E.J. Dionne writes in today’s Washington Post that the Obama administration has come up with a revolutionary new strategy to save their party: blame the other guy, and talk about how much they will “fight” for you.
Can Democrats finally put the Republicans on the defensive?
Obama is betting that they can. His speech at a fundraiser for Boxer in Los Angeles on Monday offered a template for a new Happy Warrior in the tradition of Al Smith. After a year in which he repeatedly and almost apologetically insisted that he was — really, really — trying as hard as he could to work with Republicans, he turned the beat around and asked why Republicans weren’t willing to work with him.
He used his praise of Boxer — “she wants to cooperate with folks on the other side of the aisle where she can, but she’s willing to fight where she has to” — as a pivot to what he hopes will be a central theme of this year’s national election campaign. His words about Boxer, he said, were “not a bad adage . . . for the Democratic Party…
No one doubts the Democrats are in a deep electoral hole. But Obama has now joined the battle with a strategy to transform the election from a referendum on his own party into a contest with a Republican Party the public doesn’t much like, either. Boxer’s fate, but also the fate of a lot of other Democrats, hangs on its success.
Wow. Another strategy would have been to try to work with Republicans for real, but whatever. I’m sure that if Obama just repeats the word “fight” enough times, Democrats will gain supermajorities in both houses this fall.
I can’t believe no one ever thought of this before.
