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Dear Senators Edwards, Clinton, and Obama, and Governor Richardson,
Please let me start by expressing my deep appreciation to you ALL, for demonstrating so clearly the delightful dilemma facing Democrats (which can best be described as an embarrassment of riches,) and how different we are from the Republican Party, (which can only be described as embarrassing losers.) It is a real joy to have ALL of you running for President, because ANY of you is so vastly, overwhelmingly superior as Presidential material to any of the Republican offerings. We literally cannot lose, no matter who we nominate. Damn, you guys know how good that feels? Mmmmmmm.....
And having watched the debates Saturday night (well, most of them... I admit my attention wandered some,) I experienced great pleasure in the noticeably better quality of debate and discourse (over all) among Democrats than among the Republicans. Kudos to each of you. Yes, each of you let the heat of the moment (or maybe the TV lights,) rattle you into a few honkers, but by and large you all looked great. I'm proud of you, and proud to be a Democrat with any and all of you representing our Party.
That said, I hope that someone connected with each of your campaigns is in a position to read this, because I really think each of you can benefit from what I've observed among my fellow Democrats' responses to you. And not necessarily those here on DU. Here are specifics:
My mother--white, retired, educated, and a lifelong Democrat--lives in Minnesota and she and her neighbors in the senior housing community share many opinions. Her comment to me when we spoke on the telephone on Saturday was: "The first one of those candidates who attacks another Democratic candidate loses my vote." Sorry, Senator Obama. She perceived your remarks early in the debate about Senator Clinton as an attack. She won't be caucusing for you at her local community center. But she'll still vote for you if you get the nomination.
My friend Jim in Montgomery County, Maryland--African-American, retired, a conservative Democrat--e-mailed me the other day as part of a long exchange/discussion about the election. I quote: "Any candidate who believes that winning the nomination is more important than winning the general election shows too poor a grasp of priorities to win my vote. I was supporting Hillary Clinton but if she doesn't start saving the cutthroat ruthlessness to other candidates for a GOP opponent, I'll support someone else."
The young son of an old friend--about twenty, 'multi-ethnic,' working road construction jobs to save money for college--said this to me during a phone conversation over the holidays: "I think Edwards could win it if he doesn't get distracted into a food fight with Hillary or Obama. I'd like to see him pull it out."
My college roommate's daughter--white, children's book section manager at Barnes & Noble, currently on medical leave because of complications with her first pregnancy, not too politically active in the past--has been spending a lot of time on the phone with me lately. Here's her take on the campaign: "I like them all but I wish they'd spend more time telling me *specifically* what they plan to accomplish if they're elected, and less time telling me why all the others are so terrible. And stop with the high-sounding generalities, already, do they think I'm dumb?"
A close friend here in Santa Fe--in his late forties, Anglo, a union meat cutter who considers himself apolitical or 'leaning Republican' in the past--has definitely had enough of the Republican Party, for now at least. His most recent comment on the choices offered by the Democrats: "I don't mind Richardson but if he doesn't relax a little and get his foot out of his mouth he's not going to make it to round two."
And finally, my West Coast friend--middle aged, single, white, female, very liberal indeed: "Look, no matter who gets nominated, we have to make sure the idiots who voted for Bush in 2004 know exactly why they need to vote Democratic in November. Could we just can the snarking and focus on that? If I read one more petty media flap about which candidate said what nasty thing about which other candidate I'm ready to give up and vote Green. It sounds more like the gossip in a Junior High School homeroom than grown-ups looking for the responsibility to clean up this mess Bush has landed us in."
Are you seeing a trend, here? Because I finally connected the dots. Here's how it reads to me. Election cycle after election cycle, all my life (and I'm older than some of you,) there has been much criticism of negative campaigning, which is always met by the undeniable conventional wisdom that "nobody likes it but it works." This exchange has been played out so many times that it's become an accepted truism. No one likes negative campaigning, but it works, so we have to use it, no matter how high-minded we really are, because after all, the important thing is to win elections, right? and after we've won we can demonstrate just how morally and ethically superior to our opponents we really are. In the mean time, let the mud fly and the chips fall where they may...
But sooner or later, a tide turns. The things that were "conventional wisdom" and "tried and true" campaign strategies when I was young have not all endured. Some have changed quite a lot. And I think this election just might be the beginning of such a change. I think Democrats are still quite tolerant of negative campaigning, and I think that it will remain quite effective--if it is applied to Republicans. But I think that many of us have reached something like a tolerance threshold, or a saturation point, or just a level of profound irritation, with intra-Party negativity.
Let's start with that snarky little question they threw in at Saturday night's debate. You know, the one that went something like "What's one bad thing that one of your primary opponents has said?" I don't remember the specific wording, but it was a clear invitation for each of you to slang off at least one other candidate.
I think you answered first, Governor Richardson, and I remember hoping that you were going to not only decline the gambit, but hang a bell on that particular cat. Well, you did decline the gambit, and I give you credit for that, but then you used it as an opportunity to segue into a chunk of your standard stump speech about your own experience, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Imagine, if you will, all of you, just how powerful it would have been if the first one to answer had said, "Well, Charlie, I'd rather use this opportunity to say something positive about each of my opponents. I think that encouraging us to criticize each other's positions is more valuable to the media hoping to cover a spectacular display of malice than it is to voters who want to learn more about why they should support each of us," and then gone on to say something positive about an accomplishment on the part of each of the other people on the podium with them.
Getting shilled into playing the media's game of "oooh, look at the mud-fight!" may look like a way to gain a strategic advantage in the immediate term, but it's starting to backfire. For each of you. For ALL of you. Listen to the voters out here. For every noisy one encouraging you to "Be tough, take them on head to head, don't let any negative smear go unretaliated for" there are ten, fifteen, maybe twenty voters saying "When will they stop squabbling with each other and talk to me about stuff that's important to me?"
I hope you've found this useful. I wish you all well, and I'll be very happy to vote for whichever of you wins the nomination.
respectfully, Bright
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