily on in the capital, yet if polls are to be believed, the Democrats can persuade almost nobody to switch their vote on that basis. That’s because, while they have many nice slogans on the subject, Democrats offer no larger theory of corruption, no way to help voters understand what is essentially Republican about the pillage currently being visited on our national government.

His solution is to read a book entitled The Politicos about 19^th century corruption. Andrew Gumbel in the Los Angeles City Beat has a different solution. He identifies the same problem as it affected Ruth Busby's losing campaign to take the seat vacated by Randy “Duke” Cunningham. The independent voters didn't turn out because they didn't believe a Democrat was any less likely to be corrupt than a Republican. Gumbel proposes the Democrats have an ACTIVE attack message about what they'll do about it:

More important, 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 different 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.”

What seems right to me in these prescriptions is that the Democrats need to be actively on the attack, not waiting to parry the attacks of the Republicans. When you tiptoe around waiting to be attacked trying to be all things to all people, you look weak. That's what's been wrong with the Democrats for way too long now, and the country has suffered under the predation of the Thugs. Maybe, just maybe, we're going to see some changes this time around. I certainly hope so.