The Democratic Strategist has posted a lot of content about the party’s quest for winning a greater share of the white working-class vote, which has become a more widely shared concern in the wake of the midterm elections. Trade unions have a critical role to play in meeting this challenge, and the Democratic party has a reciprocal obligation to support the labor movement, not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is a strategic imperative. For today, we’ll just flag two recent articles worth review for those who share these concerns.
Thomas B. Edsall’s New York Times op-ed “Republicans Sure Love to Hate Unions” provides a well-sourced update on the status of unions in America, coup-led with a richly-deserved scold for the Democratic party for neglecting this key constituency: One of Edsall’s nut graphs:

Democrats neglect the union movement at their peril. Not only does organized labor provide millions of dollars – the Center for Responsive Politics reports that unions spent $116.5 million on politics in 2013-14 – but union members are a loyal Democratic constituency. On Nov. 4, the 17 percent of voters who come from union households supported Democratic House candidates by a margin of 22 points, 60-38, while the remaining 83 percent from non-union households supported Republicans 54-44.

To get a sense of the future possibilities for the labor movement, the must-read is Harold Meyerson’s post at The American Prospect Long Form, “The Seeds of a New Labor Movement.” Meyerson takes an in-depth look at the more innovative organizing strategies, with particular focus on the creative efforts of David Rolf, president of a Seattle-based long-term care local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Meyerson writes of Rolph:

…Between 1995 and 1999, while still in his 20s, Rolf directed a campaign that unionized 74,000 home care workers in Los Angeles. It was the largest single unionization since the United Auto Workers organized Ford in 1941. SEIU then sent him to Seattle, where he has nearly quadrupled SEIU’s Washington state membership. Last year, he led the initiative campaign that persuaded voters in SeaTac, the working-class Seattle suburb that is home to the city’s airport, to raise the local minimum wage to $15–the highest in the nation. He also managed to make SEIU’s campaign to organize fast-food workers and raise their pay to $15 the centerpiece of the mayoral race in Seattle proper…
Over the past 15 years, no American unionist has organized as many workers, or won them raises as substantial, as Rolf. Which makes it all the more telling that Rolf believes the American labor movement, as we know it, is on its deathbed, and that labor should focus its remaining energies on bequeathing its resources to start-up projects that may find more effective ways to advance workers’ interests than today’s embattled unions can.

Meyerson shares some of Rolph’s organizing techniques and has more to say about American labor’s future prospects. All of this should be of interest to anyone who believes that the Democratic party’s route to winning a larger share of the white working-class vote must go through a healthier labor movement.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Since I have been involved in politics as a full-time job, there have been five times where I had a really bad election night, where the Republicans kicked our ass and won most of the important races: 1980, 1994, 2004, 2010, and of course this year. Every single time was awful. Every single time the country suffered a great deal as a result. But every single time, Democrats came storming back the very next election and had a great year. It’s not too surprising, really: Republicans are an arrogant bunch with really bad and unpopular policy ideas that don’t work out well when they are enacted. And of course, we know that the voting pool in a presidential year tends to look more like the actual population of the country — younger, more people of color, more unmarried voters — and that is a very good thing for Democrats. So while I take absolutely nothing for granted, and know that we will have to work our collective Democratic asses off, I go into 2016 with some confidence.
The key, though, is good strategic thinking. We can’t go into the 2016 cycle thinking that Republican arrogance and demographics alone will save us. We have to have a strategy that simultaneously fires up our base and appeals to middle- and working-class swing voters. Central to that strategy is picking the right fights to have and to drive with an extended grassroots and media campaign, and avoiding the stupid “bipartisan” deals the DC establishment tends to love, but that are harmful to poor and middle income folks. Some examples of both the good ideas and the dumb stuff below.
In 1981, Reagan had swept into power with a Republican Senate, and although the Democrats still controlled the House, there was a sizable enough Southern conservative Democratic faction in the House that Reagan was able to push through his massive supply-side tax cuts for the rich. The Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, knew he was going to lose on the budget battle, but he made a point of picking a big fight on it and driving a message about the Democrats standing with the working class and the Republicans standing with the wealthy. When the budget deal resulted in a recession and a massive deficit in 1982, people remembered O’Neill’s stand, and the Democrats picked up 26 House seats that year, securing his ability to control the House the rest of the Reagan years.
In 1993-94, when Democrats had control of Congress, Clinton split the Democratic base and ticked off a lot of working-class swing voters by pushing NAFTA hard. He then failed to get health care reform passed; leaving a lot of Democrats completely unenthused about turning out. But in 1995, after the slaughter of the 1994 elections, when Clinton (at the strong urging of the labor and progressive movements, and against the advice of centrist advisers like Mark Penn) picked a big fight with the Republicans in Congress on the budget over Medicare, Medicaid, Education, and the Environment, the tide turned for Clinton permanently. Clinton went into that fight behind Dole in the polls by about 10 points, and by the time it was done, he was ahead by about 10 — and he never lost that lead.
After the 2004 elections, with conservative Republicans firmly in control of every branch of government, Democrats, backed strongly by the entire progressive movement, stood their ground and picked big fights with Bush and Tom DeLay over Social Security privatization, the Iraq war, the handling of Katrina, and the fact that Republican leadership was trying to cover up a growing wave of scandal involving sleazy lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. In each of these fights, progressives put campaigns together, gave them enough resources to give them a punch, and worked closely with the Democratic leadership to hold Democrats solidly together on those issues. The result was the most sweeping Democratic midterm election victory of the modern era, a 31 House seat and six Senate seat pick-up.
After the Republican blowout of 2010, Obama’s initial reaction was to reach out to cut deals with Republicans on the budget. He agreed to a couple of deals, making massive cuts in spending with no corresponding tax increases, and proposed (but thankfully did not get) a “grand bargain” with Republicans that would have cut Social Security benefits and made other big cuts in domestic spending. The progressive community was in open rebellion, Obama looked weak and like he didn’t care about fighting for his principles, and his approval ratings hit a first term low. But he saved himself in time with a strong populist speech in the fall of 2011 in Osawatomie, Kansas, that picked fights with the Republicans on a series of economic issues, and then he put out a progressive budget package that stood in stark contrast with the Ryan budget, which progressives had been fighting an on-going campaign to bring down. And Obama’s campaign successfully painted Romney as a heartless Wall Street CEO. In the worst economy for a President to be re-elected in since 1936, the Democrats won every closely contested presidential state but one, as well as most of the close Senate races.
The lessons here are clear: pick economic fights about helping poor and middle-class people instead of the wealthy and powerful, and avoid dumb bipartisan trade or budget deals that end jobs and cut benefits for the middle class.
And guess what? Speaking of populism, in the 2014 elections, one key point that people should think about isn’t just how Democrats lost, but where we won relatively easily in races that were supposed to be competitive. In Minnesota and Oregon, Democratic Senators Franken and Merkley went into the cycle with people thinking they might be in trouble. In Michigan, the Koch brothers invested a huge amount of money in a race that was supposed to be extremely competitive when Sen. Levin retired. In all three swing states, Democrats followed the same playbook: they ran an unapologetic economically populist campaign; brought in Elizabeth Warren in early to rally the troops and get activists excited to help them; and campaigned as proud progressive Democrats. On a night when most other Democrats struggled, these three strong progressives never went on defense, never struggled, and won the day strongly. Furthermore, of the ten closest Senate races in the country that had been considered the most competitive throughout the cycle (AK, NH, AR, KY, GA, KY, CO, IA, LA, NC), we won only one, Jeanne Shaheen in NH. Shaheen used Warren’s populist playbook (and repeated visits to NH to rally the troops) to beat corporate “moderate” Scott Brown.
I will close on this extremely important note: While the path to a solid Democratic victory in 2016 is clear, we need to be working toward a Democratic wave not just a Democratic victory. With the gains the Republicans made in the House and Senate, it will take a big Democratic election to have a chance at winning back both, especially the House. And whether it is Hillary or another Democratic president, I sure as hell would want to be governing without having to deal with a Republican-controlled House.
Having been deeply involved in both the 1996 Clinton re-elect and the 2006 strategy that won back both houses of Congress, I can tell you that there was a huge difference in both strategies and outcomes in those years. While Clinton thankfully rejected Penn’s and Dick Morris’ advice in 1995 to just split the difference with Gingrich and Dole on the budget, he did take their advice in terms of overall political positioning: he “triangulated,” intentionally setting himself apart from congressional Democrats and running his campaign on a completely separate track from other Democrats in 1996. The result was that Dole, indelibly linked in the public’s mind to a very unpopular Gingrich because of the 1995 government shutdown over the budget, was easily beaten, yet we lost two Senate seats and only picked up two House seats. In spite of the decisive budget victory, in spite of Gingrich’s unpopularity, in spite of a lifeless Dole campaign, there were no Clinton coattails because of the distance he created between his campaign and other Dems. It would be the last election where a president or party nominee had so little impact on the rest of the election.
In 2006, the contrast could not have been more dramatic. While there were some differences between Democrats on message, in general the party and progressive movement worked closely together on issue fights and messaging with a goal around building a wave. Staying united and winning decisively on the Social Security fight, and creating effective messaging campaigns around Bush’s failures in Iraq and with Hurricane Katrina, as well as driving message around the widespread scandal and corruption in the House under DeLay’s leadership, built the wave to an unprecedented level of strength.
In a presidential turnout year, with Republican hubris and extremism on full display as they flex their newfound power, I have no doubt a big wave for the Democrats can be built. It will take smart strategic thinking about what big issue fights to pick and what dumb bipartisan deals to avoid; it will take a strong dose of economic populism in an economy overwhelmingly skewed to the top 1 percent; and it will take a unity of purpose instead of Democrats trying to set themselves apart from the core values of the party. But if we are smart and tough and relatively unified, 2016 will be a great election for the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Martin’s “After Losses, Liberal and Centrist Democrats Square Off on Strategy” at the New York Times summarizes the central debate emerging within the Democratic party and offers an interesting observation: “Progressives pointed to three Democrats who ran as populists as models for success: Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Senator-elect Gary Peters of Michigan…Mr. Merkley, who focused on the loss of well-paying jobs, the cost of college tuition and opposition to trade deals that he said sent jobs overseas, won by 19 percentage points. While Democrats nationally lost whites without a college degree by 30 percentage points, Mr. Merkley narrowly carried that bloc.”
At Slate.com Jamelle Bouie explains “Why Democrats Can’t Win Over White Working-Class Voters.” Bouie observes, “The white working class is a huge subset of Americans. “Close to half of white men and 35-40 percent of white women in the labor force are still essentially ‘working class,’ ” finds liberal commentator Andrew Levison in his book The White Working Class Today. “Their occupations are basically blue collar rather than white collar and their earnings fall far below their white collar counterparts.” And in that category are groups of reachable voters: Union members and low-skilled young workers in particular. Democrats don’t have to win this group as much as they have to avoid a rout. If they can do that–and hold Republicans to a majority rather than a supermajority–then they can avoid the Republican waves of the recent midterm elections, and strengthen their presidential majority.”
Kevin Drum weighs in on the topic with “Can We Talk? Here’s Why the White Working Class Hates Democrats” at Mother Jones.
In similar vein, William Greider posts at The Nation on “How the Democratic Party Lost Its Soul: The Trouble Started When the party Abandoned Its Working-Class Base.” Greider arguers, “What we need is a rump formation of dissenters who will break free of the Democratic Party’s confines and set a new agenda that will build the good society rather than feed bloated wealth, disloyal corporations and absurd foreign wars. This is the politics the country needs: purposeful insurrection inside and outside party bounds, and a willingness to disrupt the regular order. And we need it now, to inject reality into the postelection spin war within the party.”
At Politico DLC Founder Al From explains the Dems midterm disaster “We were trying to sell a product the American people did not want to buy. On the economy, for example, Democrats offered fairness; most Americans wanted the opportunity to get ahead.” From suggests “The cornerstones of our retooled message must be economic growth and government reform.
The Upshot’s Nate Cohn argues that, contrary to pundit consensus on the midterms, “The evidence for a fairly successful Democratic turnout effort is straightforward. ”
At The Monitor’s DC Decoder Joshua Huder notes, “Democrats’ attempts to localize their races and distance themselves from the president also put distance between them and a solid national economy. During the campaigns, we heard very little about steady growth, lower unemployment, or the other factors that could have played well for Democrats. It’s entirely possible many did not believe these trends were good enough to campaign on. It’s also likely that many states in which these races took place still had struggling economies, which, according to a new paper by Stephen Ansolabehere, Marc Meredith, and Erik Snowberg in the journal Economics & Politics (November 2014), can affect perceptions of the national economy.”
Also at Politico, Tarini Parti reports on the debate about how Democrats can better leverage their financial resources in the next election.
Mark Miller’s “Five Takeaways on Retirement from the Midterm Elections” shows why seniors who voted for Republicans in the midterm elections may soon have a bad case of buyer’s remorse.

As many have noted in the past week, the economy remains the dominant issue facing Americans, as many struggle to keep up in an age of stagnant wages and an ever increasing cost of living. Not surprisingly, there is strong support for policies that address the struggles of low wage workers, many of whom just barely get by or live in poverty. As the largest creator of low wage jobs in the US economy, the federal government has a particularly important role to play in improving the lives of workers and rebuilding the middle class. In a recent survey commissioned by Good Jobs Nation, voters overwhelmingly favor requiring the federal government to give preference to companies that pay their employees a living wage and provide benefits, as well as for the President’s executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10. Support for these policy changes cross partisan, demographic and regional lines. Key findings include:
*A large majority of voters, 88 percent (54 percent “a very big problem”), believe that the growing gap between the rich and everyone else is a problem in the country. This view crosses party lines, as over three-quarters (88 percent) of Independents and 79 percent of Republicans feel this way.
*Sixty-two percent of voters rate low wage workers favorably, significantly higher than CEO’s (26 percent favorable) and Wall Street (24 percent favorable). Congress receives the lowest ratings among voters, earning only a 17 percent favorable rating.
*Almost three-quarters (71 percent) of voters support the executive order issued to require businesses with contracts with the federal government raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.
*Voters overwhelmingly favor the government taking further action in support of low wage workers. Seventy-seven (77) percent of voters favor the government, when awarding con-tracts, giving preference to businesses that pay their employees a living wage and providing benefits such as healthcare and sick leave. The depth of support for such a measure is evident, as it receives majority support regardless of partisanship or ideological leaning. In fact, 60 percent of conservative Republicans support the federal government taking such action.

*After voters learn about the scope of the federal government in low wage job creation, to the tune of one trillion dollars in purchased goods and services and being the largest creator of low wage jobs, support for the federal government giving preference to model employers, those who pay a living wage and provide benefits and sick leave, remains almost unchanged (72 percent).
The above findings are based a national survey among 1000 likely 2016 voters. The survey was con-ducted November 5-9, 2014 and carries an overall margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval, with the margin being higher among subgroups. Forty percent of respondents were reached by cell phone, in order to account for ever-changing demographics and trying to accurately sample the full American electorate.
For a PDF of the memo, click here.

One of the conclusions an awful lot of Democrats are coming to after November 4 is that a voting coalition that only shows up in presidential years is insufficient to create a stable governing majority. Accordingly, there’s new interest in finding ways to reach out to what is probably the lowest-hanging fruit in the persuadable portion of the electorate currently voting Republican: non-college-educated white voters, whose economic interests are not well-served by the politicians they are helping elect.
The “white working class” has obviously been a regular preoccupation here at TDS. So we encourage you to read (or refresh your familiarity with) the Roundtable on Progressives and the White Working Class published here during the summer, and check out the first issue of TDS’ bimonthly newsletter on the subject, supplying a presentation of and links to material from a wide variety of sources. It’s a conversation Democrats will need to have on a regular basis going forward.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which re-earned its name by correctly picking winners in 97 percent of 2014 midterm contests, offers “14 From ’14: Quick Takes on the Midterm” by Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley. I doubt, however, that the three Marks, Begich, Udall or Pryor would agree with #14, though.
It might be wise for Democrats to study this race as a possible template for winning future house races.
At The Fix Aaron Blake explains “How urban voters failed Democrats in 2014.” Says Blake: “According to numbers crunched by Gene Ulm of the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, turnout in the most rural one-third of U.S. House districts was down 34 percent from 2012. In the middle third — think suburbs and exurbs — it was down 38 percent…And in the one-third most urban districts on the United States, it was down nearly half, 47 percent.”
Thomas B. Edsall has a New York Times op-ed exploring possible reasons for “The Demise of the White Democratic Voter.”
From Donna Brazile’s post-mortem on the election: “Tuesday was a bad day for Democrats, but not for Democratic policy priorities. For now, Democrats need to rethink the strategy for winning in 2016 — starting with rebuilding and re-tooling the party at the grassroots level, educating our candidates on handling the media, and having our values articulated in a distinctive, clear brand. If we don’t, we risk losing when the stakes are much larger.”
Greg Sargent has a warning at the Plum Line: “Democrats’ electoral disaster puts Obamacare in serious peril.” Sargent explains: “In the wake of the 2014 elections, roughly two dozen of these states have legislatures that are under GOP control. Nearly as many have GOP governors — meaning they are under total Republican control…GOP control will make states less likely to set up their own exchanges after a bad SCOTUS ruling…More conservative states were initially less likely to set up exchanges, so they were obviously more likely to end up on the federal exchange. But now that a SCOTUS ruling against the law looks like a real possibility, we’re looking at a new and ominous set of long-term consequences that could result from the Democrats’ electoral disaster.”
I wish this was true, but I have doubts.
Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson opines that “The right economic message can get the Democrats back on track.” A teaser: “Economic messages are serious business for Democrats. Republicans tend to win elections not when their own economic messages are plausible (such instances are too few to be statistically significant) but when the Democrats’ economic pitch fails to persuade many voters. Such was surely the case last week.”
WaPo’s Catherine Rampell provides some disturbing examples which indicate that “Voter suppression laws are already deciding elections.”

As most readers probably know, one of the most relentless narratives of the 2014 election cycle was the claim that the Republican Party had “moderated” itself after its Tea Party-influenced bout with government shutdowns and other tokens of extremism, and was now operating under a “pragmatic” party leadership determined to govern, not obstruct. Not missing a beat, GOP and MSM opinion-leaders have carried that narrative into post-election spin.
But you know who isn’t buying it? Rank-and-file Republicans, as reported in a new Pew survey that I talked about at Washington Monthly today:

[The] new numbers from Pew…asked self-identified Democrats and Republicans if they’d prefer that leaders work with the other side “even if it disappoints” some party members, or instead “stand up” to the other side, even if that means “less gets done in Washington:”

[O]nly about a third of Republicans and Republican leaners (32%) want to see the GOP leadership work with Obama if it disappoints some groups of Republican supporters. About twice as many (66%) say GOP leaders should stand up to Obama even if less gets done. This reflects a shift away from wanting to see their leadership work with Obama in the wake of his reelection two years ago, but is little different than opinions among Republicans after the party’s 2010 midterm victory.
In contrast, about half (52%) of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents say Obama should try as best he can to work with Republican leadership even if it results in some disappointment among Democrats, while 43% say he should stand up on issues important to Democrats at the risk of less productivity in Washington.

There’s more of the same flashing signals elsewhere in the survey:

By a 57% to 39% margin, more Republicans and Republican leaning independents say their party’s leadership should move in a more conservative, rather than more moderate, direction. These views are little changed over the last four years.
And, as in the past, Democrats are more likely to say their party leadership should move in a more moderate direction (52% say this) than a liberal direction (41%). Yet the share saying the party should move in a liberal direction is now higher than it was following the 2010 midterms (41% today, up from 34%).

So the party whose rank-and-file wants the most conservative Republican Party in history to become more conservative, and also wants the most obstructionist congressional cadre in history to obstruct more, is the support base for all those “pragmatists” heading to Washington who want us to believe they’re determined to “get things done” come hell or high water.

My guess is that all the “pragmatism” talk is just positioning in order to blame Obama and Democrats for the gridlock just ahead. Yeah, Republicans may be more “disciplined” than before, but only in the service of a conservative movement bent on turning back the clock as soon and as far as it can.

Mark Bayerleins “Are Democrats Losing the Youth Vote?” in the New York Times will undoubtedly evoke despairing sighs among those who would like to see a stronger Democratic Party. Here’s the statistical nut of Bayerlein’s article:

Six years ago, voters aged 18 to 29 favored Barack Obama over his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, by a ratio of two to one and justified Time’s announcement that 2008 was “The Year of the Youth Vote.” Two years previously, in midterm races for the House, the same demographic went for Democrats 60 percent to 38 percent.
In 2012, President Obama’s advantage slipped, but under-30 voters still gave him a 23-point edge, 60 percent to 37 percent. No wonder this year the president appeared two days before the election at Temple University, where he exhorted the crowd, “So I need all of you to go grab your friends, grab your classmates… I need you to vote.”
But it turned out that 2012 was no anomaly. Turnout for young voters this year was around 21 percent, typical for midterms, but the breakdown was disappointing for the left: Exit poll data show that young voters backed House Democrats 54 percent to 43 percent, half the advantage of 2006 and two percentage points lower than in 2010.
The Senate contests were last fought in 2008, a presidential year, and here the plummet was startling. In North Carolina the rate at which young people voted Democratic fell to 54 percent this year from 71 percent in 2008. Virginia saw it slide to 50 percent from 71 percent. In Arkansas and Alaska, a majority of young voters went Republican.

These last figures for North Carolina are particularly concerning, because of the importance of the Research Triangle in statewide voting. The hope has been that NC’s college community would become the driving wheel for steering the state into the purple/blue spectrum.
Unfortunately, most discussions of youth voting trends fail to take much account of class differences, as reflected in the distinction between college youth and young workers. Bayerlein’s numbers also lump them together. For a more nuanced consideration, it would be interesting to compare the turnout rates and party preferences of the two sub-categories, and perhaps factor in marital/parental status.
Young people do share a range of common concerns, regardless of their educational and employment status, which may be reflected in their political party preferences. As Bayerlein notes,

Given recent surveys of youth attitudes, though, we shouldn’t be surprised. Last April, Harvard’s Institute of Politics found a growing gap in party loyalty between younger millennials and older ones. In 2010, 18-to-24-year-olds chose to self-identify as “Democrat” over “Republican” by 15 percentage points, or 38 percent to 23 percent. By 2014, that gap had narrowed to 10 percentage points, 35 to 25, even as older millennials, between 25 and 29 years old, maintained that 15-percentage-point split. What’s more, 18-to-24-year-olds who called themselves “moderate,” not “liberal” or “conservative,” climbed five points, to 31 percent.
A Pew Research Center survey released in March found that while 40 percent of millennials in 2006 considered themselves political independents, now 50 percent of them do. Moreover, 31 percent believe there is not “a great deal of difference in what Republicans and Democrats stand for.”

Such disturbing indicators are disappointing for Democrats, who have spent huge sums trying to educate and motivate young people in recent decades. It’s not just the old saw about youth being ‘the future of our country’ etc. It’s more about the frustration that comes with realizing that, on just about every issue of special concern for young people, Republicans stand in opposition, while Democrats support the reforms youth favor — regarding climate change and environmental protection, minimum wage increase, aid to education, income inequality, same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, affordable housing etc. — the list goes on and on.
But then, why should young people be any more likely than other constituencies and demographic groups to reliably vote their policy interests? White working-class males, for example, get little if any economic benefit from the policies of the Republican candidates they overwhelmingly support.
It appears that Democrats have a “branding” problem that often trumps economic interest and policy preferences. George Lakoff hinted at it in his recent analysis of the 2014 elections: “Democratic strategists have been segmenting the electorate and seeking individual self-interest-based issues in each electoral block. The strategists also keep suggesting a move to the right. This has left no room for the Democrats to have an overriding authentic moral identity that Americans can recognize.”
If Lakoff is right, many voters prefer Republican clarity to a muddled, balkanized Democratic message. Democrats have failed to clearly express their “authentic moral identity,” which would resonate with youth, white workers and other constituencies. To some extent, it’s an unavoidable problem for a “big tent” party, but it’s not necessarily an insoluble one.
The midterm electorate is a different beast from presidential elections. But Obama’s extraordinary ability to inspire hope in young voters 2008 is nonetheless instructive for Democrats in all elections. An enhanced commitment to establishing a clear, unique “moral identity” as the party of hope for young people would likely serve the Democratic party well.