I’d rather not have to write this, but it appears that I need to be a bit of a contrarian. The grassroots organizing in Alabama was outstanding, particularly in terms of mobilizing the black vote. This was critical in helping Doug Jones win a statewide election by around 20,000 votes in a state where Democrats usually have no chance. This has led to some predictable victory laps for a faction that believes that the way forward for the Democratic Party is to spend most of their resources and messaging on turning out the reliable base of the party rather than trying to win back voters who have recently defected to the Republicans or third parties.
But, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show, had the votes in Alabama’s special election for Senate been cast instead for congressional candidates, the result would have been one Democratic seat and six Republican seats. This is exactly the makeup up of Alabama’s current congressional delegation. The only Democrat is Terri Sewell who represents the 7th District based in Selma and the western Black Belt region of the state. And she would have been the only Democratic candidate to win last Tuesday.
It’s certainly nice to win statewide races, meaning races for governor and other important state positions like Attorney General and Secretary of State, as well as seats in the U.S. Senate. But this alone won’t do anything to help Democrats win back control of state legislatures and it won’t help them win back control of the House of Representatives.
Currently, the Democrats hopes for winning back control of Congress rely on the Republicans’ incredible dysfunction. But that kind of thing is mainly cyclical and only works when they’re already in power. The reason the Democrats can’t just sit back and accept the loss of so many rural and white working class voters is because this is giving the Republicans unprecedented power in legislatures all over the country.
If the Democrats want to win a presidential election or statewide elections, the strategy that was pursued in Alabama to boost base turnout is a good one that can and will work. It’s also true Doug Jones ran an aggressive campaign to win over disgruntled Republicans in the suburbs. This was roughly Hillary Clinton’s strategy, and it is definitely a workable strategy. It can even have some success in winning suburban seats in both congress and state legislatures. But it’s not enough to get the Democrats back to competitiveness.
Now, I’ll acknowledge that there’s a part of the electorate which has moved from Obama to Trump that isn’t coming back. But the point is that many of them will come back. Some may come back for the same reason they left, which was to try something new and to express their basic antiestablishment attitudes. Some may come back for no other reason than Trump is a failed experiment. But the ones that can come back and stay are the ones attracted to a message that is new and fresh and aimed at tackling their particular problems, including economic contraction due to corporate consolidation and lax antitrust enforcement.
It is a mistake to see this as a binary decision, where the party either focuses on base mobilization or it focuses on winning back white working class voters. It needs to do both at the same time or the Republicans will continue to have far more power in this country than the Democrats. Alabama’s results are proof of that.
Fourth Bruce: “In addition, as he’s going to be teaching politics, I’ve told him he’s welcome to teach any of the great socialist thinkers, provided he makes it clear that they were wrong.”
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Trump voter redemption seems a loooonnng way off.
Well… no. Just no.
Currently the Democratic base is legitimately appalled and completely turned off by the thought of being in the same coalition as the white working class. And they aren’t wrong.
75% plus of white working class voters in Alabama voted for a child molester. Nationally there are very few places that Roy Moore doesn’t at least have a 40% plus floor of working class whites who would vote for him.
Anything the Dems do to appeal to working class whites is going to turn off and rightfully nauseate the Dem base.
In short Booman, you can have your bigots and the full Dem base too. You can have one or the other. Pick one.
Enjoy your minority.
And thanks for reminding me why I Demexited. It wasn’t just Hillary. Mainly it was you bigots.
The Democratic Party is as left as it has been in decades on every issue, and rather than push it more you’d rather pick up your ball and go home. It makes no sense.
. . . bigot/racist. Reference to “you bigots” is just his version of the standard rightwingnut projecion jiu-jitsu (i.e., accuse your opponent of what you’re guilty of, and never mind evidence for/validity of that accusation).
It makes perfect sense to me. A perpetually aggrieved member of the majority who is very sad that his tribe isn’t getting it’s ass kissed anymore.
“this is why the Democrats lost blah blah blah”
I don’t identify as a Democrat either but you don’t see me in here whining about the party every other day.
Well yeah, but that thought just makes no sense to me, especially when said person has consistently supported left policy in this forum for a decade.
Anyway, call it a learning moment because I’ve been here since college, but 2016-2017 have been the most politically enlightening of all those years, both regard to centrists and the left.
I’d characterize the last two years as being quite eye-opening, to say the least.
. . . of writing a very similar response . . . but didn’t quite cross it. E.g.,
I’ve counseled Booman before to make explicit this distinction between proposals to benefit the (simply) working class (good! Dems should!) and proposals to target benefits specifically to the white subset of that working class (as even deployment of the phrase “white working class” sorta kinda implies). This necessarily implies leaving benefits to the non-white subset of the working class out, i.e., preferentially benefiting the white subset of the working class. Which is of course what the racist/bigoted subset of the white working class expects/demands, and what Dems/libs/progs (and in fact all decent folks!) must utterly eschew, as it’s racist on its face.
So far, Booman hasn’t acknowledged this counsel, but my take is that (taking the quotes above together) this post of his avoids the latter, but fails to do the former. So good on the latter, but the former remains critically needed (which I take to be your objection, and a valid one).
Clearly, when fielding candidates in rural areas, Dems need to focus on winning over Trump voters.
When running statewide, the strategy of turning out the base seems to work.
So…?
In spite of Boo’s claim, the “Jones/Virginia strategy” of turning out our base can get us the House, and will if we see similar swings nationally. You don’t have to win anything in Alabama for that; there are plenty of swingable districts elsewhere. The Senate is a hard lift for 2018 but very winnable in 2020. I don’t know how we’d do in statehouses; based on Virginia we can flip some but not most.
The fact that a majority in AL could get only 1 of 7 House seats shows that gerrymandering is a big problem. There’s nothing in the Constitution giving extra power to rural people in House elections; it’s all about the districting. With fair districting this problem would go away.
P.S. can reply to comments using the “Recent Comments” feature but I can’t reply directly to the post because when I view it I’m logged out and see an older version with fewer comments.
With fair districting it could go to 2D-5R instead of 1D-6R – maybe, provided a close election which would be unlikely in Alabama.
Look closely at the map and vote margins. The D vote is so concentrated in the black belt the state is naturally geographically gerrymandered.
Really, the state is so +R in PVI the Dems are lucky their vote is concentrated enough to get them the 1 district.
In my rural area it means getting Hispanic voters to turn out. I volunteer for a non-profit whose clients are primarily Hispanic. The staff of this non-profit tells us they constantly hear “my vote doesn’t matter” from their clients. Yesterday we were told that until this last year one nearby rural county didn’t even have a Democratic Party organization. Trump’s election may be having unintended good consequences.
Obama turned out the Hispanic and rural vote in my state both in 2008 and 2012. Hillary Clinton did not. However, Obama had a presence in many rural areas (paid staff, extremely active volunteers, etc.) while Hillary did not.
Another factor is that Trump energized and turned out infrequent white voters.
No idea how many Obama voters turned to Trump in my area and not certain if we have the data to determine that. Without knowing that, our best strategy seems to be registration and turnout plus persuading left-leaning voters registered as unaffiliated. Unaffiliated is over 1/3 of registered voters. We have some extremely experienced urban political operatives, for lack of a better word, who are advising us in our lead up to 2018.
The Republicans won – and retain – these voters with a platform that says “Vote white” and I can’t take any attempt to win these voters back seriously unless I hear a reasonable response to the Republican message.
If the Dems ignore the Republican message, they lose.
Fuck the white working class. If we can’t fight their racism – and I don’t think we can – we can’t win their vote. Fuck ’em. Do the best we can. I’d rather lose than create a coalition with people who could vote for Roy Moore.
Fuck you too.
The problem is, in a country where 70% of the voters are white, Republicans do not need a single non-white vote, while Democrats need a massive number of white votes (even more considering the gerrymandering and voter suppression).
The Republicans can afford to become purely race-based, they are rewarded for creating overtly racial coalitions. They have the numbers. We don’t. We must appeal to tens of millions of whites. And not just gay, Jewish, highly-educated whites. There aren’t enough of them.
I can’t think of any statement that would make more people angry on Twitter, but all the blacks who voted for Jones don’t surprise me. Of course they voted against the party that is viciously hostile to their lives. What surprises me is all the whites who resisted the racial appeals and voted for the non-white party. We cannot survive without people of color. Not for an instant. And we cannot survive without whites voting against the white party. Not for an instant.
Half of this country feels like a strange and backward land to me. I’d be more comfortable in many places overseas than in many states in the US. I am culturally alien to many of my fellow Americans, and they’re the same to me. So yeah, fuck ’em. Except … we absolutely cannot afford to lose. And we can fight their racism.
Let me ask you this. Genuine question. If Obama could’ve run again, would he have beaten Trump?
I think the answer is clearly yes. Four million of those racists would’ve voted for him over Trump.
I don’t know whether Obama would have beaten Trump. Absent the 22nd amendment I doubt if Trump even runs. Do the Russians interfere in the hypothetical matchup? Does Obama prevail in the face of a blatantly racist campaign?
I’d like to think Obama would have won, but I don’t know the answer to those questions. I do think Trump won because he asked voters to vote white. It worked. The same appeal convinced the same voters in both Virginia and Alabama. Republicans are going to make the same appeal going forward. It is all they have.
I do not believe those voters can be won back while ignoring the Republican appeal. How do you neutralize race with these voters?
I understand the arithmetic and how the constitution and voter suppression and gerrymandering make these votes more valuable than other votes. But Democrats can control the federal government without these voters and that’s the best possible result right now.
I can be convinced otherwise, but not without hearing a credible response to the Republican appeal.
Huh. Well, if you don’t agree that Obama would’ve almost certainly wiped the floor with Trump–despite Russians, voter suppression, racism, etc.–then I suspect that our political intuitions are so different that we’d end up talking past each other. But basically I don’t think you neutralize race. I don’t think Obama would’ve. He embodies it. I think you win them over despite it.
I don’t understand the importance of the hypothetical. If I agree Obama would have won, so what? I was certain Hillary was going to win. We are talking about what is, not what might have been.
My point is that we know what the Republicans are going to pitch to these voters. It will be the same hate fear anti-other we have seen from Republicans since Trump proved the strategy.
What do you say to that voter? If you do not address the Republican issues, you lose. Tell me how you can convince that voter that his fears are unfounded and his hate misdirected? If you cannot do this, I do not think you can get them to vote for you.
I don’ t think Democrats can afford to waste resources in a futile effort. Spend the resources turning out our voters. If that leaves us playing defence until the fever breaks, so be it.
Because if racist voters would’ve voted for a black candidate in substantially higher number than they voted for a white candidate, then racism isn’t an insurmountable obstacle. It’s a corrosive and horrific toxin in our society, but not an insurmountable obstacle to our electoral results.
That’s why the hypothetical is so important to me. What would Obama have said to that voter? I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe ‘saying things’ doesn’t matter. Maybe his image, cool and competent and unflappable, would’ve been enough.
I don’t think we need to convince voters of anything, not in terms of issues at least. This isn’t a rational argument we’re having with rational people. To my mind, one of our greatest weakness is that we keep trying to figure how to logically appeal to people’s issues. We need to figure how to emotionally appeal to them: and they have emotional triggers beyond ‘hate fear anti-other.’
Fair enough. When you do figure out a way to appeal to them – when you can identify the emotional trigger that trumps hate, fear, anti-other – I’ll be with you all the way.
Until then, I’m writing them off and I hope the Democratic Party goes elsewhere for votes.
A candidate with movie star charisma is one trigger. Vague but effective.
A candidate who takes no shit, and convincingly pretends to be authentic is another.
A candidate with a compelling story featuring specific villains would be a very powerful one, I’d imagine.
Some, maybe most of Trumps’s people really are unreachable – this would be the gun fetishists, the super-Christians, people who are tribalistically Republican.
But Trump also conned a lot of gullible saps with extravagant promises – like bringing back jobs, better trade agreements, better while cheaper health insurance. These people (some of them anyway)are noticing these promises are not happening, and some of them are pissed. Some of these are also sporatic voters who need to be appealed to.
Saw a news story on TV last night or this morning following up on the Carrier story, wherein Trump had claimed credit for saving hundreds of jobs — but a lot of those jobs went away anyway, the company is planning to ship more of them to Mexico, and some Trump voters are pissed as hell now.
Too bad they couldn’t see back then that a guy who made it a habit to screw over contractors and employees didn’t give a rat’s ass about them, but….
You make a good point, Steggles. Most of the pepole who visit and comment on this blog believe in science and facts and the idea that rational arguments based on science and facts can persuade people. Unfortunately, when it comes to presidential elections I think a majority of the electorate (sorry, no citation, just my gut feel) votes based on emotion.
In my lifetime some charismatic presidential contenders have also bolstered their campaigns with very simple, emotional, slogans: It’s Morning in America; It’s the Economy, Stupid; Hope / Change. Any surprise that those three won two terms each?
Humans are an emotional species – we forget that at our peril.
You will never win an argument over how someone feels. Which makes your last paragraph spot-on: we need to figure out how to emotionally appeal to the Obama-twice-Trump-once voters. It obviously can be done because Obama did it.
I get a bit uncomfortable about lumping “white working class” as some monolithic entity. Do we know, for example, what proportion of this socioeconomic and ethnic group is evangelical versus not? Among those who are not, do we have an idea of who is agnostic or atheist? Reason I ask is that my non-work-related circles consist largely of “white working class” individuals who are very secular and moderate to liberal (and coincidentally more or less reliable Democratic voters and in some cases activists). Makes some sense as I am an atheist and definitely pretty damned left of center (although I have moderated – ahem – a good bit in recent years). We often roll with people with whom we share common interests. Sorry for the aside. Point is, maybe we need to know who we’re actually targeting here when we use a term like “white working class”. Are we talking about folks like my auto mechanic friend who just happens to think all religions are bullshit and is generally open to Democratic candidates, or something else entirely? Just a thought.
The “WWC” has a wide variety of meanings nowadays, it seems to me. One is the vision of ruined rural Appalachia captured in Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy”, which describes an economically stagnant, largely poor white population plagued with ignorance, low skills and “white resentment”. Then there’s the people you describe who aren’t racists, who work alongside African-Americans and Hispanics and aren’t evangelicals. A lot of my peers when growing up in Pittsburgh were like that. Then there’s the more specific WWC I see described by Booman in the context of the last election. These are the specific sub-group that actually voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump this time. Apparently, some of them are still working but a lot of them have lost their jobs (or had them automated out of existence). My feeling is that this part of the WWC is kind of specific to the PA and WI rural and peri-urban voting districts that flipped the election to the Orange Monster.
I personally really doubt whether this peculiar slice of the WWC that behaved like this, i.e. vote Obama then vote for Trump can be found in any other part of the country with the possible exception of Iowa and maybe parts of the NC electorate. I do think the Obama then, Trump now voter is pretty much a lost cause for the Democratic Party. They will have to deal with the mindless destruction of Trump and the GOP. We have to make sure to follow Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous dictum: “Never interfere when your enemy is trying to destroy himself.”
The point of that map on Rachel Maddow’s show was to highlight the problem of gerrymandering. You can have what amounts to a 30 point swing in favor of the Democratic party, but if the GOP is in control of the legislative and executive branches of a state, they can effectively “stack and pack” so that the GOP remains in control unless there is one hell of a tsunami-like wave. Fixing the problem of gerrymandering would go a long way to creating competitive districts again. For better or worse, that is something that has landed in the courts.
One other quick point: a lot was made about the high proportion of white female voters casting their vote for a serial creep simply because he had an R by his name. What sometimes gets missed in those crosstabs is that when you look at white nonevangelical women, the vast majority of that group went for Jones. As I noted before, we need to be very careful about lumping folks into broad categories and treating them as if they are monolithic. We need to look very carefully at who we are targeting and how receptive they are likely to be to our candidates. Some folks will never be reachable. We have to accept that. What we can do a better job of is reaching those who are receptive. I’m all in favor of doing so.
“Now, I’ll acknowledge that there’s a part of the electorate which has moved from Obama to Trump that isn’t coming back.”
Hopefully because those A-holes are dead… and I am quite sincere.
errmmm… If you don’t take back control of the state legislature and the governorship, you can’t correct the congressional district lines to be more neutral. You can’t hope to repeal the voter suppression statutes.
And that really is the name of the game. State Democratic Parties and their local offices in a number of states need, and apparently are, in the process of rebuilding. Comes down to fielding candidates in each election for each seat, no matter what level (local, county, state-level), rather than leaving seats uncontested (to me that is a cardinal sin). Having Democratic members elected to Quorum Court or local state legislative districts in large enough numbers will not guarantee victories, but at least will provide some hope of controlling redistricting, as well as provide a bench for the development of new talent. Note that states with GOP supermajorities in their legislatures may not be conquered in one election cycle. This is going to be a long slog. Be prepared for both moments of elation and disappointment.
Even technically non-partisan seats should be contested by Democratic members – often those are school boards and city or town councils. Those folks have a lot of direct impact on the folks residing there. Heck, I live in the South, and on the border of another red state, and I am well aware of rumblings of discontent with the GOP led status quo. There is plenty of energy to be mobilized, and if done right, we’ll see some changes in the polls in 2018. We’ve already seen the harbingers in special elections (especially at the more local levels across the country) all year long this year.
Check out some of these gems running in RED & RURAL areas:
Arkansas: http://www.paulspencer2018.com/
Iowa: http://www.scholten4iowa.com/
Northern California: https:/www.jessicaforcongress.org
New Mexico: http://mad4nm.com/press-coverage/
These are down to earth people with solid experience. Quality candidates running in red districts. Helping them now will pay dividends for years to come. If they win, our party becomes less the party of insufferable prats.
There’s a lot of “what ifs” and other hypotheticals in this threaded discussion. But when it comes addressing the WWC, there are several crucial issues to consider:
Bottom line, the Democrats can’t afford to give up their voting coalition in order to appeal to white racists, misogynists and xenophobes. That is truly the road to perdition. The message to all voters, regardless of their race should be we support and want to strengthen the social safety net, increase the minimum wage and, like our host advocates, tackle whenever possible corporate consolidation and the war against small businesses. If the WWC still votes for those that want to kill them off, i.e. the GOP, then I say to hell with them. We’ll just to have to take our chances.
Clinton won 37% of white voters in 2016 vs 58% for Trump. Obama got 39% in 2012. This represents a drop off of 2% in the white vote.
Per Pew: “Clinton held an 80-point advantage among blacks (88% to 8%) compared with Obama’s 87-point edge four years ago (93% to 6%). In 2008, Obama had a 91-point advantage among blacks.”
In summary, Clinton experienced a 2% drop of white voters, and 5% deficit among black voters in 2016, vs Obama in 2012. Question is, could she have won had she maintained the Obama level numbers? I believe the numbers say she could have, depending on where those voters were situated.
Setting aside for the moment the ones who are never coming back, there are a number of white voters for whom republicanism is tribal, and will never vote democratic. So what is the ROI for dems investing resources focusing on “working class whites?” I think when its posed in that monolithic way, its not favorable. So its worth it, I believe for the democrats to truly understand why these voters are disaffected? Part of the answer lies in what the voters said in 2016, that they essentially felt neither party had done much for them, and they wanted something “different,” and saw that in Trump by virtue of him being a former reality TV star, in the same way many saw “difference” in Obama and thus the implied “change” by virtue of him being a black man. One might have assumed that Clinton being a woman would have given a similar implication to her candidacy, but it was outweighed by her being an all too familiar figure and one who was seen as representative of a failed status quo. Again, rightly or wrongly, but that was the net effect of it.
I believe the 2012 vs 2016 numbers also tell the story of the difference between a candidate that has a relatively high approval rating among the electorate, and thereby a higher level of trust, versus one that does not. With considerable baggage (right or wrong) and a message that didn’t speak to the “freshness” voters were seeking, while it is still somewhat surprising Clinton lost, it should mot be earth shattering.
In summary, this analysis says the answer for democrats lie on three fronts. First, they must perfect their GOTV operations. What they accomplished in VA and AL says they are working, but I would not allow anyone to rest on those accomplishments. More needs to be done. Secondly, they need to cultivate candidates who are either not long term establish quo politicians, or who are personally dynamic enough so as to overcome the trust deficit associated with such candidates. Lastly, the democrats need to supply their candidate with a message based on solid policy positions that speak clearly to the issues of the majority of the voters, regardless of race. For example, Obama had a great opportunity to speak to them by making sure that the banksters responsible for the 2008 crash were held responsible instead of being rewarded, while homeowners were essentially left to twist in the wind with a TARP program that really did little for them overall.
The answers to the democrats problems is not rocket science, and in fact just may be Politics 101.
I would highly recommend that you google “Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis”. It will provide a number of possible approaches. That Pew Research study in 2016 is also a good reference. The democrats have been losing white voters for some time now and that may explain the loss of state legislatures. The party lost this one all on their own it appears to me. I’m not sure the answer is easy but it is doable.