In 2016, Democrats lost the most winnable election we’ve ever seen. And if we don’t learn from that history, we may be doomed to repeat it.
Some of the reasons we lost were beyond our control. But there are other things we can control, mistakes Democrats made in 2016. We need to learn from those mistakes now so we can strengthen our chances of winning back the White House and the Senate in 2020.
Here, I want to examine the lesson we need to learn about superficial representation.
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One of the most discouraging moments in the 2016 campaign came when Hillary Clinton chose her running mate. Tim Kaine was nobody’s dream. Yet here at Daily Kos and in other forums, Democrats supported the choice by saying the campaign would need him to win white male voters. As I white male voter myself, I found this puzzling: Kaine only dampened my enthusiasm for the ticket. Elizabeth Warren would have excited me. Even Cory Booker would have been a plus. But Kaine? What could he offer to white male voters or to any other voters? I kept asking people, and the only answer I got was this: well, he’s a white male, so white males will like him.
In politics, representation matters, but not the superficial kind. Not anymore.
If voters made one thing clear in 2016, it was this: they want leaders they believe will fight for them, not leaders who happen to look like them.
In the Democratic primaries that year, women younger than 50 voted overwhelmingly for the most crotchety old man in the Senate, while men over 50 voted for the woman. Indeed, one poll showed that among Millennials, Ms. Clinton did better with male voters than female voters. Susan Sarandon said, “I don’t vote with my vagina,” and millions of women agreed with her.
Including Republican women. In the crowded Republican primaries that year, Carly Fiorina was the only woman running. Had she carried the women’s vote, she would have triumphed in every state. Instead, she had her best night in New Hampshire, where she totaled at 4% of the vote, and exit polls showed she did no better with women than she did with men. Donald Trump, in that same primary, won six times as many women’s votes. Ted Cruz also got more votes from women than Fiorina did. So did Rubio, and so did Kasich, and so did Bush, and even Christie did better with women voters. After that night, Fiorina dropped out with one poll showing that, nationwide, only 1% of women voters in the GOP supported Fiorina, as did 1% of men voters. As USA Today noted, “For the only woman in the Republican presidential race, gender hasn’t been much of an advantage.”
And it wasn’t just gender and age where voters rejected superficial representation. In Nevada, the first primary with a significant Hispanic population, Donald Trump won more Hispanic votes than Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz put together. Cruz, in fact, did better with white voters than Hispanic ones.
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After voters in state after state rejected superficial identity politics, Democrats still seemed to think the best way to win white male voters was to put a white male on the ticket. And it wasn’t just random Democrats on Daily Kos who made this mistake – the Clinton campaign made it. The book Shattered shows the Clinton campaign was deeply focused on the superficial.
During the primaries, Campaign Chair John Podesta drew up a list of 36 possible Clinton running mates to consider, which he helpfully broke into seven categories:
- Latinos
- Blacks
- Female senators
- Male senators
- Military officials
- Business leaders
- Bernie Sanders
It is telling that more than half of these categories were defined by race or gender, while none were defined by character, values, or approach to governance. There was no category for leftists or for centrists, for populists or for pragmatists, for hawks or for doves.
At the end of the selection process, campaign leaders were carefully considering Cory Booker, but in the end, they rejected him because they already had the black vote sown up and therefore “the campaign’s consensus was that she didn’t need an African American running mate.”
Cory Booker is a charismatic speaker, filled with optimism that would make a strong contrast against Dark Donald. Booker’s veganism suggests compassion and environmental responsibility are not just empty talking points for him but are values to which he is sincerely committed. In 2012, Ann Coulter of all people praised Booker as “the most impressive elected Democrat in the nation” for his success in bringing down crime as Mayor of Newark. But the Clinton campaign saw only a black man who could deliver black votes they already had.
So Clinton selected a white male running mate, and on Election Day, she lost the white male vote. She also lost the white female vote. Voters who looked like Hillary Clinton rejected Hillary Clinton and voted instead for a ticket without a female on it.
Was it because women voters didn’t realize which ticket had a woman? No. Hillary made sure of that, taking every opportunity throughout the long campaign to remind people she was a woman.
During the first Democratic primary debate, moderator Anderson Cooper asked all five Democrats, “How would you be different than President Obama’s administration?”
Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley both eagerly promised to go further than Obama had in reining in Wall Street to protect the American people. Jim Webb promised a more bipartisan approach to government that included all voices. Lincoln Chafee promised a more peaceful nation, keeping us out of wars.
And Hillary Clinton’s answer?
Well, I think that’s pretty obvious. I think being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had up until this point, including President Obama.
And that was her entire answer. That wasn’t her way of introducing some pro-woman policy stances she wanted to trumpet. Being a woman was itself the thing she was trumpeting.
When Cooper pressed her to name a policy change she favored -- any policy change -- Clinton failed to describe her position on any policy.
While other candidates offered their visions for the country, Clinton offered her second X chromosome, confident that was all she needed to secure the votes of women, who make up more than half the electorate.
In the general election, Trump eagerly offered his own promises for making America great again. Secure borders. Secure jobs. Terrorism defeated. America enjoying the world’s respect.
And Clinton kept promising to give us a woman president.
It was almost as if, instead of choosing our next government, Clinton thought we were casting a movie. Wouldn’t it be cool to do a reboot of West Wing? But with the President played this time by a woman! That will make it look fresh and modern. I can do for America what Melissa McCarthy did for Ghostbusters!
The President shapes the policies that govern our lives. At minimum, the President is the one we count on to keep our government functioning. The President’s physical appearance is far less important than the President’s priorities and the President’s competency.
Hillary Clinton was the most qualified, the most experienced, and the most thoroughly vetted candidate for President our nation had ever seen, and she urged voters to forget all that and focus instead on her gender.
While a reality TV star was promising a change in leadership, a qualified leader was promising a change in casting.
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Trump successfully used Clinton’s empty messaging choice to suggest she simply had nothing of substance to offer.
"Frankly, I think if Hillary Clinton were a man, she wouldn't get 5 percent of the vote," Trump told a crowd of supporters. "The only thing she's got going is the woman card."
And as others echoed his complaint about her playing “the woman card,” Hillary Clinton responded emphatically: “Deal me in!” Her campaign even printed pink cards they sent to donors reading in big letters “Woman Card,” so supporters could proudly show everyone the reason they were supporting Clinton. The Woman Card read at the bottom, “Congratulations! You’re in the majority!” If the word you’re referred to women voters, then yes, they were and are in the majority. But voters who embraced the Woman Card were not in the majority – certainly not in enough states on Election Day.
There were those had who tried to warn Clinton against this strategy, including a diversity of women with expertise.
Danielle Pletka:
[I]f Hillary were the trailblazer she pretends to be… she would stand up and say, “I’m not going to play the ‘woman card’ because I don’t think I’m here because I’m a woman. I’m here because I won, and I won because I was better and the other guys were worse. I’m here because I have ideas that you like. I’m here because you don’t think of me as a woman, you think of me as president.”
Mary Matalin:
[I]f her gender becomes her main offensive play, she will drive away high-propensity male voters while ignoring the policy priorities of other key groups. … The good news for Trump is that a gender-based campaign by Mrs. Clinton is unlikely to entice any would-be Republicans who are on the fence.
Mahroh Jahangiri:
[S]o long as Hillary Clinton’s feminism remains as shallow as a literal playing card, she’s losing us.
And why was this shallow version of feminism losing voters? Because at some level, most voters understand what Anne-Marie Slaughter put so well:
If you think she would be a bad president but would vote for her anyway because she is a woman, then you are serving neither women nor the country.
Of course, both women and country would have been better served had voters chosen the experienced and competent leader over the loudmouthed scam-artist. But voters were more focused on the Woman Card Clinton kept putting in their faces than on the qualifications Clinton could barely be bothered to mention. She left Trump to define the issues, no one talked about qualifications, and Democrats lost the most winnable election in our lives.
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In the weeks after Clinton lost, Democrats felt more free to speak out about the type of identity politics Clinton had employed. Bernie Sanders observed:
It is not good enough for someone to say, “I'm a woman! Vote for me!” No, that's not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, one of the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics.
I think it's a step forward in America if you have an African-American head or CEO of some major corporation. But you know what? If that guy is going to be shipping jobs out of this country and exploiting his workers, it doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot if he's black or white or Latino. And some people may not agree with me, but that is the fight we're going to have right now in the Democratic Party. The working class of this country is being decimated. That's why Donald Trump won.
Outgoing President Obama offered a similar observation about the perils of identity politics:
And one message I do have for Democrats is that a strategy that's just micro-targeting particular, discrete groups in a Democratic coalition sometimes will win you elections, but it's not going to win you the broad mandate that you need. And ultimately, the more we can talk about what we have in common as a nation, and speak to a broad set of values, a vision that speaks to everybody and not just one group at a time, the better off we're going to be. I think that's part of the reason why I was able to get elected twice, is that I always tried to make sure that, not only in proposals but also in message, that I was speaking to everybody.
As Democrats choose our candidate for 2020, let’s avoid picking a politician who is running as a woman, or running as a man, or as a black, a white, a Hispanic, a Jew, a whatever. Let’s instead nominate someone who will run as a competent leader with a vision for America’s future. Whatever demographic niche that person happens to fall into should not be what defines her (or him) and should not be trumpeted as the reason to vote for her.
And as we rank-and-file Democrats talk up the candidates we like, let’s be careful that we don’t define them by demographics. If someone, for example, attacks your favored candidate, don’t respond with “You only oppose my candidate because you hate [members of demographic group my candidate is in].” Let’s avoid injecting candidate’s demographics, and if someone else drags in demographics, don’t give them any traction. Bring the conversation back to what matters, the real reasons your candidate deserves to be entrusted with such a great responsibility.
In 2020, if Trump accuses our nominee of playing a card, we need a nominee who will not say, “Deal me in!” but will instead say, “Bullshit! I’m here because I have a vision for this country and I have the proven skills and knowledge to make that vision a reality. That’s what voters care about, and that’s why I’ll win.”
Let’s learn from the 2016 mistakes and follow the advice that was given then by Obama, Sanders, and other top observers. We don’t need a candidate who looks like us. We need a candidate who fights for us – for all of us.
If we put forward a candidate like that, we will win.