Factors

Please review, if you haven't, the 26 factors posted here after the election which contributed to the outcome of the Daschle/Thune race.  Then review the following analysis/collection of thoughts put together by a long-time South Dakota political veteran/insider, which is very much worth your time:

I have read the "26 Factors" several times and have shared the list with
several political junkies and even normal people.  Here are some
reinforcements for existing factors and some additional factors:

John Thune The Candidate:  We cannot ignore the obvious.  John Thune was a
great candidate against Tom Daschle.  Far too often, incumbent Democrats in
SD have had the luxury of running against extremely weak GOP challengers.
Tim Johnson's victory over Senator Larry Pressler was paved by Johnson's
previous House races, in which he faced relatively weak Republican
candidates.  Those races got thousands of registered Rs into the habit of
voting for Johnson and feeling comfortable doing so.  Running a weak
candidate damages more than just the instant election; it often has a long
legacy.  Could any Republican candidate other than JT have defeated Tom
Daschle in 2004?  I doubt it.  In 1980, George McGovern was ripe; many
different Republicans could have probably beaten him.  In 2004, Daschle was
not ripe, but he was vulnerable--with the right candidate running against
him.  John's name recognition, his exiting of the 2002 campaign with class,
and his maturation as a candidate by going through the 2002 defeat made him
the right person in the right place at the right time.

The Daschle Campaign Failed Daschle:  The McLaughlin and Associates tracking poll shows that during the months running up to the November election, Daschle was essentially a flat-liner.  His campaign kept spending millions, but his support stayed at 49% or under.  At some point in lavishing all the millions upon South Dakota, you would think that somebody in the Daschle campaign would have said, "Hey, wait a minute, we've spent X million, and Tom's numbers have still not moved.  Before we spend X+1 million on more of
the same advertising, marketing, and promotions, perhaps we should figure
out how to spend it more effectively."  I read somewhere that the Daschle
campaign ran 75 different TV spots in SD during that election.  How's that f
or a mixed message?  Of course, many of those spots were responding to Thune
ads and initiatives; the Daschle camp, was for the first time, playing
catch-up.  Even after chalking up 26 years of incumbency and spending
$20,000,000, Daschle was the road team in this game.  One Republican
political strategist told me earlier this week that he felt that in the face
of inelastic tracking poll numbers, Daschle should have resorted to the old
"come clean" tactic, running a spot that said, "I got the message.  I hear
you.  I have strayed, but now I'm coming home."  (Remember when Illinois
Senator Chuck Percy used that tactic successfully many years ago?)  This
same strategist also believes that Daschle would have never even considered
this tactic--because of his overwhelming ego.  Daschle had come to believe
that most South Dakota voters were such dunces that he could forever get
away with being liberal in DC and appearing conservative in SD.

The Thune Campaign Was Better Than The Daschle Campaign:  At the onset of
his 2004 campaign, John "reintroduced himself" to the voters by starting his
media with soft, friendly, biographical spots.  It was almost as if John
were "born again" politically.  It reminded me of how a good attorney
"rehabilitates" his star witness after a rugged cross-examination.  John's
reintroduction wiped away the 2002 defeat and made him a fresh, new
candidate in the eyes of many voters.  John's daughters were absolute media
stars.  They should seriously consider careers in TV or the theater.  They
softened his image with sensitive swing-voters.  All too often, over the
years, Republicans have gotten mean and surly with their Democrat opponents,
and their message and media have, over the course of the campaign, become
heavier and heavier.  Near the end of the 2004 election, the Thune
advertising actually lightened up.  When Daschle's campaign was expecting
the Thune camp to use a bludgeon, it instead used a rapier.  The
football/obstruction spot was hilarious, and the "In his own words" spot was
devastating.  Both had a strong element of cleverness to them--and I have
not been able to say that about very many Republican spots over the years.
(Also, the timing of the "In his own words" spot was perfect.  It was placed
early enough to make a difference, but late enough so that Tom did not have
time to slither out from under it.)    The tag line, "It's time", succinctly
captured the sentiment that the handful of undecided voters needed to feel
when they walked into the polls.  Finally, I liked the idea that at the end
of the campaign, John flat out asked the voters for their support.  That is
a really old-fashioned concept, but many people in SD still want businesses
to ask them for their business and politicians to ask them for their vote.

The Accident:  Bill's Janklow's August 16, 2003, accident ended the public
careers of both Bill Janklow and Tom Daschle.  Had both men run for
re-election in 2004, both would have been re-elected handily (barring, of
course, any Acts of God or seismic political shifts).  Bob Burns's research
shows that in every federal election in SD, about one-fifth of the state's
registered Republicans will vote for a top tier Democrat.  As Burns wryly
remarks, however, his research does not show that in every federal election
in SD, one-fifth of the state's registered Republicans will vote for two top
tier Democrats.  With Janklow and GWB on the 2004 ballot, and with Dusty
Johnson's superbly organized and relentlessly carried-out campaign
eliminating Jim Burg as a magnet for registered Republican voters, the
classic Republican ticket-splitters would have had only one race to prove
their "open-mindedness"--the US Senate race.  (The Democrats and the MSM in
SD have conveniently forgotten that prior to Janklow's accident, Herseth had
publicly announced that she was "not interested in running against Janklow
again".  With Herseth out of the picture, the Democrats would have been
bereft of a quality candidate to run against Janklow.)

Stephanie Herseth:  I have heard many Democrat partisans say that you can
explain Tom Daschle's loss in two words:  Stephanie Herseth.  (For a good
laugh, read David Newquist's rantings. ______ is fond of saying
that many voters "traded in" Tom Daschle for Stephanie Herseth.  Those
thousands of ticket-splitting registered Republicans saw Tom as their
good-old pickup truck that they had used for a hundred thousand miles.  They
saw Stephanie Herseth as a brand new shiny red convertible sports car.  The
pickup had been great, but it was time for a trade.  As the previous
paragraph contends, these ticket-splitters were going to vote for one D, but
not two.  If you look at the geographic erosion of  Daschle's support in
2004, it occurs along the I-29 corridor--the home of legions of those
moderate, ticket-splitting registered Republicans who voted for Daschle in
his previous elections.  By the thousands, those people voted for Thune and
Herseth.  Many Democrats also say that Herseth's (patently phony)
conservative positions on several issues made Daschle look too far left.
After the 1986 election, many of Lars Herseth's supporters complained
bitterly that Tom Daschle's campaign had cost them the election.  As you
know, Lars Herseth made up huge ground in the weekend before election day,
with about 90% of the apparent undecideds swinging to him.  The Herseth
people contended that on election day, the Daschle campaign dragged to the
polls absolutely everybody who was solid Tom or leaning Tom, even if they
knew that these people were also going to vote for Mickelson.  To this day,
the Daschle people laugh off that theory, saying that Lars just ran a shitty
campaign.  Ironically, many Daschle supporters now blame Lars Herseth's
daughter for costing Tom this election.  The Herseth partisans now say, "Tom
ran a shitty campaign."

Saddened:  Daschle's partisan pot shot about his being "saddened" over the
president's failure of diplomacy that led us into war in Iraq was the
stupidest thing he ever said, and it came back to haunt him.  It has always
been an unwritten law in American government that "politics stops at the
water's edge"--that partisan political differences should not color our
foreign policy.  Daschle violated that law.  First, he took a whack at GWB
on the eve of the president's first trip abroad.  Then, he became "saddened"
over Saddam.  The "saddened" remark really galvanized anti-Daschle sentiment
all over America.  It may have made him a hero to many Ds, but it certainly
made him a bum in the eyes of many Rs, and in SD, Rs outnumber Ds.  (For
weeks, SD newspapers carried anti-Daschle letters to the editor that
pilloried Tom with humorous variations of, "I'm saddened.")  Many people who
had previously supported Daschle said to me just before the 2004 election,
"I'm not going to stick with him this time because he just cannot get along
with the president."  Daschle's campaign realized that he was vulnerable on
this issue and particularly because of the "saddened" comment, and that was
the genesis of the ridiculous pandering in the "hugging the president" TV
commercial run by the Daschle campaign.  Unfortunately for them, they could
not get the toothpaste back into the tube.

Unilateral Disarmament:  Why did Tom Daschle, at the onset of the campaign,
unilaterally announce that he did not want any "outsiders" coming into the
election on his behalf?  Did he think that Thune was moronic enough to
follow suit?  When an individual says, "I'm going to beat up you--and all
your friends."--it sounds like an  unfair fight--not to mention suicide--to
me.  The anti-Daschle "outsiders" that jumped into SD helped close the
funding and advertising gap between Thune and Daschle, and by attacking
Daschle upon a vast variety of issues, they helped create an environment in
which people started thinking that Tom's baggage had finally become too
heavy for them to carry.  One week before election day, the Democrat
Senatorial Committee came bursting through the saloon doors to plop $600,000
of advertising down on the bar, but the bar room brawl was already over.
The Daschle campaign's defense of the desperate maneuver ("We have no
control over these guys.") was, of course, the Thune campaign's defense of
Thune-friendly 527s that the Daschle people had ridiculed earlier in the
campaign.  The last-minute arrival of Tom's friends merely made Daschle look
desperate, hypocritical, and "cloutless".

Watering The Plant To Death:  Most houseplants that die do so from
overwatering, not underwatering.  I still cannot understand why the Daschle
campaign ran bazillions of commercials for months and months and months and
months--long before Thune started advertising and long before the campaign
had started in most peoples' minds.  They kept telling me that they were
"solidifying the base".  Actually, at the time, I thought that they were
spending money merely because they had it.  (Bill Richardson has observed
that both campaigns--Daschle and Thune--had "more money than they could
spend wisely".  I think that his comment rings truer with Thune's 2002
campaign than his 2004 campaign.)   The Daschle campaign kept up this early,
constant, and heavy bombardment despite the fact that it was just not moving
the polls.  What the carpet bombing did accomplish was to increase "Daschle
fatigue" among the voters.

Trying To Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too:  Tom and his campaign staff
fumbled the abortion issue badly.  Rather than trying to delicately carve
out some middle ground on this issue, he should have just said, "I am
pro-choice.  I do not think that the federal government and its bureaucrats
and judges should stick their noses into an issue that is moral and
ethical--and not political.  Now, you might disagree with me on this issue,
but at least you know where I stand, and we probably agree upon a whole lot
of other issues."  Of course, there was a big, fat reason why Tom could not
take an unambiguously honest position on this issue.   While he had drifted
into the pro-abortion camp (and then lurched into it out of national
political necessity during his abortive run for the presidency), he had
allowed large numbers of South Dakotans (especially older people in small
towns and on farms) to believe that he was still the anti-abortion altar boy
from Aberdeen.  It was too late to tell the truth.  Tom's campaign staff
frenetically tried to keep him firmly on both sides of this issue, even to
the point of having SD Planned Parenthood (which endorsed Kerry-Edwards and
Stephanie Herseth) put "None" under its United States Senate endorsement in
its 2004 Voters Guide.  Ultimately, to many moderate, ticket-splitting
registered Republican voters, (the secret of Tom's past successes), the real
issue ultimately became not abortion but integrity--or the lack thereof.
And that translated into, "Maybe he's been there too long."

Crying Wolf Once Too Often:  Over the years, Democrat incumbents in federal
offices in SD have religiously clung to victimization status in order to
keep their jobs.  The ham-handed Republicans, of course, have been eager to
make the strategy work, plastering the Dems with vapid, brainless attacks on
non-issues.  George McGovern won many elections because, by election day,
thousands of Republicans felt sorry for him.  Note how fast Stephanie
Herseth picked up on this time-honed tactic.  Every time Larry Diedrich
criticized her on her record (fabricated and flimsy though it may be), she
blew her rape whistle and started screaming, "He's distorting my record!"
There is considerable evidence that this tactic was counterproductive for
Herseth, both in June and in November.   Tom Daschle has played the victim
artfully during his long career.  Yet, in an election year when being a
"macho man" seemed somehow important (with Kerry feeling the need to stress
time and again that he would "KILL" terrorists, while Bush partisans
ridiculed Kerry for throwing footballs and baseballs "like a girl"), Daschle
finally overplayed the victim card.  Two years ago, the dominant feeling out
there in SD was, "I hate negative campaigning."  This year ,the dominant
feeling out there in SD was, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the
kitchen."

Blogging and Flogging:  The new Web logs in SD were a critical factor in
Thune's victory; he would not have won without them.  The blogs had two
salient contributions.  First, they did the deep research that undressed
Daschle, or, more tellingly, revealed him to be a political cross-dresser.
Because of modern-day newspaper, radio, and TV economics, only the largest
media have the resources to dedicate to "actual research".  The Argus Leader
falls into that large-enough category, but the Argus purposefully
constricted its coverage of the 2004 general election because it was trying
to protect its political and pecuniary investment in the status quo:  the
incumbency of Daschle and Herseth.  When you measure the Argus's actual news
coverage of DvT against the fact that DvT was the most-watched Senate race
in all of America, you are left wondering, "Where's the beef?"  The Argus's
preposterous decision to print only a tiny handful of letters pertaining to
the election was part of its deliberate and desperate attempt to keep Tom in
office.  In the past, that tactic would have worked, but along came the
bloggers, like Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox".  They did the research that
the media could not do and would not do.  Their second major contribution
was distributing the research to a growing audience all over the state and
beyond our borders.  I have always thought that in the old adage, "Praise
the Lord and pass the ammunition", the second part of the exhortation is
especially powerful because it has immediately measurable results.  The
conservative bloggers did not waste their time writing emotional
mumbo-jumbo, they handed out real ammunition--hard evidence that Daschle had become one kind of person in SD and quite another in DC.

Jon, if you use any of these ideas or concepts in any way, do not attribute
them to me.  They are not my ideas.  Rather, they are a summary of what I
have been hearing on the street for the past several weeks.  You will
probably reach 50 good reasons for John Thune's victory without stretching
the fabric of the truth, because the number of critical election factors and
the margin of election victory are, of course, inversely proportional.