Democrats have suffered crushing defeats in the past few midterm elections. Since Obama was elected, Republicans have gained control of a majority of governorships, both Houses of Congress and picked up 900 legislative seats. But, Democrats say, we win when people vote and they point to Obama’s healthy victories in 2012 and 2008 when turnout was much higher than midterms.
Those Democrats may be right, but it’s not going to solve their problem of winning midterm elections. Driving up turnout is both expensive and labor intensive. Even the best operations can only increase turnout by 7% or so. That’s far short of the 25% or so disparity between midterm and presidential elections.
Democrats need to learn how to talk more like voters and less like activists. Republicans have successfully tapped into the anger of lower middle class voters who have been left behind by the Great Recession but who were already losing ground before it hit. They’re not all Tea Partiers but they are frustrated with government programs that they see as helping poor people but not offering them much. Republicans have made Obamacare the symbol of their frustration.
The white middle class has been dissatisfied for a long time. Every midterm election since 2006 has been a wave and the party out of the White House has benefited. Anger, fear and negative emotions drive turnout more than optimism and hope. Republicans have successfully channeled this anger focusing on Obamacare in 2010 and, to a lesser extent, 2014. The slow recovery left much of the country economically insecure and still struggling. ISIS and Ebola, and the government’s (Obama’s) seemingly inability to deal with these imaginary threats drove people to vote against Democrats.
That said, Democrats have a big problem communicating with working class voters. We offer the solutions they don’t want to hear (government mandates or tax structure) and our message is more often than not driven by Washington when it should be driven more locally. Kay Hagan almost bucked a Republican tide because she turned a US Senate race into a conversation about the state of our public schools.
Our candidates speak in talking points, not conversations. Instead of just pushing a living wage, we should be talking about entrepreneurship and innovation to help people start their own businesses. Instead of just talking about family medical leave, we should be talking about making it possible for parents to be home when their kids get out of school. Instead of talking about gun control, we should be talking about making people feel safe where they live. We do a lousy job of connecting our rhetoric with people’s lives. Instead we talk in policy jargon or slogans.
We certainly need to figure out how to motivate our base in midterm elections but we also need to figure out how to win the argument with less ideological swing voters. They prefer the outcomes Democrats seek. We just don’t know how to connect those outcomes to their daily lives. Democrats talk about a living wage, income inequality, gun control, while real people talk about paying bills, getting jobs or raises, and being safe in their homes and neighborhoods. Democrats need to learn the language.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
It is not only language. Democrats make speeches; they don’t actually talk to us. One reason folks like Bernie is his rhetoric is passionate. The press and the political pundits call it authentic. The GOP is actually no better about the speech making, but a speech filled with anger and resentment, casting blame on “others” (whoever that may be) is passionate and clear. Witness Trump, Cruz, et al.
Serious policy in politics is never simple. Occasionally a political issue can be stated in simple, concise language, but rarely are the solutions that straightforward. Few voters of any age or party affiliation show any patience with even a modicum of complexity and far too many citizens think compromise is a dirty word. In a democracy, political campaigns and governing were never intended to be about crusading ideology. There is a place for the latter, and it often drives specific political issues, but it is not a realistic basis for governing unless one wishes to ignore the minority views and needs.
The resentment of poor and the nearly poor is legitimate. The fear for their children is real and legitimate. Asking them to vote is a waste of time when voting gets them nothing except the same, which is too often the case. If they vote for the Democrats, they have to wait for a compromise with the GOP to happen in DC for any change to occur. Neither the compromise, nor the slow process, is remotely satisfactory. If they vote for the GOP, they get zilch, but have the satisfaction of the equivalent of sticking it to the Dems.
Wow, Norma. Your description of our situation oozes hopeless despair. Isn’t there anything a political party might say (“passionately”) or policies it might advance that will motivate what you say is an inattentive, impatient and skeptical citizenry? Or is it a “waste of time” to even think about that question? Or shall we all just relegate ourselves to the New World Oligarchy?
All these comments are valid, and all are USELESS as long as Republican activists own the voting machines that have been used in Florida, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland, and now Kentucky to flip Democratic votes to the Republican candidates for governor. In all those states election results showed that down-ticket races (for Secy of State, state Atty Gen’l, etc.) exactly tracked the polls that led up to election day; but the top of the ticket, the race for governor, machines suddenly and mysteriously switched tens of thousands of votes, usually in the largest, most urban (and Democratic) counties, to the Republicans during the course of election day, giving the GOP candidate a “surprise win”–actually an outright theft. That’s why those five Democratic or purple states have new Republican governors that the voters didn’t vote for. In Kentucky, in fact, the captured images of state election commission results during the day showed cumulative totals — not just percentages — of Democratic votes diminishing as the day progressed!
Using another tactic, Kay Hagan was well on her way to winning a second term, until three weeks before the election a secret Super PAC spent $4.9 million — of which $4.7 million was donated by one man — to flood the airwaves with dark money for Tillis. The fear campaign bought Tillis the seat, and a month later the PAC and the “non-profit social service organization” that existed solely to support the PAC went out of business, and the multi-million-dollar donor was rewarded with the chairmanship of the state republican party. That money was not only “disallowed” under election law rules; it was illegal, and those who raised it and spent it could face jail terms IF the Democrats had the balls to prosecute them.
Democrats don’t just need to speak about economic justice and fight for equal opportunity–they need to fight and prosecute and publicize stolen elections every time they happen, instead of fearing they’ll be called “whiners” or “poor losers” or, even worse, suggesting that if they point out political corruption it will depress voters into thinking their vote doesn’t make any difference so why bother — which is the current thinking of the national party.
They should use the facts and their bully pulpit not to depress voters, but to make them fighting mad, which is what the GOP thugs do, even as they steal election after election.
Excellent post A.D.; that corporately controlled electronic voting machines are being allowed to tally public votes without any paper trail to verify the vote totals runs counter to the democratic principle of fair elections, especially in light of how easily the machines can be programmed to swap votes while remaining exempt from internal inspections due to proprietary trade laws. Exit polls are and always have been a reliable measure of an elections outcome – that is until the age of the electronic voting machine, when suddenly improbable victory after improbable victory began placing a majority of right-wing, corporate driven extremists in office who equate the ‘public welfare’ with economic austerity for the 99%. Though Hagan proved to be a right-leaning, centrist senator no one in their right mind would have replaced her with as inept a political operative as Tom Tillis.
Keep talking about economic justice for the Middle Class and unfairness of the 1% getting all the GOP help while the 99% suffer declining wealth under this states current regime..
The heart of the problem is not that the Democratic message is in the wrong language – it’s in the fact that the candidates are speaking two different languages to two very, very different groups that are looking to hear two very, very different messages. And both of those groups are very important to the candidate’s success.
If you use language that appeals to the working class, you are alienating the Donor Class and their checkbooks. Look at Hillary and Wall Street, and how easily they make her back off and shut up. If you use language that motivates the Donors to pull out those checkbooks, you are alienating a substantial chunk of the working class that is fully aware of why there are no jobs and no raises. Those people want the Wall Street banks broken up and the criminal bankers hung from the nearest lamp post, so that Big Finance can never again dictate terms of surrender to us.
And if you attempt to thread the needle and speak in a universal manner, then you are either speaking out of both sides of your mouth, or you are really saying nothing at all. Unless you have the rare public speaking skills of Kennedy or Reagan, you appear to be a phony – a RINO or DINO.
A person cannot serve two masters, for he will cling to one, and forsake the other.
Democrats do not use language that appeals to working class voters, because there is no money in it for them to do so, and money is the chief predictor of political success. Democrats cling to the Donor Class, and forsake the vast majority of the country, as part of a deliberate strategy.
Democrats have willfully sold out the working class, and are simply not willing to suffer the wrath of the Ruling Class that would result if they made their rhetoric more populist.
Just like the Establishment Republicans.
You sound as if it’s a message/tactic that the Dem want to follow. It’s not. It’s a message/tactic they MUST follow, given Citizens United and the very deep pockets of their opposition’s donors.
Those messages and tactics pre-date Citizens United by at least 30 years, maybe longer – as that’s as far back as my political memory goes. They were the centerpiece of the triangulating Bill Clinton/Al Gore Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
And the same dynamics that apply externally with the Republicans (deep pockets of the opposition) also applies internally in our own “wealth primaries”.
“Electable = Well-Funded” has been rolled-up like a newspaper and used to smack “bad dog” progressive activists in the face for as long as I can remember.
And the Third Way is still carrying on the DLC tradition and doing it RIGHT NOW.
The biggest problem in representative politics has ALWAYS been corruption. Electing a candidate to do one thing, while he is being paid handsomely by the Donor Class to do another.
Money makes the world go around, and people (including democratic candidates) will do almost anything to get it. And I mean anything. Some would sell out their own mothers without shame. Others will wring their hands and bemoan the Citizens United decision, and then still take the money and do the “job” they’re paid to do.
But it is still corruption – doing what you are paid to do, rather than what you were elected to do.
This column makes a lot of sense.
“They’re not all Tea Partiers but they are frustrated with government programs that they see as helping poor people but not offering them much.”
Substitute “non-citizens” for “poor people” and you’ll have tapped into the public angst.
As for Kay Hagan, she did try to make public education her bastion but I think that’s not why she nearly won. If I’m wrong, you’ll see massive losses among Republicans in the Ledge next year…IF public education is the public’s top concern. But Hagan faced a completely beatable opponent against whom she just couldn’t close the deal with the public because she’d already opposed the public will by voting for the ACA.
Also note that seniors used to vote democratic which greatly helped Democrats in midterms….those who came of age during the Roosevelt administration were very Democratic, in fact Bill Clinton got his highest percentage of votes from seniors 65 and older in his 1992 election. The current round of seniors, those who started voting under Truman and Eisenhower have always been more Republican based on historical voting patterns. Unfortunately for Democrats there aren’t too many Roosevelt seniors left, leaving the more Republican leaning generations of seniors to make up a large portion of midterm voters…
Mike: While you are correct that those who came of voting age under FDR are heavily Dem and are far an few between nowadays (at least 89 years old, if alive), those who started voting under HST and DDE are at least 73-88 years old, making it a cohort that diminishes significantly by the day. As such, it’s a segment that will play less of a role in elections come 2016, 2018 and 2020. I do not think this segment of the electorate is as key as the younger Boomers (those born 1960-64), Generation X’ers, and Millennials. Getting many more of the latter two groups to vote, and having a social issues platform that appeals to them, is key.
Wow, Mr. Mills believes ISIS is an “imaginary” threat? Absolutely incredible!
ISIS isn’t much of a threat here. Dogs kill many more Americans than ISIS or all other terrorists combined each year (except 2001). But ISIS is a good example of GOP rhetoric and fear mongering. ISIS killed 0 in the US all year and last year,too. EBOLA killed 1.
So, two days after left activists launched one of the biggest national actions ever for raising wages, your idea is that Democrats should talk more like “voters” and less like “activists”?
I agree that Democrats should talk more like voters, and move away from the canned talking points and identity politics/culture war pap. But why does that have to contrast with “activists”? Near as I can tell, the “activists” are the only ones on the left doing much of anything about wages. It’s sure not coming from the party elite.
I missed your last paragraph. I have no idea what it means to differentiate between “living wage” and “getting a raise,” seems like a mighty fine distinction to me.
Another way to say it: Dems must do a much better job of calling attention to the human stories and meanings behind the key issues, and do so in very understandable, concise, and empathetic fashion.
The GOP/Tea Party/conservative messages tend to be pessimistic, strident, and often full of misplaced rage. They seek to incite individualistic, angry, selfish, obstructive, and divisive actions and reactions.
The Dem messages need to reflect a moderate, realistic, and positive tone and approach — humane, positive, compassionate, and urging action that advances the common good.