If only because of the overlap between the strategic questions facing progressives right now and those facing the Obama campaign in the 2012 elections, I’m suggesting you check out a post I did for The Democratic Strategist assessing the two presidential candidates’ election strategies, and why Obama’s was superior. Two arguments I make are worth litigating, even if you disagree: (1) Obama’s much-despised “bipartisanship” that led up to his “pivot” to a more frankly partisan message at the end of 2011 was designed to and may have succeeded in making his attacks on Republicans successful; and (2) in all the quite understandable (if somewhat over-the-top) praise for Obama’s GOTV program, Democrats are in danger of forgetting the very different electorate they will face in 2014. Here’s the money quote from the end:
[A]ny progressive who thinks a magic formula of maximum partisan confrontation and the best GOTV money can buy is a cure-all for the Democratic Party is courting defeat in the very immediate future.
I sometimes feel like a crank in constantly drawing attention to the very new phenomenon of near-perfect alignment of the two parties with voters who do and don’t vote in midterm elections, but it’s a problem for Democrats that they should not expect their beloved “nerds” to fix without some serious help from Democratic policies and messaging.
