From the shattering news last Friday up to last night’s boisterous memorial rally in Minneapolis, there was a deep, despairing sense among the party faithful that something more than the senator and the seven others on board his plane may have been lost. Liberals around the country called one another up and, after exchanging appreciation of Wellstone’s passion and principles, asked: What has happened to us? Have we all become careful trimmers? Have we forgotten how to dream and fight?
Maybe not. The Wellstone memorial service was in perfect keeping with the man: a warm celebration of his life–and the lives of those, including his wife and daughter, who died with him–that was also a political rally. More than 20,000 people showed up, which is almost unheard of nowadays for either funerals or political events. No doubt Sen. Trent Lott, who was booed, and some of the other Republicans felt sandbagged being there. Many left early. Vice President Dick Cheney was asked by Wellstone family members not to come, in part because they didn’t want all of the mourners to go through metal detectors. But it was probably better all around.
Even (or perhaps especially) with Republican mourners in attendance, the political message was clear. President Bush may be popular. He may have run out the clock with Iraq talk. The economy might not be cutting for Democrats as much as they hoped. But Democrats are going to bottle that Wellstone passion on Election Day. The strange thing is, it just might work for them–and not just in Minnesota, where Walter Mondale will likely waltz into the Senate.
Passion is a key ingredient in any political contest, especially a close one. Say you’re a liberal Democratic voter living in close-fought New Hampshire or Colorado. You were intending to vote for Jeanne Shaheen or Tom Strickland, the Democratic candidates for the Senate, but not work for them over the weekend or next Tuesday. But now an emotional fuse has been lit. If only a marginal number of Democrats work harder because of Wellstone, it will have an effect in the trenches, where elections are won and lost.
But there’s another reason Wellstone’s death could help his party nationally. It hobbles what for more than 20 years–election after election–has been the Republicans’ best strategy for winning campaigns: to use the dreaded L word to destroy Democrats.
The strategy was first employed in the 1970s by GOP consultant Arthur Finkelstein, who cut ads where the word “liberal” was spit out with contempt. As early as 1976, presidential candidates Jimmy Carter and Morris Udall were forced to shun the label. By 1980, of course, resentment of the excesses of liberalism helped lead to the Reagan Revolution. And for the GOP, liberal-bashing was the gift that kept on giving; it worked in hundreds of races.
By 1998, Finkelstein’s specific kind of frying-pan ad–“He’s Liberal, Liberal, Liberal” or “He’s dangerously liberal”–weren’t playing quite as well. But the basic approach of the GOP hasn’t changed. The goal this year has been to stigmatize Tom Daschle and the Senate Democrats and tie Democratic candidates to them. A conservative group has a Daschle bubble-head spot up in several states.
This dog still hunts in Georgia, where Republican Saxby Chambliss is actually having some success making triple-amputee Vietnam vet Sen. Max Cleland look liberal on defense. But is it so crazy to think that such ads are going to be less effective in less conservative states after Wellstone’s death?
Over the weekend, the airwaves were filled with conservative senators all talking about how much they admired their colleague, even if they disagreed with him. It seemed sincere, and, for the first time in years, they actually used the word “liberal” without sneering.
Now they will have to turn on a dime and say: keep that dangerous liberal so-and-so out of Washington. They’ll do it, but it won’t have the old passion behind it.
The Wellstone Effect isn’t likely to win the House back for the Democrats, but in a closely-divided country, it should help hold the Senate for them. Voters like a balance in Washington, a healthy debate. They liked seeing that Wellstone voted against the war resolution, even if they favored it. In recent years they have been reluctant to hand the White House, Senate and House to the same party. This year shouldn’t be any different, thanks in part to Paul Wellstone. It wouldn’t be the crowning legacy he’d have chosen, but he’d have been happy about it.
