Electoral Math is for Losers

Steve Gilliard used to say that all the time, that electoral math is for losers. He got a lot of people all het up about it, too. But the more I see Democrats--good, solid, thoughtful, intelligent, all-on-the-same-side Democrats--carefully crafting arguments around which candidate to support (or not) in the primaries based on "electability" and the vagaries of the Electoral College, the more convinced I am that Gilliard is right: This gets us nowhere and serves to do nothing but sow dissension among us.

I should be clear: I'm not calling all those who fiddle with electoral maps and count the electors on their fingers and toes losers. When I say that electoral math is for losers, I mean that counting electors is, ultimately, a losing strategy. I'll elaborate in a moment.

Am I defensive? I mean, after all, most of the people spelling out electability issues or predicting Electoral College doom are doing so to argue against Howard Dean. I am, it is well known in these parts, a long-time Dean supporter. So, then, is it just a reflex mechanism on my part to say that only a loser would argue against Howard Dean based on electoral math? I don't think so. I firmly believe that a bean-counter approach to 2004 is ultimately the worst strategy we can take (no offense to bean counters in the audience).

First of all, electability is a canard. We are a full year, basically, away from November 2004. George W. Bush is consistently at or below the level of "generic Democrat" in head-to-head polls. Yet most candidates most of the time fall behind Bush in head-to-heads. Sure, there's a state poll here and there showing some candidates up and some down, or a national poll every once in a while with one guy up over the others. But in the end, if we're looking just at the polling data from today, the Democrats all have roughly equal shots if you average the polls, and the Democrats, with an unnamed candidate, have an excellent outlook in general.

But when people talk about Howard Dean's unelectability--or, for that matter, any Democrat's--the polls are secondary. It's all about personality. Dean's too angry. Dean's (perceived as) too liberal. Dean's too gruff. Contrariwise, Clark's too militaristic to attract former Greens; Kerry's too lackluster; Gephardt's too old-school; Edwards is too young. And so on. For the most part, there is nothing objective in these elecability arguments.

What really sticks in my craw, though, is the unspoken but ever-present sense among the Democrats making these electability claims that one candidate or another (usually, again, Howard Dean) will not have the full support of the Democratic Party--or at least some Democratic voters. This is bad voodoo, my friends. Look, I'm hip-deep in the Dean campaign. I have as much invested in this as anyone. And yet, if Dean is not the nominee, I have no intention of just walking away, or of only giving lackluster support to the nominee. Why? Because Democrats must win next November.

I put that in italics so there would be no question where my loyalty lies. I want Bush out of Washington. Period. I don't care if the Democrats nominate a limp rag, I will bust my hump going door-to-door for that scrappy little rag. And face it: With about a bazillion dollars to spend next year, the Bush campaign will be hard for any Democrat to beat without all of us working hard for victory. If all you plan to do is sit on your butt if your guy doesn't win, then I don't want to read your whining about how all of the other guys can't win.

Now about that pesky Electoral College thing. You and I both know that the only thing that guarantees a win in 2004 is 270 or more electoral votes. So why, then, do I think all of this electoral math is for losers? Simple: Did you ever notice how southerners get upset whenever anyone reminds us that we don't need the South to win? You and I both know that there is very little chance that the Democrat will win Mississippi. But if all goes according to plan, our guy will be the president in Mississippi just as he will be the president in Massachusetts. And we cannot campaign nor can we act as though the South is not a part of this country or a part of this race. (Plenty of other states or regions can be substituted in the preceding without changing a thing.)

You may believe that the election will be decided in just a few key battleground states and you may want to bother over which candidate you think has a better shot in those few key battleground states. But that's not what I want. I want a candidate who campaigns to win the election, not a candidate who campaigns to win, say, Tennessee.

When we start talking about who looks good in the South, or who looks good in the Midwest, or who looks good in whatever pet state you think will be the deciding one in 2004, we lose sight of the big picture. We are in this election as Democrats, and we will win as Democrats. We are not the party of one region or another. We are not the party of one group or another. We represent the majority view on every major domestic issue in the country, and it's time to win--and win the whole country. I don't want to hear about how one guy will win one state. That's loser talk. I want to hear about how we will win period in 2004.

So don't show me your electoral math. Don't complain about some candidate's personality and call it electability. Instead tell me how we're gonna win. That's the talk of winners.