Dems, stand for something
Democrats hoping that their party can recapture control of the House of Representatives in 2018 should probably not get their hopes up. National party strategists seem determined to ignore the main lesson of the 2016 election, and are making mistakes that signal a long season in the cold lies ahead.
A widely ridiculed slogan contest by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeks to electrify the public with “Make Congress Blue Again,” and “She persisted, We resisted,” and, the worst of the bunch, “Democrats 2018: I mean, have you seen the other guys?” Ugh. If nothing else, Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump should have established that simply harping on the deficits of one’s opponent is no guarantee of victory. Even if that opponent has no government or military experience; has been caught telling lies by the bushelful, and was captured on video making lewd and obscene boasts about personally harassing women.
Clinton made a compelling case that Trump was unprepared and personally unsuited for the presidency, a reasonable strategy that did not carry the day. Early data strongly suggests that voters — including core Democratic constituencies — need a positive, affirmative reason to support the party’s policies and candidates.
Wisconsin, for instance, has 22 counties where majorities that supported President Obama’s re-election in 2012 flipped Republican last year, giving Trump the state and the White House. An analysis by Priorities USA found that many of these Obama-Trump voters felt pressed or left behind by a faltering economy.
To an extent that die-hard partisans find difficult to understand, many Americans have a loose, almost casual relationship to party affiliation. Their logic is: We tried the Democrat (Obama) and things didn’t get better, so let’s try the other guy (Trump).
That may seem maddening and inexplicable to Democrats in New York or Washington. But it also offers a sobering reality that Democrats have no future without recapturing core constituencies, especially white working class households.
A group of top liberal strategists recently summarized the state of play in the American Prospect: “The white working class is very well distributed geographically for the purposes of political influence. They are disproportionately concentrated in swing states,” they write. “But they are also disproportionately concentrated in swing congressional districts. And they are especially concentrated in swing congressional districts within swing states.”
In other words, to win back Congress Democrats ought to camp out in the industrial Midwest and offer policies and personalities targeted at these swing voters — who have already seen the other guys and decided to take a chance on them.
A more sensible approach for Democrats would be to address a core issue like homeownership, which is at its lowest rate in nearly 50 years, the lingering result of the mortgage meltdown a decade ago and a slump in building new homes. Between 2011 and 2016, the average U.S. home price shot up 34% to nearly $349,000, Politico reports. That’s a disaster of the first order for young homebuyers and working-class families.
To make matters worse, we’re seeing a return of subprime lending, According to William Poole, the former President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, the government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are once again backing mortgages to people with shaky credit and employment history.
“Fannie/Freddie have redefined ‘subprime’ to a credit rating of below 620; previously, these firms and banking regulators had used 660 as the dividing line that defined a subprime borrower,” Poole writes. “Now by using the lower number, they may be buying even weaker mortgages than before the financial crisis . . . . Someone please convince me that ‘this time is different.’ ” The reality, of course, is that this time is not different. Democrats have an opportunity to sound the alarm on the dangers of handing out government guarantees on subprime loans, a practice that adds rocket fuels to risky financial behavior and sets working families up for future bankruptcies and foreclosures.
Dems also have a chance to embark on a national campaign to restart the homebuilding market, in part by championing local zoning rules that encourage new development. Doing so might ruffle the feathers of local environmentalists, but a progrowth economic agenda is what voters in depressed urban and suburban swing counties are looking for.
It will be a lot easier to sell than lame slogans.