Go Glenn, Go!

Glenn Greenwald is plenty angry about Barack Obama's recent two-step on the FISA bill. The gist of his complaint is that, if 2006 proves anything, its that Dems don't have to worry about appearing soft on that pesky issue of terrorism. His proof? Well he starts out by pointing out that, after all, Democrats won a Congressional race in Northwest Connecticut:

Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily. In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the "false choice between war and civil liberties." Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy's opposition to warrantless eavesdropping, such as this one:The result? Johnson was crushed: Rep. Nancy Johnson, a 12-term Republican who ran a tough-on-terror campaign and touted her co-authorship of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, lost her re-election bid Tuesday to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy. Murphy had 56 percent to Johnson's 44 percent with 12 percent of the precincts voting. Johnson was the longest serving representative in Congress in state history. Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy -- as he runs for re-election for the first time -- recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

We will set aside for the moment nits like the fact that Murphy ended up winning by 54-44 (now why would Greenwald cite the results with 12% reporting -- and from Fox News?), and turn to the substance.  Now it is true that Nancy Johnson's district split 49-49 for Bush/Kerry, which actually makes it about three points more Democratic than the nation as a whole.  But it is also true that Gore won it by almost ten points just four years before that, that Clinton carried it twice (by thirteen points in 1996), that Johnson herself was very nearly defeated in the last good Democratic year of 1996, that the district had voted at about the national average for President from 1972 through 1988 (and voted for Humphrey by about six points in 1968), and that Johnson had picked the district up from the Democrats in 1982.  The 2004 challenger she defeated by 22 points spent a paltry $128,229 -- a far cry from the $2.5M Murphy raised and spent.  If anything, being held to 60% in a good Republican year against a no-name opponent is a fairly convincing sign of weakness.  Regardless, to call this an evenly-divided swing district is very much a stretch, and the district hasn't been "Republican" in my lifetime (I am sure that some time before 1958 it was heavily populated by Yankee Republicans).  At the least, it leans Democratic, all other things being equal.

Moreover, the race in the district was not about FISA, or the Iraq War.  Johnson ran one ad against Murphy on the issue, which backfired horribly.  The reason?  According to the Almanac of American Politics, it destroyed her non-partisan, grandmotherly image in the district, which is what had allowed Johnson to hold on in this Dem-leaning district, even in some bad Republican years.  Murphy made his race about her ties to pharmaceutical lobbyists, and her ties to Jack Abramoff; the Almanac notes that other than Johnson's ad, "national security did not play a major role in the race."  While it is true that Murphy wasn't particularly hurt by the FISA advertisement or his stance on the war, that has more to do with the fundamentals of the district and the nature of the incumbent than anything else.  If nothing else, that a Democrat won in a Democratic district in a Democratic year, notwithstanding tough ads from his Republican opponent isn't exactly the best argument one hopes a relatively smart guy like Greenwald can come up with.

On the other hand, the race in the neighboring Fourth District was absolutely about the War in Iraq.  And Christopher Shays' Democratic opponent stuck to her guns steadfastly on the war, while Shays gradually tacked to the center on the issue.  The result?  Shays is now the only Republican in New England, representing a district that went for Kerry and Gore, serving in a Congressional delegation headed by Chris Dodd and stauch war opponent Senator Ned Lamont.  Oh wait . . .

The lesson of 2006 is not that steadfast liberalism wins.  Nor is it "a perception (rightly or wrongly) that [Democrats] actually stood for something different than the GOP in National Security." Very few steadfast liberals running in center-to-center right districts won in 2006.   As this analysis demonstrates, of the 29 Democrats who picked up Republican seats in 2006, twenty-one wound up in the most conservative quarter of the Democratic caucus.  Nearly half of the 30 most conservative Democrats are Freshmen in the Class of 2006.  And because of this, nearly 2/3 of the Democrats who replaced Republicans voted against FISA reform.  Of those that voted "nay", most are like Murphy, from Democratic-leaning districts.  Those from Republican-leaning districts like Carol Shea-Porter . . . well, they do not appear to be long for this Congress.  The reason that Democrats won in 2006 is that they embraced all kinds of Democrats who were out-of-touch with core Democratic concerns from abortion to the War in Iraq (the only reasons we still have Congressmen Barrow and Marshall of Georgia), not because they ran from the center or defined some type of new center.

Moreover, the general election is not going to be won or lost in places like CT-05.  It will be won or lost in center-to-right districts like IN-02, CO-07, or PA-08.  If Obama can convince those voters who barely voted for Bush in 2004 to turn out heavily for him in 2008, he will win.  If not, he will probably lose.  And the Democrats in those distrcts generally voted for FISA reform. 

 To be sure, by abandoning his previous positions, Obama is opening himself up to attack and definition as a flip-flopper, which is dangerous for a relatively unknown politician seeking to establish himself with the general electorate.  This is similar to the problem that Kerry encountered in 2004, to be sure.  But it does not follow that, because Kerry ran to the center in 2004 and lost, that he would have won had he run as a modern George McGovern.  This year is almost certainly going to be a better year for Democrats than was 2004, so maybe Obama can run far to the left and still win (although I don't think the country as a whole has moved much since 2004 -- a subject for another post).  But the Democrats who represent the kinds of districts he needs to win to obtain the Presidency seem to indicate otherwise, and given the stakes for the Democrats, it seems foolish to urge him to take the risk.  Which is why I hope the Obama campaign is listening to Greenwald.