Democrats continue to obsess about the tactical rather than strategic. The simple truth of electoral failure is that the Democrats lack an appealing theory of government.
It is a waste of time for Democrats to focus on the role of fake news, the Russians, October surprises, their uncharismatic candidate, the Trump kleptocracy, the impact of a Clinton-controlled party machine, or any of the rest of the inside game. These failures at the margins ignore the big strategic losses Democrats are taking. Those losses dwarf the dirty pool and details of one election.
Simply put, Democrats are losing locally and nationally because the customer doesn’t want the product. Voters recognize that Republicans are offering false hope, but, in the words of one voter, false hope is better than no hope at all.
The product offered by Democrats is a fatal combination of stale and incoherent. Stale because, while the party faithful believe existing Democratic policies need a bigger, bolder try, the displaced or struggling American voter sees those policies as very well tried, and very well failed. This is not a messaging problem – its real.
Democrats need to consider that more-of-the-same is not going to solve middle America’s economic problems. Democrats need to design new and more useful answers to today’s challenges.
It starts by recognizing that the voters they are losing, the voters Democrats most urgently need to reach, do not look like the urban working-class. She looks like the owner of a two-truck plumbing company located 60 to 90 miles outside the urban core, or the guy who works for her. She does not want a government program, she wants the dignity of work. He recognizes that there’s a role for government intervention in the economy, but for the most part his contact with that intervention hurts rather than helps – a tax bill he can’t pay, an OSHA regulation that seems to burden his employer more than it helps.
To this American, redistribution and regulation do not ring true as answers to their problems. To this American, more government – of the kind they experience today – sounds like a burden, not a benefit.
Democrats need a new strategy for this century, for the middle American, or they will continue to lose elections.
A Policy Wonk 