The problem for the Dems lies in their living down to the GOP’s stereotyping of them:
Behind Rothenberg’s analysis — like the analysis of the risk-averse pollster-consultants who have been running Democratic candidates into the electoral ground for a decade — is the assumption that voters hear the words Democrats say but don’t pick up the meta-message they’re conveying with their actions: that they’re too frightened to do and say what they believe. Democrats can tell voters that they’re strong on national security, but the public can see with its own eyes what Dems do when confronted with aggression. If voters don’t trust Democrats with national security, there’s nothing the matter with Kansas. Kansans are seeing them clearly. They know cowardice when they see it. And Democrats have repeatedly displayed cowardice for a decade. The irony is that every time they haven’t — like when they started to challenge Bush on his equation of the Iraq War with the ‘war on terror’ — the public has responded."
"Voters," Westen told me, "don’t like pollster-driven politics or politicians, and with good reason: They want to know what their leaders’ values are, because if they know their values, they know how they’re likely to represent them — not just on today’s issues, but on tomorrow’s, about which we may have no inkling today. Political scientists have found that people prefer to vote for candidates who share their values, but they prefer a candidate who is strong in his or her convictions — even if they don’t share those convictions — to one whose convictions are hidden in the fine print. Being strong and principled isn’t about being left, center, or right. The fact that voters associate values with the right reflects the fact that conservatives wear their values proudly on their sleeves, and they display their principles in their voting records. Conservatives don’t vote for bills they don’t believe in. If the public associates principles and values with the GOP, it’s time Democrats start showing voters that there’s another set of principles and values out there: theirs." (Drew Westen quoted by Arianna Huffington
Among the conservatives of my acquaintance the term "liberal" is synonomous with "unprincipled." I think that Dems simply don’t understand that much of the contempt directed toward them has less to do with policy and more to do with the kind of political calculation exemplified by Rothenberg.
Now I realize that there are as many or more unprincipled Republicans as there are unprincipled Democrats, but the Republicans are aggressively unprincipled and and the Dems are passively unprincipled. The Republicans for that reasons have become dangerous, and need somebody to stand up to them. The Dems represent a national constituency that is smarter and more sophisticated in its understanding about the complexities of the world, but their superiority in this regard is useless if they are incapable of asserting themselves against the crudity of the cultural and corporate right. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Dems would show as much muscleheaded, unsophisticated toughness as Bush when it comes to issues they care about?
Ideological considerations aside, which team are most Americans going to identify with–the bullies or the sissies? If you’re an employer hiring from one pool or the other, which pool do you think you’re going to pick from most? Do you want aggressive or passive employees? Me: I want principled employees who are willing to fight for what they believe in. I know what certain individuals in the Dem party believe in, but I don’t know what the party believes in, and whatever it is, I don’t expect the party to fight for it.
Tom Tomorrow makes the same point here.
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