Democrats test liberal messages in midterms
A single-payer health care advocate in South Texas. A gun restriction supporter in Dallas. Cheerleaders in Arkansas and Iowa for public option health care.
Weeks into the primary season, with five more states voting Tuesday, Democrats’ midterm class is shaping up to test what liberal messages the party can sell to the moderate and GOP-leaning voters who will help determine control of the House after the November election.
It’s not one size fits all, with every candidate checking every box wanted by the activists driving the opposition to President Donald Trump and the GOP Congress, and Democratic voters typically aren’t tapping the most liberal choices in targeted districts. But, taken together, the crop of nominees is trending more liberal than many of the “Blue Dog” Democrats swept away in Republicans’ 2010 midterm romp.
That means voters now represented by a Republican will be asked to consider some or all of the mainstream Democratic priorities that may have been considered “too liberal” in the past: more government involvement in health insurance, tighter gun laws, a path to citizenship for people in the country illegally, reversing parts of the GOP tax law, support for LGBTQ rights.
“You have ballpark 60 districts as diverse as Kansas and Staten Island. One bumper-sticker message will be self-defeating,” said former congressman Steve Israel of New York, who led Democrats’ national House campaign in 2012.
The question is whether that path results in Democrats gaining the 23 new seats they need for a majority.
The next test will come with Tuesday’s primaries in five states: Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia.
A key measure of Democrats’ leanings will come in suburban northern Virginia, where vulnerable Republican Barbara Comstock has a half-dozen Democrats vying to knock her out of Congress in November. The field spans from establishment favorite Jennifer Wexton, a state senator who touts her bipartisan deal-making in Richmond and says the U.S. should move cautiously toward universal health insurance, to political newcomers with calls for a $15hour minimum wage and a more immediate move to single-payer, government health insurance.
Israel disputes that the current House slate represents a notable leftward shift nationally, and national party leaders have still angered liberals with some of their recruitment choices.
Still, resistance leaders are confident of their influence. “We are seeing grassroots action and organizing in a meaningful way,” said Maria Urbina, national political director of Indivisible, founded after Trump’s 2016 election. “We see the party apparatus coming in behind some of this action on the ground.”