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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Kosmas Plan. The Grayson Plan

Central Florida this year may offer the best example of campaign experimentation for Democrats in this entire campaign cycle as Suzanne Kosmas and Alan Grayson take starkly different approaches to re-election strategies. If one of these incumbents fall in November and the other remains standing, it will set the tone for years on how campaigns in swing districts are waged.

Kosmas is playing the ultimate moderate. She supports the Bush tax cuts, piddled around on Obamacare and has disappointed liberals with a Progressive rating which makes Allen Boyd look like a leftist. She is trying to be what many, including myself, believe is a dying out creature: the Southern conservative Democrat.

Grayson, meanwhile, is the ultimate fighting Democrat. He calls out social conservatism for being outside the mainstream, assaults right-wing health care policy, and fills his coffers with national donations as a result. This is the campaign most of us in the blogosphere have wanted from Democrats. It is what we hoped Howard Dean would do, and after that campaign imploded, what we wished so badly John Kerry had done.

But the "conventional wisdom" has always been, when the going gets tough, run to the center. Never mind that in any sport known to man, the most successful plays normally come from running up the sides.

Right now, Congress is breaking session, and infighting between the conservative Democrats like Kosmas and the liberals like Grayson has resulted in no vote being taken on the tax cuts, either those that benefit the rich, whom Kosmas is apparently quite worried about, or those that affect the rest of us.

There isn't enough polling being done on either of these seats, despite being the most watched Congressional races in the state. Kosmas and Grayson both have released internals which show themselves leading. But Sunshine State just released a poll that shows Grayson behind Dan Webster by 7 points. The NRCC says Kosmas is behind Sandy Adams by 10.

Obviously, everything is still in the air, and the next five weeks are go-time for both incumbents.

I want both freshmen to win re-election, of course. Kosmas is far from my favorite Democrat, but she's better than Rapey McNovotes. But given the choice, I would rather see Grayson re-elected and Kosmas go down than vice versa. While I was hard on the Grayson ad yesterday, I do kind of hope the name Taliban Dan sticks. More importantly, though, I want a declaration that sticking to one's principles and fighting for a liberal cause is not political foolishness, and that a progressive agenda has its place in mainstream America, not just liberal strongholds.

It's still a real possibility both of them could lose, which would suck, but at least would leave no room people to blame being liberal for Grayson's downfall. More important than any candidate is the right for a progressive agenda to be treated with equal respect in the marketplace of ideas, especially when right-wing fanaticism is so often given a pass.

3 comments:

  1. In baseball, hitting the ball right through the middle is often winning strategy . In basketball, the team that can drive up the ceter to the basket usually wins

    I really get tired of negative campaign ads - unfortunately they seem to work and really slimy individuals like Grayson seem to delight in them.

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  2. I'll give you baseball. But I've seen a lot of game-winning shots from the post.

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  3. The best way to motivate the base is to fight as hard as possible. One of the major reasons we can't pass our agenda is because of the weakness of our current leadership. Grayson is the wave of the future, if we want to preserve FDR's legacy.

    Imagine if we had pressed our advantage after the great victory in November '08. Strong leadership could have abolished or greatly weakened the filibuster. Secret "holds" could have been eliminated. We could have passed all our legislation, and the subsequent improvement in all American's lives in the last year would have gotten us into the position to finally kill off the GOP.
    But, no, we had the experience of Obama and Reid squandering the tremendous Democratic mandate, giving in to the Republicans every time. After all the media spin, we now find ourselves in deep trouble, with the possibility of losing one or both Houses. Should it happen, we can expect non stop investigation of the Obama administration, and an end to progress for years to come.
    So help get out the Democratic vote.

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