POST 31: THE KNIPSCHER TEAM PLANS ITS “WIN IN 2016” STRATEGY
May 24, 2010
Immediately following the 2012 presidential election (Posts 19, 20, 26-30), Nancy Knipscher and Mitt Romney – the largest Independent presidential ticket– collaborated with volunteer and professional supporters on an action report entitled “Win in 2016.”
Written in a style rich in metaphor and metrics designed to motivate and inform (Posts 15 and 16), the report included three sections: Section I summarized results of 2010 midterm and 2012 presidential elections; Section II identified strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities seized and missed by 2010 and 2012 campaigns, and Section III outlined a strategic plan for winning the 2016 presidential election.
Section I: How candidates fared in 2010 and 2012
After losing 8 Senate and 30 House seats in the 2010 midterm elections, the Obama-Clinton Democratic ticket’s 48 % popular vote in the 2012 presidential election bested the Joe Scarborough-Pat Buchanan Republican ticket’s 26% share by 22 points, historically exceeded only by FDR vs. Landon (1936, 24.3%) and Nixon vs. McGovern (1972, 23.2%). The 22% popular vote showing of the Knipscher-Romney Independent ticket, only four points below Scarborough-Buchanan, was historically exceeded only by Bull Moose Theodore Roosevelt vs. Taft (1912, 27%).
Four popular vote percentage points were shared by Independent candidacies on the right (Gingrich-Palin) and the left (Nader-Sanders).
Section II: Analyzing Democratic and Republican campaign strategies
This section of the “Win in 2016” report started its analysis of the Democratic party’s road to victory in 2012 by citing president Obama’s failure to communicate the values of health care legislation that was to be the showpiece of his first term. Perhaps influenced by the reception for “Hillarycare,” the Clinton Administration’s failed 1993 health care plan, Obama decided to encourage Congress to devise health care legislation on its own rather than expend the prestige of his presidential bully pulpit behind this initiative (Posts 5,8, 9).
Then, in spite of Obama’s vow to sign health care legislation in 2009, it wasn’t until March 2010 that a health care bill narrowly squeaked through Congress. Not a single Republican congressman voted for the legislation which, although lacking key provisions desired by the left (such as a public option to keep premium payments competitive) would expand coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, curb abusive private insurer practices, and cut rising health care costs.
During this extended period of posturing and procrastination, congressional Republicans, committed to destroy the Obama health care plan as a step toward the eventual “Waterloo” of his presidency, launched a well-coordinated attack on “Obamacare” as a Socialist (or Communist or Fascist) government takeover of healthcare . This plan, they claimed, would inflict a huge new bureaucracy, dramatically increase health care costs, pile trillions in debt on our grandchildren and sidetrack efforts to fight the economic meltdown with which it competed.
Leveraging the potency of this Republican attack were three stimulus packages designed to keep the great recession of 2007 from morphing into a great global depression. The first two were overwhelmingly passed by Congress in the last year of the Bush administration: The Economic Stimulous Act of February 2008, which allocated $152 billion in tax rebates to lower- and middle-income taxpayers, plus tax incentives to stimulate business investment, and the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) of October, 2008, which allocated $700 billion to purchase assets and equities from U.S. institutions to strengthen the financial sector. The third, Democratic, stimulus package, which passed by a 60-38 Senate party-line vote in February 2009, allocated $825 billion in tax cuts, tax credits, extended unemployment benefits plus a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures (Posts 5,7,8) designed to create and save 2.5 million jobs by 2011.
In positioning the health-care bill as a totally unaffordable spending bill, the Republicans, from the far right to what was left of the moderate middle and abetted by tea party and right-wing media allies (Posts 23, 28), effectively added the presumed costs of these stimulus packages to the $2.5 trillion they claimed the health plan would cost.
Tracking polls indicating falling popular support for the health plan in all electoral segments, from radical right to the progressive left, evidenced the success of the Republican attack. Collateral damage included reduced reelection prospects for Democratic congressmen who voted for the plan, and historically low assessments of Congress. Obama’s ratings, while dropping, remained comparable to those of other activist first-term presidents like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
How the Democrats Lost in the 2010 midterms
The “Win in 2016” action plan concluded its section II analysis with advice on how Obama should have handled the health care issue to counter any Republican counterattack. This advice would suggest issue positions and create strategic guidelines for Knipscher’s 2016 campaign plan, spelled out in section III.
Instead of delegating to a contentious Congress the messy task of shaping a modern, comprehensive health care plan from a gaggle of half formed ideas, Obama should have taken the lead himself in positioning and selling a fully-developed plan. Giving it his persuasive, inspirational best, Obama’s presentation should have started the day he won the November 2008 election, when he could safely blame the defeated Bush administration for economic and political woes facing the country, and preempt Republican efforts to position Obamacare as a massive spending bill.
Metrics define declining state of U.S. healthcare
Obama’s preemptive presentation would begin with metrics comparing the current state of healthcare in the United States with healthcare in the rest of the world (Posts 14, 16) . Included would be World Health Organization statistics ranking the U.S. 37th among UN members in overall performance (Posts 3, 16), 30th in longevity and 36th in infant mortality ( ahead of only Russia among Group of Eight countries). Yet U.S. healthcare costs exceed by an average of more than 50 percent per capita healthcare costs among all the world’s industrialized countries, each having universal healthcare systems based on private or public administration systems.
Creating a preemptive presentation
The Key element of Obama’s presentation repositioning Obamacare 180 degrees from the massive spending position his Republican opponents found for it (Posts 3,4,6) was to define it as an investment stimulus program with a massive payoff . Conceptually similar to the Bush 2008 TARP stimulus plan that paid back its initial investment by 2010, this health care plan would do what single payer plans like Medicare or the Health Insurance Program in Germany since 1883 would do: revive the financial system, create jobs, bail out critical industries, :and enhance living standards for middle- and working-class families facing healthcare costs that are a prime cause of foreclosures and bankruptcies.
Firms revitalized by Obamacare would be high-leverage businesses and industries, like health, information technology and electronics manufacturing, that support other industries, (Posts 3, 14), and most of the estimated five million jobs created would be good, private-sector jobs, supplementing public-sector jobs created by Bush-Obama stimulus plans. This stimulus investment would also make these industries more globally competitive; for example, by cutting $1500 per auto consumers pay to cover American retiree health care costs .
Biggest Obamacare Savings: Healthcare Reform
But by far the biggest savings would derive from healthcare reform measures built into the plan, notably “best practices” initiatives, insurance premium reductions, and medical tort reform measures (Posts 3,4, 8, 11, 12).
For example, in the “best practices” area, benchmark studies, procedural checklists, and digital systems would dramatically reduce provider medical, surgical, hospital and pharmaceutical costs, producing annual savings exceeding $50 billion after five years, assuming a conservative 25% reduction in provider costs. Add to these Medicare savings additional savings from the millions of citizens covered by Obamacare and premium reduction legislation. Also add lowered tort reform costs resulting from comparative effectiveness and standardized checklist procedures, which, when followed , become a strong legal defense in malpractice suits (Posts 5-8).
How the Democrats won the 2012 Presidential Election
The argument that Obama never made while his Health Care bill was being hashed and trashed in Congress got made immediately after the bill passed, broadcast from Obama’s POTUS bully pulpit and from cadres of Democratic congressmen and cabinet members from prepared talking points (Posts 25, 26, 27, 30).
In the face of the Demcratic argument, a withering Republican attack on Obamacare reached crescendo levels as eight state Attorneys General announced plans to block enforcement of the bill as unconstitutional, legislatures in 39 states announced bills to block the mandate to carry health insurance, the Hannity / Limbaugh / Beck media machine beat the kettle drums for repeal, and Republican heavyweights like Mitch McConnell and Newt Gingrich pledged to repeal and restart the bill (Gingrich: “ The American people will not allow a corrupt machine to dictate their future”).
At the height of the crescendo, many right-wing blogs predicted Obama’s Waterloo and the loss of at least 100 Democratic House seats in the 2010 midterm elections.
Then, during the period between the March 2010 passage of Health Care and the November 2010 midterms, two events – one planned, one fortuitous – intervened to render premature this prediction of the Democratic Waterloo.
Democratic Strategy: Build a Showcase
The first event was the Democrats’ construction of an umbrella showcase position (Posts 3,4,7) to cover diverse positions (in addition to healthcare reform) they planned to launch against the Republicans in 2010 and 2012 election campaigns (Posts 3,4,6,19,22) . They planned to follow Knipscher’s approach (also used by Clinton to create “It’s the economy, stupid” and Reagan to create “ The shining city on the hill” ) when she crafted a memorable, motivating slogan ( “Bring Back the Greatest Generation” ) covering major campaign issues tailored to the wants, needs and behaviors of defined segments of the electorate (Posts 7, 11, 12, 20, 21, 24) and communicated via modern digital and traditional tools (Posts 11, 12, 14, 23 25, 27)
A key insight in crafting this Democratic platform was the perception that most issues in play in Spring 2010 contrasted a number of current Republican positions with similar Republican positions during the recently defeated Bush administration, creating a potent image of cynical hypocricy. Examples, as spun by Democratic planners:
- Contrast the cost-saving Obamacare bill savaged by the Republicans after its passage in 2010 and the largely unfunded Bush trillion dollar Medicare drug entitlement bill these same congressmen helped pass in 2003;
- Contrast the draconian, possibly unconstitutional policies advocated by Republicans toward illegal immigrants with the constructive policies that many of these same Republicans (John McCain, for example) strongly advocated under the Bush administration;
- Contrast universal Congressional Republicans support of bailouts and stimulus packages during the Bush administration’s economic meltdown to conceptually similar packages during Obama’s administration;
- Contrast Bush administration Republicans’ approval of an unqualified Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court with their opposition to Obama’s appointments of highly qualified women to the Court;
- Contrast Bush II Doctrine policies of fighting misinformed preventive wars and withdrawing from international treaties and protocols with Obama’s policies of “trust but verify” negotiation and strategic engagement.
- Contrast the three straight annual budget surpluses generated by Bill Clinton’s modest tax increases on the richest one percent of the population — totally unsupported by Republican congressmen — with the seven straight annual deficits, adding up to a 2009 deficit of over $1 trillion, under the Bush tax cuts, whose scheduled repeal Republicans universally refuse to support.
Other Democratic issue positions 1) cited the 50,000 barrel a day Gulf of Mexico oil leak , preceded by a now-silenced “drill baby drill” cacophony from the Republican right , as a reminder of cozy, corrupt Bush administration oil industry deals and the inept staffing of the Minerals Management Agency and other key agencies like FDC, SEC and FICA and 2) perceived the Republican opposition as soft on “too-big-to-fail” and consumer protection banking legislation, and ignorant of impending threats to the environment from global warming and acid oceans.
The umbrella showcase position (Post 4) chosen by the Democrats to pull these issue positions together (Posts 11, 12, 14) while appealing to motivated members of the electorate (21, 22, 24) was “Don’t Bring Back Bush,” used throughout the 2010 midterms and 2012 presidential elections even more frequently than Knipscher/Romney emblazoned their “Bring back the Greatest Generation” showcase position.
Republican strategy: Start squabbling
The second event favoring the Democrats was a role-reversal resulting largely from different Republican responses to Democratic “Don’t Bring back Bush” showcase and support positions. Members of diverse ideological groups comprising the fierce Republican opposition, who had been absolutely united in their opposition to Obamacare, now began to feud among themselves, while House and Senate Democrats, many with a worrisome tendency to wander off message during the painful passage of Obamacare, were absolutely united in their support of Obama’s “Don’t Bring Back Bush” platform and the burning urge to save their jobs in 2010 and 2012 elections (Posts 7,8).
The upshot of these argumentative cracks in Republican ranks – libertarians vs. neo-conservatives, neo-conservatives vs.” true” conservatives, thumb sucking Sarah Palin tea-partiers vs. high-IQ partiers, all tea-partiers vs. moderate and conservative Republicans, conservatives vs. moderates, moderates and conservatives vs. Cheney/Bush II supporters — were two outcomes favoring Democratic prospects in the 2012 presidential election (Posts 6,7).
For one thing, the internecine feuding among Republicans was diverting time and energy from the real fight against the Democratic enemy; for another, it was effectively trashing, and eliminating from consideration, leaders capable of standing up to Obama/Biden or even Knipscher/Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Few, if any, candidates were spared, but the heaviest hitters seemed most vulnerable : for example, 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain (Posts 8, 9), who actually claimed never to have been a maverick to get back into right-wing good graces, was gradually reduced to late-night comic fodder, and Mitt Romney, tired of being a target, jumped ship to join the Knipscher crew. Filling the leadership gap were the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, actually being taken seriously as presidential candidates.
The Democratic strategy in response to this opposion feuding was to encourage continuing acrimony among the Republican factions – as the Republicans had done during the congressional healthcare hassle—but to otherwise follow the sage prescription to not help your enemy dig his own grave.
Over time leading up to the 2012 election, the Democratic “Don’t Bring Back Bush” message pegging Republican candidates as hypocritical opportunistic closet Bushies who, based on past affiliations and voting records, would bring back the bad old days , gradually seeped into the collective mind of the electorate (Posts11, 12, 26, 27), The power of this message to change votes (Posts 12, 13, 14) marked the difference in the size of the popular vote for Democratic candidates between 2010 to 2012 (Post 31).
Section III: The Knipscher/Romney team plans its 2016 presidential campaign
In the last section of the “Win in 2016” report, the Knipscher/Romney planning team pulled together findings and conclusions pertaining to competitive strengths, weaknesses, issues, strategies and tactics in crafting a plan calculated to ensure victory in the 2016 presidential election. Questions addressed:: Should Knipscher/Romney run again in 2016 as independents? Democrats? Republicans? Should either candidate be replaced on the ticket? How Should “Bring Back the Greatest Generation” (BBGG) showcase and support positions (Posts 3, 19, 24), be changed to reflect changing cultural/political/economic trends and developments anticipated in 2016 (Posts 22, 24)? How best to address wants and needs of target constituencies anticipated during the 2016 campaign (Posts 20, 21)? How best to improve digital and traditional communications (Posts 23 -25)? What ideas can we borrow from competing 2012 Republican and Democratic campaigns, and what mistakes should we avoid? (Posts 1, 2,3).
