AN OPEN LETTER TO DEMOCRATS
Dear Democrat:
Harry Truman said that in a contest between a Republican and a Republican, the Republican always wins. Harry would have recognized that in the late election there were way too many Democrats running as Republicans and not as Democrats and that this, to a large extent, explains the poor results for Democrats. The electoral strategy of Democrats is also an example of Einstein’s statement that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
To blame Hillary for not running a better campaign is not entirely fair. Yes, she should have taken a different approach, but the one she took is the same one taken by lots of Democratic candidates for decades, often with bad results. But no one seemed to notice. Hillary and lots of other Democratic candidates took the well-worn path to defeat in 2016, seemingly on the theory that adopting the same old failed political strategy would somehow produce a different result. So it is time to take stock of reality and make changes in the Democratic Party’s approach to public policy and elections, which will reflect that reality.
Ever since Ronald Reagan was elected, too many Democrats have thought that in order to get elected, they had to take something like Reagan’s policy positions, they had to generally agree with the political theories put forth by Republicans and conservatives and they had to use the same techniques to raise money as the Republicans did. This approach is illustrated by Bill Clinton’s “Third Way/Republican Lite” policy. Bill could make this work because he was charming enough to attract voters on a personal level, but for most Democrats, it left them running against Republican opponents while sounding basically like a Republican. They certainly did not try to explain why Republican policies didn’t work or why their views of how the world worked were completely wrong.
The problem with this approach by Democrats is that Republican policies are intended to hurt the natural constituency of Democrats, i.e., the 99%. Even before Reagan, many Republicans recognized that they could not compete with Democrats whose public policy positions would help the 99%, since that would offend the 1% who provided the Republican campaign funding.
The Republican solution to this problem was to ignore serious public policy discussion and just make up fake explanations about how the world works; focus on making Americans fear as many things as possible, including each other; describe Democrats as supporters of small special interest groups rather than the 99%; claim that people’s economic problems were caused by Democrats taking their money and giving it to women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and others (thus making racism and sexism acceptable public policy positions); and running campaigns that engaged in a lot of mud-slinging, often based on false claims. All of this was funded by a small group of rich people, including the Chamber of Commerce, CEO’s of big companies, banks and securities traders, all of whom wanted the government to help much them richer.
Democrats, for whatever reason, have for decades refused to challenge any of this. Instead, they decided that campaigns could only be won by adopting the Republican tactics of mud-slinging and spending lots of money raised from rich people, who only asked that the government help them become richer at the expense of the 99%, who are the Democrats natural constituency. Democrats also adopted the theory that that there was no need to back public policy positions which helped the 99%, because that would offend their rich contributors whom they were convinced that they needed to win elections because that was what Republicans did. Instead, Democrats tried to appeal to narrow interest groups by scaring them about Republicans and conservatives and promising each group some changes in the law. The theory was that if you got enough small groups to vote for you, based on fear of Republicans, you would end up with a majority of the votes. This, of course, only proved the Republican claim that Democrats don’t represent a majority of the people, but rather only narrow interest groups.
And so we ended up with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who is in the pocket of the payday loan industry, but was very good at raising money from the same rich people that Republicans raise money from, as head of the DNC. Hillary raised a lot of money from the 1%, as did many Democratic Senatorial candidates, but they lost because they had no real message for the American people, as a whole. Which is not surprising, given that the contributors wanted to become richer at the expense of the 99%, whatever other narrow policy issues they were concerned about. So instead of a broad-based public policy campaign, Democrats ran their usual interest politics and mud-slinging campaigns.
So what should Democrats be doing now? First, they need to acknowledge that they need to stop taking and running for office as if they were Republicans. Second, they need to stop being tricked by talk of the need for “bipartisanship”, and instead start pointing out that the Republican policies are bad for everyone except the rich Republican contributors and that the first step in reversing the economic inequality is to vote Republicans out of office.
Third, Democrats need to face up to the fact that the massive economic inequality threatens the country at the deepest levels. No society or country can continue on the path that the US is on where the 1% gets richer and richer and everyone else gets poorer. Democrats must challenge the Republican explanations of this problem and speak the truth, even though it will hurt fund-raising from some rich people. On the other hand, they need to recognize that all of the narrow interest groups that they support would benefit greatly from a reversal of the economic inequality.
Fourth, Democrats must face up to the fact that the identity politics they have been pursuing only leads to losing elections. There is more than enough evidence that this approach does not work, that continuing is indeed insanity. Among other things, Democrats should note that identity politics does not turn out voters in those groups. If 80% of women or African-Americans had voted and voted for Hillary, Trump would not be President. If the identity groups could not get their voters out to vote against Trump, they never will. A new approach is required.
Fifth, Democratic leaders need to recognize that this is a time for patriotism. The country needs their help, either in making serious changes in the country or in getting out of the way so that other, younger and more patriotic people can take the party in the needed direction. Super-delegates are only a way for the failed leadership to remain in control. They have to go, as do the state leaders, unless they are willing to make very substantial changes. Democrats need to be recruiting candidates who will challenge the way the Party has done things. Patriotic Democratic leaders have to give up their ego trip positions and cushy jobs and let others lead or they must drop their rich contributor friends who will not accept that they have to become less rich and then help the Party move on to new policies and electoral approaches.
Yours,
A Friend
