All Democratic Campaigns Should Read This

Building a narrative by Kos should be mandatory reading for all Democratic campaigns.

Republicans are masters of building the "narrative". They don't throw these kinds of numbers at voters and expect to move them their direction. They build a narrative based on their (positive) values and their opponent's (negative) ones.

So in 2004, Bush's entire campaign was essentially 1) Bush will defend America, and 2) Kerry is a flip flopper. In 2000, it was 1) Bush is a compassionate bipartisan conservative, and 2) Gore exaggerates.

That's it. Everything else is slotted into that narrative.

At a recent event I ran into a gubernatorial candidate who asked me, exasperated, why his state's press wouldn't cover the GOP nominee's draconian position on abortion -- he opposed it even in cases where the mother's life was in danger. I said, "because it's an issue. And issues don't generally make good stories. Or, at best, they are a one-day story."

The key is to find that negative value, and base the entire campaign to define the opponent around it. Then, every single issue that arises can be neatly slotted into that value, reinforcing it in the media and the voters' minds.

This speaks to my own theory that Republicans are good at running campaigns but bad at running government. Democrats are the opposite, and unfortunately, if you are bad at running campaigns, then it won't matter how good you are at running government because you won't be running it.

I am pretty sure that the gubernatorial candidate Kos references is Ted Strickland who is the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio. He is running agains the Republican candidate Ken Blackwell who opposes abortion even to save a woman's life.

This extremist position is dangerous for women everywhere, and no Ohioan should vote for Blackwell because of it. Personnally, I think that if Strickland ran against Blackwell on this issue alone, he would win the election easily.

However, this does little towards "building a narrative" as Kos suggests. The Strickland campaign needs to work on that. I would suggest that the narrative against Blackwell is that he is an extremist.

Ken Blackwell is an extremist. On abortion, he is an extremist. On taxes, he is an extremist. His dangerous extremist positions are dangerous for Ohio and Ohioans.

There is your narrative, Strickland.

Now, if we can just get all Democratic candidates to focus on this idea of building narratives, they would be unstoppable.