stevenberlinjohnson.com: Doing The Math On Dean

If Al Gore's surprise endorsement of Howard Dean has you rethinking some of your assumptions about Dean's "electability," take a look at this revealing electoral college infographic that the Times ran last week. To me, it calls into question a lot of what we've heard about how the Democrats can't win without a Southern centrist (the line usually trotted out to explain why Dean will be a huge fiasco in a national election.) But as this chart shows, there's basically no South for the Democrats to win: every Southern state save Florida is firmly in Bush's column, and as we know, Florida isn't really a Southern state anyway. (Too coastal, urban, multicultural, etc.) The undecideds are basically all the Rust Belt states, plus Arizona, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, and Nevada.

This chart doesn't say to me that the Democrats need a Southerner. It says that they can win decisively if they can find someone who'll play well in the industrial midwest, who can pick up Maine and New Hampshire, and win Florida. Dean could do all those things, I think -- though it does make you wonder whether a Dean/Graham ticket makes more sense than the Dean/Clark ticket I've been fantasizing about since this summer, given the importance of Florida.

It's easy for mainstream Democrats to dismiss the fact that Dean has energized the "democratic wing of the democratic party", but I think that force shouldn't be underestimated. For as long as I can remember, the Republicans have had far more unity between the centrist and their ultra-conservative wings: Bush has passionate supporters at both ends of the party, as did Reagan. (The only Republican president who didn't have the far right's adoration, Bush Sr., didn't get re-elected.) But the reverse isn't true on the Left: the ultra-liberals and progressives were mostly disgusted by Clinton's DLC-style centrism and his welfare reform bills; they were Nader supporters or they believed that all mainstream politicians were beyond the pale. Partially because Bush has been so appalling, and partially because Dean is speaking at least in the tone of their language, if not the substance, that left-wing group finally has a candidate they can whole-heartedly embrace. Assuming that Dean can play his John McCain straight-talking maverick act to the midwest next year, I'm not at all sure that having such a passionate base is a liability, even if they are to the left of the rest of the country. In fact, I'd wager it's a strength.

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Comments

Interesting take, Steven, for a left-Dem like me. Let's keep in mind that the Dems had a "Southerner" as their candidate in 2000, and Gore couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee. So I don't see how a non-Southerner could do any worse at taking some of the GOP states. The real problem emerges if the Dems have trouble capturing "swing" states that should easily be in the D column, like West Virginia and Minnesota. Whether Dean is the candidate for the job remains to be seen.

Posted by: Loren Fox | December 09, 2003 at 03:15 AM

Interesting, too, that Arizona, Nevada and NM are all in play - I'd suspect that just as Florida isn't a Southern state any more, those aren't "old west" states either - each has large urban areas, diverse populations and so on.

I think the big question with Dean is the extent to which his campaign can mobilize supporters in solidly Dem states to help fight for the swing states - through money, online activism, actually picking up and going and campaigning there, whatever...

Posted by: Alex S | December 09, 2003 at 04:22 AM

while its definitely true that the southern strategy is not necessary, I wouldn't put too much stock in that map. AK, LA, NC, GA and VA are all potential democratic victories, but given up upon in the map. Clark does double damage by being both southern and in the military which is a potent factor in some of those potential swing states.

I also wouldn't put too much stake in Graham locking down Florida, he's popular no doubt, but Jeb is still in charge and this time around there is a war going on. Not to mention Gore would have won if he had just picked up Clinton's home of AK or his own homestate of TN.

Posted by: Abe | December 09, 2003 at 06:54 AM

and yeah if you really want to geek on the electoral votes: http://www.edwardsforprez.com/dailykos.html is a good interactive map/counter.

Posted by: Abe | December 09, 2003 at 07:04 AM

I'm finding this resonates with that recent TimeMag cover story on Bush, about the country's love/hate thing. This theory might imply that (a) it's OK for the Dem to be extremely anti-Bush (won't alienate the centrists, because they just want to get rid of Bush), and (b) it's actually an asset to do so because it carries more energy.

I think it's also worth noting that alliances between "centrists" and "extremists" are often relatively temporary. They are often based on a "common enemy" model (for the Dems it's Bush, for the Repubs it's Terrorists). But that may be long enough to swing the election.

Posted by: Bill Seitz | December 09, 2003 at 12:58 PM

Indeed. One thing you'll note is true, for nearly all of the analyses that conclude that Dean is a liability: they're done by Republicans.

Ummm, duh.

There are a heck of a lot of more apathetic non-voters that can be incited to vote by an energetic, *liberal* candidate, than there are marginal "swing" voters that may decide to vote Republican. When he heads to the left and speaks out, for every marginal voter in the "middle" that Dean loses, he gains five on the end. The only danger now is that Dean will start to believe the Republican propaganda that he has to be Mr. Nice Mushy Republican-Lite in order to win, and he'll start to move centrist, which won't gain him any of the centrist votes back but will deflate the left end of his support.

Posted by: Anonymous | December 12, 2003 at 04:34 AM

Without commenting on the Dean/electablilty issue, just a technical point: Even though most of the southern states are not in play right now, a southerner somewhere on the ticket forces the Republicans to put some resources into at least some of the southern states. Those resources are then taken out of the "battlefield" states. A southerner also helps in Florida tremendously, and we all know by now how crucial a state Florida is. Florida is very much a Southern state north of Interstate 4.

Posted by: Kevin C | December 19, 2003 at 03:21 AM

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