To EAW (Memo 3: Electability.)

Senator Warren,

As you approach the second round of debates, I believe you are well-positioned to win the Democratic nomination.  In writing this, while I note Aaron Blake's recent ranking of the top fifteen Democratic candidates (Washington Post, July 26, 2019), my conclusion rests on my personal assessment of the nomination contest.  I have no inside information, just a lifetime study of history and politics, my own gut feelings about you, as a person, and my sense of the times we are passing through.

As I see it, only one major obstacle stands between you and nomination - the question of "electability".

This question is not entirely new.  There are those who will insist that it is - that it is merely another manifestation of sexism in our culture.  Perhaps that is partly the case.  But to a certain extent, as long as their have been elections, the question has arisen whether a given candidate possessed the necessary qualities to appeal to the citizens of his (usually "his") time.

What is new, I suspect, is the fact that perfectly good liberals and progressives are willing to ask - out loud - whether you are electable, because you are a woman.  In public, where I represent you as a volunteer coordinator for my small Oregon county, I am asked the question point-blank.

Is Elizabeth Warren electable?

Fortunately, in my own person, I have little difficulty answering this question.  I'm a mature man - about your years.  Having, in the course of my life odyssey, practiced law, taught history, and acted professionally, I have a certain amount of presence.  I've been involved in politics most of my life.  So I can say, with a degree of confidence and command, something like this:

It amazes me how many people - not just pundits and political scientists, but ordinary citizens - think there's a way to tell who is "electable".  I've been around politics since I was nine years old, and the question always reminds me of what William Goldman - who wrote the screenplays for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Princess Bride" - said in his book about Hollywood:  "Nobody knows anything."

What Goldman meant was that nobody knows what movie will be a hit or a flop.  Millions - sometimes hundreds of millions - are risked to make a movie.  Risked by men and women who have spent their careers in Hollywood.  And, remarkably often, they get it wrong.

The same is certainly true of politics.

Four years ago, how many people thought this country would ever elect Donald Trump President?  Twelve years ago, how many people doubted that America was ready to elect its first black President?  I'm sure you can think of many, equally good, examples.

So the answer to your question about Elizabeth's electability is what Bill Goldman said about the movie business:  "Nobody knows anything."

The only person who is absolutely, definitely electable is the person who was elected yesterday.

So - if nobody knows who is electable - why don't we forget speculating about that, and focus instead on another question:  Who would make the best President?

Senator, I don't know how to translate my answer into a form that could be used by someone new to politics - a first-time canvasser or a young citizen in an Iowa caucus room.  As noted, I have certain acquired skills which command a hearing.  But I believe this is the true answer to the question.  Your staff will be able to find versions of my answer that suit different volunteers, but that's the message.

There is, however, another aspect to the question of electability which deserves attention - and a good deal of caution.  Your own advisors - your staff - need thoroughly to purge themselves of any concerns they may harbor about your electability.  Those concerns must be exorcised.  Your staff must put all doubts about electability entirely out of their heads.

And so must you.

Because, until that happens, there will always be a danger - a propensity to want to package you in some way intended to make you more appealing to the public.  In other words, when your staff, your advisors, your pollsters - even you yourself - question your electability, there will always be the temptation to remake yourself into someone more electable. 

And this can lead to embarrassing - or even fatal - mistakes.

The most tragic recent example of this was the transformation of Al Gore into a wooden, almost robotic parody of himself during the campaign of 2000.  I've seen Al speak to a large crowd at his Climate Reality training in Denver two years ago.  He was warm, enthusiastic, and energetic.  If that version of Al Gore had run for President in 2000, there would have been no George W. Bush presidency - and much of recent history would have gone very differently.

Senator, you are all you need to be to win the Presidency, and to be a great President.  Not just good.  Great.  Top Five great.

You, and the people around you, need to know that.  Do not let them package you.  The next time you go to the fridge to get yourself a beer, let it be because you're thirsty after a long day of campaigning - not because someone decided it made you seem "folksy".

You are who you are.  We haven't met, but I sense that you probably feel at your best as a classroom teacher - or as a Senator who is functioning as an educator.  I often say that you remind me of that wonderful high school teacher - everyone had one - who opened complex ideas to her students, and made them feel smart about understanding those ideas.  The teacher who didn't talk down to her students, but lifted them up. 

Whenever I say that, people nod their heads.  They see it, too.

If that good teacher is the real you, that's a wonderful persona for a President.  Lincoln used that same skill-set - which he acquired by educating small-town juries about complex legal and factual issues - to lead the Republic through the dark days of the Civil War.

But whether I'm right or wrong about that, you know who you are.  Trust that.  Trust yourself.  Tell your staff they must do the same thing.

Most of all, forget electability.  We'll all know if you were electable on November 4, 2020.

In the meanwhile, be yourself - and devote your energies to learning more about who we are.

Thanks for your consideration.

Getting to Yes...

It's been a long time since I did sales work.  In my acting days - my mid-to-late 40s - there were summers when I didn't have a gig.  For several of those summers, I worked as a telemarketer for the Richmond (Virginia) Symphony.

Telemarketing is hard work, but you learn a lot.  Mainly, you learn how to close - which is an essential skill in our sales-oriented society.  No matter what your vocation or avocation, sooner or later, life is going to require that you find strategies for getting people overcome their reluctance to say "Yes".

For citizens volunteering in political campaigns, such strategies and skills are absolutely essential.

Yet, surprisingly, most citizens who don't practice politics for a living find it difficult to go from a polite, cautious political chat to actually pressing a fellow citizen to commit - even though commitment is the name of the game.  Sending a small donation, putting a bumper sticker on your car, signing up to do something - anything - to help out.  These small, first steps are how undecided voters become active citizens, fully invested in a campaign.

And invested citizens are the ones who will do the hard work of GOTV ("get-out-the-vote") at election time - the hard work that spells the difference between victory and defeat.

This afternoon, I struck up a conversation with a nice lady who was visiting Cannon Beach with her husband. Somehow, we got around to 2020, and I told the lady I had become a volunteer for Elizabeth Warren, with the initial duty of being the campaign's organizer in Clatsop County, Oregon.  (Again, for those who don't know our state, Clatsop County is where the address label would go, if Oregon was an envelope.)

The lady replied that she really liked and admired Elizabeth - then stopped, the unspoken word "but" hovering in the air.

And I surprised myself.  I don't usually turn a friendly chat into a political moment, but this lady was clearly smart, thoughtful, and professional.  She was the sort of person you want on your team - no matter what the task.  So I said...

"And what's the but?"

The but, for her, was electability.  Specifically, the concern that America might not be ready to elect a woman to the presidency.  So I smiled and said:

"You know, I've been in politics - on and off - my whole life.  And I'm always amazed that people think they can predict who will win or lose an election.  Because for me, what William Goldman* said about the movie business is equally true of politics:  'Nobody knows anything.'

"In 2008, did you think this country was ready to elect a black man President?  I didn't."

She smiled, then replied, "And I never thought we'd elect Donald Trump.  I couldn't believe that happened."

And I repeated, "That's because nobody knows anything.  We can't predict.  So to me, it makes more sense to just do what I think is right."

Then I looked at her, a quietly impressive, charming woman you would trust - in five minutes - with anything.  "If you think America isn't ready to elect a woman president, how do you make it ready?  The only way I can see is by doing it.  If we don't nominate women, it continues to be impossible.  Once we elect one, it's suddenly been possible all along."

The conversation went on from there, but my new friend left with a Warren bumper sticker and a smile.  I'm not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that sticker is on her bumper very soon.  Because she seemed to have given herself permission to do what she wanted to do anyway - support the candidate she believes would be the best president.

She just had to get past the "electability" issue - which, really, is no issue at all when you admit that you don't know anything.  Because nobody knows anything.

Whoever you're backing, I hope this will help.  If nothing else, it will save you hundreds of hours listening to, watching, or reading the predictions of "experts" who have no more chance of being right than they have of predicting a coin toss.

Politics is fascinating stuff.  And one reason is because - in William Goldman's words - Nobody knows anything.

Think about it.

_____

*  William Goldman is the screenwriter responsible for, among others, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride.  The quote is the basis of his best-selling book, Adventures in the Screen Trade.

A View from Exile

As we enter the active phase of a presidential election fight - a campaign about which I will be writing often (d.v.) - new readers of this gazette deserve to be brought up-to-date on one important fact about the author.

I am a man without a party.

Growing up in a political family of Virginia Democrats, I waited until finishing law school before steering my own political course.  Though I'd gone into practice with my father - a lawyer-legislator whom I greatly revered - I knew I was a progressive Republican at heart.  Drawing my inspiration from a tradition which reached its apogee in the vital times of Teddy Roosevelt, I hoped that modern conditions would make possible a revival of TR's assertive, confident brand of progressive nationalism.  All my personal ambitions focused on such a revival.

So, in 1978, I joined the GOP.  While holding appointive office under Republican Governor John Dalton, I dared to campaign actively for John Warner for the US Senate - against Dick Obenshain, the darling of Virginia's right-wing, Reaganite Republicans.  Obenshain won that nomination fight, dying shortly afterward in a small-plane crash while campaigning.  Warner replaced him on the ballot and went on to serve with distinction for thirty years.

Two years later - when Reagan forces took decisive control of the national and state GOP - I resigned from the party.  A year later, I was driven from office, and turned myself into a high school history teacher.

But, despite several efforts to re-invent myself as a Democrat, I have never really made the transition.  I'm simply not a Democrat - and probably never will be - for three reasons.

• My strategic ideas render me uncomfortable with a party which is, and has always been, more of a coalition of competing identity groups than a cause.  The Democrats' various groups perpetually struggles for influence, short-term gain, and the realization of personal ambition.  The Democrats have no unifying body of principles - no allegiance to anything like the Founders' notion of the commonwealth.  And that is essential to me.

• My relatively fortunate life experiences have ill-fitted me to be at ease in a coalition of groups which work from competing narratives of exclusion and/or victimization - and my education in history makes me suspect that any government run by the tribunes of society's least-favored elements will prove short-lived, ineffectual, and costly.

• My understanding of our Constitution doesn't square with the Democratic Party's historic obsession with presidential leadership - and consequent neglect of the potential of the legislative branch.

But of course, since the Reaganite takeover of the GOP, I couldn't possibly remain a Republican.

While I've made fitful efforts to refashion myself as a Democrat, I've never even tried to rejoin the GOP.  The Republican Party has become the party of bigotry, superstition, ignorance, and greed.  If Donald Trump personifies the worst aspects of the GOP - at least, so far - he is only the last instance of a decline which runs back through George W. Bush (and his puppet-master, Dick Cheney), Newt Gingrich, and Ronald Reagan - and eventually to Dick Nixon.

And there's no reason to think the rot will not continue.  If there are worse men - or women - than Donald Trump, today's GOP will find them, nominate them, and try to elect them.

Observers such as Tim Alberta (American Carnage) argue that this process of Republican decay runs back a decade.  As a Virginian with a sense of history, I could see the process taking place in 1978 - and triumphing in the summer of 1980.  I didn't need to stick around to participate in what followed.  The triumph of the Reaganites marked the death of the Party of Lincoln.

Ronald Reagan might have been a nice enough fellow - if somewhat dim - but his Virginia supporters included a phalanx of segregationist die-hards from the Byrd wing of the state's Democratic Party.    The massive influx of Dixiecrat Southern segregationists - and the simultaneous influx of Bryanite Midwestern and Southern evangelicals - transformed the Republican Party into a second, darker version of the Democratic Party.

For progressive and centrist Republicans, the only options were to stay "loyal" and be slowly, inexorably corrupted and degraded - or to leave and make the best of it.

So, in 1980, I left - becoming an independent who longs for a party which does not exist.  That is where I remain today.  As a patriot, I do what I can - when I have the heart - to help the better sort of Democrat win an election against the more execrable sort of Republican.

I am doing that right now, as an active volunteer coordinator for Elizabeth Warren in Oregon, my new home state. Elizabeth Warren, after all, is a commonwealth-minded progressive - and a former Republican - just as I am.

But if Senator Warren has found a way to be a Democrat, I have lived - and will almost certainly die - a man without a party.

Everything I'll be writing here comes from that grim - but I hope, not bitter - perspective.

To: EAW (Memo 2: The Long Game)

Senator Warren,

Following up on my previous memo, I'd like to address general election strategy as part of your strategy to win the Democratic nomination.

I needn't remind you that long, contested nomination battles usually force the winning candidate into awkward postures before she or he inevitably "pivots" to general election mode.  It's an old, old story.

No doubt, some timid souls are already advising you to moderate your positions and plans, lest you be driven too far to the left in the nomination contest.  That is not my advice.  Rather, I think you should position yourself now to bring the party together - and specifically, to bring this large field of candidates together - once you are the nominee.  In the process, you will be able to fine-tune your present positions as part of the process of unifying the party.

In my previous memo, I suggested an approach to winning the withdrawal and endorsement of candidates currently lagging in the polls and in fundraising.  As you may recall, my suggestion was that you find ways of signalling your desire to build a Government using the talents of many of your present competitors, by citing the example of Abraham Lincoln, as set forth in Doris Kearns' Goodwin's Team of Rivals.

As a cautionary note, I also suggested that your reference to Lincoln's cabinet-making take a humble tone,  emphasizing the caliber of the field.  Rather than suggesting that you would be the one doing the team-building, "If nominated, I would...", you would say, "Whoever wins the nomination would be well-advised to consider the example of Abraham Lincoln..."

For a lagging candidate, the subtext is the same.  Elizabeth Warren will value your involvement in shaping the next administration.  If you decide drop out, keep this in mind in deciding whom to endorse.

Today, I want to expand on that idea.  In the first debate, you were very much the adult in the room.  It was interesting to see Kamala Harris adopt that role on the second night - and take it a step further, by calling down her rivals when everyone seemed to be talking at once.  That moment was, in my view, even more impressive than her swordplay with Joe Biden.  It sent the message that Harris has the personal authority - the gravitas - to act as the party's unifier.

Obviously, you won't want to concede that status to her, so I suggest this.  Introduce the Team of Rivals references as soon as possible.  But also, start working in the suggestion that - whoever wins the nomination - it would be worthwhile for her or him to convene the entire group of candidates for a few days of talks on both policy and strategy.

You might say something like this:  "I've heard such a wealth of ideas from this group!  I have plans, and they are solid, detailed plans - but I learn something every day from one of my fellow candidates.  I think the eventual nominee could greatly improve her or his plans by bringing the whole field together for a few days to share ideas.  Once we're past the stage of being rivals, we need to become a team."

In my view, this accomplishes three things: 

First, it suggests that you are the adult in the room, perfectly prepared to unify the party as soon as the nomination battle is over - and possessing the gravitas to do so.

Second, it builds on the the suggestion that you would welcome some of  your rivals in your Cabinet, or in other positions of importance.

Third - and this is vital - it suggests that you are not the left-wing candidate, but - as the nominee - would occupy a unifying position in the heart of the Party.  That you are prepared to listen to every one of your rivals in improving your plans.

This will give you more flexibility when it comes time to pivot to general election mode.  Without committing yourself to modifying a single item of your program, you give yourself the option of tweaking it.  By inviting suggestions from your former rivals - across the board - you bring them on board, while retaining full control of your program.  Should you, as the nominee, choose to incorporate some of their suggestions, you would do so - not as matter of political calculation - but as the act of a unifier and team-builder.  

And in your case, I strongly believe that is a fair representation of who you truly are - highly principled, but a believer in teamwork and consensus.  It's what I would expect of you as President.

I hope these thoughts will be of some value as you go forward.  Thank you for your attention.