Our battle plan for 2018 and 2020 should build on the considerable strengths of both Hillary’s and Bernie’s campaigns, rather than repudiating either of them.
Hillary’s approach almost got us a landslide; don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater
If Hillary had won just 112,000 more voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would be our President-elect. This, along with Hillary’s near-record turnout elsewhere, her almost winning in North Carolina and Florida, polls that gave her double-digit leads before Comey’s October Surprise, and Hillary making states like Arizona, Texas, and Georgia competitive for the first time, suggests that there wasn’t a major, fundamental problem with Hillary’s approach and that we should not necessarily do everything completely differently in 2020 from what Hillary did this time. Rather, we should focus on how we can get at least 112,000 more Democrats to turn out for our nominee in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Maybe it will be a matter of campaigning more in those states; maybe it will involve highlighting issues that matter more to those voters, such as job creation, less expensive healthcare and education, and infrastructure spending; maybe it will involve getting a more charismatic nominee with less baggage, and/or one who already has a big following in the Midwest (e.g. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who defeated her Republican opponent 61-35 percent in 2012). The lesson of 2016 is not about Hillary’s approach being majorly flawed, or about Americans being more racist and misogynist than before; rather, it’s about how the emergence of Trumpism in the Republican party necessitates a somewhat different strategy for dealing with the peculiarities of the Electoral College. Actually, it seems that the same Midwesterner Republicans who favor racism and misogyny every election turned out at the usual rates for Trump, while a tiny percentage of the Democrats who voted for Obama either voted for third parties or failed to turn out in 3 swing states that mattered: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
We shouldn’t throw out the baby (Hillary’s building of a big-tent Democratic coalition with significant attention to issues important to women and people of color as well a slightly more moderate version of many of Bernie’s best ideas, a 50-state strategy, and a data-driven voter turnout machine with particular focus on getting unlikely voters to vote) with the bathwater of her very narrow loss. Hillary’s support was a mile wide but an inch deep, and the polls showed that; because she was close to tied with Trump in a lot more states than Obama had been with Romney, Hillary was both more likely likely to lose and more likely to win a landslide than Obama was; unfortunately for us it was the former. If the election had been held at any point between the first debate and the Comey letter, Hillary would have won, probably a landslide at some points (when her poll numbers gave her a double-digit lead over Trump). Actually Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush could easily have lost if their elections were held on a day slightly earlier than the day they were held. So the lesson is not that we need to completely avoid approaches and candidates like Hillary in the future, but rather that elections are extremely volatile and unpredictable. Maybe Hillary spread herself too thin, gambling on a 50-state strategy that would result either in a landslide with widespread downballot coattails to let Democrats control all branches of government, or the surprise loss that we see now. If she had only focused on her firewall states even though her lead was in double digits and then she won just her firewall and lost the Senate and House because she avoided a 50-state strategy, she would win but be blamed for being selfish and not trying to spread her considerable downballot coattails around to get a Democratic Congress she could work with; and she still would have lost if she had picked the wrong states to focus more time on, given how close she was in so many states and how unclear the polls were about which ones actually had the closest races (e.g. if she won Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan at the cost of losing Nevada, New Hampshire, and Virginia). It’s quite likely that her 50-state strategy did help ensure that our Senate and House losses were not as bad as they could have been. She never could have predicted that Comey would pull his stunt right before the election, evaporating her two-digit lead. That two-digit lead Hillary had really shows that we were on the right track with a lot of things, though.
Bernie’s success in the primaries showed us that almost half of Democratic-leaners have a real hunger for more progressive approaches, as well as for the charisma, authenticity, and bold promises Bernie embodied. However, the fact that Berniecrats and proposals did not fare especially well downballot suggests that adopting Bernie’s approaches wholesale is not necessarily the solution. For instance, if the only reason Hillary lost was because Midwesterners wanted Bernie instead, then Bernie-like downballot candidates (e.g. Feingold in Wisconsin) would have won in those states. So rather than focusing entirely on changing all Democrats into Bernies, Democrats should just adopt the most popular of Bernie’s proposals and focus on them more, support younger candidates with Bernie’s charisma, authenticity, and willingness to make bold promises, while also supporting more moderate Democrats in areas where more moderate approaches work better.
Building a younger bench of downballot Democrats
Our top priority should be to rebuild our bench, starting with downballot Democrats in 2018, and try to promote a lot of promising young candidates in the hope that other Clintons, Bernies, and Obamas will eventually emerge among them. One strategy I’m going to take as a voter from now on is to weigh age, charisma, and lack of scandals more strongly in primaries for downballot candidates, favoring those who are more charismatic, and have less baggage that might be attacked, and also younger, so that they will have more elections in their future, and more time to accumulate enough support and fame to rise up in the ranks and excite the younger voters who are the most likely to support Democrats but also most likely to not vote. I think the success of less experienced but more charismatic candidates like Obama, Bill Clinton, Trump, Reagan, and George W. Bush, suggests that charisma and likability are more important than just about anything else in winning over the less politically active and informed voters who tend to make the difference between winning and losing elections.
Possible 2020 Presidential nominees: Klobuchar, Warren, Harris, or Cortez Masto?
We should start working now on getting new Democratic candidates to run for every downballot seat currently held by a Republican, and helping current Democrats in elected offices get the support and name recognition to get even higher office in the next election, including for President. A woman would be particularly effective as our nominee against an incredibly, offensively misogynist sex offender like Trump, especially if the Trump/Pence Presidency succeeds in taking away reproductive rights as they promised to do. All the women and male feminists whose hearts soared at the likelihood of a woman President only to be crushed as our hyper-qualified female nominee had the election stolen from her by an incredibly misogynist sex offender would pour 4 years of pent-up outrage into her campaign. Meanwhile, many of those who claimed they were ready for a woman President, just “not this woman,” would want to prove to themselves and others that they are really not sexist by voting for a woman who is completely different from Hillary. Maybe Amy Klobuchar, a true Midwesterner “Senator Next Door,” who could certainly nail down the Midwestern states Hillary lost, her “Minnesota Nice” persona contrasting sharply with Trump’s vindictive bullying. Or Elizabeth Warren, a true populist, could win over much of the working class once they realize they were duped by Trump’s faux populism.
We also just elected two exciting new women of color: Kamala Harris, Senator from California, and Catherine Cortez Masto, Senator from Nevada. They are young and new enough to win over Millennials, have limited baggage, and be convincing change agents (and Americans will be ready for a change after the torture Republicans will put them through). They could adopt many of Bernie’s most popular ideas, but unlike Bernie they could placate older Cold Warriors by adamantly claiming that these ideas are not “socialism”. And they won’t be weighed down by long careers full of compromises that make progressives question their sincerity as some did with Hillary. Cortez Masto, the first Latina Senator, would nail down Nevada, drive up even more Latinx turnout (and there will be even more vote-eligible Latinxs then) and have a better chance than Hillary did of winning states with large Latino populations, such as Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Texas. Kamala Harris has a lot of charisma, which seems to be more important than anything else in this American Idol-like political environment. And people of color would be energized by the possibility of electing the first African American woman, the first Asian American, and the first Caribbean American President all at once—so many glass ceilings could be shattered in one election. With her multiple ethnic identities, she might get even more people of color to turn out and vote for her than Obama did (and there will be even more people of color in the electorate in 2020 than ever before).
Building permanent voter turnout machines through unions, universities, and churches
We also need to work on turnout, by partnering with long-term, permanent institutions instead of just by creating campaign-based turnout machines in Presidential election years. Hillary had an outstanding ground game, but a one-time, one-year-old campaign-based ground game just can’t compete with a ground game based on powerful longstanding community organizations such as churches and civic organizations, many of which Republicans have turned into their voter turnout machines.
Partly because of the Republican Party’s strong ties with churches and civic organizations, the vast majority of Republican leaning voters are reliable voters who always vote for the Republican nominee no matter what, while a much larger proportion of Democratic leaning voters are picky, finicky purists or low-info, unreliable voters who will not turn out to vote unless our nominee truly inspires them to fall in love. Trump had much more baggage than Hillary, but Trump still got almost as many votes as Romney did, while Hillary got far fewer votes than Obama did. Like they say, “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Eligible voters who don’t vote are very disproportionately Democratic leaners. If all eligible voters voted, Democrats would win landslides at every level of government, every election. We can blame our unreliable voters all we want, but we won’t be able to win elections unless we give them what they want, even if what they want is someone incredibly charismatic, too young and inexperienced to have much baggage, and able to convincingly and authentically make big, bold, but simple and easy to understand promises.
But because we lack a ground game based on permanent community organizations,we can only get our unreliable voters to vote when we have an unusually inspiring rock star like Barack Obama running for President who can make them fall in love, which means we almost always lose during non-Presidential elections. We should keep trying to find Obama-style rock stars to run for President, but our victories will be limited if we have to depend on that, since there are so few rock stars like that in politics.
We do have some progressive churches, especially Black churches, on our side, but not nearly enough. Not all churches are anti-gay, anti-abortion, and anti-science, so it might be possible to get more of the more tolerant churches on our side by emphasizing ways in which our platform aligns with religious values of compassion and helping the poor, sick, powerless, elderly, and children. But we would really have to bring religion into our discourses far more than we currently do.
Universities also have a lot of potential, as most faculty and students favor Democrats already. University students are among the least likely to vote, so there is huge untapped potential there. And university students are also likely to move into positions of power 5-10 years after they graduate. But we would need to emphasize a platform and candidates that excite them, which means getting younger candidates, and putting things like free college, funding for universities, lower healthcare costs, marijuana legalization, and lowering the drinking age on the front burner. And we need to really work with organizations like the College Democrats, and offer internships with progressive political organizations to college students, every year instead of just during election years. Also we need to try to get more people into universities, which the Republicans are actively working against, because they know that universities could potentially be a much more powerful force for Democratic turnout and activism than they currently are.
Labor unions used to be key turnout machines for Democrats, but we’ve allowed them and our alliance with them to atrophy. We need to fight Republican union-busting everywhere it happens, as well as put unions’ concerns on the front burner of Democratic agendas.
So don’t give up! Hillary lost because about 112,000 Democrats in 3 key Midwestern states stayed home on election day. Some combination of the strategies I listed above, and probably others I haven’t thought of but others might, can easily win those voters and many more back.