An immodest proposal: A 435-District Strategy in '08

I'm sure that by now we've all read the front-paged, and carefully plotted, target list by kos.

I'm certainly not the political pro he is.  I'm just a guy who's been doing grunt work as a volunteer for democrats and lefty causes since the days when I still had hair, and my beard wasn't grey.  And, I'm still a diarist with training wheels, but I feel like we're getting stuck in a false dichotomy between pragmatics and ideals (yes, Virginia, there really is a Hope, Arkansas).

Of course we need to "target" the fifty (or whatever arbitrary number the professional mathematicians amongst us become convinced via their slide rules is the "correct" number) of most vulnerable candidates, but...

please hear me out on this after the jump...

I have some deep reservations about locking ourselves into a plan which is premised upon the notion that political races need always be driven solely by numbers.  I know it sounds foolish.  After all, election night is all about numbers... but what leads up to that night, I think, not as much as those of us who like to scrutinize every opinion poll might tend to believe.

There are so many unquantifiable factors: subtle changes in mood of the electorate, atrified local party structures, charisma or lack of same of one or the other of the candidates in a given race, the weather.

Take, for example, the measurement in the cited post of vulnerability based on the percentage of votes in a district went for Kerry.  It makes a nice chart, and provides considerable insight.  But it doesn't really tell us how that District would have voted had their choice been a Jon Tester instead of a John Kerry in '04, even less about their receptiveness to a Democrat who speaks their language now, and nothing at all about how they feel about their current representation in Congress.

So, here's what I would propose as a balance between the art of persuasion, and the science of politics by the numbers.

Instead of allocating our available funds to the fifty most likely winners based solely on perceived electability, particularly as measured by prior votes in previous campaigns in which our candidate was not even running, how about a two-pronged approach.  Let's allocate a big slice of the pie first toward seed money (perhaps in the form of matching grants) for the Democratic candidate in each of the 435 Congressional districts, to protect all of our incumbents, and give even our underdogs start-up funds.  Sometimes long shots can pay off big.

To minimize the risks, the lion's share of the pie will still go to the "targeted" races... making the seed money to the less likely candidates not just a hedge, but a real investment.

What if this had been the approach this time around?  Well, I can't produce numbers without pretending that such things are actually quantifiable.  I do know that had the candidate in my own congressional district, who received not one thin dime from the state or national parties until the last week, been given some seed money, the incumbent would not have been able to as easily duck her call for a debate, and hide out throughout the entire campaign season.  I honestly believe that it would have made an enormous difference... perhaps not enough for a victory, but enough to show him for the rubber stamp that he is.  Even that would have given us more on which to build for the next campaign.

So, it's out there.  I think we can have our cake and eat it too -- pragmatism and idealism need not be mutually exclusive.  Even reality-based strategies can leave room for faith and hope.

Update - 11/14/2006 2:31 PST - I edited the poll question to remove the quotation marks which caused it to be truncated. Mea maxima culpa.