Stanton Champion

Dear Democrats:

Congratulations!  You won on Tuesday and you deserved it.  Your planning, development, and evangelizing have earned you a legion of new and happy voters who are tired of the past and interested in your new brand of hope.

However, even though history doesn’t repeat, it frequently rhymes.  With that in mind, I would like to offer you five pieces of advice:

1.) Don’t get cocky

The Republicans made a habit of jumping the shark time after time, but the party movement as a whole did so around the time they proclaimed their “permanent majority.”  It was a ludicrous thing for Republicans to say, even when their power looked strong.  Any student of history will tell you that nothing is permanent – especially political majorities in a democratic government.

Your majority is a gift from the American people to be used for doing our will.  Don’t think for a second that it’s permanent, and never forget that we can and will remove your privileges if we think you no longer represent our interests.  If you want our votes in 2010 and 2012, you’ll have to earn them.

2.) The Republicans aren’t a regional party

There’s this belief going around (see various posts on DailyKos) that the Republican party is now a regional party.  They’re not.  While Republicans won strongly in the South while losing most of the rest of the country, the votes were still very close in the Southwest and Mountain West.  Much of the new Democratic strength is fairly soft right now, and it remains to be seen if these new Democratic voters represent the future of the Democratic or Republican parties.

Also, never forget that the Democratic party was once declared a regional party of the coasts just a few years ago.  Middle America would never go for such “left wing” values, and so on.  Right now, Middle America appears to go for a whole lot of things when it suits them.

3.) “Change” was a brand, now it must be policy

Take it from a guy with an MBA: Americans make a ton of decisions based on brand.  But take this from a guy with an MBA: if the brand fails to meet expectations, Americans will drop the product like a hot potato.  Coke created a flop with New Coke.  Democrats: don’t make a flop out of Change.

Americans expect a number of things from this product of Change: more transparency, less corruption, a more intelligent level of dialog, and less single mindedness.  These are easy things to promise, and I actually think that Obama wants this kind of government.  What I’m not convinced is that the rest of the Democratic party wants this kind of government.

So Democrats be on notice: your party leader has created a very powerful brand with high expectations.  Your new ascendency to power has been built on those expectations.  Live up to them, or you will end up like New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, and the Ford Edsel.

4.) Yesterday’s movement is today’s establishment

Over the past eight years, one of the most interesting things to watch has been the downfall of Bill O’Reilly.  Remember him?  I’m not talking about the blowhard commentator who sits on Fox News and spits out right-wing press doctrine.  I’m talking about the guy who led Fox News to incredible highs in the 2000 election by making the populist case against Bill Clinton and the Democrats.

O’Reilly has always been a jerk – just find the old video on YouTube of his meltdown on Inside Edition in the 90s.  It’s just that eight years ago, O’Reilly was able to tap into a willing public consciousness looking for a new future.  He spoke of the ills of eight years of Clinton rule, ranted against the perceived failures of Clinton policy, and made the frequent case for a new Bush based future.

Today, the role of O’Reilly has been replaced with the likes of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Markos ‘Kos’ Moulitsas.  They are the voices of the underdog movement, but as of Tuesday, their roles have now completely changed.  Their movement is now more powerful than ever, and they are certainly no longer the underdogs.

As leaders of the underdog movement, they are now faced with a choice.  They can become pundits, like O’Reilly, and try to support their new found power by promoting themselves and their party, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of failure.  Or they can wait until the time is right, jettison many of their previous followers, and rebuild a new movement around tomorrow’s problems.  The second choice is obviously harder, requires more work, has less payoff, and creates many new enemies.

Kos, Olbermann, Maddow, and others be warned: you are now establishment pundits until proven otherwise.

5.) Your party is a fractured coalition

The Republican party must now rebuild out of a mess of competing interests, and it’s a wonder that these people were ever able to form a party in the first place.  Religious evangelicals, corporate executives, and libertarians have absolutely nothing to do with each other.  All of this mess has to be put back together, and getting any kind of consensus will be nearly impossible.

But wait, before you Democrats find too much schadenfreude in all of this, remember that you too are a party of competing interests.  You have a mess of high-tech nerds, union laborers, greens, “new” corporates, social liberals, and moderate conservatives.  It is absolutely inevitable that this new coalition will collide, and the first conflict to come will be the unions vs. everyone else.

A rebuilding Republican party will almost certainly come cherry picking whomever loses in this coming battle of self-interested supporters.  You can sometimes push off the conflict, but you can’t do that forever.  There’s really no way to stop the collapse of a coalition government, and that’s what keeps a real permanent majority from forming.  See #1.

Conclusions

Democrats, you are on notice.  Your clock is ticking, and we as Americans expect results.  All of us want a new direction, but the new directions we want are all completely different.  Figure it out, or we’ll find someone else to do it.

(Coming Soon: Advice for Republicans.)