Democrats mostly ran on bipartisanship
Democrats might want to think twice about ripping West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for wanting to appear bipartisan — many of them ran on a promise to do the same.
House Democrats spent $21 million on TV ads in 2020 touting their bipartisanship — and next to nothing about racial justice or climate change, according to a new analysis from the progressive strategy and donor group Way to Win.
That is one of the findings from the Californiarooted group, which contributed $110 million in support of Democrats in 2020. It commissioned an analysis of all the TV ads for 2020 House candidates, and the results pointed to some real challenges facing the party in the midterms.
While Dems spent three times as much as Republicans to convey their desire to appear bipartisan, no ads mentioned the words “Black lives,” and few focused on global warming, according to Way to Win’s findings.
Meanwhile, while Democrats were promising to sing “Kumbaya” when they got to Washington, Republican candidates spent half their ad dollars — $49 million — shredding Democrats as “socialists” and “extremists” who want to “defund the police.” And, as has been the case for the past decadeplus, Republicans
invoked the specter of San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi returning as Speaker of the House, to the tune of $42 million.
Way to Win is worried that the $243 million worth of TV ads run by Democrats — 37% more than the GOP in House races — didn’t push back hard enough on GOP attacks, said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the group’s vice president and director of strategy.
“We didn't really talk about the right things. We ignored our own base. And then Republicans used our silence to define our agenda to voters,” Ancona, an Oakland resident, said on my “It’s All Political” podcast.
Way to Win’s analysis is the latest Democratic postmortem on the 2020 race, and the one that dives the deepest into its TV advertising — which is still the main way that many voters over 50 and the DVRaverse absorb campaign messaging. The analysis studied key words that were used in the ads, whether they were “positive” or “negative,” and how much was spent.
It’s worth noting that one top Democratic operative scolded me for using the word “postmortem” to describe a party that won the House, Senate and White House. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee acknowledged that when it comes to media planning, “we must rethink where we make expenditures and when. While Democrats had expenditure advantages on TV in 2020, it did not always translate to wins.”
It’s another sign that Democrats, who are typically more into navelgazing and selfreflection than the GOP, are understandably worried about the 2022 midterms. They are combing the 2020 campaign with extra scrutiny, knowing
that the party in power typically loses seats in the midterm election if it also occupies the White House.
An even starker statistic to Ancona: Even though House Democrats vastly outspent Republicans on TV ads, they won zero of the 27 races listed as tossups by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Plus, 279 of Democratic candidates underperformed how Joe Biden did in their districts; 156 performed better.
That’s a sign Democrats have little room for error. They currently hold an eightseat advantage in the House, with five seats vacant.
“It is possible to buck historic trends and gain power in the 2022 midterms,” said Way to Win’s analysis, which was shared with The Chronicle, “but it won’t happen without doing things differently, particularly when it comes to our
message.”
Let’s start with health care, the issue where the Democrats spent most, including $64 million on ads that mentioned “preexisting conditions.” The problem, Ancona said, is that it’s a “polltested” policy term that often doesn’t resonate at a gut level with voters.
Meanwhile, Ancona said, Republican ads focused on the words “taxes” and “Nancy Pelosi.” That tells you right away what their story is, she argued: “Democrats are gonna raise your taxes. Nancy Pelosi is the ringleader of it all.”
Similarly, she said, too many Democratic ads focused on appearing bipartisan while Republicans spent big on painting their opponents as radicals. That question likely will linger into next year’s elections as Democrats fume at Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, for saying he won’t
back the party’s preferred legislation on infrastructure unless there is GOP support.
“If you’re lifting up working with them across the aisle, you’re essentially normalizing their attacks by not calling it out,” Ancona said.
It’s a bit like how Democrats spent far too much time trying to woo back whites who voted for Barack Obama and then switched to Donald Trump in 2016 — and not enough time on the party’s base, half of which are people of color, she said.
“Our base is really diverse,” she said, “but a lot of our messaging has mostly ... kind of been whitecentric.”
Occasionally, according to the analysis, Democrats ran ads that were not “culturally competent.” The study called out former Orange County Rep. Harley Rouda for airing “antiChina” ads against an
AsianAmerican GOP candidate, nowRep. Michelle Steel, in a district that is 18% Asian Pacific Islander.
Rouda responded Wednesday that the group’s analysis was “completely wrong,” noting that the district’s AsianAmerican population is “overwhelmingly Vietnamese Americans who have a lot of distrust for communist governments, such as the government where they fled, as well as the Chinese Communist Party.”
Rouda, who has defined himself as a moderate in the suburban district where Republicans outnumber Democrats, also touted bipartisanship.
“When I decided to run in 2017, I made a commitment to the voters in my district that I would do my best to work with members across the aisle as well as members within my caucus,” Rouda said, adding that he was “committed to continuing to do that,” as he plans to challenge Steel again next year.
That rematch, should it happen, will be one to watch. It will be a sign of whether Democrats will be writing a real “postmortem” on how they performed in the 2022 midterms.