For the first time in more than four years, I didn’t post a blog for more than two weeks. I started a few but never finished them. I was traveling around Minnesota and enjoying checking out the people and scenery more than the politics in North Carolina. I do have some observations, though.
I spent relatively little time on social media, usually checking in on twitter and Facebook once or twice a day but rarely spending more than a few minutes on either platform. I don’t feel any less informed because I got my information a few hours later than I would have with a “BREAKING:” twitter post. Instead, I felt more relaxed and balanced.
I thought a lot about why Democrats have lost so much in recent years. Right now, the party has a real problem determining what it represents and too many people confuse issues with ideology and message with principles. The party needs a set of broad, inclusive tenets under which it can build a big tent that reaches beyond its base.
The party has become defined by the interest groups that offer litmus tests for determining support for candidates. That’s what interest groups are supposed to do. It’s not what parties should do. Parties should provide a set of core values that can be broadly defined yet give commonality to all people who consider themselves members. Democrats should get back to their roots of standing up for people against powerful interests that include both corporations and government. The core values include fairness, justice and equality.
If you’re running for Congress as a member of the resistance in a Republican held Congressional or legislative district, you’re probably going to lose. People who consider themselves members of the resistance already support Democrats and already are engaged in politics. Because of gerrymandering and self-segregation, most of the resistance already lives in Democratic districts.
The people you need to reach don’t care much about either the resistance or the Tea Party. They aren’t into slogans and don’t go to protests. They’ve also been resisting a lot longer than you. They’ve been throwing out establishment candidates and rejecting the status quo with startling regularity since 2006. And they’re not all working-class whites, either. Some are working-class African-Americans and Latinos who took a pass on 2016 because they didn’t like either choice. Others are middle-class suburbanites who see their children leave college laden with debt and working multiple jobs to service it. They want a fair shake again and hope for the future, but they don’t necessarily want it to come as another government program.
Your job as a candidate is not to convert these people to your point of view, but to assure them that you understand theirs. You’ll have to work hard to gain their trust because they believe they’ve been lied to and left behind for more than a decade. If you go to them with slogans and political dogma, you’ve probably already lost them. They don’t define themselves in political terms and are suspect of people who do.
For Democrats to win again, they need to figure out that the biggest threat facing America is not interference from Russia but a populace that is losing faith in its government and leaders. They need to spend less time demonizing Republicans and more time understanding why people support them. It’s not all just racism and xenophobia. It’s also fear that the safety net won’t be there to support them when they need it because of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s the belief that low-income workers are keeping their wages down. It’s an inherent distrust of rules and regulations that’s as American as Mom and apple pie.
Until Democrats spend more time trying to understand the voters of middle America instead of trying to get those voters to understand them, they will struggle electorally. Republicans certainly have their problems, but that’s a result of an internal ideological battle over whether they are the conservative party of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan or the populist party of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. Given that dynamic, Democrats may well win next year, but if they do, I’m afraid they’ll learn all the wrong lessons.
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 >
Misters Pete and Jay, you should:
a) Listen to yourselves
b) take your own advise
c) read Al Franken’s latest book and seriously consider his recipe for success.no,
I might be on the democrat’s side but I am getting a bad case of fatigue listening to you shriek without a singles constructive suggestion (and no I don’t consider the “Bernie Bros” a free chicken in every pot, free college for all and a free mansion with 2 BMW’s in their garage for everyone, without a hint of how to pay for it, a viable approach.
Yes, I think the republicans are world class whack-a-doodles. I find the number of people buying in discouraging, I find that I may actually get to experience a nuclear holocaust amazing ant that it will be started by the US even more so.
but tearing of hair and carrying on??? Not really helpful. Why don’t you spend some time thinking of a constructive suggestion or 2, like expanding social security withholding to 100%of people’s salary, taxing all income at the same rate as earned income to name a few, and for #@ist’s sake, stop calling them entitlement’s; they’re programs we have paid for!
p.s. Smarty is my pony
? Um…Oh…So that’s what a non-sequitur looks like. The question is what do the Democrats stand for – and underlying that – why do most people think it stands for nothing except being anti-Trump. That leads to the problem of the content of the brand, which leads to some really awkward questions about what the party has been standing for in practice. Adding a few more planks to a badly leaking boat does not seem to me to be the way forward.
If Bernie is giving away 2 cars with every free mansion, they should at least be made in America not Germany.
We have missed you, Thomas. We all need a break from the constant attacks on our sensibilities. This bizarre, surreal new normal is exhausting, discouraging and disappointing in so many ways. The Republic edges closer to the brink with every new day.
Over the weekend, I read Al Franken’s book, “Giant of the Senate,” in which he brags on his native Minnesota. He found things to like about his Republican colleagues, even though he believes that the Republican Party is fundamentally toxic to our national interests as a people. He looks for the still-beating heart within some of the worst of the worst Republicans, and finds it, through humor, except for Ted Cruz. Franken always makes me laugh while making serious points.
Apropos of your comments, Franken tries to find a positive message, then unites people around an issue and works for solutions to problems that confront all Americans, regardless of party affiliation. He has had some success in helping native Americans, veterans and some health-related issues as he looks for matters upon which there is broad agreement.
Franken has been a tireless fighter against the right wing disinformation industry since the early 1990s.
Democrats cannot run campaigns with the message “Not Trump” as the only issue. Democrats will fail if their only mission is to demonize Republicans. Republicans are either blind to their evil ways or they really are demonic and are happy about the chaos they create as they dismantle civil society and consort with our enemies of America.
In the 1990s, I went to a lot of film festivals where there were submissions by Russian film-makers. In the background, the subtext, Russian society was completely and utterly a gangster culture from top to bottom. That wasn’t news to Russians so they didn’t present that fact as something remarkable or noteworthy. It was the reality. Russia was, and is, run by criminals.
That Trump is a sexual predator, con man, psychopath and a liar is a fact of life in America. It is now the American subtext. The world knows it; Americans know it. It is no longer news. Everyone knows he ran a con called Trump University, that he grabs women by the crotch, that he would go to jail for tax fraud if he released his taxes, that he is a despot trying to murder the free press.
Democrats must step into the foreground with solutions problems that will help people. Solutions should be announced loudly and repeated often. Republicans are going to do what they have always done. They are going to pollute the environment, fatten the bank accounts of people with already fat bank accounts, and they are going to try to kill people by taking their health care away. That is them. They will spread their lies on their right wing outlets, and fools will believe them. Get over it.
Democrats must keep on keeping on. We educate the populace; we build roads; we create opportunity; we create a level playing field under the law; we build businesses and we create jobs. Let the billionaires do what they do. Let them lie, cheat and steal. If we can put them in jail, great, but, in the meantime, we need to keep on telling the truth and helping people. We need to continue to find solutions to problems facing the working class and middle-income people. That should be our message.
Democrats’ job has been made more difficult by voter suppression, Citizens United, and gerrymandering, but there it is: our mission is difficult, but not impossible. Evil bastards on the right get up every day ready to knock down the middle class and destroy the environment; we have to get up every day and fight back. It is exhausting, but there is no alternative.
Thom,
II like your distinction: “.. too many people confuse issues with ideology and message with principles. The party needs a set of broad, inclusive tenets under which it can build a big tent that reaches beyond its base.” And I like the line “The party needs a set of broad, inclusive tenets under which it can build a big tent that reaches beyond its base.”
You are right on the money as to what this needs to be: “Democrats should get back to their roots of standing up for people against powerful interests that include both corporations and government. The core values include fairness, justice and equality.”
But then it seems to me you lead us back into old-D thinking: “Your job as a candidate is not to convert these people to your point of view, but to assure them that you understand theirs.” I’m reading this as trying the “feel your pain” ploy rather than standing for real principles with specific application.
In VA we had Perriello run for gov in the Dem primary with one great populist progressive stand:
Coming out against Dominion’s pipelines and refusing to take money from them. He also had a strong public financing of elections stand – and then he berried his principled stand in vague blah blah and let Northram run to the left of him though Northram was always on the defensive on the Dominion issue . I worked on that campaign. it was infected by Podesta/Obama/Clintonian top-down “tried, true, and wrong” campaign thinking. Perriello almost broke free. But one thing was very interesting about the results. His populist appeal did very well in rural Virginia. He won there and got clobbered in liberal Northern Virginia.
Bernie had the formula for progressive populism – clear values, clear principles, clear program. It needed more concrete fights against the big boys – fights which are clear illustrations of bold leadership and what government should be doing. Bernie also did very well in rural areas. It also helps to be a person of real authenticity and integrity – especially with people who haven’t seen an honest politician come through for generations.
Democratic candidates also need to take on the real hardly-acknowledged problems also: Automation and jobs being one. And I screamed at the TV more than once for Bernie not to blow by his most important fact: .01% control more than 90% of the wealth. What!? Let’s stop for a few minutes, turn to your neighbors, and talk about what that incredible figure means to everything we care about. We need real people with real values running on real issues that people care about because they effect people’s real lives. Bernie and Perriello were also damn good listeners as politicians go.
Now the question is whether my ideal candidates can run in swing or conservative districts as Democrats. That is one truly damaged brand as recent polling shows. People go apoplectic about Hillary still – for bad reasons (sexism and right wing propaganda and very good reasons – her corrupt, elitist, neo-liberalism. She, not Bernie, are core to the Party’s brand image. Time to run as an independent. I’m afraid the zombie of the Democratic Party will eat the brains of even the best candidates it runs.