Paul Waldman, writing in the Washington Post, takes issue with people, including me, who say that Republicans should be running on some policy proposals: “The idea rests on the assumption that to actually win the election, voters must have a clear idea of what you’re for, because only then will they vote for you.” This assumption, he adds, is incorrect: The last four midterms “were primarily negative campaigns won for negative reasons.” Nor is a campaign agenda necessary for the winners to govern effectively: “The fact is that once a party has control of one or both houses of Congress, it will do whatever it is going to do, regardless of whether it has whatever it is we call a ‘mandate.’ Every election winner acts as though they have one, whether they campaigned on a ‘positive agenda’ or not.”
None of this is especially responsive to my actual arguments, which only dimly resembles Waldman’s caricature. I don’t believe that parties always need agendas to win elections; I don’t even think that Republicans need an agenda this year to pick up seats in the House and Senate. And I think their message should be primarily negative. I also think, though, that Republicans will win more seats if voters think Republicans are solution-oriented, even if the voters are hazy about what the solutions are. In part that’s because I think being able to suggest that Republicans have solutions strengthens their negative message about the Democrats. Finally, the usefulness of an agenda post-election is not that it provides a mandate. It’s that it makes co-ordination among the politicians in a new majority easier, gives them a sense of what they should do, and lessens the chance of a backlash against the new majority for springing controversial ideas on voters.
Waldman offers a cynical take on elections, but that’s not the same as a realistic one.