Washington Post (Plum Line)
By Paul Waldman
June 8, 2015
Do
presidential candidates have an obligation to campaign everywhere, and
to make particular appeals to every demographic group? That’s the case
made by this big article
that appeared in Sunday’s New York Times and continues to drive
discussion today. Here’s an excerpt:
Hillary
Rodham Clinton appears to be dispensing with the nationwide electoral
strategy that won her husband two terms in the White House and brought
white working-class
voters and great stretches of what is now red-state America back to
Democrats.
Instead,
she is poised to retrace Barack Obama’s far narrower path to the
presidency: a campaign focused more on mobilizing supporters in the
Great Lakes states and in
parts of the West and South than on persuading undecided voters.
Mrs.
Clinton’s aides say it is the only way to win in an era of heightened
polarization, when a declining pool of voters is truly up for grabs. Her
liberal policy positions,
they say, will fire up Democrats, a less difficult task than trying to
win over independents in more hostile territory — even though a broader
strategy could help lift the party with her.
This
early in the campaign, however, forgoing a determined outreach effort
to all 50 states, or even most of them, could mean missing out on the
kind of spirited conversation
that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election. And it could
leave Mrs. Clinton, if she wins, with the same difficulties Mr. Obama
has faced in governing with a Republican-controlled Congress.
In
terms of geography, this is a bizarre — yet bizarrely common —
argument. I addressed this at some length in this piece at the American
Prospect, but the simple fact
is that as long as we have an Electoral College and 48 of the 50 states
assign their electors on a winner-take-all basis, there is absolutely
no reason for candidates to campaign in states where they have no chance
of winning. So they don’t. They also don’t
campaign in states where they have no chance of losing.
Neither
the Democratic nor the Republican nominee will spend large amounts of
time stumping for votes in California, nor in Oklahoma, because everyone
already knows what
the outcome in those states will be. Democratic senator Joe Manchin is
quoted in the article saying Clinton should campaign in his home state
of West Virginia, since if Al Gore had won the state in 2000, he would
have been president. But in the last presidential
election, Barack Obama lost West Virginia by 27 points. If Manchin
actually thinks Clinton or any Democratic presidential contender has a
shot there, he may not be quite the political genius he fancies himself.
In
any case, it’s the demographic factor, not the geographic one (even
though they overlap), that poses some genuinely interesting questions.
Both parties face severe
hurdles with certain slices of the electorate, defined by race,
religion, gender, age, and any number of other variables. How far should
we expect them to go to make up for their deficiencies? And is there
anything wrong with not bothering to make special
appeals to groups that aren’t inclined to like you?
There’s
an important distinction that we should make, between the things a
party may have done in the past to alienate a particular group, and the
decision to attempt
to undo that alienation. For instance, Republicans have a real problem
with Hispanics, the nation’s largest minority group and one that is
growing quickly. The reasons are both substantive and stylistic: the GOP
has largely opposed the kind of comprehensive
immigration reform many Hispanics want to see, and it has also sent
some unfortunate messages of hostility toward immigrants. But let’s
assume for the moment that the eventual Republican nominee isn’t going
to change where he stands on immigration. Are we
going to call it a moral failure if he doesn’t stroll through Hispanic
communities and get photographed wolfing down an empanada?
If
you asked him, he’d say that even if you disagree with him about
immigration policy, the other things he supports are what’s good for
Americans, Hispanics included.
Likewise, Hillary Clinton would be happy to explain all the reasons why
white men in rural areas of the South should find plenty to support in
her program. But that’s not enough: we want to see them grovel.
So
something strange happens: first we demand that candidates pander
enthusiastically, “reaching out” to every demographic subgroup whether
there are many votes to be
won there or not. Then when they actually take us up on it, we examine
the pandering with a magnifying glass to unearth any notes of
insufficient “authenticity” and mock them if their performance isn’t
convincing enough. Did Clinton’s speech take on a bit
of a Southern lilt? Did Mitt Romney sound foolish talking about his
love of grits? Then they’re obviously big phonies who can’t be trusted.
The
Times story says Clinton is eschewing the supposedly broad, unifying
kind of campaign her husband ran in favor of “Obama’s far narrower path
to the presidency: a campaign
focused more on mobilizing supporters in the Great Lakes states and in
parts of the West and South than on persuading undecided voters.” The
obvious implication is that 1) you have to choose one or the other, and
2) we’d rather have a candidate who concentrated
on persuading those who aren’t initially ready to vote for her than one
who gets her supporters out to vote. But why is that?
The
truth is that every candidate wants to do both: he or she will be
trying to persuade and trying to mobilize. But neither one is inherently
more admirable than the
other. Convincing someone who hasn’t voted before to get to the polls
is no less a service to America than persuading one of the tiny number
of truly independent voters to come to your side.
And
as much as we might lament polarization, it does bring a clarity to
campaigns. Back in that 2000 election, lots of people who thought
themselves knowledgeable claimed
there wasn’t a dime’s bit of difference between George W. Bush and Al
Gore. It wasn’t true then, and today nobody with half a brain is going
to say the same thing about Clinton and whoever the Republican nominee
is. If one of them succeeds in getting their
voters to the polls and thereby achieves a majority, then they deserve
to win. Let’s not forget that Barack Obama’s “far narrower path” to the
White House was paved with the votes of a majority of the American
electorate. Twice.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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