What a difference a week makes, eh? It was only about that long ago that I (and many others) were wondering when we would see a Symington campaign actually manifest itself. Since then, they finally launched a real website (which is even more visually accommodating and serves as a better gateway to its content and functionality than the Pollina website), which provides a window to the actual campaigning being done by the Speaker. And although there were some serious opportunities lost during her non-presence while the Governor was signing (or not signing) bills she had a hand in, her media presence has been much improved.
And the difference now that a communications apparatus is in place is not good news for Pollina. Pollina has been running and working the media (sometimes pissing them off needlessly) for some time, but if recent coverage is any indication, it would seem that reporters are now feeling obliged to get a quote from Symington everytime Pollina is referred to, making it difficult – if not impossible – for him to get a foothold in any story without having readers reminded that he is the third party pretender, and not the left wing standard-bearer in the race against Douglas. Ouch.
Clearly, as we’ve discussed ad nauseum, Symington has an even shot at forcing this thing to the legislature, where a Democratic Legislature could hand it to the second place player. But is it possible she could, you know – actually get more votes than Jim Douglas? Likely? No. Easy? No.
Possible? Remotely, but yes, it’s possible. And that puts a whole new light on this discussion.
In my previous “how they can win” diaries which focused on Anthony Pollina and Peter Galbraith, I acknowledged that I was pushing the limits of credulity, and didn’t really…well…see how what I was optimistically promoting could actually come to pass.
But a 45%-45%-10% split, with advantage Symington by a handful of votes, does not seem insane.
We always work with a dearth of polls in Vermont. At this point, we have to lean way too heavily – at least in theory – on last Fall’s poll from WCAX, which, though giving continuing high positive ratings for the Governor, >only gave him a 42% re-elect percentage.
42% is a significant number because it, not coincidentally, is basically the GOP base statewide. The clear message from this poll was that, while voters still generally like Douglas, voters beyond that Republican base are no longer convinced he is the right person for the job, and that makes him susceptible to being held to 2002 voting percentages, or maybe even lower (Douglas beat Racine in a three way race with Con Hogan, 45%-42%-10%)
Douglas was way up to 53% in a hypothetical matchup with Pollina and Galbraith, but with Galbraith’s low name recognition (and not even being a candidate), that was essentially a Douglas-Pollina-Generic Dem matchup.
So, while meaningful, it was apples and oranges, and Symington will inevitably fare better in the next poll than did Galbraith – at the expense of both Douglas and Pollina. Pollina is clearly going to perform nowhere near his peak against Shumlin in 2002. A lot of that is the staleness of the Pollina brand. 2002 was the last year he could convincingly run a “vote your hopes, not your fears” themed campaign, as that was the last election Pollina ran as a progressive/Progressive symbol of the disaffected left. He was simply “the Prog the liberal hero” in that, and his previous race. This time around, Pollina is not looked at as a proxy, he is looked at by most Vermonters as himself, and as such, they are less likely to project “their hopes” onto him without any of “their fears.” Everytime he flips on an issue, people remember. When he passes off Symington and Douglas as the same, they roll their eyes (as they do when he invites charges of hypocrisy through his high-profile endorsement of Barack Obama). And when he passes himself off as a political outsider, they just don’t buy it.
All this adds up to a 15% ceiling, and a good third of that 15% is very, very squishy. The Pollina camp knows this, as they have already been lowering expectations for the release of the first media poll results.
So Symington needs to continue to push the case that Douglas is not right for the job, and she has Pollina and an increasingly challenging news media (at last) which can help. Douglas needs to be held as closely as possible to that 42%. With an expected record-setting election this year, including the possible arrival of that Holy Grail of politics, the “youth vote,” Douglas will inevitably post lower numbers, and that distinction in Democratic performance between the interstate corridors and the rest of the state will become more pronounced.
Looking at Douglas’s performance in the last two years makes precision predictions sketchy. Sure, it’s clear where his stronger and weaker areas are, and the spread of the last two elections is very similar – but the ’02 spread is different. Clearly, if the dynamic hasn’t changed, we’ll be seeing that ’04 & ’06 pattern play out again, but the WCAX/Research 2000 polls suggest that things have changed, and Symington has to build her approach on that dynamic.
But what about Pollina? Well, Pollina looks more predictable… not in terms of what his overall percentage will be, but in terms of where those votes will come from. Here are his results from his latest two statewide runs:
That’s a pretty consistent spread, with the exception of the drop in Windham County from running against local boy Shumlin, making Pollina’s appeal very trackable. It also suggests that if the Democrats field efforts in traditionally high Dem performing counties like Washington and Chittenden payoff, the high-profile Democratic bleed from places like Lamoille will drift negligibly down that curve.
If Douglas does prove to be vulnerable, Pollina will, as many fear, have a big role to play in the outcome, but it doesn’t have to lead to a Douglas victory.
The hole in that curve is Windham County. Symington will need to do well in what should be a mine for Democratic votes (it is the only County Peter Clavelle won in 2004), but many of the shortcomings of the Democratic legislature – in particular the serial enabling of Entergy Vermont Yankee – are placed squarely at her feet.
In a broader sense, I suspect many voters in Windham County will have similar problems to those that I have with her as a candidate; concerns about her competence in her role as Speaker, in particular, concerns that she is her own worst enemy in terms of creating Progressive change (and in the opposite way that Pollina the bridge-burner is his own worst enemy). Symington’s oft-repeated mantra over the years is a celebration of politics as “the art of the possible.” If you wonder why such talk is like fingernails on a chalkboard to many activists, I’ll quote myself from some time back on this site:
Do you know what the most destructive quote in politics is? It’s the oft-repeated and fawned over line:
“Politics is the art of the possible.”
-Otto Von Bismarck
Feh. This single line and the sentiment behind it has lead to the steady marginalizing of anything that could be considered visionary from so many elected Democrats. It is the poison of cynicism masked in rhetorical elegance. It is both the implicit permission to surrender on policy, as well as a suggestion that working towards truly far-reaching goals is immature and unrealistic. If only the following were as readily quoted:
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
-John Kenneth Galbraith
A little silly, sure. But it’s true. We are looking at the disastrous all around us. And while it may be unpalatable to step out in front and brave the inevitable slings and arrows that come from advancing visionary, progressive positions, disaster is simply not an option.
Symington is all mechanics. To convince some of these voters, she’ll need to find vision, and this “art of the possible” nonsense is an excuse not to have to deal with anything as silly as vision.
She needs those votes, and they will not be votes she can make up through the DNC-enhanced Democratic field structure in less-blue counties. In fact, Field is going to simply keep from losing ground for Symington, rather than gaining it. Without a primary, she can hit the ground running with a Field operation through the Party, but beyond a solid, generic voter ID and an efficient, targeted get-out-the-vote operation, this is not going to be a Field-oriented campaign. She simply started too late for that. She can make up for a lot of that if her Democratic House caucus is willing to put some of their efforts, contacts and footwork to work on her behalf – and they likely will – but they will be a tough metric to track, and therefore be a tricky one to depend on in terms of any meaningful predictability.
Symington is going to have to go to paid media sooner than Dems usually do, and in a more sustained way. Clavelle went to media relatively early, but in a scattershot way. Parker was more sustained, but went up later. Symington needs to do both, and to do that, she is hopefully taking full advantage of the lack of meaningful campaign finance limits.
The game changers to watch will be July 31st when Campaign Finance disclosures will be due. If the discrepancy in funds between Symington and Pollina is as dramatic as I suspect, expect that to generate further momentum from swing voters who will see her as viable.
The other question mark is whether the Symington campaign can generate poll numbers – either internally or externally – that suggest Symington has a shot. If the undecideds are back up, and the daylight between Symington and Douglas only just dips into double digits, expect the DNC financial floodgates – locked shut for the last 4 years – to open up again, changing the paid media equation in what will have to be a largely paid media-driven campaign.
And those last minute megabucks Jim Douglas has come to expect every year from the national Republican Party may not be quite so plentiful given the financial disadvantage enjoyed by so many Republicans in this year of Obama, and given the fact that Douglas is running for re-election in a state where McCain will get trounced, and where there is no credible challenge to Peter Welch on the horizon. Vermont will be looked on as a state with no value-added, cross-ballot payoff by the national GOP.
This is a year where things can – and likely will – change quickly.
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