There is a simple yet powerful way that progressive candidates can undercut their opponent and get cross over votes without sacrificing their values: turning change versus more of the same on its head. Traditionally, in a two-way race, the incumbent will run on his record and the challenger will tell voters that they need something different than what they’ve got. Voters who are happy with the status quo or at least with what job that the incumbent has done will vote for him and those who aren’t vote for someone else.
Incumbent progressive campaigns should simply keep talking about change instead of running on their record. By continuing to emphasize change in lieu of asking voters not to change horses midstream, those candidates will be able to capture some voters who are interested in change in addition to the more of the same voters that they will get by default. In a way, this isn’t structurally different than Clintonian triangulation.
In 1996, Clinton advisor Dick Morris outlined a strategy for Clinton’s reelection where he would push issues such as deregulation and balanced budgets to curry favor with voters who traditionally voted Republican. This variant of triangulation isn’t issue-focused, however. Instead, this form of triangulation is about continuing to get support from people who believe the local, state, or federal government is moving in the wrong direction in addition to the people who think that it is moving in the right direction.
This is powerful for incumbents because challengers don’t have the ability to poach more of the same voters while incumbents can make a good argument for voters who are looking for a change. If polling shows, for example, that 40% of the electorate in the district is happy with the government’s direction and 60% are unhappy that’s a challenge for an incumbent unless the incumbent is able to overcome those numbers by brute force, such as overwhelming his opponent with TV ads or a superior GOTV effort, or by convincing 20% of those unhappy voters that the incumbent isn’t happy with the status quo either.
In an election year where Republicans are trying to recover from some of their losses in the House, there will be many seats where the incumbent Democrat is vulnerable and the Republican candidate will have resource parity or better. In those cases, those candidates should consider tailoring their message to voters who are ready for something different. A candidate, for example, could appeal to voters who are looking for something different by telling disgruntled voters that they should vote for the incumbent because the Republicans are the “party of no” and are making Washington gridlock exponentially worse. If you want more of the same, vote for the Republican whose primary political goal is to stop legislation dead in its tracks. If not, keep the Democrat in office who is willing to try new things.
Many campaigns are already doing this without thinking about it in these terms and others are courting change voters explicitly. It’s a strategy that’s useful for many campaigns and will be interesting to see whether it along with the other strategies that targeted races execute on win day on the first Tuesday in November.
