Diary of an Aspiring New Yorker: February 5, 2008
Today is the big day: the largest battle in this winner-take-some knock-down war that we call the Democratic primary. The news today is aflutter with Democrats making last minute uncertain decisions. I ran into gobs of these Democrats yesterday and what it comes down to is far from clear.
Four years ago - give or take a few months - I found myself in Bangor, Maine helping to build a rally for John Edwards. The night before the rally, a number of students covered the sidewalk around our stage with sidewalk chalkings of slogans like 'Flip-Flopper' and 'Supporting the troops means voting for Bush!' We pulled aside a local groundskeeper and persuaded him to use a pressurized hose to blast the sidewalk chalk away. Later, the university president called us in and explained that we had violated the school's freedom of expression policy. We apologized profusely but -- clearly -- our opposition had already been erased.
While we were waiting to be chastised outside the university president's office, we overheard students for Nader planning to disrupt our rally by yelling 'End the Iraq war.' My cohort and I found a volunteer who would be manning the gate the next day and barged in on their meeting. "We want you all to know that you are not invited to the rally this afternoon" we explained to the students. "We brought our friend here so that he can recognize you and deny you access."
I felt alright about destroying the sidewalk chalk -- it was, after all, graffiti on a site we were renting from the University -- but the talk to the Nader folks felt like a Gestapo tactic. I mentioned this to my superior, let's call him Ben, when we were outside.
"If we didn't stop them, then ten seconds out of our one-minute story on the local news tonight would be devoted to protesters for Nader," Ben said. "This event will cost $20,000 to produce plus staff salaries plus fuel for the plane and hotel and rental car fees. Probably something in the realm of 40K all told. Do you want the campaign to spend $40,000 on this event and lose one sixth of our news story because you had qualms about shutting out protesters?"
On one level Ben was right and most people in politics would tell you the same. There's a reason that campaigns are stuffed full of war metaphors right up to the word 'campaign' itself: they operate with a top-down mentality that doesn't leave room for staffers opinions on potential free speech issues.
I sat back against a metal barrier and looked at the ground.
"This is why Democrats keep losing," Ben said, warming to a theme. "We can't play the game. We're sitting by the sideline as the Republicans jam up our phone lines or publish false ads two days before election or call our voters with the wrong polling places. We have to learn to compete with that."
I don't mean for this story to imply that Democrats don't sometimes play dirty. We do. I was personally involved in a New Hampshire congressional campaign where we essentially spent election day trying to disenfranchise old people. In New Hampshire at the time, voting absentee was illegal if you were in the state on election day. So the campaign sent volunteers to knock on the doors of any registered Republican who had cast an absentee ballot. If the person was home, we would put a check by his name and the campaign's lawyers would challenge his vote. Of course, the people who had voted absentee usually had a good reason. If someone answered the door, she was usually in a wheelchair or in her eighties. It would have been a nightmare to get to the polls to vote. Yes, we were acting according to the law, but it was a dumb law and we were basically trying to disenfranchise the elderly and handicapped. We felt awful about it.
I also felt awful about the silencing the Nader people. I argued to Ben that 'not playing the game' was why some people are Democrats. In the races I have worked, at least, the Democrats play fair. Or at least more fair than the Republicans. For me, a fairer style of campaigning was an issue in itself.
Which brings me back to today. Everyone talks about Obama being a candidate of sweeping change but little experience vs. Hillary: the candidate of incrementalism. Incrementalism means fighting little fights to get things done. It means playing hardball politics and crushing your opponents so they know not to cross you in the future. It's Realpolitik, it's slow boring through hard wood, and it's where the smart money is. It's the New England Patriots of the political Superbowl.
But there are times when the country is wound so tightly that the right candidate can release the will for sweeping reform. FDR passed legislation in 100 days that would have taken an incrementalist two full terms.
Now is one of those times. We have a president whose share of the popular vote, were he to run for office today, would probably fall below Hoover's abysmal 41 %, people are not happy with the Republican party, and there are congressional districts that haven't gone Democratic in 30 years that might slip our way if the top of the ticket is someone they don't already hate.
To me, Hillary is the candidate whose campaign is willing to dismiss the South Carolina primary as the one that 'Jesse Jackson won.' I am certain she knows that Obama is strongly pro-choice, yet she is the candidate who tried to call Obama's support of abortion rights into question because of a tactical 'present' vote. And Hillary's campaign, I feel quite certain, would be vicious in the general election. She belongs to the school that believes Democrats need to come out swinging with rotten tactics of our own.
In 2004, shutting out the Nader supporters probably did get us an extra 10 seconds on the nightly news and it may have been the smart choice. But that small sacrifice in idealism is something I still feel dreadful about four years later.
When I look back on voting for Obama this afternoon, I think I'll feel pretty good about it.