We now see what happens when Democrats run a base-focused campaign for most of the year.
In today’s Morning Jolt, I contended that a lot of Democratic candidates and campaign strategists are a lot less smart and shrewd than they think they are, and they’ve built their careers by playing the game on easy mode, protected and saved by a largely friendly media.
I wonder how often Democratic candidates and campaign strategists interact with people who don’t normally vote for them or their clients. I realize genuinely undecided, centrist, independent, or persuadable voters are rarer than they used to be, but the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t follow politics, and aren’t that gung-ho with enthusiasm about either party. It’s surprisingly easy for the politically passionate to get trapped in a bubble of like-minded friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Most of the Democratic campaigns desperately needed to hear from someone who would say something like…
- “Abortion isn’t a top issue for me this year.”
- “I feel really squeezed by inflation, particularly grocery prices and the high cost of gas for the past year. President Biden said this was going to be temporary, and it’s been going on for more than a year. I’m starting to think the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
- “I want a secure border, and I don’t understand why people like Kamala Harris say the border is secure when everyone can see that it isn’t.”
- “I’m really worried about crime, it seems to be getting worse, and I don’t understand why anyone would want fewer cops on the streets instead of more right now.”
- “I’m not comfortable with all of the sexual stuff they’re teaching in schools these days.”
- “No, I haven’t watched the hearings about January 6. What happened that day was awful, but I haven’t thought about that in a long while.”
- “I don’t really care about what Donald Trump is doing right now. Maybe I’ll think about him more if he runs for president next year.”
Most Democratic campaigns have been running as if an overwhelming majority of the electorate are members of NARAL, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign, and Everytown for Gun Safety. Yes, motivating your base is important, but at some point, you run out of Democrats – particularly in purple districts. And we now see what happens when Democrats run a base-focused campaign for most of the year. They end up spending millions in an open seat race in a Rhode Island district where Biden won by 13 points in 2020.
Pollster Stanley Greenberg has been trying to warn Democrats that when they brag about how much legislation they’ve passed, and how great those bills are, they sound like they have no idea what kinds of real-life problems voters are facing:
In memos, private communications and interviews, Greenberg has been imploring the party to — let’s put this bluntly — shut the hell up about all the work it’s done. It’s not that voters don’t care. He says voters actively turn against Democrats when they hear it.
“It’s our worst performing message,” Greenberg told West Wing Playbook. “I’ve tested it. I did Biden’s exact words, his exact speech. And that’s the test where we lost all of our leads… It said to the voters that this election is about my accomplishments as a leader and not about the challenges you’re experiencing.”
Think about it, the story of the 2022 midterms is a story of a fire of voter anger at incumbents over the state of the country, and Democratic candidates’ decisions are pouring more and more gasoline onto that fire.
Republicans aren’t immune to this phenomenon. Arizona GOP Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem sounds like a lunatic when he contends Biden couldn’t possibly have won his state in 2020 because “I can’t find anyone who will admit that they voted for Joe Biden.” Maybe people just don’t like talking about their past votes to Mark Finchem. If he really wants to find people who voted for Biden, the state of Arizona has roughly 1.2 million registered Democrats. He can start with them.
But this year, it is mostly Democrats who have ignored, and largely conceded that small but decisive slice of voters in the middle, who are frustrated by high prices, wages that aren’t keeping up with inflation, an insecure border, and rising crime rates.