Election 2009 (IV): The Lower Depths

Once, when a pollster made him angry, Emanuel sent him a dead fish.

--TIME bio of Rahm Emanuel

Here are two reasons why Democrats feel they can rule as liberals in a moderate-conservative country. The first is that they are America’s natural leadership class—better educated, wealthy, and correct on the big issues our nation faced over the last century. The second is that, with the help of a protective media, they feel able to fool “some of the people”—the non-liberal 30% they need for a majority—“all of the time.”

One key part of “fooling” people is Democrats’ willingness to play hardball (we won’t say “dirty”) politics. Lee Atwater, as George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager running Bush’s 1988 campaign for president, became the prototypical hardball campaigner. Democrat Michael Dukakis led Bush by 17% in early polls, but Bush carried 40 states in a November 1988 landslide.

To win, Atwater redefined Dukakis as a “Massachusetts liberal,” most infamously making a household name out of Willie Horton, a black murderer who raped a woman while on a furlough program Massachusetts Governor Dukakis oversaw. Democrats keyed in on the Willie Horton ad as blatantly racist, even though Atwater never used Horton’s picture, and his successful campaign to redefine Dukakis had several other pieces to it. (Incidentally, Donna Brazile, later Al Gore’s campaign manager, unsuccessfully attempted to savage Bush in that same 1988 campaign for an affair she said he had in the 1970s.)

After 1988, Democrats and their media friends determined not to be out-Atwatered in the future. The Democrats’ current Atwater is Rahm Emanuel, who orchestrated the Democrats’ 2006 take-back of the U.S. House, and today is the Obama chief of staff who runs most everything. As this blog noted in 2006, the media largely ignored the story Emanuel knew about the Mark Foley scandal a year in advance, but sat on it until he could use it to blow up Republicans during the campaign’s final six weeks.

Emanuel plays real hardball, for as a sitting House member, Emanuel had an obligation to bring Foley’s actions to leadership’s attention much earlier. Emanuel wanted an election issue more, and the delay worked, with voters in exit polls giving corruption—highlighted by the Foley scandal—as a reason just behind the Iraq war for turning Republicans out of office.

Dishonesty marked the 2008 Obama campaign. Obama promised to take public financing and limit campaign expenditures accordingly, promised not to hire lobbyists, promised to publish legislation on the internet so everyone could read it 5 days before signing, promised to be bi-partisan and post-partisan in governing, promised health care wouldn't increase the deficit, promised to put health care negotiations on C-SPAN, promised not to force people to purchase health care, promised not to raise middle class taxes, indicated we were in Afghanistan to win a “necessary” war, and promised to bring down the Bush budget deficits. Was any of this serious, and does it build trust to ignore promises so quickly and often? Beyond this, there is the illegal overlap between the Obama campaign and ACORN.

So in 2009, it’s no surprise that Democrats and media friends played hardball in the key New Jersey and Virgnia gubernatorial campaigns. In New Jersey, Jon Corzine was desperate to stave off defeat by Chris Christie, the Republican. It helped immensely to have independent conservative Christopher Daggett in the race, taking votes away from Christie. But it’s beyond hardball to, as Democrats did, pay for phone calls to voters advocating they vote for Daggett over Christie. And never mind that marathon runner Corzine also ran ads talking about the corpulent Christie “throwing his weight around” (the ads may have backfired; few New Jerseyites run marathons).

The Virginia gubernatorial campaign featured a series of Washington Post articles attacking Republican Bob McDonnell for views expressed in his 1989 masters' thesis, a document the Post proudly surfaced as relevant to 2009. Thesis in hand, the Post repeatedly hit at McDonnell for writing 20 years ago that working women were detrimental to families. Post coverage blankets northern Virginia; the attacks drew blood, dropping McDonnell’s lead to near zero. But McDonnell's opponent Creigh Deeds kept harping on the same point. McDonnell, who rallied support from his wife, daughters, and women who had worked for him, eventually found the public tiring of articles and ads based on an old academic paper.

The Post attack failed. McDonnell whipped Deeds by 18%, in contrast to the Post’s successful 2006 effort to end Republican Virginia Senator George Allen’s career by finding and repeating the story that Allen had called an ethnic Indian volunteer working for Allen’s Democratic opponent James Webb a “macaca,” and had welcomed the U.S.-born volunteer “to America.” Thanks to the Post, Webb won a squeaker.

Score after two big Virginia elections: Post & Democrats 1, Virginia Republicans 1. All’s fair in war and politics at the lower depths, so the Post will likely be back helping Democrats and Emanuel (also known as Rahm-bo) again next election.