The reason that the Democrats have become experts at losing the Presidency is that the Republicans have become experts at the dirty win. Or so the mythology goes. This idea gained traction with the smear campaign run against Michael Dukakis in 1988, when the patrician George Bush played the part of Pontius Pilate, washing his hands while Willie Horton’s face was plastered all over the TV. Since then we have seen Swift boating and Democratic candidates faces split-screened with Osama bin Laden. This year sets a low water mark in dirty campaigning, with John McCain claiming that Barack Obama wants to teach sex education to kindergartners and that he is pals with ‘terrorist’ William Ayers, the former member of the Weathermen, and now professor at the University of Illinois. Even with Obama’s good poll numbers right now, McCain’s nasty accusations has some Democrats worried once again. Personally, I think there’s too much mythology and not enough realism at work here. Democrats have lost every election since 1980, with the exception of Bill Clinton, for several reasons:
· The Democratic majority was chipped away when the racist South turned Republican in the Nixon era.
· The union movement, which was solidly Democratic, collapsed.
· Blue collar voters, with the arrival of prosperity, stopped voting their pocket books and started voting their social resentments against war protesters, minorities, gays, and the elite class.
· Widespread disillusion with politicians after Watergate drove voters away, allowing splinter groups like the religious right to seize power in a climate of apathy.
· The rise of character assassination and fake scandals promoted by the right wing drove away good potential candidates who refused to fight in the mud.
· An aging population moved right, as happens in almost any aging society.
· Pressure from immigration, terrorism, and crime triggered an angry defensive reaction. This aided the right-wing’s opposition to social progress. Falling back on patriotism and xenophobia is commonly seen under these circumstances.
· The Republicans forged a new coalition of Southerners, social and religious conservatives, and the mountain and plains states, taking advantage of the electoral college (which can give a candidate the Presidency while he loses the popular vote).
If you add these factors up, it’s clear that dirty campaigning is only one ingredient among many factors in the Republican victories. Barack Obama’s task isn’t to win nobly instead of losing nobly, it’s to counter the factors I’ve listed. He needs a perfect storm against the demographic gains the Republicans have built in the last few decades. With the recent financial meltdown and the insecurity it is engendering across the country, it is likely that Obama now has that perfect storm. The voters’ focus on leadership that can address these economic issues should be enough to wash away the narrow majorities that Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were able to carve out of the middle class electorate.
The McCain campaign understands that the ground has shifted under their feet, and that negative ads will likely work only if the election is already pretty close, but given the limitations of their candidate, smear tactics is all they have. As Sarah Palin and McCain whip their crowds into frenzies of anger and hatred toward Obama, letting shouts of “terrorist!” and “kill him!” go unchecked, they may find that the shouts of this poisonous pocket of their constituency will be their enduring legacy. Going dirty without the underlying basis to win means going down in history as a dirty loser.
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