Once again, Democrats are touting falling short as a moral victory. In Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff came approximately 2 percentage points from winning the seat outright in a special election. Donald Trump won that district by 1 percentage point. In other words, Ossoff underperformed Hillary Clinton. That is a fact.
The bottom line is that the failure and incompetence of the Trump administration have not yet marginally changed the characteristics of the district's electorate. Those are the numbers. Forget that Tom Price, who previously held the seat before being named secretary of Health and Human Services, won it by north of 20 points. After all, he was the incumbent. We do not need to fool ourselves.
Democrats claimed the same moral victory in Kansas, where progressive candidate James Thompson lost his congressional race by an acceptable margin. Democrats see shrinking margins in defeat as future victories. In reality, we’re doing nothing more than pulling the wool over our own eyes. Why? Because every time Democrats get close, Republicans will tweak their message. In the case of Ossoff, they have 60 days until the run-off election to do so.
One should not brag about losing less badly. One should promote winning. Winning stories like the ones reported in The Huffington Post recently are a perfect example.
The city of Kankakee elected its first African-American, Democratic mayor. West Deerfield Township will be led entirely by Democrats for the first time. Elgin Township voted for “a complete changeover,” flipping to an all-Democratic board. Normal Township elected Democratic supervisors and trustees to run its board ― the first time in more than 100 years that a single Democrat has held a seat.
Khalid Kamau, a very progressive activist lawyer endorsed by Our Revolution, earned a city council seat in South Fulton, Georgia, a newly incorporated municipality outside Atlanta. He won by a landslide with a grassroots message. He engaged average Americans on their turf. High-priced ads did not get him elected: engaging with people did.
Progressives from around the country invested more than $8 million in getting Jon Ossoff into a runoff. How many additional dollars will be spent trying to take the seat? If he wins, it will be a symbolic victory. But win or lose, it will have been a waste of resources that could otherwise get spent in local elections to bring more progressives into office in races throughout the country.
Most Americans are progressive in the majority of their values. When asked about policies like Social Security, Medicare, the right to health care, or public education, they support these by overwhelming margins. So why is it that progressives, the folks who by definition will materially make the lives of the middle class and the poor better, have a hard time winning? The answer is: a failure to communicate.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. How many times do we hear consultants tell Democrats that they just need to bring out the base for a win? What happens when many in that base come out but instead vote against their interests, as they did in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin during the last presidential election? When will Democratic leaders realize what Republican consultants know but do not say? Party affiliation when folks enter the confines and privacy of the voting booth is fungible. And the party or group that reaches voters on the carnal level ultimately wins.
The corporate establishment always knew that. Over the last several decades they've executed the Powell Manifesto, written by Democrat Lewis Powell, with abandon. The Republican Party and corporate Democrats have not deviated from its tenets. It is the reason we have an Affordable Care Act that benefits insurance companies that pilfer the average American citizen. It is the reason pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge us exorbitant prices for drugs originally developed with taxpayer dollars. It is the reason we do not have single-payer/Medicare-for-all health care and universal health care, which is in effect in some form in every democratic industrialized country in the world.
So how does one stop the insanity? Remember that party affiliation is fungible. People vote for those they connect with in their gut. One can demonstrate that Republican policies materially hurt most Americans. But the GOP wrap themselves in the flag and “America First” rhetoric, and they instill a fear of the other. Progressives must use those same impulses, with the truth framed in similar terms.
Progressives must understand that it is about more than bringing out the base. It is about expanding and educating the base. The right counts on ignorance, and we must remember that ignorance defines our original state of being. The process of growing and teaching must start locally. We build trust locally.
All Americans want a good education for their children. That is one place where people can work together to elect school boards that are looking out for children. Parents working together will soon realize that the funding and laws they need to do better by their kids need legislation and financial support from the state. If the state politicians do not oblige, those same politicians get booted out. If the federal politicians do not support the requests of the state and local politicians, they are voted out. The common interest, with people working together, can create an actual “we, the people” government.
The aforementioned scenario may be overly simplistic, but the process is definitely on point. It requires hard grassroots work to bring people together while fighting the misinformation distributed by many Washington think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and others. But it can be done. We must do it. If progressives win locally—by winning the hearts and minds of their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances through working together on issues of shared concern—the national wins will follow.