N.Y. Times, Frank Bruni, Tim Ryan; Anat Shenker-Osorio, Lis Smith, “The Democratic Brand Is in the Toilet”: 4 Writers Tell the Democrats’ Fortune
The Politico piece appears to be mostly straightforward reporting of what people said in focus groups—the people in question being several categories of wishy-washy, definitely non-elite voters. Takeaway: “In a trio of focus groups, even voters whopreviously backed Democrats cast the party as weak and overly focused on diversity and elites, according to research by the progressive group Navigator Research.”
If you care about American democracy, the N.Y. Times article is most definitely worth a read. In it, Frank Bruni of the Times moderates an email conversation among himself, Tim Ryan, the former congressman, and two others. (“Ms. Shenker-Osorio is the host of the podcast “Words to Win By.” Ms. Smith was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.”)
Some highlights:
Lis Smith: The Democratic brand is in the toilet. Many of the Democrats who succeeded this cycle — our best over-performers in House races, for instance — are people who ran against the Democratic Party brand. Trump tore down the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but he also expanded his vote the most in our bluest and most urban areas. …
Tim Ryan: The Dems got pinned as the status quo party on inflation, instability, insecurity and every other issue facing working people. Trump was the change candidate in a year when 65 percent of people thought we are on the wrong track. And they failed to redefine themselves on the culture issues on which they were on the other side of 60 percent to 70 percent of Americans. …
Anat Shenker-Osorio: … Voters, outside of hard partisans, think most politicians lie at least some of the time. I know — we just asked them in a survey. Seventy-two percent of them said this of Republican leaders and 70 percent said this of Democrats. This is astonishingly good for authoritarians. What it means, and we hear this in nearly every focus group we do, is that they discount the threats of MAGA. It sounds like this: “Well, Trump’s just saying things. He doesn’t really mean them.” So, he gets to keep his base engaged and enraged, while also seeming like the guy who’s just going to give you a personally signed check.
Meanwhile, it’s absolutely detrimental to Democrats because their purported achievements, desirable agenda and dire warnings are all not credited as real. Nationally, extrapolating from AP VoteCast data, 19 million Biden 2020 voters sat it out this time. This was mainly a lurching couch-ward, not rightward. Why? Voters here and around the world are looking around at what there is on offer and saying: not this. …
Smith: We need to look to who succeeded and overperformed this cycle and why. Some of the top overperformers in House races couldn’t have had more disparate profiles — Pat Ryan, Jared Golden, Tom Suozzi, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Angie Craig. What they had in common was that they were willing to run against the party brand, they met voters where they are on their frustrations with the border and public safety issues, and they talked more about their vision for the future than how bad Donald Trump is. I’d also throw in another thing — these members largely were among the first to call for Joe Biden to step down as nominee. They weren’t in the crew of Democrats who told voters not to believe what they’d seen with their own eyes in that first debate.
Shenker-Osorio: If you want to look at successes that seem to defy “conventional wisdom,” to me that’s Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. He has consistently run on, not from, his values, mixing economic populism with a clear and powerful explanation for the siren song of the right wing: scapegoating, hate peddling and fear mongering. Beshear creates the biggest possible “we” and then conveys why right-wing attacks on groups that have been intentionally “othered” are Trojan horses to enable widespread harms, from taking away our freedoms, to controlling our lives, to screwing over our livelihoods. …
The largest voting bloc in the United States is almost always voter-eligible nonvoters. Folks are opting out of participation for a reason — and it’s feeling as if neither party is actually focused on making life better for working people. Democrats cannot be running as the protectors of norms and institutions, and yes, that includes democracy, because democracy never bought anyone dinner.
Bruni: I’m encouraged, in a way, that I don’t sense Democrats spoiling to fight Trump on every initiative and at every turn. Democrats cannot live on a diet of sour grapes, and that kind of blanket resistance could look less like principle than like reflexive obstructionism and haughty dismissal of election results, and could doom Democrats to failure in the fights that count the very most. Which are those? Which of Trump’s proposals must Democrats do all in their power to defeat and — maybe just as important — are there proposals or general priorities of his that aren’t awful and that Democrats should try to find ways to work with him on?
Ryan: We should be all over the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. food reform initiative. We don’t have to agree with him on everything and we can fight him on other things. It is criminal what we have allowed to happen. We are basically poisoning our own people, driving up health care costs, lowering productivity while it’s all being subsidized by the taxpayer for American farmers to grow crops that go into fake food.
We should put forward a dozen recommendations on the “department of government efficiency” effort. Our federal government is so wasteful and bloated that we should be able to come up with major reforms to save money and help government provide better services.
Smith: We don’t actually know what Trump is serious about doing as president yet. Unlike Tim, I don’t think Kennedy was picked to take on Big Ag and Big Food — I think all of that is being used as a smokescreen for his truly dangerous views on things like vaccines. We should fight Trump and Kennedy tooth and nail if they sow doubt about lifesaving vaccines for polio and M.M.R., because that will actually have life-or-death consequences for Americans (see what Kennedy did in Samoa).
But broadly, we shouldn’t just oppose things because Trump supports them. If he really wants to build more American manufacturing or cut taxes for the middle class we should be for it.
Facing MAGA 