Sending populist cues
by Tom Sullivan
(Image: @JamesThompsonKS/Twitter)
Panic among Democratic moderates accustomed to sitting nearer the middle of the dais generated several concern-trolling columns over the weekend. Former FBI director James Comey joined in, tweeting, “Democrats, please, please don’t lose your minds and rush to the socialist left.” Despite much evidence to the contrary, Comey insists America wants “sensible, balanced, ethical leadership.”
Still, with “several outright Nazis and white supremacists” gracing Republican tickets this fall, Michelle Goldberg wonders why political insiders are worried: Has the Democratic Party become too extreme?
Democratic veterans are haunted by past electoral debacles, Goldberg writes, citing McGovern in 1972 and Dukakis in 1988. The Newt Gingrich-led, mid-term rout that in 1994 swept out incumbent Democrats across North Carolina still gives Democrats here of a certain age cold sweats. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to so obviously unqualified an opponent will hang in the corners for decades. From my vantage point, her field strategy failed to energize volunteers, reach beyond her base, and turn out Democrats who would actually vote as Democrats. If she won handily (as hoped), it might have become the default template for Democrats’ future national campaigns. Dodged that bullet.
As I shared from personal experience yesterday, moderates’ fears of lefty overreach are greatly exaggerated. Goldberg concurs:
After all, the economic demands that animate the left are generally quite popular. Though “Medicare For All” means different things to different people, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll from last year found that 62 percent of Americans view it positively. A recent Rasmussen poll found 46 percent of likely voters support a federal jobs guarantee, a more radical proposal that was barely present in American politics a couple of years ago.
Centrists might not think these are good ideas, but they are not wild fantasies; they represent efforts to grapple with the chronic economic insecurity that is the enemy of political stability.
Martin Longman argues at Washington Monthly that worries that national Democrats may start blasting a national message that sounds “more like the platform of the Working Families Platform” are not just overblown, but misplaced (as if they were capable of a unified message). In a mid-term election, local and regional candidates need to find “solutions and messages that can work in both Democratic and Republican strongholds.” That does not mean wasting time trying to appeal to voters in MAGA hats. But it does mean showing interest in reaching beyond their own base. As Paul Waldman knows (and my experience shows), voters do not vote based on some internal ideological score sheet:
People are much more apt to respond to cues that tell them whether you are on their side or not than to make that determination based on a careful analysis of policy proposals. It’s easy to let people know you have contempt for them and people like them, and that’s when they stop listening. If the national Democrats want to make life hard for their most crucial Senate candidates, they can send powerful signals that they don’t respect whole regions of the country or even want their votes. They won’t do that by proposing this health care bill or that one, but they might just say as much when talking to their own base.
If the Democrats are going to have a successful midterm, they have to respect the people whose votes they are going to need, and that’s not the same thing as running to the middle. Republican policies are generally unpopular in theory and even more so in practice, but that doesn’t prevent them from competing in most areas of the country. That’s because they really excel at convincing people that they’re on their side. That they do so by consistently appealing to people’s least generous and most fearful emotions isn’t something to emulate but it is something that has to be countered effectively in this upcoming election.
To turn out the base, to reach beyond it, and to rise above the daily din of Trumpism will take Democrats proposing solutions to real problems in health care costs, employment, and stagnant wages that are populist enough to rattle moderates’ comfortable cages. So be it. Democrats need to stop chasing public opinion and set to work changing it if they hope to win. Milquetoast proposals will do neither.
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