Hard Lessons for Democrats

You have to win elections.

Resistance is (mostly) futile.  Winners set policy, nominate judges, direct agencies, define our government and set the direction for the country.  Losers march in the streets.  For the progressive agenda to succeed, it is necessary to win elections.  The time and energy being put into marches and protests would be better spent in organizing campaigns for the next election.

The Progressive Agenda

The progressive agenda is more important than any individual candidate.

The political agenda of the progressive movement is more important than any individual candidate.  The Democratic National Committee became enamored with the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, then risked – and lost – the progressive agenda in the attempt to elect her.

Corruption

Don’t run corrupt candidates.

It is not acceptable to run a corrupt candidate, or a candidate with a reputation of being corrupt.

Hillary Clinton developed a well-deserved reputation for corruption in her earliest days as First Lady of Arkansas*.  Hillary and Bill Clinton accumulated over $150 million dollars in sixteen years after Bill Clinton left office from speaking fees alone.  Hillary Clinton collected over $20 million of this total in between the time she served as Secretary of State, and before she officially campaigned for President.  This pile of money places the Clintons in the 99.9^th percentile of American families by wealth.

To amass so much wealth as a consequence of holding public office is simply not acceptable.  Holding high public office in America should not be a springboard to immense wealth.  It invites corruption, and carries the appearance of corruption.  The Clintons and their supporters may feel that these earnings are justified, but to the American public, “Speaking Fee” is just another term that means “bribe”.

*  See my previous blog post, “Why Hillary Lost”.  http://debatablypolitical.blogspot.com/2016/12/willful-self-destruction-democratic.html

Popularity

Don’t run disliked candidates.  Didn’t anyone run a focus group on Hillary Clinton?

Especially, don’t run a candidate disliked among your own party members.  I do not understand why Hillary Clinton was the Democratic candidate for President.  I don’t understand why she was given development posts of Senator and Secretary of State.  Didn’t anybody in the party run a focus group?   From the 1990s, Hillary Clinton was extraordinarily disliked by Republicans, and generally disliked by men of her own party.  The party should have realized that she was a weak candidate very, very early.  Her development assignments as a candidate blocked the potential development of other, more electable candidates.  I fault the party, Barack Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Hillary Clinton herself for advancing a failing candidacy, and losing the progressive agenda.

Losing Issues

Don’t run on losing issues.

Gun control is a losing political issue.  You should realize that every time you talk about gun control, you lose elections.  When you lose elections, you set your entire agenda back by decades.  In the 1990s, the country appeared to be approaching a consensus on gun control.   A distinct majority favored some restrictions on guns.  But there existed (and exists) a fervent minority which opposes any restrictions on guns.  That minority contributed substantially to the Republican Party in donations, energy and volunteer hours, and defeated the Democrats in the 1996 Congressional elections.  Republicans overturned 40 years of unbroken Democratic control of the House of Representatives on this single issue.  And as any single issue could have turned the 2016 election, the gun control issue lost again for the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election. 

Look – you hate guns.  I hate guns.  Guns kill about 30,000 Americans every year, with about 2/3 due to suicide.  There are many, many preventable deaths due to guns.  But Democrats do not win elections when they campaign for gun control.  The next time there is another atrocity due to guns, the Democratic leadership should simply say, “We are waiting for the Republicans to propose safeguards to prevent a recurrence of this tragedy.”  Put it on the Republicans, and leave it.

Competitiveness

Compete in Every Race

It is necessary for the Democratic Party to have a national presence in every race, and in every domain – in government, in culture, and in information.  The Party (or the Progressive movement) must compete on message everywhere, and cannot cede territory anywhere.

You have to have candidates running in every race at every level, if you are to compete on message everywhere.  And the message must be the moral rightness of progressive policies – towards ourselves, our neighbors, around the world and to generations yet unborn.

It is necessary to have a strategy for rural states.  Our system is biased to give sparsely populated states disproportionate power.  That’s the way the system works, and you have to win the Electoral College.   You have to convince voters in those states of the rightness of your cause.

Candidate Development

You must develop promising young candidates.

Early in the 2016 campaign, I made a list of prominent Democrats with national name recognition, looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton.   I was surprised to find that there are very few young, prominent Democrats.  Here’s my list.

Dianne Feinstein	81
Jerry Brown	77
Patrick Leahy	75
Harry Reid	75
Nancy Pelosi	75
Michael Bloomberg	74
Barbara Boxer	74
Bernie Sanders	73
Joe Biden	72
Edward Markey	68
Tom Udall	66
Elizabeth Warren	65
Charles Schumer	64
Al Franken	63
Andrew Cuomo	57
Corey Booker	45

The list of nationally prominent Democrats younger than 55 should be longer than one name.  You have to organize to produce, develop and fund those candidates.  I am convinced that the Republican Party has been grooming candidates for the US Senate for at least two decades, starting with bright students at ivy-league universities.  Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska is one product of the system, as is author J.D. Vance, future Senator from Ohio.  Democrats have been woefully inadequate in vetting, grooming, or funding potential candidates. 

Winning Opposition Voters

1.        Break the Republican Block

Republicans have a solid hold on their voting base.  The loyalty is almost tribal or religious.  This tribal loyalty is aligned to a political paradigm of beliefs, which are so deeply entrenched that they defy fact-checking.  Disdain of Democrats is firmly entrenched in the paradigm and reinforced by conservative media.  As long as the Republican block is intact, it will be very difficult for Democrats to govern, even when they are elected to the highest offices, as we learned from Barack Obama’s tenure as president.  I don’t know how to break the Republican voter block, but it is necessary to win elections and govern with a progressive agenda.

It is difficult to reconcile some progressive values with the values of conservative voters.  The difficult issues are abortion, guns, religion, and sexual identity.  The progressive movement must lead, but not be so far ahead that voters do not follow.  The progressive movement successfully led the country to acceptance of gay marriage.  The acceptance of transgender bathroom access may have been a bridge too far.  You don’t lead anybody if you don’t win elections.  Democrats must think very carefully about the policy compromises which are necessary to reconstruct a winning, dominant coalition.

2.       Break the Republican Paradigm

Republican voters hold a set of beliefs as a self-evident set of truths with almost religious devotion.  [So do Democrats, but that is a different discussion.]  These beliefs are enshrined as conservative principles, repeated frequently and given a revered, unquestioned status.  Here is an incomplete list:

Taxes are too high.

The taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay for anything that doesn’t directly benefit him.

The free market is the answer to everything.

Government is the source of our problems.

Government doesn’t do anything well.

Welfare recipients (blacks & Latinos) are just lazy, and welfare keeps them dependent on assistance.

Welfare is the reason our government runs deficits.

Blacks and Latinos are violent people and account for most of our crime.

We should lock up anyone who breaks laws, and keep immigrants out to keep our country pure.

Muslims are very violent people who have no place in our country.

Christianity is the true religion of our country, and Christianity should be the foundation of our laws, our courts, and our schools.

Abortion should be banned.

Gun ownership is the foundation of our freedom.

Sexual conduct outside of marriage is sinful; birth control is a woman’s problem.

Unorthodox sexuality is deviant and should be repressed.

Women should play a traditional role in society, raising children and keeping the home.

There is not enough discipline among young people.

The military and the police should be honored and glorified.

A strong military response is the answer to all of our problems of foreign relations.

Science is not to be trusted; scientists are just after money.

Democrats (aka liberals, feminists, libtards, warmies, snowflakes, etc.) are misguided and evil.

The news media is liberal and lying to us.

The lands, oceans and environment exist to be used, and to be exploited for profit.

We don’t need foreign trade; foreigners are just stealing from us.

These views, whether spoken or unspoken, exist as a monolithic paradigm in the minds of conservatives.  To win elections, it is necessary to get votes, and to get votes, it is necessary to change the hearts and minds of the people who hold these beliefs.  It may be an impossible task, when they reject the bases for changing beliefs – news and evidence-based truth.  But changing hearts and minds is the core challenge for Democrats. 

It is necessary to portray Democrats in a positive light to conservative voters.  It is necessary to project a message that appeals to both a higher morality and self-interest.  Teddy Roosevelt did this in portraying conservation as protecting the environment as the inheritance of our children.  Bill Clinton successfully crafted a message of improving the economy through business/government partnership.

It may be necessary to rename, rebrand, or redefine the mission of the Democratic party to gain a clear national majority.  It will be necessary to get rid of the older leadership of the party (Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders, step down!).  Every older leader without future potential, from "safe" Democratic districts, is blocking the development of a future Democratic leader.

Fight Propaganda

Find a way to discredit FOX News, Breitbart, OAN, Rush Limbaugh and right-wing radio

There has been a frightening change in society in the past 20 years.  News media and politicians have abandoned any pretense of objectivity and freely spout falsehoods for political gain.  Credulous partisans unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of their chosen oracles.  Conservative television and radio outlets spew lies by distortion, innuendo, omission, misdirection, and outright falsehood.  Liberal media cover only those stories supportive of their political orientation.  Conservative voters discredit genuine news organizations (“the mainstream media”) as liberal and partisan.  Likewise, the Trump administration has labeled the most responsible news organization in the country as fake news, in the way that authoritarian regimes have always discredited the news media.  And voters of both sides develop distorted world views through confirmation bias. 

Perhaps the most difficult tasks for the progressive movement is to find a way to combat conservative propaganda.  Conservatives have “weaponized” propaganda a key part of their political campaign, and liberals have found no answer for this tactic.   The claims by conservative media are objectively, demonstrably false, but it doesn’t matter.  Democrats need to find an compelling way to drive a wedge between conservatives and their propaganda, but I don’t know how to do that.  Fact-checking (Snopes) is ineffective; alternatively-biased media (MSNBC) isn’t helpful; and truthful media (NYT) are ignored.  Somehow, Democrats need to find a way to better fight the misinformation war.

Conclusion

The Failed Enlightenment of the Obama presidency

History lurches from periods of enlightenment to dark ages.  From 500 BC to 400 BC, ancient Athens produced more science, philosophy, governmental theory, art, and literature than the rest of the western world for the next 1000 years.  But every period of enlightenment has eventually ended, and our period of enlightenment, the longest in history, will also someday end. 

In a smaller sense, the country goes through periods of enlightenment and dark ages.  Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency was a time of enlightenment, when workers’ rights were recognized, consumer protections established, and national forests and parks were created to preserve the environment.  The Taft administration that followed rolled back many of those gains.

The Obama administration was a failed enlightenment due to a combination of political opposition, misplaced priorities, errors in foreign policy, and failure to establish a winning succession.  Democrats are now facing their weakest political position in two generations, and the Trump presidency threatens to be a dark age of at least four years, and possibly something considerably worse.

The work in front of us is to correct the problems and reverse the political winds that led to this defeat.  It will not be an easy task.  We need to do more than simply build a narrow winning electoral margin.  A reformation of the party is needed.  Democrats need to win the respect and votes of a completely dominant majority to govern well and lead to the next enlightenment.