USA TODAY International Edition
Hey, Democrats: Heed moderates
Will this week’s debates also veer left?
Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio are unlikely to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Make that highly unlikely. Each polled at 1% or less in a recent nationwide survey. But all three of the long-shot candidates have messages that their fellow Democrats ignore at their peril.
Those messages, delivered in separate conversations with USA TODAY’s Editorial Board, can be summed up as follows: If the party keeps lurching left, rehashing old battles and alienating working-class voters, President Donald Trump will be putting his hand on the Bible again in January 2021.
You wouldn’t know it from the Democrats’ first debates in Miami last month, but it doesn’t matter whether their nominee wins California by five votes or 5 million votes next year. What matters is whether that candidate is competitive in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other battleground states that Trump swept in 2016.
This ought to be self-evident to anyone who understands the Electoral College. Yet progressives are promoting policies on health care (end private insurance and cover undocumented residents), immigration (abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and decriminalize illegal entry), education (pay off student loans and make public college tuition-free), race relations (study reparations for slavery and relitigate court-ordered busing) and the environment (remake the whole economy) that appear tailored to repel moderates and anti-Trump conservatives.
Just because Trump is catering to his base doesn’t mean Democrats should follow suit, especially because the progressive base is smaller to begin with. Last year, according to Gallup, 35% of voters identified as conservative, 35% as moderate and just 26% as liberal. Even in these highly polarized times, it’s political malpractice to ignore or alienate the middle.
2020 will be won in the middle
“This election is going to be fought in the center,” said Delaney, 56, who served three terms in the House.
Not that Delaney — a successful businessman who declared his candidacy two years ago, has visited all 99 counties in Iowa and is promoting “real solutions, not impossible promises” — will necessarily be the one to carry the centrist banner.
What Delaney has in smarts and earnestness he lacks in charisma and name recognition. (He was my congressman, and I probably wouldn’t have recognized him if I had bumped into him at the Safeway.) Still, Delaney’s worth listening to.
Are Democrats veering too far left? “It is a valid concern. We have to make sure we’re getting behind policies that make sense, that you can pay for and that you can get done. … A lot of the things we’re proposing, or at least some of the candidates are talking about proposing, don’t fall into that category.” Like “Medicare for All”?
“The single-payer Medicare for All proposal is not only bad policy, but it’s bad politics . ... More than half the country has private insurance and most of them like it. … If we put up a nominee who runs on Medicare for All, we will lose the election.”
And the “Green New Deal”?
“It’s just dishonest. … The premise of the Green New Deal is that we will get off fossil fuels in 12 years. That is impossible. When you set forth impossible goals, people just stop trying . ... If (President John F.) Kennedy would have called for us to go to Jupiter instead of the moon, no one would’ve gotten behind it.”
Party needs diverse coalition
Moulton, a 40-year-old combat veteran of Iraq, agreed that Democrats need to look beyond their liberal base.
“We can’t win this race if we don’t bring together a pretty diverse coalition. It’s got to include everybody in the Democratic Party, plus independents and even some disaffected Republicans,” said Moulton, who didn’t qualify for either the Miami debates or this week’s second round in Detroit. “Donald Trump is going to be harder to beat than a lot of Americans think.”
Ryan, 45, who represents northeast Ohio, espouses a populist centrism that contrasts with Delaney’s more corporate centrism.
“We have a perception problem with the party,” he acknowledged. “We are perceived as being a coastal elite, Ivy League party that does not connect to working-class people. The waitress, the teacher, the construction worker — we’ve lost our connection to them.”
At this week’s debates, the Democratic candidates, collectively and individually, have a second chance to make an improved first impression. Joining the crowded field and bolstering the centrists this time around will be Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, the only candidate to have won a state Trump carried.
It remains to be seen whether Bullock can gain any more traction than the other candidates polling in the low single digits. But just because the alsorans don’t stand much of a chance doesn’t mean they have nothing worthwhile to say.
Bill Sternberg is the editor of the editorial page.