So much for the fifty states strategy…
With Howard Dean in charge of the DNC, 2006 was supposed to be the election year the Democratic party took the fight to all 50 states, not just the handful of swing states we think we need to win a presidential election. While the rest of the blogosphere is obsessing over how we lost Ohio in 2004, I am a little more concerned with why we aren’t even trying to win Maine in 2006.
Once considered the bell-weather of American politics (as goes Maine, so goes the nation…) the Democratic Party has barely noticed that one of two GOP senators in an increasingly blue state is up for re-election this fall. No one at party headquarters seems to have thought it would be a good idea to hunt around a bit for a viable candidate to take on Olympia Snowe. Neither writer Jeane Hay Bright or lawyer Eric Mehnert, both awaiting the outcome of a low-turnout primary vote yesterday, fall into that category. Neither has ever held statewide office. Neither has shown any ability at fund raising. Neither has an inspiring life story and both come from the far left fringe of the party.So much for taking back the Senate.
What is most troubling about the lack of attention this race has gotten is that any strategy to take back the Senate should have included a plan to win this seat. The Democrats need to pick up six seats. We will probably unseat Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. That’s one. We have a decent shot at Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island. That’s two. We have a shot at Conrad Burns in Montana, at Mike Dewine in Ohio and at Jim Talent in Missouri. Do a clean sweep, and we are up to five. To get the sixth seat, it is looking like our best shot is to pickup the seat opened up by Bill Frist’s retirement. Representative Carl Ford is fighting a strong but uphill battle to do this.
For the Democrats to take control of the Senate all these races need to break the right way and some of them have a lot of breaking to do. Of the two we are most likely to win, against Santorum and Chafee, they are both in states that traditionally vote democrat in presidential elections. It stands to reason states like these might be where the Democrats should focus. The state of Maine comes to mind.
Beating Olympia Snowe would be an uphill race, no doubt. She won her last race with 69% of the vote in 2000, despite Al Gore taking the state. Not trying in Maine is tantamount to throwing up your hands in panic and despair. I guess that is where the Democratic party is. We could take a lesson from the Republicans on this one. In 1994, an obscure businessman named Mitt Romney ran an uphill race against someone with even more name recognition and an even wider cross-party following than Olympia Snowe: Ted Kennedy. Romney lost but knocked Kennedy’s support down to 58%, the lowest in any race he has ever run. Eight years later, he easily slid into office as Governor of Massachusetts. In 2008, he may take the weight house. Only Democrats believe in the damaged goods theory of political candidacy.
To win Maine in 2006, a viable candidate should have gotten Tom Daschle on the phone at his office at Georgetown and asked for his advice. In 1986, Daschle defeated incumbent GOP senator James Abnor with a simple message. He did not challenge Abnor’s honesty, or his patriotism, or attack him personally. He went out of his way to show he held Abnor in nothing but the highest regard. Then he leveled a simple charge against him that no voter in the state could deny. Abnor was never going to do anything to help the state’s distressed farmers receive help from the federal government. He was ideologically opposed to that form of government intervention. He had said so himself.
A decent candidate in the state of Maine could have won with a similar message. He or she could have said that Olympia Snowe is a smart, dedicated public servant that cares about the issues important to Mainers. He then could have said that her party doesn’t. He would have had plenty of evidence. We might have had a Democratic Senate.
