Hunter Campbell: Dems. must win back middle-class voters

Posted Sunday, March 12, 2017 2:36 pm

PRINCETON, N.J. —. The Democratic Party has drastically deteriorated since Obama won in 2008. Democrats have gone from controlling 57 seats in the senate and 257 in the house to only 48 in the senate and 193 in the house. In 2008, the Democrats controlled both chambers of 27 state legislatures, while Republicans only held both chambers in 14 state legislatures. The nail in the Democratic strategy's coffin was our loss of the presidency, and the fact that soon the supreme court will be back to a conservative majority.

For years, Democrats have been continually holding out for a demographic shift in the country, which would increase the size of its coalition. The logic is that women, millennials, college-graduates, racial minorities, and the LGBTQ tend to lean left. The assumption has been that the more the older, more conservative generation passed away, and as more people went to college and America became more racially diverse, that our country's progressive future would be secured.

Exit polling from the New York Times showed that Democrats have been consistently losing support from each of the 18 different demographics for which exit polling was conducted, which included groups like racial minorities, women, and college-educated voters. While many of these groups still lean Democrat, as they have become a larger percentage of the population, they have also begun to shift to the right. This does not mean that they will become part of the Republican base any time soon, but it does mean that the current Democratic strategy will not be able to sustain the party permanently.

Currently, whites are 70 percent of the electorate, so even if Democrats won all voters of all other groups, they still would not win the general election without getting a large number of white voters. Many of the left-leaning demographics are situated in safe-Democratic districts, which makes it even harder for Democrats to win state-wide and national elections. Furthermore, Democratic voters tend to be more irregular than Republican ones, which brings us to a much larger point.

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Our party cannot simply blame voters for not showing up to the voting booth whenever we want them to. We have to give them a reason to show up. Hearing this, many Democrats will clutch their pearls and blame losing the election on Russia, or the FBI, or Jill Stein, or Bernie Sanders, or WikiLeaks, or fault the moral character of our nation. This state of denial helps no one.

We have to develop a strategy that can appeal to all working and middle-class Americans, ones from all walks of life. Some on the left have fallen under a delusion that there is zero-sum gain between economic justice and social justice. They think that those who advocate for moving the party in a more progressive direction only want to focus on economics, but that simply is not the case.

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Naive notion

We need a populist message, but one that also acknowledges the struggles being faced by different groups within our society. Flowery words and political platitudes will not achieve equality in our nation, only action will. The populist message of the progressives like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, and Keith Ellison are the future of our party. Having neo-liberal economic policies and economic, environmental, and foreign policy with some good rhetoric but no action on social issues will not win the Democrats any elections. Sadly, that is the path the establishment Democrats offer.

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Hillary Clinton said "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow. . . would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?" Such a na ve notion, that breaking up the big banks somehow takes away from the fight against oppression, does not help the Democratic Party, and does not help the American people; only a well-rounded progressive platform will.

The people of our country recognize this — 58 percent of Americans support a national health care system, 61 percent want labor unions to have more or the same amount of power, and 77 percent think we need to limit money in politics, which is something that hurt Democrats this election cycle. Furthermore, 74 percent care about the harm climate change is causing our planet, and over 60 percent think both the upper class and corporations pay too little in taxes. The list of issues on which the American people hold progressive views goes on and on.

Bernie Sanders won with his favorable, populist message, not only in states Clinton lost in the general election like Michigan and Wisconsin, but also rural states like Kansas and Nebraska. It's no surprise polling showed Sanders beating Trump by 54-39, Clinton only beating him 46-43. If Sanders had won the Democratic primary, maybe Trump would not be in the oval office today.

Hunter Campbell is a member of the Princeton College Democrats. This column was provided by the website Content Reaction, which provides a college perspective on relevant issues to newspapers nationwide. Cyrus Beschloss, a student at Williams College, is its CEO.