Keep It Simple, Stupid

Dick Meyer writes an opinion column for CBS News, so I'd expect him to be far more sympathetic to the Dems than to the GOP. His column today is pretty critical of the Dems and outlines some of the big problems facing them in 2006:

I think the Democrats should shelve all the fancy thinking about how they need to develop a new "values vocabulary," reframe old issues in news terms, learn how to use God-talk, be more daddy and less mommy, capitalize on the Abramoff scandals or become the post-Katrina party of "competent government."

Democrats need to do two simple things: look at the 2005 party fundraising reports and read the speech Karl Rove delivered last Friday to the Republican National Committee. A whole lot will get real simple if they do that. They'll realize they need a boatload more money and some knockout punch lines for campaign debates.

Let's start with the easy stuff: money. Everyone said Howard Dean would have trouble raising money as the party chair and everyone was right. The Democratic National Committee enters 2006 with $7.3 million in the bank, the RNC with $31.9 million (figures from the Center for Responsive Politics). That's a problem.

And what is it that's causing this fundraising deficit?

This appears to be a [Howard] Dean-specific problem. The boom of Internet, little-guy fundraising he promised hasn't yet materialized. He has installed a new moneyman and hired professionals in all 50 states – something new, oddly enough. Still, despite what seems to be a tsunami of Bush-hating in the blue world, the Democrats will go into the midterms underfinanced against a party that really knows how to spend campaign money in smart ways. You don't have to be a linguist or a neo-anything to know that's a bad thing.

But is Dean the role model they want for 2006? Certainly not. No money, lousy spokesman: so why did they pick him again?

And what about the message problem?

War chests matter less than zeitgeist. But if the Democrats have the wind of history at their back this year, the wind is not being funneled into anything visible to mere mortals. The Republicans don't have that problem of clarity and simplicity of message: witness Mr. Rove's address .

The 2006 GOP/Rove platform can easily be put on an index card, if not a Post-it note. It reads something like this: we are at war against foreign terrorists who want to kill you and your society and we'll do what it takes to stop it and the Democrats won't; we will cut your taxes and give you money and Democrats won't. Every Republican candidate in the country can spit that one out.

The Dems don't have anyone who can articulate their message - probably because no one knows what their message is. Until they get that sorted out, and cashier their DNC chairman, the GOP will have little to fear in '06.