How to Win

WINNING THE RACE
I know people read the Angry Middle but I rarely get comments, mostly because my very clear points need very little clarification and my readers are quick to fall in line and spread my musings across the free world. I am the left center Rush Limbaugh.

My buddy Jon posted an interesting comment and a really nice description albeit written from his political point of view (although I do agree with him) and it made me think, what would the Democrats have to do to actually pull this election out. And I mean a strategy that wouldn't make me want to register for the Prohibitionist party. So I try to answer the question, what can the Democratic Party do to show that they are the party of moderates?

Most of my answers entail not playing defense all the time. Democrats always seem to be waiting for the next move and look like they have never seen or anticipated what is now a tired Republican playbook. Come up with some new ideas, don't be afraid to piss a few people off, particularly in your base, your base, except for the crazies are not leaving. You need to find the soccer moms, the security moms, the Reagan Democrats to lean your way to win the election. Here are a few issues I would hit, I know they're issues, not something the media really wants to cover or talk about because that would require reading and research but let's roll with in anyway.

It is amazing to think that such a disaster of an administration would leave even a potential for that party to retain the White House, of course part of this that I've been hammering away at for months is the Democratic selection of one of the only two candidates who could possibly lose this election despite their personal intelligence, skill or charisma, while the Republicans managed to nominate the only Republican who could possibly win. Obama needs to explain a simple ugly fact, before one bridge is built, Title I funding sent to a school, national park cleaned up or energy/agricultural subsidy is put out, 70% of the budget is already spent on defense/medicaid/medicare/social security and the national debt and all these are eating up bigger percentages every day, an ugly fact but people need to know, as abhorrent as senseless earmarks may be, they don't touch the big money.

So here's a couple to start with.

National Defense
Always a tough row to hoe, especially with a war hero candidate. The Republican argument will be that (as of Sept 23, 2008) there has not been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. I would also argue that no one in my hometown has been attacked by a polar bear either. The anti-war crowd is yours already, no need to knock on Code Pink's door hoping for an Obama endorsement. You need to work on those who may have supported the war initially by hammering away at the lack of intelligence (both military/political and cerebral) on the part of the administration when the decisions were made and then quickly run to solutions while at the same time dousing soldiers, sailors, marines and airman alike with well earned praise.

Some major issues I would hit on is developing an exit plan for Iraq by talking to, wait for it, both allies and foes alike on how to solve the situation. Obama has got to sell the country on the idea the unilateralism is stupid, and expensive in blood, treasure, and international political capital. It is amazing to think that a country, more an idea really that has been put on a pedestal for so many years by billions of people around the world can now be seen as the biggest bully on the block. This makes some Americans happy, the idea of a whiskey soaked John Wayne walking into a bar and taking no guff and shooting everyone in sight is an attractive fantastic notion, but a little prodding and straight talk (yeah I said it) could make Americans see a different way, a President not afraid to use force when necessary, but sees it not as the first option. I still think there are people that think a Democratic president would have sent flowers to the Taliban asking them to tuck in Osama for them, folks have to be convinced when push comes to shove, the commander in chief will not hesitate to use the greatest armed force in the history of the planet.

A Democratic candidate also has to have a plan on Afghanistan complete with our NATO allies while at the same time looking forward to new threats, a growing China and an increasingly bizarre but petrodollar infused Soviet ehhr... Russia that seems expansionist while we're tying down our best brigades in Baghdad and beyond. These are realistic threats, realistic threats that become bigger as we start to lose junior officers and NCO's as they leave the service in frustration after multiple deployments that seem endless in nature. Obama needs to accentuate the fact that a military independent of political entanglements but strong civilian leadership is important. Officers must have the ability to speak truth to power without losing the prospect of promotion or career.

Good Government
OK, this is the boring one and probably the most self-centered as I am a public servant. The Republican argument is a great one, government sucks, ruins everything. It's a great argument because you can't lose, if the government does well, it's the Republican leadership, if it does poorly it's the entrenched bureaucracy. So how does government revolutionize itself, how can you get high quality empowered employees with great leadership. Government can be transformational, it is the only organization that can do the huge infrastructure projects and in fact can do government's biggest potential job, wage war. There are images both real and imagined of government bureaucrats as being useless, but sometimes it's because they are terrible and sometimes it's because they are hamstrung by political priorities that are not true policy priorities or by who can hire the best lobbyists or lawyers.

Obama needs to trumpet the need for an effective, honest and public service driven government and have ways on how it will be administered from Pentagon procurement to a ranger at Yellowstone to the clerk at the local social security office, government is a huge enterprise, how can it be taken from the power of lawyers and lobbyist to an organization that serves the people. Ensure that you will hire the best people and the best managers and leaders to get the job done.

Be prepared for the Republican response that Reagan "elegance" that government is the problem but lets say with elements like the current financial crisis that that ship has sailed.

OH YEAH, THE FISCAL CRISIS
OK, I own 110 shares of Freddie Mac, which has lost 99% of it's value. Yup, that's the point of investing, it's a calculated gamble, at one point last week I spent more money filling my gas tank than my entire Freddie Mac stock portfolio was worth. But investing is wins and losses. So now we bring ourselves to the current crisis, I broke my first rule, I have no idea how Freddie Mac makes money. The assumption was simple, back up some loans, take a cut, kind of like some cut rate Somerville bookie hanging around Virgie's. But no, that would actually be honest thievery. I can't explain this fiscal crisis and neither can anyone else. That's the problem, all these credit swaps, collateralizing, securitization and the mother of them all derivatives made everything so confusing and intertwined that Hank "the hammer" Paulson, new American overlord, requested one trillion dollars, no strings attached to try to clean up the mess. I have no idea what corner the President was hiding in at the time, but last I looked he won the election, and if I'm going to ask for hundreds of billions of dollars, it's probably a better idea that I ask for it myself.

The fiscal discussion is actually for my next post, I haven't really figured out what the hell they are doing and frankly it's Democrats and Republican fingerprints all over this, with the Republicans dusting off the old "it's Clinton's fault" thing. In fact some regulation is good, and this is a perfect example. Obama needs to hammer away on the need for adults to be in charge, the fact that it is not a good idea to have lobbyists making policy for the regulation of their own businesses but walk that narrow line of explaining that regulation will be able to temper an uncontrollable free market while at the same time saving the potential for the market to innovate and grow. Markets are good, when they are transparent and regulated and honest. I personally hate these bs derivatives and shorting and crap, to me they are all market manipulation. I may be old school, but if you like a stock, buy it, if you don't sell it, why does it have to be anymore complicated than that. If I want to buy a hotfudge sundae, do I have to sell the frozen hotdogs from the back of my freezer to hedge that purchase?

It's a tough line to walk for Democrats, to suggest more regulation but I think there is a good way to tap taxpayer anger here. The taxpayers who are paying their boring, vanilla fixed rate mortgages on time, looking at the huge amounts of interest they are paying over a lifetime and being not able to understand, how the hell the mortgage market could get so screwed up when they are paying so much damn money. (I'm sliding in between the third and first person here in my own frustration) There are the homeowners and others who are living in communities filled with foreclosures in key states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania wondering why some Wall St. fatcats are getting a bailout while their communities and home values continue to suffer.

These are tough questions for Obama to approach, certainly the first and easiest approach is to attack the problem with more government largess, but the real way is to stop the bleeding and say it won't happen again. The markets are already crying that the inability to short stocks is hurting financial stock growth. Hold on sister, if your kid crashes your car while drinking, you'll probably wait a while until he can borrow one again, and even longer until he gets to drive it alone at night.

Obama has to be convincing that this bailout money and process will be well managed and feed and prime the economy and not just the hedgefunders with balloon payments in the Hamptons. There is a large populist movement just below the surface that is fed up with the concentration on Wall St. instead of Main St. Obama needs to focus on this populist surge with real, tough talk on economics and not let the uberrich kleptocracy dominate the field of play.

Here are three zones where the Democrats could make some hay, attacking on traditionally Republican issues, veering away from the voting blocs that will already vote for them and may be of interest to the "Reagan Democrats" it takes to win.