The Year the Democrats Punched Back

By JOE KLEIN

First, the Republicans tried to attack Democrats on national security, their old, reliable soft-on-terrorism gambit. But that didn't work, in part because George W. Bush's own National Intelligence Council issued a report that said the Administration's policies were probably adding to the sum total of terrorists in the world. Then the Republicans tried to accuse Democrats of being soft on illegal immigrants. But that didn't work because the President himself was notoriously humane on immigration--and it was the Republican Congress that had failed to produce a tough immigration bill.

In recent weeks, the Republicans unwrapped another moldy chestnut, advertisements proclaiming that Democrats will raise taxes. But that didn't seem to be working either because voters were focused on Iraq and Mark Foley. And so last week the Republicans unleashed a series of ads painting the Democrats as sex-crazed, homosexual-loving, porn-perusing--and in the case of the novelist and Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, porn-writing--perverts. It was vivid proof that the prospect of a hanging doesn't always concentrate the mind. Sometimes it leads to feral, piss-pants desperation.

Most of the media attention was centered on the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr., and why not? He's young, attractive and black--and you know how dangerously sexy those people are. But there was enough other action around the country--the attack on the sex scenes in Webb's novels, sex-related claims against Democratic congressional candidates in New York and Minnesota--for the outlines of the new Republican strategy to become clear. Even President Bush leaped on a New Jersey court decision favorable to homosexual couples, calling it another case of liberal judicial activism.

Ford's crime was his attendance, along with 3,000 other people, at a Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy magazine last year. This inspired the Republicans to run their now famous ad featuring a scantily clad white actress who claimed to have met Ford at the party and then, in the punch line, pooched her lips, winked and whispered, "Harold, call me." A second ad accused Ford of having "Hollywood values," for what it said was his support of gay marriage and the distribution of morning-after birth-control pills to teenagers.

Neither claim is true. It remains to be seen what, if any, effect these ads will have, but Ford responded immediately with a spot featuring average Tennesseans expressing their disgust with the Republicans. A woman named Maura Satchell says, "My son's life is on the line in Iraq, and they're putting out these ads just to distract us."

Rapid response to Republican attacks has been a key to Ford's unlikely strength in Tennessee. In early October, for example, the Republican candidate, Bob Corker, accused Ford of being pro-amnesty for illegal immigrants. Ford's response was immediate and lethal: an ad claiming that Corker's construction company had employed illegal aliens. In fact, a Corker work site had been raided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "Rapid response is a rule I set down for all our candidates this year," says Senator Charles Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). "If you want [financial] support from us, you have to respond within 24 hours after you've been attacked."

Obviously, John Kerry's lamblike response to the attacks on his character during the 2004 presidential campaign, especially those emanating from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is very much on Democrats' minds in 2006. But Schumer learned the lesson in his Senate race against Alfonse D'Amato in 1998. "Fonzi attacked me for being soft on crime, and we came right back at him with a tough series of ads with the tagline 'Alfonse D'Amato: too many lies for too long.'" Schumer says that perhaps the most important ad run by a Democrat this year appeared in July in the Ohio Senate race.

The Republican, Mike DeWine, had put up a spot that called into question Democrat Sherrod Brown's record on national security, using a smudged, smoking, slightly distorted image of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. The thrust of the ad was accurate: Brown is a mortal dove who repeatedly voted against increases in the intelligence budget. And the attack had been expected. "Our candidates were really worried about how to counter the Republicans on national security," says J.B. Poersch, executive Director of the DSCC. "It's what worked against us in 2002 and 2004."

But Brown responded with a spot that began, "It's sad. Mike DeWine exploiting images of 9/11 to smear Sherrod Brown ..." and quickly pivoted to Brown's favorite issue: [DeWine] supported trade deals with China, even after thousands of lost jobs and the transfer of sensitive military technology ..." Polls show Brown well ahead now--and the ad also had a spillover effect. "Our other candidates saw Brown's success," says Poersch, "and they began to feel confident that they could survive Republican national-security attacks."

As a result, the political-advertising phenomenon of 2006: almost all of the best ads this year, in both the Senate and House races, have been Democratic counterpunches. Of course, it is easier to strike back at an exhausted opponent, and 2006 may be remembered as the year that the Reagan Revolution finally crested and began to recede.

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