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OK, now that this thing is in the bag, a couple of election thoughts from a voter and occasional door-knocker.
Biden and Harris ran a good campaign and did what they had to do. This election was necessarily about Trump. The main goal was to defeat him and they did it. They knew what states they had to take back, and they focused on them like a laser.
I thought they could win a few reach states, but they weren't really trying to win Texas, Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, despite a few visits. Trump really was trying to win these states, especially Florida, maybe because they knew they were going to lose PA/WI/MI.
Democrats lost a few seats in the House and only have an outside chance of winning the Senate. There are a lot of post-mortems floating around already about what Democrats did wrong, but remember that Trump gets people to the polls like crazy.
Republicans showed up to vote either for (usually) or against (on occasion) Trump, and they voted for the GOP down-ballot. Efforts to court disaffected Republicans to vote for Biden may have hurt Democrats a bit in Congressional races.
I'm skeptical that any of the criticisms people are offering about could have made much difference down-ballot this year. Maybe some more organizing could have helped a little. This year was about removing Trump, and that cast a shadow over everything else.
Now that the big elephant is out of the room, the Democrats can focus on strategies to get more of the little elephants out.
I'm not a politician, political scientist, or an organizer, so I don't know if I have any good ideas about how to do this, but I have some thoughts.
Recruiting good candidates is the number one priority. That's something that the Democrats did right this year. The candidates for Senate who lost were by and large really good and could have had a shot in any other year.
Fighting for voting rights, getting voters registered, and organizing are also key. I want to see what Stacey Abrams did in Georgia and Ben Wikler did in Wisconsin replicated in other parts of the country. It will take different strategies in different places.
Policy is important, but I don't buy arguments from either wing of the party that adopting certain policies is the key to winning. I don't think people vote positively for policies as much as we think they do.
People do vote against policies they don't like, though. The consistent national message in the midterms should be that the GOP has failed voters. Each candidate needs to show how specific Republican policies have been disastrous for their voters locally.
Democrats can't worry about courting moderate Republicans. They can't worry about recapturing Trump's base. They have to show how the things all Republicans have pushed on our country--not just for the past 4 years put for the past 20 or more--have been damaging.
Then, build on top of that a layered positive positive policy agenda. The base layer is the set of things that all Democrats--progressives and centrists--can agree on. These things need to be pushed nationally as the alternative to Republican failures.
The next layer are the things that progressives and centrists are going to disagree on. I see absolutely no problem with having a diversity of views in the party as long as everyone agrees on certain core principles. What works in one part of the country may not work in another.
I believe we need to elect progressives where we can and centrists where we have to gain enough power in Congress to get things done. Activists need to become comfortable with working to elect someone they may not agree with 100% to help progressive goals in the long run.
It's worked for the Republicans! They have always called themselves a big tent party, and they absolutely stick together to an insane degree. It's worked to help them move their tent very far to the right. Democrats can use the same strategy for good.
Of course, that takes buy in from leadership as well. I actually think Biden is a big tent guy--he is accused of being a wishy-washy centrist, but his platform is actually quite progressive and he works well with people to his left.
Finally, Democrats absolutely cannot give up on fighting against injustice of all kinds and fighting for the expansion rights and opportunities for people in groups that have marginalized. Any proposal that compromises on this is a no go.
That was long, but now I'm done.
Today is a day to celebrate. Tomorrow we get back to work!
Today is a day to celebrate. Tomorrow we get back to work!
