Ron Klain, a 2016 HRC adviser and chief of staff to two Democratic vice presidents, has penned another of those ubiquitous "What Democrats must do to win in 2018." He suggests three "pathways," which I have tightly condensed:
"First, Democrats have to show voters that they are fighting for them, not merely against Trump…. Second, our best argument may not be about the outrageous things Trump has done but, rather, about the things he promised to do that he has not done [such as introducing an infrastructure plan]…. Third, we should promise voters a different kind of Congress if we get control: a true 'people’s Congress.'"
All solid, modest suggestions; nothing there to quibble with in terms of a positive program. What Klain omits from his prospectus, however, is that inescapable enormity in today's political landscape, which is to say, the undecided voter — especially in midterm contests — is virtually extinct.
The 2018 congressional elections will be decided by base-voter turnout — and that of course means ginning up enthusiasm on both sides. For Dems, promising their voters such programmatic trinkets as, for instance, "more transparency and openness in how Congress is run" and "fewer perks for members" is quite unlikely to motivate the base to rush to the polls in November. What will motivate is deeply driven antipathy toward those rubber-stamping Republican goons in Congress and, needless to say, their mob boss in the White House.
In politics, it is a psychosociological fact that prodigious negativity is a winner. (Just ask the Republican pols in power, who haven't had a fresh policy idea since … hell, I can't even recall.) Klain seems to reject this thundering political truism when he writes that "Voters know whom we are fighting against. We need to talk more about whom we are fighting for." As a civics textbook entry, I'd give Klain an A+. As a giver of political strategy, I'd boot him out of the war room.
Yes, negativity gets old, really fast. And voters claim to detest it. But it works. It sticks. The winners of the 2018 midterms will be the guys who fought in the gutter with the greatest verve. That is perhaps a pitiable statement about democracy, but it is what it is. If Democrats prefer to teach goo-goo civics, they should get out of politics.