Blog: Fixed Pie

A lot of people on discussion boards and blogs are falling prey to the "fixed pie fallacy", which I described a while back in a fundraising context. The fixed-pie thinking here goes that Americans have a certain set of opinions, and we have to choose positions in order to capture at least 51% of the opinions.

But opinions aren't fixed, and most importantly the relative priorities aren't fixed. Why do many voters think that "Christian values" means banning abortion and gay marriage, rather than improving the quality of education and finding ways to help the poor? Why do they think that "security" means starting wars in countries that didn't attack us while failing to inspect shipping containers or put guards around nuclear facilities?

We should neither "move left" nor "be more centrist." We should identify those core principles of Democrats which do resonate throughout the country and aggressively communicate those to all voters. As NY State Senator Eric Schneiderman said, don't talk about moving to the center, talk about moving the center back to the center. Right now voters hear principled persuasion coming from the right, moving the electorate farther right, and "ok we agree with that but not this" from the left.

As for who runs in 2008, please don't think so much about that. A huge problem with the party is that it's mostly small set of prominent national celebrity figures without a lot of local community involvement. There are a host of local conservative-leaning institutions from Chambers of Commerce to churches across the country explaining to citizens why they should be Republicans. They have surrogates on all the media shows arguing for the conservative viewpoints. Then every four years the Democrats pop up and expect one national figure to singlehandedly build a nationwide party infrastructure, develop a message, communicate it widely, and get a majority of Americans to vote for ideas they're just hearing for the first time.

When Bush ran in 2000 he didn't invent the conservative message. He didn't build up the party. He was just a guy chosen by a larger ongoing organization to run for a specific office. Rather than debating how far right we should move or who should run in 2008, we should be figuring out how to build the ongoing campaign in 50 states starting at the local level. And that's what the DNC chair needs to do.

It's not about where the chair is on the political spectrum, but whether the chair will build a robust party or maintain its narrow, short-term focus. I fear the interest groups that make up the party today want a weak chair who won't challenge their power. We need the opposite. I'm not sure Howard Dean is the guy, but I doubt Tom Vilsack is either. Maybe it's Simon Rosenberg, who has built a credible organization and hit a lot of important themes when he spoke at the Morning After Conference we organized this past weekend. But the building needs to be done and we need a chair who will do it.

I spent the week in Boston at the Democratic National Convention. Blogger helped with a party thrown by the DCCC honoring bloggers. Near the end, I got to witness Kos debating two very political operative-looking guys from the DCCC about the Ginny Schrader / "No Comment" flap.

It seemed to me at the timethat Kos may have jumped the gun a bit in his criticism, and the DCCC insisted after the fact that "No Comment" wasn't as laden with meaning as Kos took it to be. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant. I'm sure Kos's feelings stem from a general lack of enthusiasm for any nontraditional campaigning that comes from all the party committees, which is very real.

Kos wrote a summary of Wednesday's dispute which shows an advanced stage of fixed pie-itis. The DCCC's logic goes, there is only a fixed amount of support they can give, so they need to focus it on the best people. Therefore, they need to find the people who will slog through rain and sleet to raise money and prove themselves viable, then fund those people. Whereas online money is easy, so it doesn't prove the candidate's mettle, and as a result we shouldn't raise online money.

If that is really their belief, it reveals a deeply ingrained attitude that the existing, traditional donors are the only ones who matter. As one commenter asked, why should money from the Net be treated as less revealing of a candidate's ability to raise more than money from wealthy people at fundraising dinners? To get the Net's money a candidate needs to persuade bloggers to solicit donations and individuals to agree to give them. Someone who is successful at that has shown just as much ability to run a campaign as someone who raises the same amount in paper checks.

(Alternately, one commenter on the Kos story suggested they don't really believe that, but rather simply want control. If so, that reveals another problem in the party apparatus, that many people are striving for personal power rather than success for the party as a whole, and refuse to try new ideas to see if they work because of the risk of losing control.)

For many years, the Democratic Party has operated under what I call the "fixed pie" fallacy. According to this theory, there are only so many dollars out there to be donated, only so many volunteers to be mobilized. As a consequence, they feel it's best to focus as much money as possible on those Congressional races, Senate seats, and states at the Presidential level which are most in play. Most races therefore go uncontested, many issues unaddressed, many groups of people ignored.

But the pool of money and energy is not fixed. I just donated to Samara Barend's campaign for an open seat in Western New York. If elected, Sam will be the youngest Congresswoman in history. By giving her my support, I didn't give less to John Kerry or anyone else - the more people ask, the more I'm likely to give. If I give $20 to each of the dKos 8, that doesn't mean I would have given $27 had there been only 6. In Missouri, Jim Newberry is running against Tom DeLay's right hand man Roy Blunt. The Democratic establishment wasn't interested in helping Jim, but Internet donors were. Now, bolstered by his success so far, many other groups have come out of the woodwork and raised money for Jim, money which would not have existed had an interesting Democrat not been running in the district.

For every seat that goes uncontested because of the fixed pie philosophy, the Republican can afford to take extreme positions without regard for his constituents. He can raise money to for other candidates and campaign on their behalf. Every group of voters whose interests are ignored become an opportunity for Republicans to appeal to them and win over their support despite Republican policies working against the group's own self-interest. And the Republicans built a majority this way.

When it comes to politics, less is not more. A political party isn't a dotcom startup trying to cross the chasm, where the best strategy is to focus narrowly on a few areas in order to succeed somewhere. Instead, it's like the large successful technology companies where each product interoperates and thus reinforces the others. Jim Newberry's campaign in Missouri not only means an opportunity for another House seat but also potentially energizes more voters for Kerry, shows people in that district a reason they should be Democrats for the next thirty years, and might get some young person interested in politics who will one day be a Democratic Senator from Missouri or even President.

The Democrats should be out there contesting all 435 House seats, all 33-34 Senate seats, all 50 states at the Presidential level, and all 50 state legislatures every election. As of two months ago the Kerry campaign didn't have an office in South Florida and no way for my grandmother to volunteer. We need to be there arguing every issue, mobilizing every group, and raising money from every little corner. Joe Trippi ran $100,000 of ads for Dean in Texas and raised a million dollars. We have to be trying to do everything.

When Justin organized the progressive mixer in May, many groups publicized it to their mailing lists. One group declined, saying they didn't want to distract their members from going to that group's own events, even though that group had no event competing for the same night. This is the same fixed-pie fallacy. I don't have a preset number of political events I'm willing to go to, and just because I go to one I don't subtract another. I'm more likely to replace, say, an evening of watching television. At the mixer itself, we listed all the groups on a sign-up sheet and encouraged people to check off which mailing lists they wanted to be added to. Even the recalcitrant group got listed, and all groups ultimately benefited. The mixer didn't detract from other organizations, it strengthened them. And the same idea underlies Cosmopolity, the NYC Progressive Calendar, which promotes all groups' events.

Now it's true that doing more requires more work. The small cadre of committed party staff can't recruit candidates for every Republican and open seat, organize field offices in every city, and put on events of all shapes and sizes. Doing more requires empowering more people to do their part. That means some loss of control, something the party has been very afraid of in the past. But better a large, somewhat messier pie than a perfect but ever shrinking pie. This is a lesson many have learned but many as yet have not. The sooner our party leaders learn this, the sooner we will be a majority once again.