On Losing an Election

This post has been percolating in my brain for a while, and last night, while sitting and waiting for the Bush MeetUp here in Denver, it sort of came to a point where it seemed important to get it written. See, no one showed up for the MeetUp.

If this had been an event for Dean or Clark, I'm betting that it would have been well-attended. There would have been a sense of purpose and direction that would have been shared by the attendees, and a willingness to do what it takes to mobilize to support their candidates.

Most people who frequent this site probably intend to vote for Bush in the upcoming election. Well, to all you I say, we could be losing this election for our candidate.

How can we lose this election? The economy is turning, the job market is slowly making gains, and the overall war on terror seems to be moving in the right direction. I think that we have two distinct problems that could lead to a Bush loss--although we also have time enough to turn those things around and rally behind our president.

Problem 1: Innaction
If we can't mobilize ourselves--people who are admittedly political and activist in nature, people who want to be involved--to meet to discuss strategy and the ways that we can support our candidate, then how do we expect to mobilize voters come election time? Popular support is meaningless when people fail to actually vote.

The counter-argument is that we have yet to begin the campaign. There is truth to this; we do not want to waste our energy fighting off nine opponents. We truthfully want them to expend all of their energy and as much capital as possible in their battles with each other.

But there are only a handful of viable candidates. We don't have to take on Mosely-Braun or Sharpton, for instance. Kucinich is just as irrelevant to the proceedings, for that matter. Then there's a second tier that doesn't require too terribly much attention--Edwards, Lieberman, Clark, and Gephardt. At the very tippy top are the two that we might have to worry about: Kerry and Dean.

Even more, while we don't have to take a position of attacking a certain candidate's positions right now, we could be running the opposite direction: supporting our candidate's views in a more public and obvious way. And where we aren't spending energy in this way, we could be strategizing for the upcoming elections. The GOP has been successful of late in mobilizing voters for elections; we need to be just as successful this time around.

Dean, especially, has a talent for rousing passions. This can't be underestimated. While there are die-hard voters on both sides of the spectrum that you couldn't pay to switch parties, there is a huge middle that can always be persuaded and convinced. We need to be addressing them--or planning ways to address them--in a manner that will convince them that Bush is deserving of another term.

Our own inaction is allowing a huge build-up of support and momentum for our opposition. They're moving along at a hell of a pace while we're simply sitting here waiting for the race to start.

We need to motivate ourselves and prepare for the next stage of the process.

Problem 2: Smug Arrogance
One of the reasons that I think the GOP is finding itself at a standstill is that we've become a bit smug. Hell, we have some good reasons for that, but it's still dangerous.

Recent national and local elections have shown a strong swing away from Democrats and toward Republicans. The economy is moving at a pace that's absolutely amazing and finally showing growth in jobs. Our president toppled two rogue governments and has been a good shepherd for our country after 9-11. In fact, most of us got far more out of this president than we might have initially imagined.

To top it off, Republicans are largely convinced that things are moving in the right direction in Iraq and Afghanistan. It may not be playing well on TV, and it certainly isn't over, but the overall direction in both nations seems to be for the good.

Why shouldn't we feel good about ourselves?

We Americans like a "can-do" attitude and we like a little cockiness in our leadership. But there's a big difference between "Yep, I know it's hard, but with work and effort we can tackle that problem" and "Damn, we are good."

Our arrogance is leading to inaction--we think that we have reasons to feel pretty damned good about ourselves and that everyone else sees it the same way. Simply put, they don't. We're letting this attitude keep us from positively conveying the good things that we're achieving while addressing the difficulties we have yet to face.

While we may think the war is going well, the public as a whole isn't so sure. If we don't address that in a way that makes sense, then they might start believing that we need new blood in the White House to carry on the effort.

Churchill at the end of his career was essentially thanked for his hard work and shown the door with the implicit message that he wasn't needed anymore. Bush could face the same fate: "Thanks for all you've done for us, it was a great start, but we'll take it from here."

If voters don't believe that we are still involved in an ongoing, and direly important, war on terror, then they'll be even more likely to move on to someone who will just pick up the pieces of Afghanistan and Iraq and move us back to the "business of America is business" attitude.

We could lose this because of our own inaction and arrogance. We've let our recent success move us close to a position of paralysis in the public arena. If this continues, we will probably see a President Dean, and I think that this election is far too important to simply sit back and let that happen.

There is more than enough time for us to start moving in a positive direction--but we really do need to start moving. We aren't playing catch-up at this point, but we don't want to find ourselves in a position where we have to.

Posted by zombyboy at December 10, 2003 10:49 AM | TrackBack