They Own It

Josh Marshall has this absolutely brilliant piece in TPM Cafe today:

Central to any message for Democrats now and through 2006 has to be that Washington is a Republican town.  It's run by Republicans.  Everything that happens in Washington is determined by Republicans.  If you're fed up with Washington, you're fed up with Republicans, etc.  It's not spin.  It's all true and painfully so. 

Every Democrat in their home district or state should be making the point that they're outsiders in today's Washington.  There may be Republicans and Democrats that voters know at home, each with some positions of power, fame, prominence in business and so forth.  Not so in today's Washington.  It's a Republican machine.  And Democrats are as much outsiders on the action as voters are.

We chose John Kerry in 2004, an establishment Democrat who has lived and breathed Washington for 20 years, negating this line of attack. The Republicans pounced on it, and if anyone was running as a Washington outsider last year, it was the President. But in the midterms, this is an absolute must for the leadership. The only reason the old saw that "Democrats don't have any ideas" has been allowed to become conventional wisdom in many circles is that the GOP leadership in the House and Senate systematically block any Democratic legislation, and we're not at this point good enough at circumventing that and getting the message out.

The outsider, "throw the bums out" thing has worked for years and years, but only when it's coupled with a strong message about what said "outsider" or "outsider party" would do if elected. I agree with Jon Stewart that it would be instructive for Democrats to loudly proclaim every day between now and next November what they would do differently if they were in power. You could go issue by issue for the next 400-odd days. Do it through media, direct mail, whatever means at our disposal.

And by the way, there's an excellent chance to get this started right now. In Ohio's 2nd Congressional district, Paul Hackett, an Iraq War veteran who will be going back to Baghdad if he loses this race, is up against Jean Schmidt, a Republican. This is an open seat created by Rep. Rob Portman's being named the US Trade Representative. The election's in just a couple of weeks. This is maybe the most conservative district in the state, serving Hamilton County (Cincinnati). It went 2 to 1 for Bush in 2000 and 2004. But since the election, Ohio's GOP has weathered a number of scandals (including Coingate, the ruining of the workman's compensation system by purchasing rare coins that were lost in the mail), their Republican governor Bob Taft has a NINETEEN percent approval rating, and Hackett has a chance to pull off the upset. Here's some more information on it.

This is an excellent test case to play out some of the themes that could work nationally. Hackett's Act Blue page is here if you want to donate.

UPDATE... The GOP candidate Jean Schmidt is making is really easy to nationalize this race, by taking $10,000 in the last month from Tom DeLay's under-indictment Political Action Committee. Slick idea, Jean.