USA TODAY International Edition
Democrats, don’t embark on ill- advised lurch to the far left
Democrats are wondering what hit them. For many, the idea of President- elect Donald Trump makes it easy to believe that the Democratic ship is sinking. Anyone can see why. There are icebergs aplenty: Voters returned Republican majorities to the House of Representatives and the Senate at the same time they sent the highest number of Republican governors and legislators to state capitals in nearly a century.
But before Democrats launch the lifeboats and embark on an ill- advised tack to the far left, distraught liberals should keep one fact in mind: Even with her baggage, Hillary Clinton earned support from a million more Americans than Trump. That’s a sign the party needs a course correction, not a panic attack.
The good news is that some of the Democrats’ comeback work will be done for them. A party tends to do better in Congress and state races when it can rail against the guy in the White House. And Trump presents unique possibilities as a foil.
But Democrats have weakened to an unusual degree over eight years. And the fight to reshape the party’s leadership at the Democratic National Committee seems more focused on putting the right spin on Democratic losses than on the work of rebuilding the party.
And that is exactly the mistake Democrats have been making. The excitement of championing America’s first black president and reshaping America’s troubled health care system took too much focus off the search for new blood and new ideas, and using them to win state and local elections. The result was a Democratic primary battle between a septuagenarian and a 68- year- old.
Normally, Republicans nominate familiar faces who have waited their turn. Normally, Democrats can argue that Republicans want to turn back the clock. Not this time. Even the near unanimous backing of the tech industry couldn’t help Clinton lay out a winning vision of the future. Without excitement, millions fewer voters turned out for her than did for Obama.
The party needs a tactical tuneup as well, with a focus on basics such as discovering why white voters, particularly those without a college education, abandoned them. It needs to rediscover ways of appealing across racial, ethnic, gender and age lines. The less Democrats focus on divisive social issues and the more they elevate the unifying power of their economic message — income inequality, the minimum wage and access to education — the better off they will be.
And Democrats need to be tough in opposing the presidentelect. They should pick the right moments to use all their power to stand in Trump’s way, particularly when Americans will see the party as fighting for what is good for all.
But the real work of making the Democratic Party competitive again will take place far from Washington. We won’t know whether Democrats have pulled it off for two years and even more important four years from now, when the makeup of state legislatures will determine which party draws new congressional districts to its own advantage.
What is clear now is that the Democrats should not judge their leaders by who has the right demographic look, with the smartest social media feed and the best sound bites on the talking head shows that only insiders watch.