The international magazine of politics and political campaigns, Campaigns & Elections, asked a number of top American political consultants -- both Republicans and Democrats -- to share their thoughts on what worked, and what didn't, during the 2002 election cycle, and how those lessons translated to future campaigns.

What Vic wrote below contained critical lessons for Democrats which were finally understood and translated into successful Democratic Strategies across the nation in 2006.

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SPECIAL FEATURE of Campaigns & Elections Magazine

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE LAST
ELECTION:
Where Conventional Wisdom is Wrong

By Vic Fingerhut

1.   The GOP victory of 2002 did not reflect any fundamental or even significant shift in the underlying political loyalties of Americans in the electorate: the parties remain in balance.

     This is not great news for the Democrats, for the election outcome of 2002 confirmed anew that the historic Democratic advantage in party identification, which provided the basis for Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives for 60 of the 64 years between 1930 and 1994, is over.

     The Reagan era reduced the historic New Deal-inspired 15-point Democratic advantage in party identification to single digits and despite the supposed political skills of the Clinton political team, the Clinton era did nothing to reverse that trend.

    Put most graphically, up until 1996, the GOP had not been able to win two successive House victories since the elections of 1926 and 1928.

     Now, beginning with 1994, the GOP has won five (!) in a row.

     So much for the political wizardry of the Clinton-era Democratic team.

     The current exceedingly close two-party split has nothing to do with a "deeply divided"America.  It is a simple numerical relationship of parity.  In fact, the differences on issue views between rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans in most policy areas has narrowed, not increased, in recent years according to most studies.

2.   For more than 70 percent of the electorate, party identification remains the single most important factor in voter choice.

     A national poll that our firm did just before the 2002 congressional elections showed that more than 90 percent of self-identified Republicans were planning to vote Republican, and similarly, more than 90 percent of self-identified Democrats were planning to vote Democratic.

     More pointedly, Democratic "hawks" on Iraq were still loyally planning to vote Democratic, while GOP "doves" were sticking to Bush and the Republicans.

    S o much for the "irrelevance" of party identification.

3.  The fact that the GOP embarked on major GOTV efforts may be a critical harbinger of things to come. For years, the Democrats have had to "give away" 5-8 points in preference because of higher GOP election day turnout.

     As long as the GOP electoral constituency was heavily upscale (in terms of income, education, etc.), high GOP turnout could be expected even without substantial GOTV efforts.

     However, the increase in Republican support among traditionally Democratic groups -- middle and even lower-income white males, for example -- has opened up a new opportunity for GOP campaigns.

     Republican GOTV efforts among certain targeted groups of unlikely voters can now produce rich yields in votes -- something not possible in earlier days when most of the underlying lightly-participating voting groups in America were heavily Democratic.

     Since the white South has produced the greatest defection of hitherto previously Democratic middle income and working people (as well as rural voters)... it is not surprising that Republican GOTV efforts in states like Georgia yielded a rich harvest in 2002 .

     Democrats can expect more of the same in coming years -- adding further urgency for the party to re-establish its populist roots.

4.   If Democrats must enter the foreign policy fray, they should do so for compelling policy or moral imperatives; in strictly political terms, national defense and foreign policy issues remain a big "loser" for Democrats.

     The 30 percent of the electorate whose votes are not determined primarily by party identification -- the swing voters -- continue to see the Republicans as best at handling foreign policy and national defense issues by large margins.

     There is nothing new to this.

     Swing voters don't believe the Democrats are sufficiently competent to handle relations with Iceland -- no less the rest of the planet.

     And, Democratic presidential candidates looking forward to and designing their strategy for 2004 should understand that this is a competence issue, not a

positioning one.

     Even issues with only the remotest connection to substantive national defense or foreign policy matters work for the GOP, as the Republicans so skillfully demonstrated in 2002 by picking a "fight" over the proposed Homeland Security Agency and successfully portraying the Democratic position (on an employment rights issue) as obstructionism in the war against international terrorism.

5.   The fifth successive GOP capture of the U.S. House -- unprecedented since the 1920s -- proved anew that the Clinton-era centrism has been an absolute disaster for the Democrats.

     In a pre-election broadcast on Fox-TV, Clinton-era White House strategist Dick Morris predicted Democratic victory in 2002, and proudly pointed out that the centrist movement of the Democratic Party in the 1990s had successfully "triangulated" the Republicans out of the budget, crime and welfare issues.

     What he failed to note was this strategy -- with its conscious blurring of party images - had also "triangulated" the Democratic Party out of its historic 50-year majority.

     Thus, by the fall of 2002, Americans -- by a massive 61-34 percent margin -- had come to the view that "the Democrats used to represent working people but recently they've gotten too tied to the rich and corporate interests."

     Americans increasingly saw the Democrats as not doing enough in their areas of traditional strength, whether it was health care, standing up to the big corporations, protecting the jobs of ordinary Americans from cheap foreign imports, and so on.

     For example, contrary to the common misinterpretation of the 1994 election, Americans -- by a 3-1 percent margin -- thought the Democrats were not doing enough -- rather than too much -- in fighting for improved health benefits for Americans.

6.  Economic populism remains the Democratic Party's best hope for short-term political recovery -- and long-term political dominance.  While the highly-educated and upscale people who dominate political interpretation and "analysis" in Washington are instinctively cool to populism as a political approach, the data continue to show that this aversion is not shared by the American people.

     Indeed, contrary to the conventional "political wisdom" and the pervasiveness of recurrent political fads such as "new collars" or "soccer moms" or "kitchen table politics," economic populism both as political positioning and substantive policy remains where the majority of Americans -- including the majority of swing voters -- continue to reside.

     By a massive 72-26 percent margin, Americans who planned to vote in the recent congressional elections took the view that "neither the Democrats nor the Republicans stand up for ordinary working people as much as they should.  Both parties seem to be too close to the big corporations and the very wealthy." Populist positioning remains the Democratic Party's most promising path to regaining power in 2004.

     And while Washington insiders may recoil from economic populism, swing voters in the fall of 2002 spoke quite clearly in one poll by a nearly 5-1 margin in saying that "the Democratic Party once stood up and fought for ordinary working people ... and that's the kind of Democratic Party I'd like to see today."

Vic Fingerhut is a Democratic polling and communications specialist who

has also designed successful messaging and media campaigns for progressive candidates, parties and labor movements throughout the world – from helping elect the current Mayor of Panama City, Panama to successfully changing the pattern of political party identification in the Canadian province of British Columbia, to totally reversing a 15 point defeat for the Australian Labor Party in the past two years.