By Jonathan Martin
Monday, November 14, 2016
The Democrats’ stunning defeat in the presidential race
and continued struggles in lower-level contests have jolted party leaders into
concluding that their emphasis on cultural issues has all but crippled them by
diverting voters’ attention from the core Democratic message of economic
fairness.
But even as Democrats agree about the need to promote
their agenda more aggressively for the middle class and voters of modest means,
especially in parts of the country where the party has suffered grievous
losses, they are divided over how aggressively to position themselves on the
economic left, with battle lines already forming over the lightning-rod issue
of foreign trade.
While the country has moved steadily to the left on such
social issues as same-sex marriage and gender equity, it is increasingly
apparent that Democrats cannot win in much of the country without a more
coherent and overriding economic message.
The debate over what that message should be comes not
only against the backdrop of Hillary Clinton’s astonishing loss to Donald J.
Trump — a race decided by a handful of Rust Belt states that for decades had
favored Democratic nominees — but also after the third campaign in the past
four election cycles in which the party was routed across vast sections of the
nation, leaving Democrats out of power in both chambers of Congress and in most
governors’ mansions.
The direction the party chooses now could have ramifications
for years to come: In 2018, Democrats face Senate races in 10 states that
favored Mr. Trump. And there will be 38 elections for governor in the next two
years that could decide whether Democrats are able to play a role in drawing
more favorable congressional maps after the 2020 census.
“If we don’t have Democratic governors there to veto
these maps after the 2020 redistricting, the next 10 years for us in Congress and
state legislatures are going to be brutal,” said Gov. Terry McAuliffe of
Virginia, the only Southern state that Mrs. Clinton carried last week.
Over President Obama’s two terms, Democrats have embraced
a down-the-line cultural liberalism that energized his coalition of
millennials, minorities and college-educated whites.
But the growing nationalization of politics and the
Democrats’ drift to the left doomed a number of candidates running in more
conservative states during the 2014 midterm elections, when turnout fell.
Yet despite Democrats’ near extinction in much of the
South and in parts of the Great Plains — two regions that had for decades
elected Democrats to statewide office — the party had little in the way of a
debate about Mr. Obama’s approach.
Now, without rebuking the still-popular president
directly, many Democrats share a growing recognition that Mr. Obama’s way may
not be the best course in a country where many voters have experienced little
income growth and where high-paying jobs can be scarce.
Even Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the presumptive
incoming Democratic leader and someone who is eyed warily by the left, has
taken steps to signal that he recognizes the need to embrace a more populist
economic orientation.
Mr. Schumer announced on Friday that he was supporting
Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a leading House progressive, to be
the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And earlier in the week, Mr.
Schumer said in a private meeting at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that while Democrats had
been at the forefront of cultural change in the country on matters of race,
gender and sexuality, they had not been talking in similarly transformational
language on economics, according to a labor official in the room.
“The party started looking at people through interest
group coalitions, and we thought, ‘If we talk to them all in different ways,
that will be enough to cobble together an election coalition,’” said
Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona. “But I think there is a common
interest in our economic policies between the laid-off white worker in Flint,
the African-American and the Latino in Phoenix.”
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American
Federation of Teachers, said the growing importance of social issues in the
national debate and Democrats’ reliance on wealthy donors on the two coasts who
are more focused on cultural liberalism than on economic solidarity had,
together, left the party somewhat disconnected from the working class.
“Social issues now have become central, rather than class
issues,” said Ms. Weingarten, who recommended what she called a “both/and”
approach.
Such talk bears a striking resemblance to the fierce
debates Democrats engaged in 30 years ago when they suffered repeated White
House losses and many party moderates concluded that they were too captive to
interest-group politics. Except now, it is not centrists calling for a greater
focus on economic issues, but a broader constellation of Democrats.
“The Democratic Party can no longer be led by the liberal
elite,” said Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, calling for a party “prepared
to stand up to Wall Street and the greed of corporate America.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who may run in
2020, sounded a similar message in a speech last week to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.,
ignoring Mrs. Clinton entirely, praising Mr. Sanders and calling on her party
to address the economic grievances that she conceded “President-elect Trump
spoke to” in the campaign.
The Democratic shift toward a more unapologetic brand of
populist economics gained steam when Mr. Sanders electrified many on the left,
and even some more moderate party activists across the Midwest, in his primary
race against Mrs. Clinton.
Yet while Mr. Sanders’s brand of confrontational populism
— characterized by his fierce attacks on international trade and Wall Street —
may be favored by many liberal activists, it does not sit well with party
leaders who fear that his call for an economic “revolution” may turn off
moderate voters.
“Americans want to hear a stronger economic message from
the party,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, “but this shouldn’t be
about a revolution, but about fairness.”
Other Democrats are more explicit about their concerns
with Mr. Sanders’s broadsides, especially on trade, which Mr. Sanders and Mr.
Trump used to great effect in the campaign. It is an issue that highlights
regional differences among Democrats from states that have been hit hard by
manufacturing plants’ being shut down and replaced overseas, and those from
states that depend on a robust export market.
“I don’t think you can be anti-trade,” said Gov. John
Hickenlooper of Colorado, who is mentioned as a possible 2020 presidential
candidate. “In the modern world, we need consumers overseas for our products as
well.”
The now-dormant Trans-Pacific Partnership, noted Senator
Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, was backed by every agricultural commodity
group in her state.
“We’ve got to have a market for our products,” said Ms.
Heitkamp, who has implored her party to have a more robust rural agenda.
What is striking, though, is that there is no larger
appetite in the party to move fully toward the political centrism that marked
Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Jason Kander, a Missouri Democrat who lost to Senator Roy
Blunt by just three percentage points while Mrs. Clinton lost the state by 19,
dismissed what he called “the old construct about Blue Dogs,” referring to the
moderate-to-conservative Democratic group that was once robust in the South and
in border states.
“I ran on a progressive message: economic fairness,
college affordability and equality for the L.G.B.T. community,” Mr. Kander
said. “We should not hide from our beliefs or apologize. We should lean in,
full force.”
More worrisome to a range of Democrats is that they are
struggling in states with significant rural populations, where some of the most
competitive Senate races in two years will take place: North Dakota, Missouri,
Montana and West Virginia.
“We have to be bigger than a coastal party,” said Gov.
Steve Bullock of Montana, who eked out re-election last week and went deer
hunting with his son over the weekend.
The good news for Democratic officeholders and candidates
— and something many of them gingerly brought up — is that they may fare better
the next two years thanks to Mr. Trump than they would have if Mrs. Clinton had
been elected. The party of the sitting president often loses seats in the first
midterm election, and many Democrats expect a backlash to Mr. Trump if he is
unable to fulfill his grandiose promises.
“Sometimes it’s easier, certainly, to be able to run
against the White House and have that contrast,” Mr. Bullock said.
Mr. McAuliffe said the Democratic governors had convened
a conference call after the election to begin planning for governors’ races. He
said he planned to push for a larger session with congressional Democratic
leaders in the coming weeks to impress on them how important those contests
would be to the party’s future.
“It’s time for everybody to get in the game,” Mr.
McAuliffe said.
One Democrat who seems ready to do just that is Nina
Turner, a former Ohio state senator and acolyte of Mr. Sanders’s who is eyeing
a run for her state’s governorship in 2018.
In an interview, Ms. Turner made clear that she had an
unambiguous, and familiar, focus. “It’s the economy, stupid,” she said.
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