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&c. - Howard Dean's "visceral longing" strategy doesn't look like such a disaster.
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Candidate
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jul 24, 2003 09:22pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - New Republic, The |
| News Date | Monday, July 14, 2003 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | No real title to the article other than &c, so I pulled in one from the copy. - RP
The relevant question is therefore how you minimize the number of centrist voters you alienate en route to winning the nomination.
Once you realize that's the question, then Howard Dean's "visceral longing" strategy doesn't look like such a disaster. There are, after all, only two ways to satisfy the party's left-leaning base. The first is on the level of policy--that is, taking liberal positions. The second is on the level of tone--that is, angrily denouncing the president with overheated rhetoric. The beauty of the latter is that it's essentially contentless: It satisfies the base without locking you into any particular policy positions, meaning you're free to fill in the details of those positions as you see fit. And in Dean's case, those details happen to be pretty centrist (with the exception of his opposition to the war; more on that below): He's a relative moderate on gun control, the death penalty, trade, and fiscal matters.
And, any way you slice it, you probably scare away fewer swing voters by moving to the left of them tonally than you do by moving to the left of them ideologically. |
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