Staying on Message, and having a great message, is more important than ever in these crazy times
The environment that Donald Trump is creating is so juicy, so mesmerizing, that it is all too easy to focus on his antics, and not on winning back the House in 2018. The Democratic National Committee seems to have fallen into that trap. Their website today reads: JOIN RESISTANCE SUMMER.
The U.S. Senate Democrats recently released their A BETTER DEAL slogan and program. I like that slogan more than the DNC's, but it still misses the mark, I believe.
The other day I read about a study of Obama-Trump voters that was conducted by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. I found some interesting and telling observation on this group of people in an August 17, 2017 New York Times article by Nate Cohn.
First: "The Obama-Trump voters generally support Mr. Trump's key campaign pledges on police, infrastructure spending, trade and the environment." I'm not happy about their thinking; what I have found by talking to some of these voters is that they want fairness, especially regarding immigration. They aren't especially upset with rich people or big corporations. (The "Better Deal" program pits "special interests and the very wealthy" against the "middle class". I'm not sure how helpful that is.)
Second, a number of Democrats running for office in 2016 either won a bigger share of white working class people without a college degree, or lost by a smaller margin than Clinton did. Tammy Duckworth in Illinois, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, and Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania won their races. John Kander lost his bid for the US Senate in Missouri by three points; Clinton lost by twenty.
The Democrats may not be able to get back all of these voters who flipped from Obama to Trump. Democrats should not abandon their positions on the environment and police brutality. They should, though, try to learn what Duckworth, Feingold, McGinty and Kander did to outperform Clinton in 2016. And then they should use that information to craft a compelling program and message for 2018.
