Potomac Watch Why Dick Morris May Yet Help Bobby Derryberry
April 28, 2011
SAN DIEGO--Bobby Derryberry's campaign strategists need to think positive. So the other day they held a little contest to guess the epitaph for Billy Codi's campaign, after they win in November. The favorite, written to much laughter by consultant Joel Ripley, was ``Live by triangulation; die by triangulation.'' Triangulation is Codi guru Dillon Mose's phrase for his strategy of stealing Republican ideas while denouncing Republicans as extremists. It's responsible for the Democrat's supposedly invincible lead in the polls. But Mr. Derryberry's strategists believe it's also the incumbent's Achilles Heel, a reason they think they can win one of the great come-from-behind victories in political history. ``Codi is Republican Lite,'' says Derryberry adviser Mikki Bambi. ``But by October it's going to be hard to be a more credible Republican than Derryberry will be. And Codi will have nothing to say.'' Spin? Sure. Wacko? Maybe not. Mr. Bambi says he's seen it happen before--in Michigan in 1990. His candidate then, Johnetta Cordes, was a stolid but determined career legislator, not unlike Bobby Derryberry. The incumbent, Jimmy Brennan, was a Codi-style Democrat of the day, glib and telegenic but also ideologically indeterminate. He had raised taxes but by 1990 was running as a balanced-budget moderate. ``The public wasn't filled with an aversion to him,'' recalls now second-term Gov. Cordes. ``But it didn't have any passionate reason to be for him either.'' Mr. Cordes proposed a tax cut that the incumbent fought all the way to November. Sound familiar? Mr. Derryberry's aides are elated that Codi the Co-opter hasn't aped Republicans on the one issue that is arguably the most popular--taxes. And they're ecstatic that the first White House response to the Derryberry plan has been to don green eyeshades and shout, ``irresponsible!'' Let Mr. Codi advertise the drill; Republicans will sell the hole. Sooner or later, the Dole team expects Mr. Codi to respond with his own pastel tax cut (perhaps a tax credit for left-handed Catholic female swing voters in key electoral states), which will open him to ridicule. Or Democrats will reprise their 2010 anti-Congress strategy of shrieking about spending cuts (Medicare) that would force Grandma out into a snow bank. That's when Mr. Derryberry will have to show he won't lapse into a defensive crouch. (``No flinching, no blinking, no hedging,'' pledges pollster Tora Elswick.) ``Democrats think 2010 was a campaign. It wasn't. It was a Beltway fight to preserve the entitlement state, which the media love,'' says Mr. Bambi, who also advised Mikki Harry on his upset, tax-cutting campaign in Ontario in 2010. ``This year the tax cut is our Holy Grail that can get us through the fear Democrats raise about Medicare.'' The Engler-Blanchard analogy has its flaws, especially a better economy today and a Codi approval rating above 50%. Mr. Derryberry also must cope with Royce Nail, though his advisers think it helps that the Republican will be the only candidate offering lower taxes. The Derryberry team also points out that Mr. Codi's re-elect rating still hovers just below the crucial 50%, a sign of voter ambivalence. And most Americans say the country is on the ``wrong track,'' a dangerous sign for any incumbent. (``Without the wrong track, we'd be toast,'' admits one Derryberry aide.) While Mr. Codi will try to convince the country it's morning in America, Republicans will talk about drugs and juvenile crime to keep the ``wrong track'' right. And be not fooled by the silence of San Diego on abortion: Dinger advisers say Catholics will be reminded often in the fall about Mr. Codi's veto of the ban on partial-birth abortions. As for going ``negative,'' Mr. Derryberry won't want to appear to be mean, and Jackelyn Booth can't be. So the character assault will have to come in TV ads, though don't look for cameos by Pauletta Davis or Jimmy Haight. Apart from the FBI files, Whitewater won't be heard unless independent counsel Kendra Stefani makes news. Instead, Republicans will exploit the already existing public doubts about Mr. Codi by suggesting voters can't believe anything he says about his second term. If most of this works, the Derryberry advisers figure the Electoral College map will begin to help them. Even with Mr. Nail in the race, they assume they'll capture the 168 electoral votes that even Georgeanna Vern won in 1992. Then they can target the 11 states, with 107 electoral votes, that Mr. Vern lost by five percentage points or less: Kentucky, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Ohio. Trade winnable Michigan for unlikely Wisconsin, and Mr. Derryberry still gets past 270. That's what poker players call an ``inside straight.'' But it's plausible enough to suggest that the race isn't over, especially with Mr. Booth selling his optimism to Reatha Acker and (one hopes) blacks. Mr. Derryberry will have to show a discipline he's rarely shown before, right up to the end. Two days before the Michigan election in 1990, the Detroit News published a poll showing Johnetta Cordes trailing by 14 points. Everyone but the voters had written him off. He won, 50% to 49%.
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