A Democratic Elixir

By Charlie Cook
© National Journal Group Inc.

January 11, 2005

This column was originally featured on CongressDaily/AM on January 11, 2005.

As Democrats prepare to select a new party chairman next month, they should think not only about what went wrong in 2004 but about what went right. After all, a party that carried 19 states in four consecutive elections (with a total of 248 electoral votes, just 22 short of the 270 needed to win) is not fundamentally broken, it just needs some work. But for 118,599 votes out of the 5.6 million cast in Ohio and 119 million votes cast nationwide, a different half of America would be despondent today and another group of people would be headed to Washington to celebrate the presidential inauguration.

By taking a full assessment of their condition, Democrats are more likely to make the most needed changes without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

First, Democrats, the Democratic National Committee, the Kerry campaign and the Dean campaign early in the process, as well as other allied groups like America Coming Together and MoveOn.org, raised more money than anyone thought was possible. Together, they actually out-raised the Republican National Committee, the Bush campaign and their partners in the presidential campaign money game, an amazing development. Democrats had the money to do what they needed to do, something that is new and noteworthy.

Second, Democrats, chiefly through Americans Coming Together, mounted what was not only the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation in the party's history, but it was probably the best field work by a factor of at least 10. Merging the latest in technology with old-fashioned shoe leather, Democrats not only met, but surpassed, their vote total targets in key states such as Ohio and Florida. With voter turnout unexpectedly climbing from 105 million in 2000 to 119 million in 2004 and a parallel effort by the GOP that took them to startling heights of organization as well, the Democratic GOTV operation was not quite good enough to win, but it was awfully close.

No doubt a big part of the Democrats' problem has been in candidate selection. Given the narrowness of the Democrats' two losses in 2000 and 2004, one wonders how the party might have fared had they not nominated stiff, aloof candidates who would be uncomfortable at backyard barbecues in all but the very finest of homes. Nominating a candidate who was capable of saying that he voted for funding for the war before he voted against it -- a remark that Bush presidential adviser Karl Rove later said was "the gift that kept on giving" -- makes one wonder how a less flawed candidate might have fared.

John Kerry's inadequacies as a candidate were hardly a shock to his Democratic Senate colleagues, many of who have always seen Kerry as a distant figure and questioned his ability to relate well to rank-and-file voters. One would imagine that in the days of the smoke-filled room, the judgment of peers would have carried more weight in this particular case.

While DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe has been the target of some criticism, to his credit, he made sure the national party was more than well funded and technologically advanced. He poured millions into making the Democratic Party's voter lists and ability to target voters light years more advanced than anyone would have imagined. But one of the smartest decisions McAuliffe made was among his last as party leader: to commission a study of the party's nominating process to see what might be done to enable the party to nominate more electable candidates in the future. McAuliffe turned to Rep. David Price of North Carolina, a former Duke University political scientist and authority on the presidential nominating process. Price served on the Hunt Commission that studied the issue several decades ago.

While many speak of the importance of a party picking a nominee quickly to allow time for nomination battle wounds to heal and to prepare for the general election, the pendulum has swung way too far in that direction. In 2004, the nominating process seemed to end almost as soon as it started. It is extremely important for two inexpensive, touch-the-flesh, retail campaign states like Iowa and New Hampshire to begin the process, but they should not also be the end of that process. Something has to be done to ensure that the primary nominating process lasts for at least a couple of months to make sure that the eventual nominee wears well over time.

Parenthetically, it will be interesting to see if Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack seeks the Democratic nomination in 2008. If Vilsack runs, there is no doubt that the Iowa Caucus will become a moot event, as it was in 1992 when another Iowan, Sen. Tom Harkin, ran and all other contenders simply stayed out and focused their energies on New Hampshire. Iowa has a choice: They can have a candidate or a caucus, not both, and it is delusional for them to think otherwise.

The problem, of course, is to get states, the state Legislatures and governors and in some cases the party apparatus in each state, to go along with a solution. In some ways, perhaps McAuliffe should have enticed the RNC to join the commission, since their elected and party officials at the state level will have as much say as their Democratic counterparts on whether the changes are adopted.