Failure To Act: How The DNC Crashed the Car
As we move forward from the shocking events of the early November and rush into that in between place wherein we look to the future but wish to revel in the moments with friends from home and family members we’re still speaking with, it is time for democrats from all circles of political involvement (voters, activists, elected representatives, and everything in between) to turn the watchful eyes of accusatory suspicion inward at what needs to change in the Democrat national party and voter base in the next two to four years.
When Kamala Harris lost, by a shockingly small margin given the incumbent’s approval ratings and her meager 100 days to campaign, many people on the left assumed that the country had declared whole hearted support for Donald Trump and this is just our country now. Respectfully, I disagree. The down ballot numbers, and the lack of MAGA presence in congress, suggest what I had pointed to in my post following the appointment of Thune: People did not want Kamala Harris to be President, but they also didn’t want Donald Trump to fully be Donald Trump. This is a theory that is already holding. Matt Gaetz had to withdraw among insistence that the results of pre-existing ethics reviews and investigations be seen by members of congress, and Pam Bondi, the subsequent nominee, is a marked improvement by several political benchmarks. I would like to note that she still fulfills what appears to be requirement number 1 to be part of the second iteration of the MAGA cabinet- she is a 2020 election denier.
Fully planning to get into all of that later, I will set that aside for now and focus on the issue facing Democrats today. People didn’t really want Donald Trump to be able to have whatever he wants. They counted on the checks and balances that apply limits to any and all occupants of the Oval Office. Arab Americans who voted for Trump are already expressing regret, and others who voted for him are balking at some of his cabinet picks. So why, then, did they not just vote for Kamala Harris? Because the Democrats are fundamentally out of touch with what the voters need to hear from a Presidential candidate. Some of this is on them, some of it is not. The first thing that Democrats must do is reshape their image and the process by which they select candidates.
For those paying attention to print and online news as well as televised news and opinion anchors, we know that Democrat candidates play well in these circles. This intellectual circle doesn’t reflect the reality of the voter base. It reflects the interests of college educated people who are highly interested in politics and systems that keep our government afloat. There are a multitude of voters in this country who fall into the category of “no-college white Americans” who do not see their needs reflected by the voices of the Democrat Party, because they have lost sight on how to connect. They make space for people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, Indigenous People, and so many others. They have forgotten to make space for the bulk of voters whose support is not guaranteed. Very few members of those groups I just mentioned will abandon a Democrat candidate when push comes to shove.
Those groups have become host to performative rage activism over the smallest of issues, cancelling people left right and center for little to no reason, and threatening action against any candidate, even on the Left, who says something they don’t agree with or choose to interpret as offensive because it fulfills their narrative of phony outrage. However, when it comes to voting day, they will not vote Republican, and most of them tracking the news cycles closely enough to jump on every little comment a candidate makes will see the importance of voting. In short, the Democrat Party has their votes. They can stop bending over backwards for them now, because in trying to appease those outcries, they have pulled back completely from middle America. This is not the fault entirely of Democrats. They have been saddled by false claims from the Republican party about bathroom issues, women’s sports, gender reassignment surgical procedures for minors, etc. that no one on the left has run on or brought up with the dogged repetition seen from the right on these issues. The Democrats have extra work to do, because they now have a mandate to buck off baggage that is not theirs, but buck it off they must.
One of the ways in which the Democrats fail to shake off these issues, and in so doing, fail to connect, is by running candidates that work for the highest educated groups of American voters. While I have always hated the “you can have a beer with him” narrative with a blind passion, the Democrats need to drum up candidates that can go out into the streets and speak normally with groups of average Americans. It’s not the folksy, plainspoken ideal the “beer” dream strives for, but it is an ability to connect with people whose needs are not reflected in the politics of Florida or California. Neither fiercely liberal nor staunchly conservative, just people trying to go about their days, keep their business afloat, and a roof over their heads. Those people desperately want to be heard. We know this because of the ads run in states where Harris didn’t stand a fighting chance, and the ads were successful. “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you.” These ads worked, because while Kamala Harris did not run on trans issues, her record in California whispered louder than she could shout. It followed her everywhere, as did her inconsistencies on key issues and her refusal to separate herself from Joe Biden. Which brings me to another failure on the part of the Democratic National Party.
Democrats can stop running solid, by-the-book, good by technical measure campaigns. AOC made a comment since the election that people in her district voted for both her and Donald Trump, because she knows that both her and the President-Elect are viewed by many as agents of change. This, I believe, is a solid analysis. Given the binary choice between two major parties, it is simple to take the easy interpretation and say that a vote for Trump is a vote for hate. While I have little patience for people who made this choice a second time, I believe that AOC is correct- people generally want change, and they do not have all the information at their fingertips that I, and others like me, do. Given that this desire for things to change is now known and widespread, Democrats need to change the way they run candidates and campaigns. Like Tim Miller said, and I agree, if a candidate cannot run, at least in part, their own fully functioning social media presence, they should not be the 2028 candidate, full stop. The memes and overuse of pop culture references can stop now. Young people know that the Presidential candidate is not one of their friends or influencers on TikTok. They are okay with that. The online presence of a successful Democrat candidate will be funny, informative, engaging, and full of calls to action that reflect the concerns they hear from American people they meet on the campaign trail. They will post small businesses they visited in each stop, ideally, and they will engage in conversations with people that are not arranged to simply be photo ops.
The biggest mountain the Democrats need to climb now is packing their primary with good candidates that can appeal to people from all parts of the country, and make sure that these people are so aggressively normal they could give Tim Walz a run for his money. The reason they must do this is because Trump’s behavior, the worst of which Republicans seem very eager to contain and control, is abnormal, erratic, and all based on personal ego. He is just crazy enough to have a passionate following, and just handled enough to be seen as not too big a threat to Democracy. The most interesting thing about Trump, and other Republican Candidates for a few election cycles, is they have semi-successfully ran against Democrats that don’t exist. They invent issues about surgery on minors, women’s sports, and so many other outlandish issues that impact less than 2% of the country, blame the Democrats for it, and offer themselves as a solution. Meanwhile the Democrats run on the economy, the environment, anti-tyranny, and many other issues that are actually problems, without refuting a single one of the Republican candidate’s claims. This has given the Republicans permission to get crazier and crazier, and has painted the Democrats into a weird corner of running a candidate that won’t bother people, with the result that their candidates flipflop their stances, don’t ever dispute fringe claims, and can’t seem to get a foothold. The Democrats will never run the kind of candidates Republicans think they are running against, so now they have to give them a candidate to run against that they will absolutely not be able to stand up against. The next Democrat candidate needs to be able to call out a lie for what it is, stop letting the pitch go by when absurd claims about minority groups are thrown around, and proudly proclaim their thoroughly researched stances on key issues that quickly become deciding factors in elections. I hate to say it, but at this point, given the rhetoric surrounding Trump and his associates and the way they treat women, and the fact that this was not a losing proposition for the American people, the next Democrat Presidential candidate must be a married man with a family.
People have pointed out, some in dismay, some in victory, that Trump’s proposed cabinet is revenge for the Me Too movement. The support for Trump in 2016 can be interpreted as revenge for the two-term success of President Obama. The progress we thought we made when Obama was elected twice was immediately followed by backsliding into fractured parties, partisan division, and a surge of racial and gender-issue driven tension the likes of which could not have been foreseen. While it may be incredibly difficult, for now the Democrats must redefine progress as a newfound ability to handily win elections, by maintaining a stream of candidates that can support those civil rights issues without getting sandbagged by claims that they are neglecting average Americans and communicate to the American people what’s true and what isn’t, preferably in a relatable and funny way.
Ironically, the biggest failure of the DNC is that they did not start the search for this fabulous pool of candidates from Day 1 of Biden’s presidency. The signs were clear that Biden intended to be a one term president, or at least that he should have been regarded as a bridge candidate. The DNC should have begun immediately finding the next person who would be suitable to be victorious against Donald Trump in 2024. I do not know that Kamala Harris would have been successful with more than a hundred days. I actually believe that she might have, based on the numbers. This cautionary tale applies strictly to the future of the Democrat Party, but I am left to wonder what would have happened if the DNC had not fallen asleep at the wheel. I do know for certain that they cannot afford to do so again.
No one likes to be lied to. No one likes to be patronized, or condescended to. No one likes to feel like the villain for getting out of bed in the morning. And no one likes to be the only one in the room who doesn’t know what’s going on. By following a new campaign and messaging model guided by those 5 principles, the DNC would be amazed at what they can achieve. I know they can do it. I hope they do, because by following this model and forcing sanity into our national conversation, the Republicans who are also tired of Trump and his ilk will be reunited with the party they know and love. This method will, overtime, enforce a leveling out of the American party system, wherein each party will be a spectrum- liberal and conservative Democrats and Republicans working together for a common goal, disagreeing only on how best to achieve it. America deserves nothing less than that distant utopia. We were there once. Surely, we can do it again…
