Despite overall demographics trending in their direction the Democratic party fairly consistently loses a majority of Congressional and local elections across the country and all it would take for them to win the Presidency back is one high quality candidate. Moreover right now up and coming quality national level Democrats seem sparse.
Democratic success so far has occurred as much as anything merely by dint of the mistakes the other side has made. Yes, this time it is a clown car, but next time?
The flip side of appealing more broadly is a wider but less passionate base … which translates to poor mid term and local turn-outs compared to the narrower but driven GOP base. The flip side of a more highly educated base is that they are also more cynical, including of their own sides candidates and of the process in general.
A New York Times look into (believe it or not) “The Science of ‘Inside Out’” claims that “it is anger (more so than a sense of political identity) that moves social collectives to protest and remedy injustice.” And an often cynical diverse broad base is not so angry … in fact appealing to the angry side turns off some parts of that base. And would in particular likely lose much of the center that it needs to win.
A strategy of relying on the other side to piss off elements of your base enough to drive passion is not a reliable one, and (gerrymandering’s impacts aside) does not win local and congressional races.
In that context how does the Democratic Party brand itself now and going forward?
The public mood, or at least the Overton Window, seems to be shifting in a left-progressive direction. It would have seemed astonishing just a few years ago that Bernie Sanders could get the traction and relevance he is getting now – and not for who he is (a Northeastern Jew with wild hair, arguably too old to be POTUS), but solely for his left-progressive politics. ISTM the time is ripe for a lefty version of the Tea Party – which by its nature can be just as radical and demanding and subversive as the RWTP without being in any way irrational or stupid like the RWTP is, and can take over the Democratic Party without marginalizing it, but, rather, energizing an angry base previously discouraged and indifferent, and determined to achieve rather than obstruct. Of course, the RWTP is not going away . . . just yet . . . but the attrition of generational demographics will render it a bit less relevant every cycle.
I think Bernie’s success has as much to do with Hillary as it does to anything else. Without Hillary, you’d have a full field of candidates that would overshadow him easily.
I’m not a Democrat (not a Republican either), but my family, friends and acquaintances are pretty conservative and here’s what I see that’s hindering the Democratic brand.
The Democratic party has decided that they’re the champion of the minority and the socially marginalized groups. This is all well and good that they represent and support them, but it’s perceived very strongly as being exclusive of average white middle and working class people.
The idea that the Democrats are strongly in favor of various social safety net programs and wealth redistribution. In itself, this isn’t perceived as bad, but when combined with #1, it’s perceived as a very “Robin Hood” type scheme that takes tax money from the white middle and working class to give to various minorities and marginal groups. As you can imagine, this isn’t a popular idea.
A perception that the Democratic party is soft. Not only on criminals, but on the world stage in foreign policy. There are a LOT of relatively centrist people who tend to think that you talk and negotiate with nations and groups that are civil enough to talk and negotiate back in good faith, but that you bomb the ever-loving shit out of the rest of them, as naked force is all they’ll understand. In addition, they have a hard time accepting the idea that criminals have much in the way of rights, dignity or anything else; having given those privileges up when they broke the social compact by committing crimes.
The idea that the Democratic party doesn’t hold religion or traditional values dear. A lot of it is as a result of #1 and #3- if they celebrate things that are against their religion, and are against law and order, they must be horrible and opposed at all costs.
So the Democratic party really needs to make a huge push to prove that their policies are those of the white middle and working class, AS WELL as everyone else.
The plan, as it will be with any party, is to motivate your base and demotivate the opposition’s while winning a majority of swing voters. Do two of those three and you win.
Motivating your base is simple in theory: give them a reason to vote for you. The problem for Democrats is that for a long time they’ve attempted to motivate their base by giving them something to vote against: the Republicans. I’ve always found it hilarious how Democrats claim that Republicans win based on fear, when Democrats have been using fear of Republicans as pretty much their only message in most campaigns. Obama proved that giving people a reason to vote FOR your party works better than trying to get them to vote against the other party. Since there is no Obama running, they’ll probably spend the entire campaign claiming that Donald Trump is the face of the party, hoping they can make a Todd Akin out of him. Fear and loathing.
Demotivating the base can be done in three ways: making them think they can’t win, making them think it won’t make a difference even if they do, or making them feel that there just isn’t much at stake. The third is what keeps Democrats out of midterm and special elections.
Winning swing voters doesn’t really need to be explained. Democrats did it well in 1992, 1996, 2006, and 2008. Since 2008, not so much, but it’s not like they don’t know how. The progressives just would rather not.
Hell, no. The working class is a marginal group now, and needs those safety nets more than anybody.
Centrists, RW, whatever people who think that are, they’re idiots. Just look at how bombing the shit out of uncivil nations has worked out lately. It only ever makes things worse, for them and for us.
“Idiots” is too weak and kindly and non-scatological a word for people who think like that. And coddling criminals is not a problem we have, in a country with a higher incarceration rate per capita than any other.
If only!
That’s rather a high bar, and one the GOP will never meet either. It is impossible for any one political party to represent all Americans’ values, nor all Americans’ interests, because we do not all have the same values nor the same interests.
Our interests overlap more than they diverge. The Democratic and Republican parties have a long list of things that thetynever publicly debate. Dan Carlin discusses this very issue frequently on Common Sense. Both sides have their lists of “hey! Look over here!” points that pass for party platforms. Meanwhile, the corruption continues. To answer the OP, the Dems need to tweak their set of “hey! look over here!” points. They are still oddly stuck in the 1970s.
There are a few they should discard. For starters, gun control, as they keep trying to do it, costs votes and offices.
For something new, start addressing the incestuous government/lobbyist/corporate circlejerk and they’ll really get my attention. Right now, one man with 75 million dollars has more influence than 75 million scattered people with one dollar each. Money controls politics. It is most likely impossible to eliminate that, but the buying of influence can certainly be changed.
Ever heard of perception vs. reality? That was kind of my point- middle and working class americans probably have more to gain by aligning themselves with the Democratic party, but the way the narrative has gone, is that the Democratic party represents gays, poor blacks on welfare and illegal hispanics. And it does, although not primarily or exclusively.
It’s not really a rational thing, but until the ***perception ***that the party represents white, working class and middle class americans changes, they’ll have an uphill battle.
I suppose’s good that the Republicans seem to be tripping over their own dicks by having clowns like Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz run for the Presidency. Those assholes are so alienating that any non tea-party loon will literally vote for anyone else.
I hate even saying this, because I don’t agree with the idea, but from a numbers perspective, using the idea that parties care only about winning, how bad is it to be losing the middle-class white vote?
Since we’re talking about the future of the brand, rather than the present, it has to be mentioned that less and less of the electorate is going to be white if current trends continue. So appealing to whites may, in the long term, be a losing move if it comes at the cost of alienating minorities. Middle-class - is it really shrinking? Obviously not having it shrinking is best for the people, but if both parties throw up their hands and do nothing about it, and it is shrinking, then in the future appealing to the ever-shrinking white middle class might not win elections.
So even if the perception is that Democrats don’t serve the white middle class, shifting their focus to a shrinking market might not be the best long-term strategy (though not so good in the short-term). Cynical, but from a numbers perspective, there’s that.
It’s easy: Frame the narrative the way Bernie Sanders is framing it (essentially the same way FDR framed it back in the day). Deemphasize the social-cultural issues (on which progressive victory is eventually inevitable in any case), and emphasize economic issues and class issues (defining the middle class and the working class to include the white middle/working class, but all other colors as well). Drive a wedge between the 1% and the 99%.
As someone increasingly leaning Republican this is totally my perception of the Democrats. As well as the perception that they’d like to ban everything but Grandpa’s old bolt-action deer rifle.
The Democratic brand has fewer problems than the Republican brand. Not to say that there are some things that can’t be worked on, mostly by aggressive debunking of Republican fear-mongering.
In terms of foreign policy, Democrats have to fight temptation to appeal to that section of the electorate that wants to turn Iran into glass and nuke Mecca to boot. That insanity gave us the Iraq war and led directly to ISIS filling the vacuum of power in the region. Republicans will always have the advantage with xenophobes, Democrats can’t try to out-pander to them.
Income inequality is a long-term winner for Democrats. Someday Joe Sixpack is going to realize that cutting taxes for the rich doesn’t create jobs for anyone. The more income inequality rises and the more Republicans are stuck in the mantra that we need to let the “job creators” back up their armored cars to Fort Knox, the less well this will play in the heartland.
Social issues are no longer the Achilles Heel for Democrats. Gay marriage is here to stay, that battle is over, those who vote R based on being homophobic are going to be dying off. Abortion shows no great movement in opinion one way or the other and unless a future Court overturns Roe, will not be much of a factor.
In the long term, being the party that stands up for minorities is a better strategy than being the party that hates minorities. Every election, the electorate is less white and increasingly less rural. It would be nuts to want to quit riding the demographic wave.
We have to realize that gun lovers will never vote D. Fuck 'em. If we try to pander to them, they fuck us in the ass anyway. So screw trying to placate them.
Thus, the unbroken string of Democratic legislative triumphs of the last 30 or so years. “Fuck 'em” is a great soundbite for the people who are on the same page of every issue as you, but it is not a viable political strategy. What you call “pandering” is just recognizing that the party does not march in lockstep, nor should it. If, on the other hand, your primary motivation is ideological purity rather than electoral victory, go ahead with “fuck 'em.” You can sit with the other members of the political non-starters club and bitch to each other how much better things would be if only you were in charge.
Democrats won more House voters than Republicans in 2014, only gerrymandering kept the gavel in Boehner’s orange hands. I’m just saying that in general, pandering to the Second Half of the Second Amendment crowd is a waste of time and effort. There may be a few districts where a pro-gun Dem can and should win, but the notion that the Democrats’ fate rises and falls on guns isn’t logical.