David Plouffe's "Hear No Evil" Strategy
January 26, 2010
David Plouffe's Op Ed piece, "November doesn't need
to be a nightmare for Democrats" (Washington Post, January 23), should
give hope to every opposition candidate who's even considering running
against a Democrat. In it, Plouffe convincingly demonstrates that his
party isn't close to understanding what a majority of Americans really
think about the current administration's policies and legislative initiatives.
In fact, Plouffe unknowingly reveals that he doesn't even know who the
Democrats' opposition is.
Plouffe rants on endlessly about "Republicans,"
as if the groundswell that catapulted Scott Brown into office had anything
to do with the GOP. Of course, it didn't. Although he points out that
Scott Brown didn't emphasize his political affiliation with the Republicans,
Plouffe doesn't seem to understand that candidates in November won't need
to do that either.
That's because Democrats are running against the American
people, not against Republicans, and as Americans have demonstrated, they're
perfectly capable of discerning which candidates are responding to their
concerns, no matter what the party label might be. Only if they change
their attitude toward those people - if they lose the haughty superiority
that characterizes their political approach - will Democrats be able to
get a grip on exactly why they lost Massachusetts so resoundingly.
Brown won by, among other things, emphasizing his position
on national security. The "41st Senator" is in favor of using
harsh interrogation techniques against captured terrorists and of not
trying enemy combatants in American courts. It's one of the issues on
which Brown's polling indicated that Democrats were weak with likely voters.
And yet Plouffe cites his own polling data that says only two percent
of Americans consider terrorism among the most important issues we have
to deal with. Both Plouffe and Brown can't be right, and my sense is that
Plouffe has misread public sentiment and is adding another canard to the
Dems' wish list (as in "we sure as hell wish this was true; maybe
if we keep repeating it, people will start to believe it").
But Plouffe's opponent-friendly agenda doesn't stop there.
The first point he makes is that Democrats must "[p]ass a meaningful
health insurance reform package without delay." Among the untruths
he insists on perpetuating is that if a health care bill is passed, "dozens
of protections and benefits [will] take effect this year." Actually,
Mr. Plouffe, only some of the benefits of the bill would kick in right
away: increased taxes on the middle and upper middle classes, reduced
Medicare benefits, and allowing unions to avoid the so-called "Cadillac
tax" on high-cost medical insurance plans. Most of us will have to
wait three more years to find out if, for instance, we really can stick
with our current insurance plans. For that matter, it will likely take
that long for all the perks that were handed out behind closed doors in
the wonderfully transparent process Democrats employed to craft the bill
to be fully revealed.
Where economic policy is concerned, Plouffe continues
to resist acknowledging that Democrats now "own" the economy,
repeating the mantra that Republicans "made the mess," this
despite the fact that the opposition has demonstrated, through Tea Party
and Town Hall gatherings, that they're not buying it. Plouffe recommends
that Democratic candidates point out the "teachers, police officers,
and construction workers" who have benefited from stimulus spending.
At the same time, he conveniently fails to mention that the jobs he's
referring to are public sector jobs (the construction industry benefits
he cites are the result of infrastructure work funded by the stimulus
bill and so are effectively public sector jobs) and that unemployment
in the private sector remains officially at ten percent, with real unemployment
closer to 17 percent.
And while Plouffe pays lip service to giving tax cuts
to small business owners, he fails to mention that the climate of economic
uncertainty created by the Obama administration's fiscal policies, including
its recent faux-populist attacks on banks, has caused most lending institutions
to virtually withdraw capital for the creation of new businesses and to
cut back on credit lines for the expansion of existing businesses.
Plouffe also insists that such things as "more incentives
for green jobs" and Democrats' "addressing health care, energy
and education reform" will somehow magically translate into job creation.
Again, the Democrats' economic lacunae, not to say their willful ignorance
about sound economic policy in general, are blinding them to realities
that simply must be addressed if our economy, led as it must be by the
private sector, is to make meaningful strides toward recovery.
Plouffe's article is a veritable blueprint for how not
to run a successful campaign in the current political climate. The people
have spoken, in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The Democratic
Party is still covering up its ears.
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