Jim Kessler, Vice President for Policy:
Third Way
Transcription by Kat

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So far so good. Thank you, General Clark, and thank you for entering Democratic politics. It's a huge and welcome addition to a party that desperately needs leaders and leaders who are (unintelligible due to applause).

I also want to say thank you to Senator Salazar. We started Third Way, the organization I co-founded with a couple of other folks. We worked closely with several Senators, Senator Salazar is one of our honorary Vice-Chairs. I took a chance on a new organization. We really appreciate that.

I also want to say thank you and acknowledge Congressman Chet Edwards. When I first came to Capitol Hill in 1988, I worked for Congressman Chet Atkins and we often got his mail. Atkins was a very liberal, liberal member from Massachusetts and thankfully we did not answer his mail. It's probably why you're here today.

Let me tell you a little bit ...Let me talk a little bit about the electorate, and some recent trends in the electorate and some long term trends that I think help us understand what it will take for Democrats to be successful.

Our methodology at Third Way: You take assumptions and you kind of throw them overboard and do quite a bit of research for this. There's always something that you learn new when don't let your assumptions get in the way.

The first is that Democrats consider themselves the party of the middle class. The middle class do not consider Democrats their party. John Kerry lost the middle class by 6 points, Congressional Democrats lost the Democrats by 3 points. But if you segment the voters and if you look at, say you look at African Americans, well they vote for Democrats no matter what income level they're at. They vote for Democrats by a 10-to-1 margin.

If you look at the white middle class, they went for Republicans, they went for Bush by 22 points in the last election-that's landslide margins and they went for Congressional Republicans by 20 points. These are people between $30-75,000 dollars in household income. There is a tipping point (and economic tipping point) at which a white voter is more likely to vote for a Republican than a Democrat, and that is $23,700 dollars in household income.

So what we think we're doing that works on a national level with middle class voters, it's not really working.

Second is that we have a polarized electorate. It's not just the polarization here in Washington; the electorate is polarized. Blue states are bluer, red states are redder. Red counties are redder, blue counties are bluer. A polarized electorate works to the advantage of Republicans. Why?

Because the electorate is 33% conservative, 21% liberal, 45% moderate and that breakdown of the electorate has not changed since 1972. It has not changed 1/10th. So if more liberals, so for example. John Kerry won 85% of liberal voters and lost. Jimmy Carter won 72% of liberal voters and won. John Kerry would have needed 60% of the moderate vote to win the election. Al Gore needed only 54% to win the election, so a polarized electorate definitely works to the advantage of the Republicans.

A candidacy that is based (especially at the federal level) that is based on domestic programs, on domestic initiatives, economic initiatives, education, heath care, etc. cannot succeed in today's climate. That you have to be credible on national security issues, and you have to be credible on cultural issues. In the last 3 presidential elections that Democrats won, '92, '96, you can argue 2000, if they won the general election, In 1976, national security registered as the top issue by less than 5% of the voters. Today, it's over 30% of the voters. If you don't have a strong national security and strong defense profile, you're not going to win.

The cultural, moral issues, there's been a lot of talk about that. Let me just say that in the 1970's and the 1980's, moral issues were Democrats strengths. If you ask voters “Which party represents your values?” Democrats had a huge advantage. That changed starting in 1992 with Bill Clinton, and it 's gotten worse ever since, and one of the lessons is that while maintaining our principles on choice and other hot button cultural issues, we also have to be open and tolerant of people who do not share those views. Pro-life people still remember in 1992 where Bob Casey was not allowed to speak at the Democratic convention, but at the Republican convention in 2004, you had Schwarzenegger, Giuliani, Bloomberg, McCain (who's fairly liberal on some cultural issues). They looked like the
Big Tent, we did not look like the Big Tent.

It used to be that you could predict somebody's voting behavior based on their income level and on their religion. If you were Catholic or if you were Jewish, you voted Democratic, if you were Protestant, you voted Republican. If you were low income you voted Democratic, if you were high income you voted Republican, if you were middle, you voted somewhere in between.

There's still a certain amount of truth to that in terms of income levels, but the greatest predictor of whether somebody is going to vote Democrat or Republican is not what religion they hold, but whether they are observant in their religion or not. So if you are an orthodox Jew, you are going to vote Republican. If you are a Catholic who attends Mass often, you are going to vote Republican. If you are a Protestant who goes to church weekly, you're going to vote Republican. If you are a secularist or if church is a relatively minor part of your life - all things being equal-you're going to vote Democratic.

This is a huge change.

Michael Dukakis scored 2 point less among religious voters than he did among non-religions voters, okay, so basically the same. Bill Clinton scored 17 points less. Al Gore 16 points less, John Kerry scored 18 points less. Going back to 1952 (which is as far back as the question was asked), there has never been as huge a gap between religious voters and non-religious voters.

Democrats are not trusted on national security issues. We have to become credible on national security in this environment. We are seen as distrustful of the military. Not believing that we believe that America has a special place in the world, and that American's influence on the world is a positive rather than a negative.

And then, quickly, just some ideas on solutions the Democrats should focus on. One is weak. We do need to have an economic policy that focuses on middle class Americans particularly in this globalized world and not just one we 'think' appeals to middle class Americans.

I'll just give you an example of one thing that Democrats always say about education. They talk about the “crumbling schools”. Well, to middle class people the schools aren't crumbling, they're just mediocre. So on education, we need to have a message in which we are talking about better schools for people where their schools aren't being well run. College affordability is a huge middle class issue that goes beyond Pell Grants and people who are poor. If you're earning $60,000 as a family income, you get basically no help.

Affording a first home is another issue. Saving for retirement. These are economic issues that really do appeal to the middle class.

We need to have a cultural agenda that appeals to the middle. We should be the party that is for reducing the number of abortions, but not through criminalization or coercion, but through other means. We should not let Republicans capture the center on the abortion issue - which they have recently and as I said earlier, we need a national security platform that convinces Americans that we have an idea how to prosecute a complicated world out there, the war on terror and that we believe in the American military and we believe America's preeminence and that America should be the most influential power.

So that is my quick run down of the last 20-30 years, where we stand today and some ideas about what we need to do.