Democrats are facing an identity crisis
N E W YOR K » Doug Ogden doesn’t know what to do.
The 75-year-old retired law enforcement officer is disgusted by President Donald Trump. But he can’t imagine voting for a Democrat in 2020, either. A self-described independent in South Carolina, Ogden doesn’t recognize the modern-day Democratic Party.
“The state of the Democratic Party is wild against wilder,” said Ogden, standing with his arms crossed at a recent town hall meeting for Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg. “It scares me.”
At the core of Ogden’s concern is a broader question about the direction of the Democratic Party and its values in the age of Trump. While Democrats are united in their fierce opposition to the Republican president, most party leaders agree that Democrats will not reclaim the White House simply by running against him; they must give people something to vote for.
But nine months into the first year of the 2020 campaign season, Democrats are no closer to resolving the big questions dividing their party by race, generation and ideology than they were on the day of Trump’s inauguration. And as the campaign enters a new heightened phase after Labor Day when far more voters begin paying closer attention, there is increasing pressure on Democrats to answer the questions behind their extended identity crisis.
How can they peel back Trump’s support with white working-class voters while boosting turnout with minorities and suburban women? How hard should they lean into antiTrump fervor and calls for impeachment? And perhaps above of all, should they embrace transformational change on issues like health care, free college and higher taxes on the rich or a modest shift back to normalcy after Trump’s turbulent presidency?
Some Democrats suggest an all-of-the-above strategy. But other presidential candidates, party leaders and top activists are searching for more definite answers to win over those anxious voters desperate for something or someone else to believe in.
“There are diverse messages coming from diverse candidates,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a 2020 presidential candidate, said in an interview.
“What the corporate media and the corporate pundits are trying to tell us is that it’s a middle-of-the-road agenda that will win the election. I categorically disagree,” said Sanders, a selfdescribed democratic socialist.
Sanders represents the Democrats’ energized left flank. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, the only member of the Democrats’ 2020 class who has held statewide office in a state Trump won, fears his party will scare away the same working-class voters it needs to beat Trump if they embrace extreme change.
“We need to make sure voters know we can improve upon their lives,” Bullock said in an interview. “That’s less about a revolution than addressing the problems of here and now.”
In the middle of the Democratic Party’s quest for a clear identity are candidates like Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Buttigieg, the 37-year-old openly gay mayor of South Bend, Ind., whose positions straddle the divide in a party whose poles are set by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on the left and by former Vice President Joe Biden and Bullock, among others, as moderates.
As Buttigieg courted overwhelmingly white audiences recently in rural South Carolina, he said it was a “false choice” to think Democrats have to appeal to minority voters at the expense of the white working class. And he offered a direct message to older, white voters like Ogden, who fear that his party has become too focused on the concerns of minority voters.
“Supporting people like him and making sure we have racial justice in this country go hand in hand because everybody’s life in this country is diminished as long as these inequalities continue,” Buttigieg said.