Tuesday’s elections brought a sweep of Democratic wins, a rebuke to the Trump administration, and historic victories for women, people of color, and LGBT people. Danica Roem, a transgender woman in Virginia, beat the anti-LGBT man who wrote discriminatory “bathroom bill.” Ralph Northam won a closely watched race in that same state, with two big factors driving his success: Voters who wanted to send a message to Trump, and voters who were highly motivated to cast their ballots for female candidates in the down-ballot races. Virginia also elected its first two Latina delegates (both of whom unseated incumbent Republicans), its first female Asian-American delegate, its first Democratic Socialist delegate, and its second African-American to serve in statewide office. Minneapolis elected two transgender people of color to public office; St. Paul elected its first black mayor. Voters in Helena, Montana, elected a Liberian refugee as mayor, the first black mayor in the state. Hoboken voters elected New Jersey’s first Sikh mayor. My hometown of Seattle, Washington, elected its first female mayor since the 1920s and its first lesbian mayor ever. Across the country, many of the women who poured into politics after Trump’s win were victorious: when a local elected official in New Jersey cracked about the Women’s March, ”Will the woman’s protest be over in time for them to cook dinner?” Ashley Bennett decided to run against him. She won.



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"If you see something that you don’t like, don’t let anybody tell you that it’s not your turn. If you’re fearful about it, do it afraid and see it through. Because you never know what could happen.” #AshleyBennett #Election2017 @womensmarch https://t.co/5TM6uglBBO — Freeholder Ashley Bennett (@AshleyBennettNJ) November 9, 2017

It was more than just a good day for Democrats. It’s a model of how the party can win future elections.

Since last year’s disastrous presidential contest, Democrats have been embroiled in a debate about how best to move forward. The discussion is complicated and many-sided, and many of the “sides” have overlapping views, but to paint in broad strokes, it looks like this: A chunk of the party – a loose combination of Bernie Sanders loyalists, socialists, and old-school Democratic moderates – say Democrats should focus on “economic issues” if they want to win, doing away with the “identity politics” that bring race and gender into the picture, tailoring their message more closely to the interests of the white working-class voters who ushered Trump to victory, and embracing leftist economic policies like single-payer health care, a higher minimum wage, and free college. Another chunk of the party – a loose combination of Hillary Clinton loyalists, feminists, and anti-racist activists – say Democrats should focus on shoring up their base of voters of color and educated women, focusing on turnout and voter enthusiasm, and dedicating more resources to curbing voter suppression (voter ID laws that primarily disenfranchise black and Latino Americans, felon disenfranchisement laws that bar people who have served their time from participating in the democratic process). There’s a lot of agreement on policy; few Democrats (or those to the left of Democrats) oppose raising the minimum wage, expanding health care, improving voting access, and making college more affordable. The debate is in the details, and over what’s a priority. The reality of politicking is that some issues take precedence over others, and resources are allocated according to perceived importance and value. This is where the conflicts continue to lie.

This last round of elections helps to clear some of the debris from the path forward. Turnout in Virginia, for example, was higher than it’s been in 20 years for a governor’s election. As usual, African-American voters were the strongest Democratic voters, with 91 percent of African-American women voting for Northam (the same percentage that cast their ballots for Clinton in the state). The Republican candidate, Ed Gillespie, won white women in the state, but just barely (51 percent voted for him, while 48 percent voted Northam) – and white women favored Northam by seven more points than they did Clinton in 2016. But among white voters, there was a huge split. Fifty-eight percent of college-educated white women voted for Northam, while only 32 percent of non-college-educated white women did. White men were more likely to support the Republican whether they had a college degree or not, but white men who hadn’t graduated from college were more than twice as likely to vote Republican, while nearly half of more educated white men voted Democratic. Eighty percent of nonwhite voters cast their ballots for Northam, regardless of whether they were college graduates. Single women, too, were overwhelmingly likely to vote for Northam. Income mattered very little; it was race, gender, and education that made all the difference.

That’s also reflected in who won. Yes, Northam is a white guy, but he’s only a tiny part of the story. Yes, many voters wanted to send Trump a message – but much of what so disturbs and infuriates them is Trump’s animus toward immigrants, women and people of color.

American politics are inherently tribal. Most voters don’t know much about policy, or pay much attention to specific laws or what’s happening inside the Beltway. That much is evident from much of the one-year anniversary reporting on Trump voters: He hasn’t done what he said he would do policy-wise, and they don’t care at all. They like his rage and his vindictiveness; the idea that politics and policy actually impacts their lives, and that they might be physically and financially better off with a Democrat in office, doesn’t matter. Trump, they feel, is one of them.

It’s also evident from new research showing that political campaigns don’t actually change people’s minds. Apparently promising policy shifts or appealing to voters’ pocketbooks doesn’t matter much (the exception here is primaries – when voters are deciding who should represent their party in the general election, then they care about these differentials).

On a practical level, what does this mean for Democrats? First and foremost, it means getting Democratic voters to turn out (and ensuring that Republican efforts to suppress Democratic votes are unsuccessful). We know the Democratic base is made up of voters of color and educated women; the party should be dedicating resources to make sure voter ID laws are done away with, that college students can vote on campus, and that the energies of educated women are easily funneled into political organizing. We should take up more forcefully the issue of voting rights for people who have served time in the criminal justice system. Nearly every state in America prevents currently incarcerated people from voting, even while the incarcerated are counted as congressional constituents. There is an argument to be made that the incarcerated have ceded not just their freedom, but the right to participate in the democratic process as well, but that shouldn’t extend to their release. Yet 35 states bar parolees from voting, and 31 also bar those on probation from casting ballots. In four states, people who have felony convictions can never vote again; eight states bar certain categories of felons from voting. And the process to reinstate your own voting rights after you’ve served time is often opaque and complex. This is fundamentally undemocratic, and belies a crucial component of our criminal justice system: to punish offenders by curtailing their liberties, but then allowing them to reintegrate back into society instead of turning them into permanent pariahs. “Democrats are chasing the felon vote” will surely be an explosive Fox News headline, but who cares? It’s the right thing to do, and our base isn’t watching Fox anyway.

Second, it means embracing the policy agenda we actually want – not because policy details convince voters to support a particular candidate (for the most part, they don’t) but because progressive policies fundamentally improve peoples lives, and are far less controversial than many Democrats seem to think. Democrats are unduly fearful that we will alienate moderates if we are unabashedly pro-choice, or push for universal health care, or put paid parental leave and affordable universal childcare at the top of our agenda, or fund public education more robustly. There are certain close local races where discrete issues may be particularly salient, so of course we need to pay attention to local voices and adjust our policy agenda accordingly. But we should worry less about alienating the muddy middle – they aren’t really paying that much attention, and significant numbers of them are not voting on policy. Voters do appreciate honesty and integrity, and Democrats owe it to their constituents to be consistent champions of what liberals believe in: equality, fairness, opportunity, compassion, rationality, education.

But we should embrace this lefty agenda because it’s the right thing to do, because it will cost us very little, and because it could encourage existing Democratic voters to turn out – not because it’s going to win us many new votes. The idea that leftist economic policies will translate into Democratic support from the white working class is a myth. The white working class didn’t abandon Democrats because of economic policies; they abandoned Democrats because Democrats opposed racial segregation and increasingly supported the civil rights movement. These voters, like most Americans, would benefit from Democratic policies, and we should make sure that they, too, are supported when in need and are able to thrive in a new economy. But they are not worth the cost of our souls.

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"I ran because I couldn’t sit on the sidelines" - Kathy Tran, first Asian-American woman elected to Va. State House https://t.co/o7Z10WjYvP — CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) November 8, 2017

Third, Democrats should work to field a team of candidates as diverse as our voters. Too many people are learning all the wrong lessons from Clinton/Trump – namely, that the U.S. is not ready for a female president. What happened isn’t quite that: It’s that the Republican base of angry white men was viscerally appalled by the idea of a feminist in charge, and a lot of conservative men and women across the U.S. were similarly encouraged to get out and vote for Trump because they distrusted female power, and because they wanted to see the executive branch reflect the same power structures they are used to seeing in their own homes, communities, and media (that is, patriarchal ones). Republicans tend to be more authoritarian, traditional, rigid, and hierarchical, and so it makes sense that change – a black president, a possible female president – stoked a deep fear, and helped propel a caricature of white male authority into the White House.

For many Democrats, the opposite is true: We are a party of diverse identities, experiences, and interests. We tend to be more open-minded and creative, and we are drawn to novelty and diversity, which is perhaps why we find political “firsts” so exciting. Democrats are also more likely to have observed and experienced ways of living outside of the white American patriarchal ideal. We are more likely to be voters of color and members of the LGBT community, whose families don’t look like white suburban Cleavers; we are more likely to have gone to college and been confronted with new people and new ideas. Democrats are more likely to hold passports for overseas travel, even when controlling for income.

Taken together, Republicans may have an advantage here: dedication to hierarchy and a propensity to bend to authority lend themselves more readily to a cohesive political party and a voter base more inclined to do their civic duty of voting; it seems to be in Democratic voters’ nature to question the party hierarchy and its priorities rather than to follow orders. But these partisan characteristics also suggest that while a diverse roster of candidates may scare the pants off Republican voters and could get them to cast hate-votes like in 2016, it might also encourage stalwart liberals to get to the polls and elect people who, finally, really represent us. Rage-voting is not sustainable in the long run. A real attachment to the political process, and a deeply held belief that your government represents you, is. We’ve seen how the women inspired to run and work on campaigns after Trump’s win are changing the electoral landscape (some women even stepped up to run for previously uncontested seats, and triumphed). Investing in the development of local, diverse talent could pay huge dividends to Dems.

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To all of my Trans & Gender Diverse family, I see you, I hear you & I will be there for you. We must resist. We must be intersectional! — Andrea Jenkins (@andreaforward8) February 23, 2017

Finally, Democrats need to take back the education system. The GOP has been all too effective at taking over school boards (and leveraging state control if Democrats are in charge locally), ferrying money away from public schools and into unaccountable charters, and demonizing public education. Democrats should take a page from their playbook and support candidates at the most local of levels – school boards, city councils – who are committed to public education. Conservatives turned facts, knowledge, and education into partisan issues – the “real men” of the working class versus liberal “elitists” with their fancy degrees, the supposed reality spun by ideological hucksters at Fox versus the “fake news” of CNN and the New York Times , the “questions” about whether climate change is real versus the inconvenient scientific consensus. Unfortunately, too much of the left has bought into this narrative that education and knowledge are somehow elitist and bad. Yes, the U.S. needs to do a much better job of catering to people who don’t have the earning power a college degree brings (our developed counterparts in Europe, written off by Republicans as havens for socialism, offer some excellent models for the development of a low-skilled working class that meets market demands and is fairly compensated and supported). But Democrats also need to flip the narrative and emphasize that education is a good thing. We are no longer living in a world where low-skill labor alone can support a developed national economy. Higher education should be more accessible and affordable for everyone; basic pre-K through 12 schooling should be funded more generously, and public and private schools alike should be more accountable to national standards so that local school boards or unmonitored religious zealots can’t simply decide to feed kids partisan lies and undercut their intellectual futures. Democrats should emphasize education in part because education creates and fills better-paying jobs, but also because an educated citizenry makes a country a better, more stable, and more prosperous place to live. And yes, educated people are more likely to vote Democratic, giving us an advantage. But a more educated populace would mean better politics, too – and hopefully a center-right party that was less able than the current GOP to rely on misinformation, aggrieved entitlement, and right-wing propaganda. It would also likely move the country to the left, which, after all, is the ultimate goal. This, of course, is the long game, but Democrats shouldn’t always be running sprints.

People vote on identity, perception, pride, and fear. If they perceive that the GOP is coming for them, and that the Democratic Party is standing up for their rights, running candidates who seem like members of the same tribe (reflecting not just their political opinions but their identities and experiences), and pushing for policies that ideally mirror their values but at the very least demonstrate a coherent and convincing worldview, they will turn out to vote.

The midterm elections are a year away. If we want to win, Democrats should take these lessons from Tuesday and start implementing them today.

Jill Filipovic is the author of . Follow her on Twitter.

Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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