Ezra Klein on the ups and downs of a Democratic Brand

Of course, Ezra says "Joe Manchin is gonna be Ben Nelson" far nicer than I have in the past.

[In] the West Virginia Senate race, where the Democratic nominee is Joe Manchin, the popular governor whose campaign ads currently feature him shooting a gun at a copy of the cap-and-trade bill. His ads, in other words, are about what a hard time he'll give the party. But those ads are, in part, why he'll likely win. And then he'll get to the Senate, vote for Harry Reid as Senate majority leader, and vote for most, but not all, Democratic initiatives. The Republican candidate in the race, by contrast, makes no similar concessions to West Virginia's populist political culture.

It's hard to have a concrete brand when a guy like Manchin is part of your party. It'd be a bit like if Coca-Cola sold not just Cokes, but a brand that spent its advertising budget convincing people that Coke was gross, and hired guys to yell at people who ordered Cokes in stores.

But though Manchin makes thematic coherence difficult, he makes it easier to have a congressional majority. The party discipline that the Republican brand requires makes it difficult to tailor candidates to individual races. So you'll see campaigns like Delaware and West Virginia, where Democrats are likely to win seats a different kind of Republican could've captured, and major policy achievements like health-care reform that only happened because Democrats decided against kicking Joe Lieberman out of the party, and senators like Arlen Specter and Jim Jeffords, who simply switched sides to get away from the GOP's party discipline.

The flip side of this, of course, is that Republicans are better at getting all of their members to vote the same way, and better at getting their candidates to move to the far right. But aside from tax cuts, I'm not really sure what that's gotten them. George W. Bush expanded the federal role in education, Medicare and campaign finance, not to mention starting both the bank and auto bailouts. Civil rights, feminism and sexual equality have all made enormous strides. Barack Obama passed a massive stimulus plan followed by a near-universal health-care bill. Conservatives might have the stronger brand, but liberals, in recent years, have had the more successful one.