Democrats strategizing over how to overcome their recent defeats now have a plan: go left.
They are reasoning that they can get back those working class voters who chose Trump. After all, Trump’s populist economics promises–including protectionism, job protection, and more jobs–goes along with what Democrats used to stand for, before the party embraced globalism and Wall Street.
The Democrats believe that the cultural issues are still to their advantage, so they are going to emphasize their social liberalism even more. After all, Trump is quite pro-gay, and that didn’t hurt him.
And Bernie Sanders, the socialist, was their one candidate who really created enthusiasm.
Normally, defeated parties try to go to the center, as David Weigel shows after the jump, but this time Democrats are going to purge their flirtation with moderation–begun by Bill Clinton–and become even more extreme.
Do you think this strategy will work?
From David Weigel, Why the Democrats’ 2017 comeback dream is like nothing we’ve seen before – The Washington Post:
Unlike in 2004, Democrats do not look at the electorate and see a majority of personal rejection. Gay voters don’t see a president-elect who wanted to change the Constitution to prevent them from getting married; they see one who ceded the issue and literally waved a rainbow flag.
For that reason, the last seven weeks have seen Democrats cement their move to the left. The only debate over the future of the party is happening in the race to run the Democratic National Committee. As we reported this month, that’s reopened some divisions over the 2016 primary, but it’s actually seen the party consolidate around left-wing positions.
Outgoing Labor Secretary Tom Perez, whose biggest impediment in the race is being seen as the establishment opponent of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), has not even tried to defend the Obama administration over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In a tweet today, already being mocked in pro-Ellison circles, Perez brands himself as a Mother Jones-approved “progressive who gets things done.”
The DNC race is also notable as the first that includes absolutely no straight white men. (Ray Buckley, the one white male candidate so far, is gay.) . . . .
Next year, while it is not what they boast about, Democrats are expecting mistakes by Trump — the most unpopular incoming president in decades — to create opportunities for them. Their debate about winning a new majority is not about a savior from red America, or even a change in policy. It is about better organizing, and how to win back voters who were Democrats until the party was branded as neoliberal and pro-trade.
There has really never been an election aftermath like this. And there has never been a moment when one party consisted almost entirely of conservative and moderate white voters and one consisted of nonwhites and progressive whites. There will be more certitude about what the parties stand for, and less dreaming for a Democratic savior.
Illustration by Ralph Chaplin – Industrial Workers of the World journal “Solidarity” (June 30, 1917 issue). Public Domain.
