Now that the party primaries have concluded, the substance of the play will
change – because the audience will have changed.
Democrat Party nominee Ned Lamont unsurprisingly dished
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim with 81 percent of the primary vote.
On
the Republican side, Bob Stefanowski hauled in 30 percent of the vote,
9 points more than Mayor Mark Boughton of Danbury, not a strong showing for a
party nominee. In the hotly contested 5th District, abandoned
by Elizabeth Esty after charges she had not moved quickly enough on reported
incidents of harassment
by her Chief of Staff against one of her female aides. Jahana
Hayes upset party nominee Mary Glassman with a convincing 62 percent of the
vote. State Senator Joe Markley won a resounding victory over his two primary
opponents, and Susan Bysiewicz, hand-picked by Lamont for the Lieutenant Governor
slot, prevailed over her primary opponent with 62 percent of the vote.
During primaries, politicians tend to pitch their messaging
to the party faithful -- to progressive Democrats or fiscally conservative
Republicans. Many “conservative’ Republicans avoid the snare of social issues
like the plague and, likewise, Democrats will wish in the coming general
campaign to skirt the obvious failure in Connecticut of progressive fiscal
measures.
In the post primary general election, a rough-hewn left or
right ideology tends to take a back pew, and the post primary candidates – Democrat
Lamont and Republican Stefanowski -- may make both substantial and
symbolic adjustments in their campaigning, a strategic move designed
to appeal to a greater number of voters, many of whom are unaffiliateds.
We know very little about unaffiliateds because, for some
indiscernible reason, pollsters have not probed the nature of the beast.
Groucho Marx used to say that he would decline to join any
group that would have him as a member. It is possible that the bulk of
unaffiliateds are anti-social Marxists. It is also possible that a goodly
number of them are expats from both political parties who have alienated
themselves from party politics for reasons good and bad. If this is the case,
the breakdown among alienated unaffiliateds in Connecticut would pattern the
general breakdown among the party faithful.
A data-driven understanding of unaffiliateds is essential in
forming campaign strategies in a general election. There are no such studies,
and in their absence campaigners more often than not become the victims of
untested hypotheses. The first doubtful presumption is that unaffiliateds are
“parties of one,” like Henry David Thoreau preparing to leave the comforts of
Concord for the rude discomforts of Walden Pond. The second presumption is that
unaffiliateds are non-ideological creatures – moderates rather than
conservatives or progressives. Both assumptions may be wildly misleading.
In any case, it has become almost a tradition among
Connecticut politicians moving from primaries to general elections to temper
their primary messaging until, in a general election, its becomes a sort of
ideological mush that appeals to everyone and no one. This is called winning a
campaign on the cheap.
During the Democrat primary, Lamont and Byseiwicz gave no
indication that their future administration would be other than a continuation
of the disastrous reign of Dannel Malloy, whose
approval rating is the lowest in the nation, though slightly
higher than the Devil in Dante's ninth circle of Hell. The Republican program
of Stefanowski/Markley has long since been hammered out in a rumbustious
Republican primary.
Columnist
Chris Powell noted a tectonic shift in Lamont’s
“overwrought if not hysterical acceptance speech admitting that the party's
eight years in control of state government have laid Connecticut low and it
desperately needs to change direction.”
There are two kinds of change, quantitative and qualitative.
A quantitative change involves more of the same – more rodomontade from
slippery politicians, more taxes, more spending. Lamont’s former gubernatorial
primary opponent, Malloy, was a near perfect demagogue. So far, Lamont is only
“nearly hysterical.” Demagoguery lies at the crossroad of hysteria and power.
In ancient Greece, the demagogue was an accomplished rhetorician, a populist
rabble-rouser who gained the affections of the populace by exploiting prejudice
and ignorance among the common people, stirring the passions of the crowd and
shutting down reasoned deliberation.
It may be well to bear in mind Mark Twain's sage
advice: “When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and
astound your friends.”
Here in Connecticut, registered Democrats outnumber
Republicans by a two to one margin, and unaffiliateds, about whom we know
nothing, have a slight edge over Democrats, presenting a rich field in which
the demagogue may sow populist tares among the wheat.
Eventually, comes the harvest of despair.
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