Terry McAuliffe's Achilles Heel was not the Clintons
They say when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So sums up the not-so-surprising defeat of Terry McAuliffe in his race to become the Democratic Party nominee for Virginia Governor.
It's also not surprising to find all of the national pundits and Beltway insiders scratching their heads over his defeat with a good deal of hand wringing over "what that means for the Clintons." Dan Balz's post mortem of the election in the Washington Post spent several paragraphs arguing whether or not the Clinton connection was an asset or a liability and what McAuliffe's defeat means to the Clinton brand.
Frankly, the usually astute Balz missed the point -- as did all of the pundits and insiders. They always have. They simply do not understand the nuances of the Southern or Heartland voter and the importance of relationships over marketing. They continuously (and erroneously) assume that the voters outside of New England and any of the top MSA's can be swayed (read: bought) by slick advertising in lieu of authenticity.
Basically, they think we're stupid. Or a bunch of backwater Jim Crow racists and therefore unworthy of their time.
What we are is savvy, and we demand the respect borne out of an honest determination to connect with us and our communities. We do not expect candidates to be in lock-step with us, and we don't even mind a non-native running for office. But, just because you've lived in the neighborhood for a while, if you haven't been, well, neighborly, then you haven't earned our trust.
I am eternally baffled why most Democratic campaign directors think they can get different results using different strategies in different regions. Why would drive-through fundraisers work in the South or in the Heartland versus the intense, personal outreach and ground campaigns they routinely use to capture New England, Florida, California and the Swing State-Voter-of-the-Month? Certainly Obama's campaign strategy defied such conventions as employed to the demise of Kerry and Gore. If anyone had cause to write-off the Southern voter, history would have excused Obama. Instead he courted votes in the most rural areas of the South and was rewarded with a strong plurality of support, stirring Democratic affinities that went dormant when the DNC -- and the DLC -- ignored the South after 1992.
About halfway through the WaPo article, Balz finally hinted at this reality: "His early lead in the polls disguised the fact that ... of the three candidates ... McAuliffe had the least connection [to voters]."
How can one live in a state for two decades with aspirations to statewide political office and have done so little to nurture a connection outside of Beltway? It's offensive. McAuliffe presented himself as a carpetbagger, pure and simple.
The irony of the matter is that his political mentor Hillary Rodham Clinton was able to overcome a similar handicap when she had the temerity to run for U.S. Senate after only living in the Empire State for a couple of months when she left the White House. Admittedly, I did not follow every tactical move of the McAuliffe campaign in Virginia, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt (as we Southerners are wont to do since it is the polite thing), and assume that his campaign trotted him out to listening parties, town hall meetings and the like. If that happened, and he was still unable to forge a connection with voters, then it was simply his personal failure to resonate. Blaming the Clintons is grossly unfair to the former President and the Secretary of State.
I met Terry McAuliffe during the 2004 Presidential Primary campaign when I was championing Howard Dean who (despite a Walt Whitman-esque Yawp) succeeded McAuliffe as national Party Chairman and did more to elect Democrats in all 50 states and win back the White House than McAuliffe ever accomplished. Balz and others have hinted at McAuliffe's brassy personality. After my encounters with him, I would call him pugnacious... to the point of rude.
Frankly, this endemic character flaw probably hurt McAuliffe's electoral chances more than anything else. While his "brass" probably was what the Party and the country needed to elect and re-elect Bill Clinton and to corral the herd of cats that is the many cantankerous factions of the DNC, it's not something that translates into the warm humility needed to inspire people to give you their vote.
As I write this, I can almost feel McAuliffe's famously rapid-fire sneer, and I can easily imagine him wind up to a dismissive retort about how Fauntleroys don't get elected. He would be right. But humility doesn't make you a Fauntleroy, whereas being an inauthentic politician loses elections every time.
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Good stuff, Kimberly! Keep it coming!!
During the last presidential primary elections Terry helped split the democrats. His feverish assurance Clinton would win, when the numbers did not back his logic showing an unrealistic reality. He caused frustration within the dems party, and was not present when Obama and Clinton formed their coalition. Terry's cause did not bring the party together. I believe this had a lot to do with his loss.
I hate to nit-pick, but it's hard - and maybe not even good - for a progressive politician to be authentic. The majority of the main stream media ridicules things like empathy and thinking there's a common good that needs to be recognized. The message becomes that you're a joke if you care. Where have you been the last ten years?
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Spoken like a pundit-in-waiting! Welcome to the fray. It is a point worth considering. Not to nit-pick back, but authenticity and empathy are not necessarily synonymous. Also most Capital-P-Progressives would not consider Mr. DLC McAullife one of them. As for where I've been the last 10 years, that would be organizing national grassroots efforts while also managing strategic PR and communications for the few successful blue chip companies still left on the big board.
Mcauliffe’s problem is borne of arrogance. It has long been accepted conventional wisdom that you have to come off as “strong” and “tough” to get the respect of voters. Why? Because it was what the Rs did. Mcauliffe is an imitator. The Rs skunked him in the 90s, so he figured he’d out-repub the republicans.
Although HC bought into the condescending approach, she did go to some effort to balance the hard-a$$ stuff with a soft side, her campaign officials were a font of in-your-face, on-camera tirades that showed a disdain for people who didn’t buckle under to their demand for votes - especially mcauliffe.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
If I’m not mistaken, VA is an open primary. Has anyone done any analysis to see what, if any, R or Independent voters did in the Dem primary for gov?
Voters in Virginia (nowadays) vote up or down on the candidate, not their patron. The Clintons were a net wash. Awkward and uncomfortable association for many, exciting for a few (I assume). But basically irrelevant to the fact that McAuliffe seemed to come out of nowhere and didn't fit in terms of political knowledge of the state, personal political style, or demonstrated past interest in Virginia government.
It was freaky to see these out-of-state endorsers like the governor of Montanan, will.i.am, and the New York Times Magazine, which chose to do a whole long write-up on his campaign, all seemingly emphasizing that he had friends and supporters elsewhere, but not here. Very weird. The NYT magazine piece was a particular disaster for Virginia voters because we seemed to be the provincial backdrop to the Terry McAuliffe show, whereas the power relationship should be the opposite--voters first.
As a Virginian who voted for *anyone besides McAuliffe", I can tell you bluntly that it had *everything* to do with the Clinton connection. And I know several others who made the same choice for the same reason.
Then your votes are cast for childish reasons. When you vote against someone or something rather than FOR a candidate, that just makes you a hater, plain and simple.
I disagree - sometimes one has to vote against something rather than for something.
It does not make you a hater.
A lot of Democrats and Republicans vote primarily against the opposition. It's what happens when you have only two parties, neither of which is particularly representative.
good thinking...way to use that vote! *sheesh*
So you don't care anything about the person you vote for you only care about their friends and associates? I'm not a fan of McAuliffe, but this doesn't seem like a great way to choose the candidates you vote for.
Krautter either has missed the point pundits are generally making, or she prefers to argue against a straw man. People aren't wrestling over whether the Clinton connection was a help or a hinderance; they're opining that in spite of the Clinton connection, McAuliffe couldn't get elected.
Krautter claims that "they" (a group she failed to define) find the South stupid, racist and unworthy of "their" time.
While southern voters don't have a monopoly on being stupid, they do have an impressive record of voting against their own self interests, and tend to reject reason based campaigning in favor of demogogic sound bites.
And while prejudice is still alive and well from sea to shining sea, the south tends to remain proud of their antebellum roots. If the GOP didn't know that appealing to the racist nature of their southern constituency worked, they would have abandoned it by now.
While the article may have been cathartic for the author, it was lazy and lacked serious merit.
See Kimberly Krautter's Profile
ChicagoDMT (who is not brave enough to identify by a real name) condescends that Southerners routinely "vote against their own self interests" when the point of the blog is that Democratic strategists fail to make the case to Southern (and Heartland) voters. As I stated, Obama changed the calculus because he showed respect for the Southern constituency. First, I specifically blame McAuliffe's loss on McAuliffe and his failure to make an authentic outreach and non-likeability.
ChicagoDMT assumes that GOP success in the South has been to prey on ancient prejudices, when in truth it's largely due to making the Libertarian arguments on Economy and separation of powers. They foment fear on matters of freedom and security. Check a map -- the largest continuous U.S. coastline spans from Texas to Virginia. This puts enormous pressure on the region with the influx of immigrants compounded by Northern transplants who have been flocking below the Mason Dixon line since the 1970s... which bodes another point: the South isn't as native as it used to be, so it would seem your northerner expatriates have some of the same political proclivities that you would dismiss as purely "southern." Von Brunn's vicious attack notwithstanding, the most violent racial clashes in the last 25 years have happend in Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Philly and LA-- not the South.
Thanks for reading, though. And thanks for caring enough to comment. Just please read thoroughly next time and check your own personal prejudices at the door.
The thesis you put forth in your article is that the national pundits and beltway insiders are confused as to why McAuliffe lost and are confused as to what this means for the Clintons'. You don't bother to support your statement with anything that resembles a fact and went on to state that all (when a writer uses the word "all" it's symptomatic of one who prefers hyperbole to verity) the pundits missed the point. You reach the conclusion that this is because the pundits treat southerners as stupid or racist. Again, nothing resembling a fact backing up your assertion. But it is humorous that you admonish me to leave my prejudices at the door after accusing all the pundits of stereotyping.
This isn't a newsworthy article. It is a poorly written diatribe which is reminiscent of an impassioned but jejune college newspaper column.
Speaking of personal prejudices, that is the principal content of your post...that politicians need to woo Southerners just the right way...no "carpetbaggers" welcome. I don't suppose you guys hated McCauliffe from the gitgo cause he seems so Northern by any chance? Here's a thought, vote your interest even if the guy speaks with a different meter and accent. Also, your personal issues with McCauliffe from your past kind of jump off the page at the reader. Now that the South isn't so important to getting to elected president...let's see how many people bother to woo at all.
This sums up exactly why, in my humble opinion, Hillary Clinton did so poorly in Iowa. Her campaign staff, including McAuliffe, was rude, arrogant and condescending. McAuliffe visited my town in NE Iowa and was insulting to every one of us in attendance, especially the multitude of Obama supporters.
Iowans (and others in the Heartland), like Southerners, are just as this article describes. We're politically well-informed and have very good BS detectors. McAuliffe is dead in the water as far as political aspirations because he couldn't and never will be able to connect with us.
yeah, we all know how hospitable everyone is in the Midwest and South...you keep telling us.
Great article!
Also thanks for giving
southerners their rightful due.
Many on the left feel that most southerners
are lock-step with the GOP-
McAuliffe was badly beaten in NoVa as well. There is nothing southern about NoVA. McAuliffe had never expressed any interest in the state before running for governor. His ads could have appeared in any state because they didn't discuss any particular VA issues. He just all around ran a bad campaign.
I couldnt be happier to see Terry ran out of town on a rail. He and all of the DLC crowd are as responsible for the mess this country is in as the Bush crowd. I have to say that I find the case for the "wisdom" of the southern voter to be a little thin. I think that they didnt vote for Terry because he just isnt phony enough. If he had more of a drawl he might have had a chance, even though the drawl is about as anachronistic as it gets. Every time I see some southern senator like McConnell or Frist I find their lack of basic human credibility impossible to overcome. I cant help but doubt the judgment of a voter who would vote for these vile human beings. Until southern communities start electing representatives that dont insult our intelligence as well as our decorum they should have the expectation that we wont respect their intelligence. I do see improvements in many southern states, namely VA and NC, but if polling is any indication their shift to the left is being led by outsiders who have moved into those states and not by the "folks".
I don't understand why McCauliffe was ever considered a serious contender to begin with. He never held elected office before this. He was the consumate inside the beltway DINO who was good at raising money, which is quite different from being good at campaigning or governing. The last election was as much a rejection of him and his kind as it was a rejection of the republicans.
Blogger: Blaming the Clintons is grossly unfair to the former President and the Secretary of State.
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I've read a bunch of comments on various blogs from black people who talk about how much stature and influence the Clintons have lost in their community - perhaps PERMANENTLY - because of their "kitchen sink" approach to the 2008 campaign.
No doubt Terry is an obnoxious piece of work all by himself - but that loss of support for the Clintons from dems no doubt contributed to Terry's downfall.
Hillary's doing a good job of redeeming herself as a member of Obama's team. But they put a helluva hurt on themselves during the primary season. At this point Bill Clinton is tolerated...but hardly loved as he was before.
he's the david gregory of the democrats. same problem. too much triangulation not enough actually caring about the country
Why can't his loss be due to his own shortcomings AND also be a signal that the Clintons have lost their grip on the Democratic Party?
And, BTW, where the heck is Howard Dean? And why is he nowhere to be found in the Obama administration?
Yeah. I almost said that, I wish.
Well, I don't think Howard Dean has role in the Obama administration because the Obama administration doesn't appreciate how much Dean's reorientation of the DNC to contest all 50 states benefited Obama's campaign. It's unfortunate, because IMHO Dean has much to offer.
Agreed.
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