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By The Hill Editors
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Posted: 08/02/07 07:02 PM [ET] |
This newspaper has suggested that the widely noted upsurge in partisanship on Capitol Hill since the early 1990s is due mostly to the fact that both parties see a chance of seizing the majority.
When the Democrats controlled the House for decade after decade, Republicans seemed to take the view that there was little point in adding the unpleasantness of real fighting to the inevitability of life in the minority.
When the GOP took over in 1995, and again this year when Democrats came back to power, it was clear that both sides had a shot. In such circumstances, when the margin between triumph and electoral disaster is so narrow, each issue is more likely to be treated as a battleground.
Competitive politics is, however, producing more than just greater volumes of angry rhetoric. It also is making the parties more thorough in their campaigning.
As Democrats looked back on their defeat in November 2004, they saw they had been trounced by Republicans among that huge proportion of the electorate clumsily referred to as “values voters” or “faith voters.” And it swiftly became plain that the party planned to do something about it.
Many of the party’s leaders suddenly could be heard emphasizing their religious faith. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for example, played up the fact that she is a Catholic, a mother of five and a grandmother. These were long-established facts, but had not been a prominent feature of her political profile previously.
Democratic presidential candidates are also wearing their faith on their sleeves — a fact that prompted Time magazine to publish a cover story last month under the headline “How the Democrats Got Religion.”
But the Dems’ efforts to win over religious people is a lot more systematic than is suggested by a few individual candidates emphasizing what they think voters like to hear. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has hired staff to conduct outreach to values and faith voters. The committee had no such dedicated team in 2004.
As The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports on the front page today, the team conducted pilot programs in six states last year and will expand into an undisclosed number of swing states for the next election.
It will get out the vote and couch policy in a way that appeals to people whose votes are swayed by issues of values and
faith. That means underlining the moral force of renewing the federal children’s health insurance program, for example, and of improving education, and questioning policy and methods in Iraq.
This is just smart politics. DNC Chairman Howard Dean was criticized last cycle for his 50-state policy, which some thought meant resources were squandered in unwinnable states. The country’s ideological and partisan split, the 48-48 nation, means not only more partisanship; it also means greater thoroughness, and that neither party can afford to dismiss or take any sector of the country or electorate for granted.
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