The Importance of Conventional Wisdom

It's now officially a given that Democrats will win seats in the midterms, "at every level of government" according to RNC Chair Ken Mehlman. The only question is "how many?"

Of course, Mehlman is trying to tamp down expectations so that he can manage them. If the Dems do stumble between now and Election Day, Mehlman can pounce by hyping the "incredible surprise". And maybe it's a trick to get the Dems overconfident (but I don't think so; in the age of Diebold, Democrats know they have to act like they're already ten points down). The important thing to note is that it's a given. This will affect the lazy Washington press corps that demands accepted narratives to guide their thinking in election seasons. The press in DC rarely talk to anyone but each other, at least that's what can be gathered from reading their articles. They now fully expect a Democratic victory in November. Everything they write will be positioned through that lens. As long as the Democrats push the narrative.

We see that a lot of recent moves by the White House go back to their game plan of picking partisan fights. Today the President nominated for the post of CIA Director someone who was the front man for the illegal NSA wiretapping program. We learned last week that the theocratic agenda is headed back to Congress:

GOP leaders are gearing up to bring a number of issues on the Christian conservative agenda to the floor of the House and Senate in the next few weeks, including gay marriage, broadcast decency, the 10 Commandments Act, a cloning ban, and laws protecting "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

"There's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball," said Dr. James Dobson, in an interview with the Fox News Network on May 1. He's the chairman and founder of Focus on the Family, a Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is helping to organize some 40,000 events for the National Day of Prayer.

There's also a looming fight over judicial nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the "nuclear option" deal last year, but is being returned to the Judiciary Committee for an eventual vote on the Senate floor.

Divisive executive appointments, wedge issues in Congress, judicial nominees. We've seen this before. The idea is to pick a fight, hoping that the base will rally around the President, and will therefore be motivated to vote against Democrats. All of these issues are also ones in which the Democrats will have to take the position of opposition to stop, reinforcing the obstructionist "party of no" frame.

However, there is a difference between the last times these gambits were tried and today. The President wasn't at 31% back then. The White House has gone from a position of ascendancy to free-fall. And the conventional wisdom is on the side of the Democrats.

Given this environment, all the Democrats have to do to win the debate on these issues is to POINT OUT THE REALITY. Every single Democrat has an easy charge to level at the GOP:

"Look, this White House has lost control of its message. It's on the verge of becoming irrelevant. They're desperate to save their skins this November. Everybody knows the Democrats are going to beat their brains in. So what do they do? They come out with something else to divide Americans, hoping that playing everybody against one another will save their failed Presidency."

Nobody picks up on this stuff faster than Russ Feingold:

Sen. Russ Feingold indicated today that President Bush has unnecessarily politicized the position of Central Intelligence Agency director by nominating Gen. Michael Hayden, who has been involved in the administration’s warrant-less wiretapping program.

“We need a situation in this country where everything isn’t politicized,’’ Feingold, D-Wis., told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club during a question and answer session.

This speech is apparently going to be on C-SPAN tonight. There's plenty more to it, but Feingold understands that the way to put the White House on the defensive on these things is by telling the American people to focus on the "why," not the "what." They're nominating Hayden for political reasons. They're bringing a gay marriage amendment to the floor for political reasons. And they're doing that because the politics don't look good for them.

If you characterize these decisions from The Decider in this way, the press corps will do our work for us. They'll write the "GOP in disarray" stories, the "GOP desperate for a win" stuff. Everybody loves a winner, it's an immutable fact in politics as in life. People are running away from this President in droves. The best way to keep that going is to openly state that people are running away from the President in droves. What not to do is to praise Hayden's nomination without taking the politics into account. Democrats too often take everything at face value. Focusing on the why, on the politics, on the divisiveness, will go a long way toward cementing a "loser" label on the Republicans. The rest will take care of itself.