Election Day 2018 was a significant success for Democratic Party efforts nationwide, capturing the U.S. House and several governorships, along with other statewide offices around the country. You’d think with this result, we’d be praising success, talking about how to replicate it, and looking at ways to tweak and improve.
Instead, as is typical, we have spent a lot of our time wringing our hands and wondering how, exactly, we could do better, combined with assumptions of why, exactly, we didn’t succeed in races that we had hoped to prevail in.
Along with this handwringing has come a new call, often by former elected officials, to look seriously at the Democratic Party and contend that the answer is we are losing rural communities and trend red districts because, by gosh, the party is simply too liberal and progressive. So the answer is to come up with a way to be, well, less liberal and progressive.
In an interview with NPR, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill decried the fact that the party has imposed hard rules, which, in her view, make it difficult to attract voters to moderate candidates. What McCaskill doesn’t point out is that in 2016 Jason Kander, who ran a far more progressive campaign, performed just as well—and often better—in rural counties throughout the state.
Both candidates lost, and a presidential year does have an uptick, but if the reason rural voters stayed away was that they were upset with a progressive message, it would stand to reason that a progressive campaign would significantly underperform a moderate one. That simply didn’t happen. Why? Because this common wisdom, that rural areas are packed with Democratic voters who want socially conservative candidates, is a combination of hype, bunk, and a little bit of salesmanship. What it isn’t, however, is a recipe for success.
Over the past several years, I’ve had time to visit candidates and state and local organizations in a lot of states, especially those with a large rural community. I grew up in those same rural communities. What is often missing is an understanding of Democratic registered voters and those who vote in rural communities. While some are conservative, a growing number of them are some of the most hardened progressives you’ll meet anywhere. Surrounded by Republicans and often outnumbered, they value their party stances and become some of the strongest advocates of the party platform by necessity. It is hard to keep your party preference a secret in a small town, and you get used to defending it on a frequent basis when everyone knows your business.
When put to the test, time and again, it isn’t just anecdotal meetings but performance at the ballot box that shows the veracity of this claim.
Kansas 2018 had a multi-way primary for Gov. Josh Svaty, a former legislator in the Kansas State House from Western Kansas. The argument was made that in order for Democratic efforts to prevail in 2018, Democratic candidates had to be “more welcoming” of an anti-choice candidate, and that this was the strategy to win.
In an interview with conservative outlet The Sentinel, then candidate made his opinion clear:
As a state legislator, Svaty supported a bill that said life begins at fertilization. He also supported legislation that allows a woman’s family member to sue to prevent her from seeking an abortion.
“I am not disputing the record (Planned Parenthood) is displaying,” Svaty said. “I’m not going to disavow those votes from 10 years ago.”
The strategy, however, didn’t pay off, as Svaty spent most of the remaining primary trying to redefine himself as not anti-choice. Finally, he ended up choosing a pro-choice running mate to show a willingness to hear out the issue.
Still, despite the early claims which came from press and legislators about how this would be the viable choice for Kansans, the Kansas Democratic primary voters instead chose Laura Kelly—and the 1st District, the reddest district in the state, the one which surrogates proclaimed would be important to at least hold serve, and that Svaty would have appeal in? Kelly won that in the primary too, and fairly convincingly.
Before we get this wrong, had Josh Svaty won our primary, I would have worked my tail off to help elect him governor, as he would have been a significant improvement over Republican Kris Kobach. I also believe that candidates like Svaty have a future inside of our party, and efforts to drive out conservative Democratic members are not necessarily helpful. Instead, I’m pointing out that the logic of those who say that the only way to succeed is by becoming more conservative—well, that continues to be disproven, cycle after cycle, and the protection gained by being a conservative Democratic elected official is almost nonexistent.
While Kansas Democratic efforts for our state house weren’t as successful as we would have liked, we held serve. The trade-off also showed us where our voting base truly is at the moment. In electing five new legislators, the issues that drove their victories included: net neutrality, environmental controls on chicken waste, a strong budget, and LGBT rights. Kansas elected the first two openly LGBT state house representatives and a first-generation immigrant to the state house.
Democratic legislators who did not succeed in their re-election efforts were all traditional, more conservative Democrats. Despite their more moderate voting records, they were not saved from attacks by Republicans hoping to oust them. It didn’t stop Republicans from campaigning hard against them, either.
Looking at voter turnout in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and throughout the Midwest and South, what we have learned is that, yes, there are real progressives in rural communities. And Democratic voters, too. We also learned that for statewide candidates, attempts to become more conservative in order to reach Republican voters who might vote for them are largely fools gold—you might attract a few, but the number of progressive voters you lose ends up nullifying those gains.
In the primary, I worked to stay as neutral as possible. However, I could see the polling data and had a pretty good idea where the race was heading. In talking to communities, I received the same message.
We risk creating a divide in this party for absolutely no reason. It’s a divide that insists that rural Democratic registered voters are vastly different than any other kind of Democratic faithful, anywhere in the country.
It’s rubbish.
Virginia, there are rural progressives. And they do vote. We need to do more to reach out to rural communities, recruiting candidates, supporting them, building hope, and working from the bottom up. Sometimes, we will have conservative Democratic members run, and they will represent their district well. Sometimes, we’ll have progressives who win, or register and bring out new voters during their races, tightening the margin in races we thought were unwinnable.
There is no single recipe, and no firm answer.
The faster we realize that and start actually talking to the people in rural communities rather than try to shove them inside of neat boxes that match our stereotypes, the better chance we have to keep growing the party—if not immediately, then in the long term.
