Posted on 02/23/2017 11:00:02 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Liberals may need to decide whether to focus on energizing their base or expanding their coalition.
Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, who is up for reelection in the red state of Missouri in 2018, recently told a St. Louis radio host she may face a primary challenge. “I may have a primary because there is, in our party now, some of the same kind of enthusiasm at the base that the Republican Party had with the Tea Party,” she said during an interview earlier this month. “Many of those people are very impatient with me because they don’t think I’m pure,” she added.
As the Democratic Party contemplates what’s next in the wake of its defeat in the presidential election, liberals may have to decide what matters more: Building a big tent party where far-left voters and moderate centrists can co-exist even if they occasionally disagree on policy and strategy, or focusing on the demands of the party’s progressive base, potentially creating a more like-minded and ideologically rigid coalition in the process.
In an effort to persuade Democrats to embrace a big-tent strategy, Third Way, a center-left think tank, argues in a new report that voters aren’t necessarily rigidly attached to a particular party, and might be won over as a result. The report, titled “Why Demography Does Not Equal Destiny,” concludes that demographic change in the United States won’t deliver Democrats a winning electoral coalition by default, but that there are still opportunities for the party to convince Americans to vote for Democratic candidates even if they haven’t always done so in the past.
“There are definitely persuadable voters out there and the question we should be asking right now is: ‘Who can be persuaded to embrace our vision of the future?’” report co-author Lanae Erickson Hatalsky of Third Way said in an interview. “The idea that there was this rising electorate that would automatically deliver progressive victories wooed us away from doing the hard work of trying to find common ground with people since it seemed easier to just find people who agreed with us.”
Erickson Hatalsky argues that voting trends suggest that some voters swing back and forth between the two parties rather than remain consistently loyal to one party or the other. For example, hundreds of counties across the United States flipped from voting for Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election to voting for Trump in 2016. Some congressional districts also delivered victory for Trump while at the same time reelecting Democratic members of Congress, like Cheri Bustos in Illinois and Matt Cartwright in Pennsylvania.
“There are clearly people out there who have not decided that they vote for only one party,” Erickson Hatalsky said. “I think that’s hopeful because it indicates that if the Democratic Party takes the time to listen to what it is that these people are looking for, we may be able to expand our coalition.”
The report notes that there has been a rise in the number of voters who identify as independent in recent years, and suggests that they could be a potential target for the Democratic Party. Some political scientists, however, maintain that independent voters are really partisans in disguise—people who may not want to publicly identify as a Republican or a Democrat, but nevertheless consistently vote for candidates of a particular party. Third Way has challenged this conclusion, and does so in the report by tracking how independents have swung as a voting bloc back-and-forth between voting for Democrats to Republicans in presidential elections dating back to 1976.
“Independents lean toward one party or another, and vote for that party, over shorter time horizons, but this trend shows that over longer time horizons partisan loyalties are not fixed in place for independent voters,” Erickson Hatalsky said.
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But what if there isn’t a significant number of voters available for Democrats to win over or win back? What if, instead, the partisan battle lines are now firmly entrenched, and spending time, energy, and effort trying to change hearts and minds proves to be a losing proposition for the party?
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, is skeptical that Democrats can significantly grow their base by converting large numbers of either Republicans or Trump voters. He believes Democrats would be more effective if they focused on increasing turnout of core Democratic constituencies, such as African American, Hispanic, and younger voters.
“There’s a reason why campaigns are devoting more and more resources trying to energize the base rather than trying to persuade people. It’s because trying to persuade people is extremely difficult in this day and age,” Abramowitz said in an interview. “That’s not to say there won’t ever be any movement back and forth between parties,” he added, “but I just don’t see there being any large number of movable voters.”
Abramowitz notes that looking back at the voting behavior of independents spanning the past several decades may fail to adequately recognize that party loyalties are much stronger today than in the 1970s and 80s. Instead, he points to increasing ideological division among voters in recent years and what he calls “negative partisanship”—a phenomenon whereby animosity toward the opposing party becomes a driving factor behind how a person decides to vote—to argue that there likely isn’t a significant number of voters up for grabs.
Erickson Hatalsky acknowledges “there’s little evidence to suggest there’s a whole swath of Democratic voters sitting at home who are just waiting to come out if we excite them.” But, she added, “if we are going to build a progressive coalition that can dig Democrats out of their hole at the state and local level and get them back into the White House, we can’t write people off either. Voters who went for Obama and then Trump cannot be deemed unreachable for Democrats, and neither can voters in states that voted for Trump, but have continued to elect Democrats to Congress. To do so, is to accept permanent status as a coastal, urban, powerless party.”
As the centrist wing of the Democratic party attempts to make its case, it will have to contend with an increasingly restive progressive base. A wave of protests across the country—including the Women’s March and rallies in opposition to the first iteration of President Trump’s travel ban—seem to have convinced at least some Democrats in Congress to become increasingly uncompromising in their opposition to the president’s priorities. Progressives are also organizing in the aftermath of the election with the explicit aim of launching primary challenges against Democrats they deem not rigid enough in their opposition to Trump.
If centrist Democrats want to ensure that the Democratic Party embraces a big-tent strategy, they will need to convince skeptical voters of the merits of the party. They may also need to convince progressive members of their own party of the merits of that strategy. And that could be a difficult task. Some progressive groups view Third Way’s centrist political ambitions as emblematic of the type of establishment politics they believe failed the Democratic Party during the presidential election, and are likely to push back on, or outright reject, whatever the think tank suggests as a result.
But perhaps the most salient challenge for Democrats all across the partisan spectrum will be whether they can accept political reality—whatever that may be—and what it dictates about the future of the political left, even if it contradicts their own vision of what the party should look like.
At this point all I see is the Dems trying to pander to the far left base. They have no idea how people view them outside their own little world in Washington, Hollywood and NY.
After seeing the Democrat Party respond with tantrums, vitriol, and open violence to America’s election of Trump...no decent person would ever want to vote Democrat again.
Yes they can.
The best way is to make Keith Ellison head of the DNC and drive the dems further left.
The only reason why some dems voted for Trump, was that he and Hillary were sooooo much alike, but they hated Hillary, so voted for Trump.
If the dems would have had a different candidate, more liberal than Hillary, they surely would have one.
Their continued infantile tactics indicate they have no intention of winning in the arena of ideas. Theirs is a playbook of deceit, manipulation, and personal destruction—part of what created the Fed Up electorate of 2016.
Democrats; the party of my way or the highway. Yeah; I kinda doubt they will be swaying many moderates and none of the conservatives.
Besides; they are (see my tagline)...
I have never once seen a story “can the republicans win back voters they lost to Obama (or HIllary, or Bill or any democrat.).
We need to put a big WEDGE between Hispanics who back illegal immigration and African-Americans.
Blacks are the group most impacted by cheap illegal labor.
Also need to tie it into the minimum wage. Ann Coulter pointed out on Hannity the other day that Australia has a ‘natural minimum wage’ of $15. That’s just how the price of labor went up as the supply remained steady absent them allowing massive illegal and legal immigration.
Black unemployment is the direct result of illegal immigration as are stagnant wages for all manual laborers.
Take their little self interest group coalition and pit them against each other. Hispanic/black is a natural one to divide because there’s much animosity between those communities already.
Marybe a few, but if it continues on its current path of destruction it will lose many of its present members. Most people are getting fed up with evil.
Is it a political party or a suicide pact?
That’s the question they should be asking themselves. Because every issue they’re pushing at the moment, there’s no upside. Sanctuary states? Oh goodie, you’re protecting illegals who have committed more crimes. Name a single voter who wasn’t already voting for the most liberal candidate who you’ll attract with this?
There’s none. They all have Bernie and I’m with Her stickers on their cars (hell, most of them still have Gore/Lieberman stickers on their cars.) But there’s plenty who can change their vote away, who view this as being a suicide pact, and not the move of a party.
And time and time again, that’s where the DNC’s at..
My biggest problem isn’t the DNC gaining brains and returning to being a party, my biggest problem is how many of my rights the GOP will trade away in their own suicide stampede.
The only hope that the DNC has of gains in the coming midterms is for the GOP to work hard to lose votes. Hopefully the White House can keep the lemmings in the party from leaping off the cliff.
If Trump can deliver on his jobs promises, the Democrats have lost the working class and rank-and-file union vote for generations
McCaskill sounds like she wants to tell Missouri’s Trump voters . . . Look! The left hates me so no reason to remove me.
White Americans finally realized that literally every identity group except them has been aggressively and viciously playing identity politics for decades.
Identity politics have arrived. Things will be interesting.
Claire McCaskill’s Hubby Involved in Low Income Housing Nursing Homes – Gets $40M From Feds
They only need to win 3 seats in the Senate and they stop Trump
AND there will be no electoral college to save U.S.
We need to keep the pressure on, crush them destroy them non-stop, no mercy no truce. We must keep the Senate.
Odds of them netting 3 seats in 2018 in the senate is slim to none. Bigger chance of losing the house than the senate. Only way either happens is a recession
” But perhaps the most salient challenge for Democrats all across the partisan spectrum will be whether they can accept political reality—whatever that may be—and what it dictates about the future of the political left, even if it contradicts their own vision of what the party should look like”
Maybe it will look like Islam?
The Democrats have crossed halfway over the street and are being run over. They are being just violent and insulting enough to make people not want to be associated with them, without being violent and brutal enough to force conversions like Islam does. The Whore of Babylon is a fool to trust the Beast she rides.
Black unemployment is the direct result of illegal immigration
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Yep
THAT SHOULD BE TRUMPS NEXT TWEET.
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