Do Democrats have a death wish?
Hug the center or go all in with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad? View the Virginia results as a warning that Democrats are losing support in rural areas and suburbs or view it as a sign that voters just want results?
The current debate within the commentariat seems to be over whether the Democrats can best save their congressional majorities and avoid a second Trump presidency with a Franklin Roosevelt strategy (big government spending programs) or a Bill Clinton strategy (accept the notion that the government will never expand again and govern as an Eisenhower Republican). Thedebate needs context. First, the Dems are really terrible at selling themselves and their programs. That’s tactical.
The exception was Mr. Clinton. He was the party’s best communicator since Franklin Roosevelt.
Other than the Clinton presidency, Democrats are weirdly inarticulate or aloof.
President Joe Biden and his party have made a number of proposals and already passed some significant legislation that should have broad appeal. But all the country sees so far is a smorgasbord of social programs and big spending.
I have never understood why Democrats who want to be FDR, or Truman, don’t act like either man.
The president should go directly to rural, small-town and middle America and make his case.He should say: Look I get that you are angry. NAFTA was a huge mistake. Corporate Democrats have betrayed you. But I have heard you. And Donald Trump and Trumpism offer you nothing. Donald Trump did not bring back coal or steel or the economies of our small towns. Plus, the Republicans have given you a “do-nothing, oppose-everything” Congress. Don’t fall for their reactionary play acting.
And then give them some real, but realistic, data.
The president could talk about the expansion of Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid; about help for small business and enterprises like solar energy; and internet access for all — the new Tennessee Authority.
He could talk about the jobs infrastructure rebuilding will create.
Next, the president should start doing weekly fireside chats. Take one issue, or problem, and one programmatic response per week. Talk to the people about what we can do together. Break it down andmake it clear.
Make clear what the infrastructure initiative, which eluded Mr. Clinton and Mr. Trump and has finally happened after 40 years of talk, will mean in our small towns and rural areas as well as suburban communities, especially the forgotten parts of Appalachia and the South.
FDR was the great communicator. Truman was the fighter. But Democrats have copied neither man. They let Ronald Reagan copy FDR and allowed Mr. Trump, in his profoundly unhealthy, undemocratic and phony way, to play the fighter.
This is not rocket science, Democrats. Go to the people. Make your case. Admit that, with unfettered trade and corporate sponsorship, you lost your soul.
Now losing your soul is, of course, more than a tactical problem. And while tactical problems abound for the Democrats — lack of party unity and an addiction to petty infighting, trying to do too much at once legislatively, and a tendency to panic when the going gets tough, all come to mind — fundamentally, the party must regain its center and its heart.
The heart, and soul, of the Democratic Party should have to do with concern, and real affection, for the less and least powerful. That has not, in recent years, tended to include Appalachian or blue collar males who did not attend college.
The party’s central practical purpose should be creating economic opportunity for all who are marginalized.
If the essence of the Democratic Party is elitism and grievance, it willlose to Trumpism.
If it tries to win based on the left’s takes on the culture wars, it will lose.
Democrats, starting with the vice president, need to go on listening tours and find out why open borders or critical race theory worry so many people.
This does not mean we must close borders or deny the stubbornness and sting of racism.
It simply means balance and prudence.
This struggle for its own soul has been going on in the Democratic Party since 1972. In that year, a good man who could have saved us from a second term of Richard Nixon, George McGovern, allowed himself to be defined in terms of cultural issues (“amnesty, abortion and acid”). Second, he allowed himself to be defined not as an economic opportunity warrior, but as a leveler.
This was partly poor tactics. But it was also when the party first lost its way: The party was and is dominated by elites who ignore much of the rest of the country.
Democrats need to get back to their roots— Al Smith not AOC; Truman not George Clooney. They need to start listening again and persuading again.
I say this as one who has watched the Democrats get more and more precious over the last 50 years.
Many working-class Americans stopped believing in the Democratic Party because they perceived that the Democrats had stopped believing in them— stopped believing that middle Americans were smart and had goodhearts.
The Democrats seem to have a deathwish.
But now there is no governing alternative to the Democrats. So they need to get it together.
And the answer to the growing power of fascism on the right cannot and must not be the fascism of the left— canceling all who are not pure enough, shutting down free speech and harassing someone like West Virginia Rep. Joe Manchin, up close and personal, whenhe leaves his home. So, what now?
Cornel West once said: “I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.”
The Dems don’t have to blow it again.
Maybe the people did elect Mr. Biden to be FDR. But they did not electhim to be McGovern.
Make Build Back Better about families and jobs. And then sell it.