Helping Mitt Romney

If Mitt Romney had simply declined to enter the presidential race, then he, like Mitch Daniels, would have been a sure winner. Thus his entry into the race is puzzling. As things stand, though, what with the confounding challenge of an actual campaign and all, Romney tells the "Today" show:

I probably do give myself better than 50-50 odds, but it's up to the American people. And I'll tell them what I believe, and if that works, great.

There is of course a long, ignoble line of epic losers, such as Alf Landon or Barry Goldwater or Walter Mondale, who gave themselves "better than 50-50 odds" of unseating the presidential incumbent, because one doesn't campaign on the slogan, "We're doomed."

Is Romney? Probably, although the usual disclaimers of prematurity, yada yada, apply. Yet sure enough, just in time to help him out come ... progressive activists. 

There is in national politics a most delicate balancing margin called the independent vote. Those left of center will never vote for a center-right candidate and those right of center will never vote for a center-left candidate, hence battling in the outer trenches is pointless. Elections are fought and won in the middle. This much is common knowledge to all who follow not just politics but reality -- and wandering from this imposing axiom is an exceedingly dangerous game, as Karl Rove learned in his near-miss of wholesale base-reliance of 2004.

It is an unfortunate but inescapable fact that independent voters are a squirrelly bunch; they almost make one long for an electorate of comprehensive ideological cohesiveness, both left and right and evenly divided, so that the battle lines could be unmistakably drawn and electoral conquests would always reduce to a mere matter of turnout. But that, as we know, is not the case; we are left with a diaphonously conservative and cussedly independent middle, which nevertheless can swing slightly center-left, although one never knows.

Because these marginally conservative independents are unpredictable yet still persuadable, electable Democratic presidential candidates generally do the politically intelligent thing, which is to say, these politicos don't rile the 10-20-percent middle with talk that falls exclusively on the left. In other words, they don't do what the active progressive base pleads for them to do every bloody election year: Go bold! The politicos, you see, prefer winning.

So back to my original point ... These activists, such as Paul Krugman, have decided that now, such as yesterday, is an absolutely peachy time to start advocating, oh, maybe horrendously costly "W.P.A.-type programs" on behalf of the presidential ticket and Democratic cause. You know, because independents aren't at all fretting or palsied over the conservative-invented "debt crisis."  

Now, would a W.P.A.-type program be smart economics? No doubt. And is this the most inexpressibly boneheaded time to politically push one? No doubt. It feeds directly into Mitt Romney's odds.

Progressive activists may want to stay focused instead. I doubt it, but as with squirrelly independents, one can never know for sure. At any rate, victory lies in a relentless assault on Republicans' determined demolition of the body politic's traditional safety nets -- because that's where the angrily motivated votes are. 

Comments

[dr.e]

I think that Romney had a bigger hurdle, and that's getting the GOP nomination.

[Bobfr]

Something for 'progressives to ponder':

Tien, at TPV, has posted this excellent comparison of FDR and President Obama:

http://www.thepeoplesview.net/2011/05/obama-is-no-fdrthank-goodness.html

Suggest you read it and send along to others!

Yes.We.Can. ... DO.More.Together!

[janicket]

After two years of observing their tantrums, their furious attacks on the Democratic leadership, their utter failure to comprehend electoral politics in this country and the actual grunt work of enacting legislative agendas, I have come to the conclusion that the progressive left is by and large as divorced from reality as their Tea Party opposites.

And just as annoyingly useless. Also.

[Carl]

Mitt Romney for president?