The New New Democrat: The Process Warrior

Today, I'll acknowledge my affinity with the liberal blogger Digby on two fundamentals for 2008.


First, I agree with her the Democratic nominee is going to beat John McCain pretty handily and I've been predicting for months that it's going to be 57-43 and I don't as yet see any reason to change my mind.


Second, I the nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is a good thing. Digby has a post today on how the nomination battle is giving Democrats in states like North Carolina a reason to get excited because their votes are going to have a meaningful impact on the nomination.


The same is true in my state of Kentucky.


There are a lot of other positive effects as well.


The biggest positive effect is that both campaigns are developing much better combinations of discipline and aggressiveness.


The Hillary campaign has put Bill on the Dan Quayle trail of small out of the way places like Morehead, KY and demoted Mark Penn. They've also learned how to hit hard at emerging Obama weak points without worrying about credibility. When Obama foolishly talked about bitter white people and their guns, Hillary shamelessly pandered about learning to shoot from her dad. That's what she needs to do now and it's what she needs to do if she becomes President.


For it's own part, the Obama campaign is learning the parry and thrust of fighting to win each news cycle and the candidate himself had one of his best moments responding to the Jeremiah Wright accusations.


And Michelle Obama was sidelined even more thoroughly than Bill.


More needs to be done. Joan Walsh of Salon correctly observes that Barack Obama needs to follow Hillary's example and start doing a better job of proposing solutions for the problems he would face as president.


But more important than that, Democratic voters need to toughen up and embrace the ups and downs of the political process. A lot of white Democrats out on the streets want harmony, high-minded ideas, and an idealistic focus on policy rather than personality and symbolism. That's great in theory, but it's a recipe for disaster in presidential campaigns and failure in office.


Even more than Democratic politicians, Democratic voters need to realize that most political fighting takes place in the gutter and be willing to see their candidates roll around in the gutter with the Karl Roves, Lee Atwaters, and Bill O'Reilly's of the world.


Scott Adams of Dilbert fame used to joke about engineers becoming "process warriors." But that's exactly what Democratic voters need to become. They need to become "process warriors" who fight with Democratic campaigns and officeholders until the process turns out some progressive sausage for a change.