Condescending to Voters, Playing to Perceived Racial Fears Does Not Work
by Jonathan Singer, Wed May 14, 2008 at 10:03:15 PM EST
Down in Mississippi, the Republicans ran a campaign where they targeted Democrat Travis Childers as being a pawn of Barack Obama under the theory that if they could mention Jeremiah Wright often enough they could scare voters into keeping the state's first congressional district in Republican hands. This wasn't their first attempt at such a move. Next door in Louisiana the Republicans tried to make another special election earlier this month into a referendum on Obama right at the time Wright was saturating the news -- only to lose a seat that had been in Republican hands for more than three decades.
Not only did Republicans lose last night in Mississippi, they lost bad. In a district that George W. Bush carried by 25 percentage points in 2004, Childers won by 8 points -- a swing of 33 points. That's right, 33 points. A great part of this is that voters are beginning to approach congressional elections more like they were parliamentary ones, backing the party instead of thinking just about the candidates themselves. Indeed, the results looked a lot more like the generic congressional ballot in which the Democrats hold a lead approaching 20 points than they do a contest simply between two well-matched candidates.
But it goes beyond voters saying yes to the Democratic Party in corners of the country where the Democrats didn't even seriously try to run in as recently as even a few years ago. This is at least in part a reaction to the deliberate attempt by the Republicans to obfuscate the real issues facing this country and attempt to make this election about the Reverend Wright and all that entails.
This tactic does not work. It did not work in rural Louisiana. It did not work in rural Mississippi. And it will not work elsewhere. Voters, whether suburban, urban or rural, do not want to be condescended to by elites in Washington, DC who think that they can be swayed by ethnic and racial and just pure dirty politics. Just because an election is held in a conservative part of the South does not mean that voters think about race like Jim Clark did in 1965 or Orval Faubus did in 1957 or Strom Thurmond did in 1948. Voters do not like being treated like they are racists by anyone, particularly by a party to whom they have given their support in recent elections.
And yet the leadership of the Republican Party appears determined to continue this strategy, pledging to continue to run ads making the election about Obama, talking about immigration as a "tar baby" for Obama and others, and generally acting in a way that would make Abraham Lincoln roll in his grave. Perhaps when Tom Davis said today that his party was "below the floor" he should have said that the Republican Party is in the much, in the gutter, in a place where the American people simply do not want to go. If this trend keeps up, Republicans will be lucky to only lose 20 seats in the House come November.
xposted mydd.com
