Excerpt from
"BLEEDING OHIO: Can the Politics of Trade Change Red States to Blue?"
by Jim Jontz (Jan. 13, 2005)
Kerry's performance aside, the
candidate's shortcomings could and should have been overcome through a
campaign
to help voters in these key states "connect the dots" and hold Bush
accountable for the job losses and weak economy that troubled them. The "Regime Change 2004" project
of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) sought to address that need.
Beginning in late July, ADA hired 10 organizers in eight battleground
states to
initiate community based education campaigns in 50 communities impacted
by
trade-related job losses. Town meetings
on the theme "Stop Outsourcing Our Future" were held in each
community, with outreach and media follow-up implemented by community
leaders
and activists. Thirteen events were held
in Ohio alone, many with Congressmen Sherrod Brown
and Ted
Strickland.
The ADA campaign did not focus on large metropolitan
areas,
but rather on medium to smaller sized cities such as Mansfield, OH, Beloit WI, Muscatine, IA, and St. Joseph, MO. There were
fewer election-related resources in these communities; the lure of the
GOP on
social issues was stronger; and the loss of manufacturing jobs from
trade was
more visible.
The ADA project addressed several important pieces
of the
puzzle:
a) We
sought to
persuade voters who were sensitive to both social and economic issues
to
"vote their pocketbook" by helping them understand how George Bush
was responsible for the economic problems they saw in their own
communities;
b) We supported community leaders
(Labor, faith,
party, and other activists, as well as elected officials) in reaching
their own
neighbors, helping to build (if even temporarily) a local
infrastructure for
networking and education, creating the kind of community conversations
that
could effectively reach voters we needed to reach;
c) We "told a story about how the world
works" that Jeff Faux suggests was missing from the Democrats' message (The
American Prospect, 12/04). In a
global economy, the Bush trade rules encourage companies not just to
move jobs
offshore, but also to undermine wages and benefits at home,
disadvantaging
workers and communities. We offered not
just small-bore policy ideas, but a vision of a world where government
becomes
"an instrument for fairness" by replacing the failed NAFTA model with
new trade rules that end the "race to the bottom," and insure that
workers share the benefits of global commerce.
d) We were talking to voters in the
places that cost
Kerry the election. There were only a few more votes to be found in Cleveland, Columbus,
and Toledo. Voters had to
be persuaded in Mansfield, Marion, Findlay, Portsmouth,
Zanesville and other communities outside the major
cities in Ohio -- and other red states.
In hindsight, it is clear that
ADA's campaign was much too modest to move the
number of
voters necessary. In Maine's 2nd CD, we conducted six town meetings and
a media
tour, our most concentrated effort.
Perhaps we helped Kerry win this district -- and one electoral
vote --
where job losses from trade are very visible, and where Congressman
Mike
Michaud strongly reinforced our message about the links between Bush
trade
policy and local mill closings.
.
In Iowa, Kerry won 6 of the 7 communities targeted
in our
"Stop Trading Away Iowa" campaign; the seventh, Marshalltown, was one of a handful of locations in Iowa where Kerry improved his performance over
Gore. However, we lacked the time and
resources to
connect with the number of undecided voters who could have moved Ohio, Iowa or
any other state, from red to blue. In
hindsight, our organizers should have been on the ground for three
years before
Election Day -- not three months.