That was John Edwards in 2004, after he didn’t win the Iowa caucuses. Doesn’t sound much like John Edwards today, does it? That’s perhaps because, at the time, John Edwards was a client of David Axelrod — the political consultant who handled Deval Patrick in 2006, and who handles Barack Obama now.
Adam Reilly has a very interesting article up on the Axelrod messaging phenomenon — that’s where I saw the Edwards quote. That quote blew me away, frankly. Everyone has remarked upon the striking similarity between Obama’s and Patrick’s rhetoric, from Obama’s remarkable “Together we can hope” line at the DNC (even Deval never joined “Together we can” and “hope” in that way, AFAIK) to “Yes we can” and his talk of overcoming cynicism in politics that is so reminiscent of the Patrick campaign. But to see nearly identical words coming out of yet a third candidate — one whose message now is so radically different — was, to me at least, startling.
Still, maybe it’s no big deal. Maybe that’s part of what good political consultants do — find rhetorical devices that seem to work for the campaigns that their clients want to run. Maybe, as Reilly says, Axelrod is the Democrats’ answer to Karl Rove.
But it makes me nervous.
Adam Reilly’s comment, “Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment pushed her to victory in New Hampshire…,” as if it were fact. Adam– have you ever worked on a campaign? For that matter, has any political reporter or talknig head worked on any campaign? It sure sounds like some of them would not know what GOTV even means.
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p>Hillary Clinton won in New Hampshire because a lot of people like me worked hard, and Hillary Clinton worked hard, to convince people to vote for her, and then we all made sure those people got to the polls. I think those reporters who keep saying Hillary Clinton won in NH because she had an emotional moment, show complete disrespect for the voters in NH and are clueless about what wins campaigns. It is hard work. Barack Obama may have a lot of people who say they support him, but I bet less of them will actually take time off from work to go knock on doors in the freezing cold to persuade other people to do the same.
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p>As for Obama’s message sounding like Gov. Patrick’s message, perhaps that means other things are similar too. Do we really want a president that needs 6 months to a year to figure out how to work with Congress and the other groups in DC to be effective? Being Senator for a few years does not cut it. Discount Hillary Clinton’s experience as First Lady if you want to, but at least she has had the experience of failing to get a major piece of health care legislation passed in a very public way. From that experiencem, she has already learned many of the lessons that Obama would have to learn before he could even possibly come cloe to being effective as Prsident. I believe Hillary Cliton actually is a better senator than she would have been otherwise because of her failure on the Clinton Administration’s health care proposal (that unfortunately did not pass). She has learned that often you have to work with a lot of different groups to accomplish your ultimate goals and often you have to compromise to get closer to your goal than would otherwise be possible.
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…and I’m glad he’s not starting a cult.
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p>Axelrod is similar to Rove in that he discovered a way to appeal to voters independent of results, past or future. Since the Iowa caucuses, Obama has avoided speaking about issues in any environment under his control. Like Joe Trippi, the story becomes the story. That wears out quickly, as Trippi has discovered. Using ch/hope lingo, a candidate can ignore anything they’ve done and inspire a loyal following motivated by promises of the future rather than examining the present. With that loyal die-hard following, it’s a matter of finding a segment of the electorate to get you over the top.
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p>However, as we saw in New Hampshire and Nevada, Axelrod’s expertise ends at message. He can’t manage reaction to attacks (Deval’s whining in the debates, Obama’s helplessness against Bill&Hill) and Hillary’s GOTV crushed Obama in both places. I’ve long held that it was John Walsh who got Deval’s votes to the polls, not Axelrod. Without finding a decent war-room and/or GOTV partner, Axelrod is going to end up a bright, shining also-ran.
Rove’s big discovery was that you can create a candidate which only appeals to base voters–essentially screwing the moderate conservatives. Turning out your base and not worrying about “unity,” or “bipartisanship,” can yield real success in an individual election because it becomes a numbers game of which side has a bigger base and which side can turn that base out. His other main accomplishment was that he would play dirty, and win by any means necessary (see SC in 2000, for example).
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p>Axelrod, by contrast, is a message maker. If there’s one thing I hear over and over again, it’s that Obama is too bipartisan, speaks too much of unity, is perhaps more moderate than Edwards or Clinton (!). And the “politics of hope,” generally means fighting a clean fight. That doesn’t mean you don’t point out real differences on the issues, or that you don’t hit back hard when attacked. It simply means you don’t attack first, that positivity is your greatest weapon, and divisiveness is generally bad.
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p>And why should it make anybody nervous that a political consultant shouldn’t want to change his politics depending on his candidate? It seems to me that Axelrod has a message he wants the American people to hear and he works for candidates who will espouse that message.
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p>And, you could argue that, really, Axelrod is just ripping off Clinton circa 1992.
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p>I’m shocked, SHOCKED to learn that Democrats running for office are borrowing from the only Democrat to win 2 Presidential terms in decades.
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p>You can do that with just about every quote they have up there.
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p>Sounds vaguely familiar!
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p>To conclude this comment, “I end tonight where it all began for me: I still believe in a place called Hope.”
A case could be made based on stimulus packages, social security, and health care that Hillary Clinton is more progressive than Barack Obama on domestic issues, and Barack Obama is more progressive than Hillary Clinton on foreign policy issues.
I don’t exactly know what makes you nervous. I read Adam Reilly’s article (which as always, was excellent and thorough) but it didn’t make much a point besides “David Axelrod has been successful with these candidates using a very similar message.” I think a the comparison to Rove is inaccurate. The only similarities they have is that they are both successful political consultants.
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p>As one of the other commentors mentioned, Rove’s message was to be as divisive as possible. I remember reading once all he cared about was 50% plus 1. He picked divisive issues and tactics to splinter the country.
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p>So why is it a bad thing if we have a smart, successful consultant who works for candidates who use messages of social justice and political unification? I don’t see anything wrong with it. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if that message kept winning elections all over the country?
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p>Am I missing something?
The radical change in Edwards’s rhetoric was one of a couple of things that kept me from supporting him this time around. Although I was aware of the Axelrod connection, I had thought of this as more of a statement about the candidates than a statement about the advisor. However, it is an interesting point which I’ll have to think about.
I think Axelrod was subdued, seemingly exhausted, but intense and hyperarticulate. He is so important to Obama.