The Scott Brown Lesson for Democrats: Recapture Change

 By Brad Bannon

Posted January 20, 2010

Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research a Massachusetts-based political polling and consulting firm that works with Democratic candidates, labor unions and progressive interest groups.

BOSTON–The brownout in Bean town yesterday was a disaster for Democrats and party leaders shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

Whenever a catastrophe like this occurs, there’s plenty of blame to spread around. Martha Coakley’s campaign was not nearly as effective as Scott Brown’s. The White House failed to present an agenda to energize the grassroots and netroot activists in the Bay State. And an unpopular Democratic governor and state legislature fouled the political environment.

Even before the polls closed yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and Coakley strategist Celinda Lake were busy pointing fingers at each other. If Democrats had been this aggressive in Massachusetts, Coakley would have won and there wouldn’t be any reason for us to argue.

Republicans will enjoy the Democratic infighting almost as much as they exalted in Scott Brown’s upset victory. My message to my fellow Democrats is get over it and look forward and not backward. There is a silver ling behind every dark cloud. The good news is the defeat occurred 10 months before the mid term elections, so Democrats have plenty of time to learn a few lessons, straighten up and fly right.

The first lesson is the importance of the economy. A lot of the election night commentary on the Democratic defeat focused on the prospects of healthcare reform. This preoccupation with healthcare is part of the Democratic problem. Voters are screaming about jobs but Democrats are whining about healthcare. The failure of Democrats to listen to people and the party’s unwillingness to take on Wall Street have produced the populist rage that ate up Martha Coakley.

I’m an FDR Democrat and the long period of Democratic dominance from the ’30s through the ’60s was built on jobs. When voters worried about jobs they reached out for Democratic candidates like security blankets. Voters now wonder, if the Democrats can’t produce jobs, what good are they?

Fortunately, Republicans have the same problem with a different issue. The foundation of the long period of GOP hegemony that ended this decade was fiscal responsibility. When voters realized that the two Bushes had accumulated federal budget deficits larger than all their Democratic predecessors combined, Republicans became cannon fodder in 2006 and 2008.

The next thing that Democrats should do is put the Who song, “Won’t Be Fooled Again” on their IPods. One line in the song, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” captures public disenchantment with Democratic leadership in Washington. Voters want change which is why they supported Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and have been voting for the GOP since then.

Barack Obama is president because he promised voters change. Candidate Obama was single minded about using the change message which is why he won the election. In his last debate with John McCain, the Democratic candidate used the “c word” 11 times. Even Joe Biden got the memo. In his convention speech accepting the Democratic nomination for Vice President, Senator Biden said “change” 20 times. But in his inaugural address, president Obama only said “change” twice.

Now Democrats must deliver. We have to give Americans something fundamentally different than they got before. The president should shake up his economic team and begin by firing Wall Street insider Tim Geithner and replace him with a populist like Robert Reich. Then the president should propose another round of economic stimulus before it is too late for it to do any good this year. If a new round of stimulus produces jobs, voters won’t care how much money it cost. Then Congressional Democrats should produce a robust financial reform package that cracks down on Wall Street and demonstrates to the public that Democrats can be tough on the special interests that created the economic mess.

Everybody likes to slow down on the Beltway and rubberneck a car crash which is why Democrats will circle up and fire at each other for weeks to come. But slowing up to look at the wreck creates congestion not progress. And progress is what Democrats desperately need to win in November.

What Democrats Should Say on Healthcare: It’s a Story With a Hero and Villains

Democrats can fight GOP scare tactics on reform with a horror story of their own

 By Brad Bannon

Posted August 4, 2009

Brad Bannon is the president of Bannon Communications Research, a political consulting and polling firm for Democratic candidates, labor unions, and progressive-issue groups.

How can Democrats revive flagging public support for healthcare reform? Well, now that Congress is on summer vacation, the reformers must think about and reboot their campaign.

And they appear to have already started: In the last few days, the House Democratic leaders called for a new message strategy to build public support for healthcare reform. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has heated up the rhetoric by describing the insurance industry as the “villains” in the piece. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters that the Democrats would develop a “more focused” message.

Both leaders are absolutely right. Democrats need to change the tone and content of their message in order to get the fundamental changes in healthcare that Americans need.

There are two ways to frame the battle over healthcare reform, the right way and the wrong way.

Conservatives would like to make the fight a question of whether government control of healthcare is a good or bad thing. And unfortunately, they have succeeded in making much of the debate over healthcare about the question of government control.

In a recent CBS News/New York Times survey, 7 out of 10 Americans said that they were somewhat or very concerned that the quality of their care would get worse in a government-run system. Another 3 out of every 4 people think that the cost of their own care would increase under government control. GOP scare tactics have had a big impact.

The question that Democrats should force the Republicans to answer instead is whether or not we need to completely change healthcare to keep America and Americans from going bankrupt. What Democrats should say is that the healthcare system is so fundamentally flawed that we should tear it down and build a better system from scratch.

The Times and CBS survey indicates that Americans want major reforms. Half the public desires fundamental changes and another third want to completely rebuild the system. Democrats should make this debate about whether the system requires major change or whether we should continue business as usual. That’s a debate that liberals will win.

Now of course the only way to fundamentally change the system and reduce healthcare premiums is a public or patients’ option that will end the monopoly that a small groups of insurers have in each state or area. If the private insurers have to compete with a patients’ option, the cost of premiums will decrease. But the public option should not be the lead in the story.

Americans want change and that’s why Barack Obama is president. The president understands this and he used the word “change” more than 20 times in his most recent press conference. But the serenity that served Barack Obama so well during the presidential campaign isn’t powerful enough to stifle the fear about healthcare reform that conservatives have generated by spending $9 million on television ads.

Democrats need to get mad and tell a horror story. Every story needs a hero, a villain, and a threat to the beleaguered villagers. The narrative (beltway speak for story) should be about the hero (the brave, young president) who fights the villains (the greedy and immoral health insurance companies) who plunder and pillage the villagers (the hard-pressed American people).

Hopefully, this scary story will have a happy ending.

Sotomayor is Obama’s Second Salvo in the Culture Wars

Sotomayor confirmation hearings could turn the culture wars if Republicans aren’t very careful

 By Brad Bannon

Posted May 27, 2009

Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research, a political consulting and polling firm that works for Democrats, labor unions, and progressive-issue groups.

Sonia Sotomayor is exactly the person that the Supreme Court needs. She is a distinguished jurist and will be the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court. As a bonus, she will improve female representation on the Court and, because of her background as a poor kid from the Bronx, she will give voice to the millions of Americans who are struggling economically to keep their heads above water.

President Obama’s appointment of Judge Sotomayor to the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court will also begin the culture wars in earnest.

Actually, the first shot in the culture wars was President Obama’s response to antiabortion advocates who boycotted his appearance at Notre Dame University’s commencement ceremony. In his speech, the president tried to find common ground between the pro-choice and pro-life forces. His attempt to moderate the culture war contrasts with his economic program, where the president has gone full steam ahead without compromises that would lessen Republican opposition.

The contrast between the president’s approach to social and to economic policy reflects Democratic confidence in its strength on bread-and-butter issues and a defensiveness on cultural issues.

Even though Democrats usually win battles on the economic front, their track record in culture wars are not nearly as good. Since the 1960s, Republicans have successfully used the social issues to drive a wedge between blue-collar union members and the Democratic Party with a steady diet of guns, God, and gays. And even now, after getting Congress to pass his stimulus program, the president not been able to prevent NRA supporters in the Senate from attaching pro-gun riders to important pieces of legislation.

But after three months of focusing on the economy like the proverbial laser beam, the Sotomayor confirmation hearings will force the president to fight the culture wars whether he wants to or not. Since Massachusetts legalized gay marriage four years ago, the focus of the culture wars has moved from abortion to gay rights.

This week, the California Supreme Court upheld the voter ban on gay marriage that passed last year. This case is likely to get to the Supreme Court, so the Republicans in the Senate will probably focus on Judge Sotomayor’s positions on same-sex marriage. The judge will probably be noncommittal on the subject to avoid prejudicing future cases, but the left and right will press her on the ramifications of the California case.

The GOP is chomping at the bit for a fight over Judge Sotomayor, even though Republicans know they will lose the confirmation battle. They will fight the nomination anyway because it energizes the base, helps them raise money, and puts Democrats, including the president, on the defensive. So expect the Senate Republicans to fight Judge Sotomayor tooth and nail.

But the GOP should be wary of the demons that fly out of Pandora’s box during the confirmation hearings. Although the culture wars have not been kind to the Democrats in the past, they may become an advantage for the party.

Support for gay marriage has increased significantly in the last few years and a clear majority of Americans under 40 support same-sex marriage. As the millennial voters make up more of the electorate, support for gay marriage will increase. Voters under 30 voted for Barack Obama last year, and the GOP is in danger of losing a group that could give Republicans fits for a whole generation. Young voters are very liberal socially and GOP opposition to gay marriage will drive a wedge between the party and the fasting-growing segment of the voter pool.

Gay marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for four years and it clearly has not shaken the cultural foundations of the state. As more and more states like Vermont and Iowa legalize same-sex marriage, more and more voters will get used to the idea.

Cultural issues have backed the GOP into a corner. The problem for Republicans is that the party’s base is shrinking because of moderate defections. As moderates leave the party, it becomes even more conservative, which in turn causes the GOP to lose even more moderates. So the GOP’s focus on cultural issues during Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation battle will make the party appear even more conservative and drive even more millennial voters out of the party.

If Republicans don’t stop this vicious circle and get their act together, they party will go into the wilderness where Democrats have spent most of the last 40 years. The GOP’s challenge starts with its handling of confirmation battle over Judge Sotomayor.

Nixon, Obama, and Earth Day Offer a Study on Challenges of Being Green

 By Brad Bannon

Posted April 22, 2009

Brad Bannon is president of Bannon Communications Research, a political consulting firm that works for Democrats, unions, and progressive issue groups.

Does Earth Day mark the dawn of a new environmental era in the United States? The answer is yes if President Obama and Carol Browner, his environmental and energy czar have anything to say about it.

Despite public indifference and worry about the threat that new environmental regulations pose to a struggling economy, Democrats in D.C. are charging ahead. President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has already announced that it will limit carbon dioxide emissions. The Democratic chairmen of the two key House committees that have jurisdiction over the environment, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California, have already said they will get their legislation to the floor by Memorial Day.

It hasn’t been easy being green in Washington, D.C., since the golden age of environmental protection in the early 1970s while Richard Nixon was president. Yes, that Richard Nixon. There is an entire room in Ripley’s Believe or Not Museum devoted to Nixon’s environmental presidency.

Before his presidency was so rudely interrupted by Watergate, Democratic Congresses passed several environmental initiatives that Nixon signed into law. These laws included the National Environmental Act of 1969, the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and last but certainly not least, the Safe Drinking Act of 1974. It wouldn’t surprise me if Al Gore had a portrait of former president Nixon hanging in his office next to Jacques Cousteau’s.

Not only did Richard Nixon sign all this legislation but he took a big step on his own when he signed an executive order creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

The big question is why a conservative like Nixon created EPA and why did he sign the green legislation passed by Congress. There are any number of explanations.

To begin with, Nixon was much more interested in foreign policy than he was in domestic policy. And Nixon wasn’t the first president to allow Congress to take domestic policy initiatives as long as it left him alone to act as commander in chief. And the president was busy fighting the war in Vietnam at the time and making overtures to the communist governments of the Soviet Union and China.

And there was a tradition of progressive GOP environmentalism in the form of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s hard to believe but, in the 1970s, there were moderate Republicans. Of course, they should have been put on the Endangered Species list before they died off, became Democrats, or were herded into re-education camps during the Ronald Reagan’s presidency. These upscale and suburban Republicans were swing voters who were green, wealthy, and influential. So Nixon catered to them on environmental policy.

Finally, most presidents want to expand the scope of the federal government and their own power even if they campaigned as small government conservatives. Federal power just goes to their heads. Just look at the administration of the most recent former President Bush. George W. Bush took control of education policy from the states and school districts with the standardized test system in his No Child Left Behind law. The 43rd president expanded the federal Medicare program to include prescription drugs and he gave the federal government the power to listen in on the conversations of Americans with the Patriot Act. Conservative Republican presidents just can’t help themselves after they move into the White House. It must be something in the water cooler in the Oval Office.

Which brings us back to the Obama administration. When the economy is so bad and there is so little concern about the environment, why is the Obama administration planning to take such bold action to clean the environment up and fight global warming?

The reason is that solving environment problems like global warming will help the new administration solve pressing diplomatic, health, and economic problems. If we burned less oil, we would have to depend less on unstable Middle Eastern countries for fuel. Some health experts believe that the increasing number of children with autism is a function of environmental impurities. And most importantly, we could follow New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s advice and create a new environmental technology industry that would be a source of new jobs, more exports, and higher incomes for America.

Conservatives argue that the United States should move slowly because we don’t have conclusive evidence that greenhouse gases produce global warming. But a friend of mine who is a biochemist and environmentalist activist told me “by the time we have conclusive proof, the eastern seaboard will be under water.”

Obama Health Summit Shows He Learned the Lessons of the Clinton Healthcare Plan

 

By Brad Bannon

Posted March 5, 2009

Brad Bannon is president of a political consulting and polling firm that works with Democratic candidates, labor unions, and progressive interest groups.

Early in his presidency, Bill Clinton was famous for the mulligans he took on the golf course and for his failed healthcare reform plan. Now under the leadership of a new president, Democrats get a do-over to heal the nation’s ailing healthcare system.

The work begins in Washington this week with President Obama’s healthcare summit. We will soon see how much he learned from the Clintons’ reform effort.

There’s little doubt that President Obama will have to fix healthcare to repair the nation’s broken healthcare system. One of every six dollars in our gross national product pays medical bills and it could be one out of every five dollars in 10 years. Democratic strategist Pat Cadell used to say that demography is destiny and the federal healthcare bill and the budget deficit will steadily climb as more and more baby boomers retire and become eligible for Medicare.

Now that the Obama planning process is beginning, it’s a good time to examine what went wrong with Clinton Care. You have to give Bill and Hillary Clinton a lot of credit for aggressively tackling the healthcare crisis, but they suffered a number of self-inflicted wounds in the process.

Hopefully, Barack Obama’s plan will avoid the secrecy, bureaucracy, and obstinacy of the Clinton effort.

President Obama has already avoided the secrecy problem with his promise to hold a number of “conversations” on the issue and also with his summit. The Clinton healthcare reform task force limited the access that concerned parties had to the formulation of policy.

The infamous iron triangle of federal bureaucrats, interest groups, and members of Congress were out of the loop, and the only way can make policy is to work your way into the good graces of this formidable trio. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, had limited access, as did the Health Insurance Association of America.

Now, the health insurance industry was never going to support the program, but involvement in the task force may have lessened the intensity of the companies’ opposition. As Lyndon Johnson used to say, it’s better to have enemies “inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” The group’s “Harry and Louise” ads devastated the public support for reform.

The secrecy also deprived the Clintons of a tool that they could have used to sell the program to the public: the media. Since there was a press blackout of the task force proceedings, Americans knew very little about the kind of reform that was coming down the pike. Americans were hesitant about fundamental changes in the traditional healthcare system and in the absence of other information, they believed Harry and Louise and feared the worst.

Supporters of healthcare reform trust Barack Obama will design a plan that is simpler and easier to explain than the Clinton Rube Goldberg contraption. The Clinton reform task force produced a report with 1,400 pages, which is not surprising since there since there were 600 people on the task force divided into 35 clusters and six working groups. A camel is a horse designed by a committee, and the plan was so bureaucratic that no one could explain it to the public with the same simplicity that Harry and Louise did with the slogan “They choose. We lose.” According to Haynes Johnson and David Broder in their book The System, the Harry and Louise ads along with other efforts produced 450,000 congressional calls, letters, or visits in opposition to the Clinton plan.

We shall also see whether President Obama is more flexible than President Clinton. There was a stubborn streak to the Clinton approach to reform. President Clinton promised to veto any bill that he and the first lady didn’t think was up to spec. Because the Clintons did not have a Plan “B,” there was hardly any kind of reform at all while Bill Clinton was president. Sen. Edward Kennedy often tells people that he will settle for crumbs and get the loaf later. The Clintons should have acted accordingly.

The Obama approach to reform is a lot more subtle. While we have been talking about what kind of healthcare reform President Obama will introduce, he has been producing healthcare reform. He has already resuscitated the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and there are billions of dollars in his economic stimulus program to increase healthcare spending on medical information technology, poor people, and unemployed workers.

So far, so good.

Barack Obama: The First Wired President

 

By Brad Bannon

Posted December 1, 2008

Long after presidential aspirant Al Gore “invented” the Internet, we soon will have our first wired president. Barack Obama may lose his BlackBerry after the inauguration, but he will be the first president to have a PC on his desk in the Oval Office, and my guess is that he will use it.

There has been a lot of discussion about how the Obama campaign used the Internet, but there has been little discussion of the role that the new media will play in the Obama White House.

One of the reasons that Barack Obama won is that his campaign dominated the McCain campaign in the high-tech sector. John McCain admitted he didn’t even know how to send an E-mail. The Obama campaign’s use of the Web as a fundraising and organizing tool to reach a cadre of Obama cybernauts is already legendary, but the campaign also used the Web to broadcast messages to millions of voters via YouTube and the social online networks: One Obama campaign staffer told me that it was hard for him to explain to his parents how he had punched his ticket to the White House on Twitter.

Barack Obama promised America change, and the only way he’ll get it is by breaking through the special interest logjam in Washington. The big pool of Obama’s young and enthusiastic netroots activists could help in that regard.

In his new biography of Andrew Jackson, Jon Meacham writes, “Jackson believed the country was being controlled by a kind of congressional financial bureaucratic complex in which the needs and concerns of the unconnected were secondary to those on the inside.” Obama faces the same problem, but he has the digital tools to connect outsiders into the beltway.

Because the Obama campaign blazed so many high-tech trails in winning the presidency, it follows that his White House will be the first to embrace the new technology to mobilize support for its policy agenda.

The president-elect has already started to broadcast a weekly message on YouTube. Candidate Obama promised to bring a chief technology officer into the White House, and the Obama transition team is already soliciting ideas from the netroots on how to define the job. Last week, Obama’s campaign manager asked 3 million Obama E-activists what role they would like to play in support of the new president.

When President Obama starts asking Congress to deal with tough problems like the economy and global warming, the Obama Net activists could play a key role. The Obama campaign has the phone numbers and E-mail addresses of millions of activists the White House can mobilize to put pressure on Congress. Imagine the new president sending out a text message and getting thousands of people to call their representatives in Congress within minutes. Or online activists organizing to campaign against members of Congress who oppose change in Washington and for members who support the president’s agenda. The possibilities are endless.

The information highway is a two-way street. The Obama campaign was successful because it did more than use the Web to communicate marching orders—the campaign used the new media to solicit advice from its Web supporters. The new president could do the same thing in putting together an agenda and proposals to deal with problems like healthcare. Real change requires new ideas, and it’s more likely that fresh solutions to old problems will come from the wired community than from the usual suspects in Washington.

But the netroots could also pose some problems for the new administration. Obama online activists are pretty liberal, and they may not want their president to compromise with Washington insiders and betray the principles that brought him to the White House.

And Obama may not always like what he hears from the netroots. During the campaign, Obama took a lot of flak from his online supporters when he voted to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And some Obamatons are already expressing their displeasure with the president-elect for the appointments to the national security cabinet of foreign policy hawks like Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates.

Of course, the mere fact of the new media does not guarantee success. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts reached the statehouse with the same new-media tools that Barack Obama had, but he has not been able to translate his netroots cadre into a force that he can use to advance his agenda through a recalcitrant state legislature.

What will be the first thing the new president does on his first day in the Oval Office? My guess is he will try to send an E-mail to John McCain and see if it gets through.

Brad Bannon is a Democratic political consultant and pollster.

Why Barack Obama Won: Voter Anger and Desire for Change

Washington experience was of little help this political season

 

By Brad Bannon

Posted November 6, 2008

John F. Kennedy once said that “victory has a thousand fathers,” and there may be a thousand reasons why Barack Obama won the race for president. But only a couple of the reasons really mattered: voter anger and the desire for change.

Anger created a winning playing field for Obama. Nationally, anywhere from 8 to 9 out of every 10 Americans felt that the country was headed in the wrong direction. The anger was a product of dissatisfaction with the economy, to a lesser extent the war in Iraq, and President Bush’s failure to deal effectively with either problem. The fulsome nature of public opinion created an environment that led to the success of Obama and the defeat of John McCain.

Obama struck the right tone to deal with voter anger. His cool, calm, and collected demeanor during the three presidential debates reassured Americans that the country could solve its problems if everybody calmed down and worked together. The tone of McCain’s debate performance, in contrast, was angry and belligerent, which only made voters more nervous than they already were.

Voter anger was the product of a weak economy. A week before the election, confidence in the economy was lower than it had been since 1967, when the Conference Board created the index. Concern about the economy drowned out debate over social issues, and, for that reason, many Reagan Democrats who lived in places like western Pennsylvania overlooked their discomfort with Obama’s position on issues like abortion so they could vote their disdain for Republican economics.

According to the 2004 exit polls, there was as much concern about morality as there was about the economy. In the last presidential election, four fifths of the voters who were concerned about morality voted for President Bush while four fifths of the voters worried about the economy voted for Kerry. With economy easily trumping morality this year, voters had stacked the deck against McCain.

There is a lot of debate about whether or not Obama’s race helped or hurt him, but voter anger and the desire for change created an environment that was conducive to a minority presidential candidate.

Political observer Charlie Cook noted a similarity between Obama’s victory and the election of Bobby Jindal as governor in his home state of Louisiana in 2007. “The people of my home state elected a 36-year-old son of two Indian immigrants because after 100 years of bad public policy, the state was in desperate shape and they decided to take a chance on a real smart young guy who didn’t look like them or anybody they knew or anybody they had ever voted for. They took a risk.”

Change is the first cousin of anger, so it is not surprising that Americans want change when things are going really badly. But what is remarkable is Obama’s discipline in sticking to the change message from the start to the end of the campaign.

Like many others, I have spent the past year and a half watching the Obama campaign very closely. I don’t think I ever saw Obama on a podium without the word “change” in the background. It was “Stand up for change” in the primaries and “Change we need” in the fall. But it has always been “Change.” Democrats in Denver said the word “change” more than any other word. Joe Biden used the word “change” 20 times in his vice presidential acceptance speech, and Obama said the “C” word 11 times in the last of his three debates with McCain.

Both of Obama’s strongest competitors took similar tacks to counter the change message, but both failed.

First, each of them unsuccessfully tried to counter change with experience. Both candidates found out the hard way that voters valued change more than they did experience. When the senators from Arizona and New York said that “experience matters,” what the voters heard them saying was that they were Washington insiders—the kiss of death in a fulsome political climate. McCain had the additional burden of defending the credentials of his inexperienced running mate, Sarah Palin.

Once McCain and Clinton learned the hard way that experience would not work, they turned to change themselves, only to find that Obama had already cornered the market on change. McCain made a special effort to grab the mantle of change by calling himself a maverick and a reformer and using every word in the thesaurus associated with change to little avail.

Now the hard part starts. For President-Elect Obama to succeed, he will have to stick to his guns and change the political establishment he now leads.