The Wedge: Occurs when a candidate raises an issue where an important component of the opponent’s base holds a position that may be at odds with the outlook of the general public. The wedge is normally employed to compel your opponent to choose between angering core supporters and appealing to the general voter.
The wedge has rapidly become the favorite tool in the McDonnell campaign arsenal.
Card Check-
The Democratic unions that are generously supporting the Deeds campaign endorse it. But it’s not clear that public does, especially given the campaign that the GOP and the business community have waged against the provisions that could exempt an organizing effort from a secret ballot.
Deeds says that the issue isn’t really in a state issue in the Governor’s purview, but McDonnell and Bolling continue to insist that the Democrats should take a stand on an issue vital to Virginia businesses.
Charter Schools
Perhps McDonnell’s favorite wedge. He supports expansion of charter schools by enabling groups other than local school boards (such as the State Board of Education) to approve charters. But almost all the major education groups in the state believe that we have sufficient choice already and oppose McDonnell’s position. McDonnell believes that most parents and (even more importantly) most voters support the expansion of educational innovation through charters.
Even better, Barack Obama and Arne Duncan are vocal supporters of charter expansion. McDonnell not only believes that he can win the debate in the court of public opinion, but he can force Deeds to choose between the President and Democratic-leaning education groups.
Deeds says that he is not against charter school expansion, but does not believe that it is one of the most central issues relevant to educational improvement in Virginia.
What’s the Next Wedge?
It has to be health care reform.
The New York Times ran a major article noting that, at this weekend’s National Governor’s Association meeting, there was broad bipartisan criticism of President Obama’s health care reform package from America’s governors.
The gist of the criticism was that provisions in the bill that will require states to assume a greater responsibility for medical costs will impose intolerable burdens on already stretched state budgets.
You can almost write the press release:
McDonnell will assert that Obamacare will diminish the quality of health care and cost Virginia taxpayers more. He will claim that Tim Kaine is standing with Nancy Pelosi and the President’s buget-busting spending initiatives and ask whether Creigh Deeds stands with the Obama, Kaine and Pelosi or with the vast majority of the nation’s governors.
Are Wedges Effective?
These can be very powerful campaign tools if a candidate selects issues that are truly meaningful to voters and if the campaign gauges the direction of public opinion correctly.
Card check is obviously an important issue to Virginia businesses and will help McDonnell counter recent Democratic advances in business support. But unless it becomes far more of a front-burner issue nationally, I’m not certain that it will have much of an impact here.
Health care reform is a much more salient matter with voters. But will it be seen as one of the most pressing issue facing Virginians in 2009?
Perhaps, but too early to tell.
Charters?
A more complicated matter.
McDonnell’s position may well be shared by many voters, especially those who do not have children in school and those who have children in very bad ones.
But the majority of Virginians with kids in schools are relatively satisfied, at least with their school system. Moreover, it is my experience that the K-12 education groups are , taken together, a powerful entity that is very sophisticated politically and difficult to defeat.
The bottom line
I’m not sure that McDonnell has yet found a decisive issue.
But I think that he may have discovered an effective approach.
He is making it increasingly difficult for Deeds to run as a Warner-Kaine Democrat by continuing to link Kaine (in his role as DNC Chair) to every unpopular proposal that comes out of the Democrats in Washington.
But McDonnell’s effort to raise national issue also runs a substantial risk.
While the public’s anxiety about Obama is increasing, there is little indication that their disdain for Republicans has lessened.
I can’t imagine that the Deeds brain trust isn’t thinking about how they can give the McDonnell campaign a taste of its own medicine.
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