Divide and fail to conquer

Yesterday I was in the commissary for some things and stopped by the magazine rack to look for what turns out to be an old issue of Men's Fitness. No loss. What I found was more interesting indeed. Tucked away in the back was January's issue of The American Prospect, probably the only truly liberal political magazine I've ever seen on the base. I can't wait to bring it in to work and scare my colleagues.

I bought this one because on the front is a milk carton with a donkey, and it says, "Have you seen the Emerging Democratic Majority?" I figured this must be a direct slap at John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, who wrote the book The Emerging Democratic Majority and manage the weblog by the same name. I occasionally read this weblog, which is mostly vituperative crap, so I thought I'd pick up the magazine and read what one group of liberals had to say about another.

Well, the Prospect, while being too eager to help the Democratic Party and not eager enough to consider the third way argument I made on this blog back in November, is actually a fairly intelligent magazine. The January issue includes solid pieces on the inevitable Rehnquist retirement, the social security debate, and the loss of Richard Armitage from the State Department, although typically of leftist thought they fail to connect any of these things with each other. Then begins the body of the magazine, which includes three articles about whatever happened to the so-called emerging majority.

Michael Lind contributes a very bright article about why the Dems are being relegated to New England, the upper midwest, and the west coast, and what should be done about it (stop nominating Boston Brahmins is a key point). Then comes an article actually by Judis and Teixeira, who argue that in fact though the emergence of the democratic majority was put off a few years by September 11, it's still taking shape just as they predicted.

But here's where things break down. For starters, they blame September 11 for the slow pace of Democratic victories, but they published their book in October 2002, having had plenty of time to see what effect Bush doctrine in the wake of September 11 might have; that argument doesn't hold water. And beyond that, the two construct their entire argument on the single biggest problem affecting American politics today. They make all their arguments based on groups--Bush won such and such percentage of this group over that group, improved his numbers with Hispanics and devout Catholics in Ohio but didn't improve them with Southern Blacks or college-educated middle class whites.

Divide and conquer is an apt policy in war but has problems in politics. All people belong to groups, but all people belong to more than one group and assuming that all people in any group are always going to vote one way or another is inappropriate. Courting one group may indeed alienate members of that group who don't subscribe to the reasons the group is being courted.

Of course both parties are equally guilty of this; Judis and Teixeira present evidence that the Bush campaign specifically targeted devout Catholics in Ohio, for instance, and both parties have long discussed "The Black Vote" and "The Hispanic Vote" along with numerous other groups. Soccer moms and NASCAR dads might be the most benign of these groupings but prove that minorities are not exempt from being labeled by the political leadership of both sides.

The problem here is old as the hills. Rather than attempting to make broad general statements about belief and persuading people--all people, rather than this or that group--that their beliefs are compatible, parties cram people into groups and then feed targeted marketing materials to each group. Having worked on campaigns, I can tell you that the campaign material distributed to blacks and whites in major campaigns is usually quite different; ditto materials distributed to different communities within a district. Because you are black you must care about this; because you live in a small town you must care about that. The only way most politicians are able to see people is through the lens of group affiliation.

Michael Lind at least makes the argument that the party should focus on economic issues and apply these across the board--who doesn't want more jobs and a stronger economy?--but fails to note the key difference between this approach and the standard divide and somehow fail to conquer anyway method. Of course, Lind will be bashed by the left for claiming that the Democratic party's best chance to regain power is to shift focus away from social issues (on which the liberals tend to be in the minority), so it's safe to say that his message will go unheeded and the party elders will no doubt attempt to stratify people into even narrower groups than "devout Ohio Catholics." And at that rate, that donkey's going to be on the milk carton for a long while.