Maybe it is because I grew up as the son of an advertising executive, next door to a senior partner at a major Manhattan law firm, with classmates whose parents worked at places like Cantor Fitzgerald or the Institute for Advanced Study, but I’ve never been really comfortable with the language of the Occupy Movement. I understand the usefulness of discussing the 1% vs. the 99%. I certainly understand the impulse to bash Wall Street. In any case, we need to have some kind of language for discussing rising income inequality and its causes. I just choose to use my own terminology.
I also noticed and was somewhat annoyed that the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia, Michelle Nunn, came out of the box talking about the need to address the country’s debt. It annoyed me on the merits, not so much on the politics.
I have long argued that progressives can win in the South without adopting the DLC/Blue Dog model, so long as they can figure out how to finance their campaigns. On balance, I think someone who talks about Wall Street the way Elizabeth Warren talks about Wall Street will do better with your average Georgian voter than one who talks constantly about lowering our debt.
But let’s also be realistic. Go down to Georgia hill country and a spend a little time. “The massive Primal Scream coming from the children of the DixieCrats” that currently has the government shut down has to be taken into account.
Michelle Nunn can win this race, but she is going to have to significantly cut into the Republicans’ advantage with the white vote. Maybe she can count on some x-chromosome solidarity, but she can’t sound like she’s going to Washington to be a big help to the president.
The most obvious route to victory for Michelle Nunn is for her to brand herself as a newer, hipper, more estrogen-endowed version of her father, and to take advantage of the radicalism of her opponent. It’s not too distinct from the path Kay Hagan took to win a seat in North Carolina, and Sen. Hagan looks like she is in decent shape to win a second term.
Now, playing it safe may not be good enough, but going populist is probably the harder challenge. For starters, I’d hesitate to recommend a strategy that isn’t genuine. The daughter of a senator isn’t necessarily a natural anti-establishment candidate. Secondly, we need to think of what type of white voters she can attract, and how she can attract them?
Going heavily into the Occupy dictionary could help her win votes among the crowd that really hates the president, but how many votes are really there for the taking? Since we know that her opponent is probably going to be extremely unhinged, her best bet isn’t to try to out-radicalize them from the left. Her best bet is to seem sane and reasonable when compared to her opponent. This is where she can win over moderate white professionals and northern transplants.
My advice here cuts a little against my usual advice, but that is because of some factors that are unique to this race. The Nunn name is a well-regarded and established brand in Georgia, and you probably don’t want to mess with it too much. The likelihood of a crazy opponent is so high, that I think the sane/reasonable approach is on solid footing. These features are absent or largely-absent in the senate races in South Carolina and Tennessee, where I think the only hope of success is to go populist in a big way. You aren’t going to beat Lamar Alexander by being more reasonable.
But, in Georgia, in 2014, I don’t think running a Blue Dog campaign is a bad bet, even though it is annoying as hell.
