A link to share with the few remaining persuadables:
staff
The following article by John Russo and Sherry Linkon (their bio notes at end of article) is cross-posted from Moyers & Company.
Because of its potential for producing crossover Democratic votes for him in this year’s presidential race, Republican nominee Donald Trump has been paying a lot of attention to Youngstown, Ohio this year. This week, the old mill town gave him the kind of attention he didn’t want.
The quick resignation of local Trump campaign chair Kathy Miller, after a series of jawdropping remarks in an interview with The Guardian — including her opinion that racism did not exist until President Barack Obama took office — and the Trump campaign’s immediate decision to replace her with a Youngstown African-American talk show host suggest that maybe the blunt-spoken billionaire isn’t as enthusiastic about political incorrectness as he purports to be.
Trump’s campaign has encouraged people like Miller to claim their racism openly and defiantly. We’ve seen evidence repeatedly, such as in a Plain Dealer reporter’s summary of the racist comments he’s received from Trump supporters or a widely-circulated New York Times video of comments from supporters at Trump rallies. And while Trump certainly fueled the birther movement, it grew legs at tea party rallies with laments about the loss of the “real” America. The horrifyingly repetitious pattern of police officers shooting unarmed black men has made the underlying racism in American culture not only visible but deadly, while pushback against the Black Lives Matter movement makes clear that many white people firmly believe, like Miller, that people of color face no significant barriers.
The following article is cross-posted from DCorps:
On the eve of the first major presidential debate, the latest likely voter survey of the battleground states on behalf of Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund shows Hillary Clinton settled into a strong lead in Pennsylvania, a modest one in North Carolina, and essentially tied in Ohio and Nevada.[1] Her overall margin has narrowed from where we had it across the battleground in June. Nothing comes easily in this election year, but the Clinton margin should grow from the structure of the race revealed in this analysis. In the two-person ballot, her margin grows 2-points to a 5-point lead across these states and she takes the lead in Nevada. And if the 3rd party candidates weaken, as is normal, Clinton disproportionately benefits.
The structure of the race
This survey shows why the presidential race in the battleground has tightened, but also why it is likely to widen back up. Trump’s better margins come from some consolidation of base Republicans and Clinton has lost support to 3rd party candidates in the wake of the campaign’s travails. Trump continues to earn overwhelming and intense support with white working class men who are making themselves the backbone of the Republican presidential coalition. Over three-quarters of white non-college men say the country is on the wrong track, making them the most pessimistic voters in the country. An equal number are casting a ballot for Trump, as they make disappointment known. But as we shall see, even extraordinary turnout from these voters cannot tip the Clinton states to Trump.
Clinton still wins the Electoral College majority, however, because of her stable support with parts of the Rising American Electorate and her inroads with other swing groups. The unmarried woman and minorities at the heart of the RAE are voting for Clinton in force. Three-quarters of minorities are voting for Clinton in these battleground states, she is getting 62 percent with unmarried women and is even winning the majority of white unmarried women (52 Clinton to 31 percent for Trump). Right now, unmarried women are showing respectable levels of voter engagement. In this poll, unmarried women and Democrats fall just 2-3 points below Republicans in saying this election matters tremendously.
But Clinton is also over-performing with college graduates, suburban voters and the white working class women who are put off by Trump. That is a big part of the story.
Donald Trump’s vote, on the other hand, is driven primarily by the white working class men who are voting for him 63 to 18. They are making their discontent known by pulling away from Clinton and making themselves the backbone of the Republican presidential coalition; they are 30 percent of the Trump vote.
But in this new America, they would have to increase their share of the vote from 16 to 25 percent in North Carolina, 15 to 17 percent in Nevada, and 20 to 31 percent in Pennsylvania, all else being equal, to put Trump ahead in those states.
Incomplete partisan consolidation
The incomplete consolidation of Democratic partisans for Clinton and the weak consolidation of Clinton voters for Senate and House candidates are the main reason Democrats down-ballot are falling short of their potential at this point. Clinton is getting 87 percent of Democrats, short of the 92 percent Obama had in these states in 2012. She only gets 77 percent of Obama voters and 78 percent of those who approve of Obama.
Clinton will likely benefit disproportionately if the race becomes more polarized. In the two-way ballot she gets 93 percent of Democratic voters. So, she clearly has the potential to drive up her margin with partisans.
Trump does not have such an opportunity. He currently gets 82 percent of Republicans, certainly up from our earlier surveys. However, his vote in the two-way ballot leaves him at just 86 percent of the vote in the GOP base. There are 14 percent in the Republican Party who just won’t vote for him. Those holdouts are concentrated among the moderate Republicans[2] where he is getting only 60 percent of the vote. One-quarter are voting for a 3rd party candidate (22 percent for Johnson) and 10 percent are casting ballots for Clinton. Furthermore, there is a halo effect for Clinton, who enjoys a 57 percent recall among Democratic primary voters, but not for Trump among Republicans. He is topped out within his base.
Potential Democratic consolidation creates this campaign’s target groups
The starting target is the 18 percent of the Democratic voters who are holding back from Hillary Clinton. These target Democrats are change voters: three-quarters say the country is on the wrong path. Well over 60 percent have unfavorable views of both Clinton and Trump, though they feel very positively about President Obama.
Millennials are at the center of the story. They comprise nearly four-in-ten of these unconsolidated Democrats. They form a parallel story to the disaffected white men. They want change, and 61 percent say this country is off on the wrong track. They are in an anti-establishment mood, and one-third of millennials are now not voting for a major party candidate. Clinton is only getting 40 percent of the millennial vote in a 4-way ballot. She is particularly struggling with the white millennials where she is running even with Trump – 33 Clinton to 32 Trump, with 28 percent voting for 3rd party candidates.
Consolidating Democrats and winning races
The incomplete consolidation of the Democratic Party at the top of the ballot is exaggerated down-ballot, and that creates a huge opportunity. That will also impact what messages can really move the vote. Only 62 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents are voting for the Democratic Senate candidate. That means that there is a big bloc of 15 percent of the electorate in these states who are voting for Clinton but not Democrats in these key federal races.
Clinton widening her lead and winning states and Democrats making gains in the Senate and House depends on the right strategy and messages for reaching these voters. We tested one on GOP extremism, one linking Republican candidates to Trump and one offering a positive Democratic economic message.
Democrats, millennials and Democratic target voters are desperate to hear where the Democratic candidates want to lead the country. The message that consolidates Democrats more than any other tested in this survey is one that offers a clear positive economic agenda. It says that Democrats have a plan for the economy, and that to get these things done, we need a Democratic majority in Congress.
A big majority of 61 percent found this to be a convincing reason to vote for the Democratic candidate for Senate, 29 percent said it was very convincing. But it was particularly well-received by the groups we are trying to consolidate. Over half of them said it was a very convincing reason to vote for the Democratic candidates.
An attack on Republican candidates for Trump as their party’s nominee is not as successful. It gets a strong response, but it is weakened by the fact that a plurality of voters think the GOP is divided and many candidates in his own party do not support him. Also, it simply does not lead to people consolidating their vote behind Democrats.
But it is clear that the greatest gains down-ballot, and at the top of the ticket, come when voters hear the Democrats offer a positive vision for where they will take the country and how they will change an economy that only enriches the few. It puts them on the side of change and a better future.
Conclusion
The race has tightened but Hillary Clinton is leading in the presidential battleground due to her strong support from unmarried women, minorities, and swing groups turned off by Donald Trump. There is still room for the Democrats to consolidate, however, both at the top of the ticket and down-ballot. Democratic targets for consolidation are eager to hear more about what Democratic candidates will do if elected. A message that argues for a Democrat majority to execute a progressive economic agenda moves unconsolidated Democrats to vote for their party candidate, both at the top of the ticket and down-ballot.
[1]On behalf of Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund, Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner fielded this survey of 1,600 likely voters across 4 competitive battleground states on September 10-19, 2016. Respondents were divided equally among states (n=400) of North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The states were weighted proportional to their vote share. Fifty one percent of respondents were reached by cell phone, in order to account for ever-changing demographics and accurately sample the full electorate in each state. Margin of error for the full sample = +/-2.45 percentage points at 95% confidence. Margin of error for each state sample= +/-4.90 percentage points at 95% confidence.
[2] Republicans who say they are liberal or moderate on ideology. They are more than one-third of base Republicans and only one-quarter are voting for Trump. They are 37 percent of the Johnson vote.
The Clinton campaign has a new ad that should be shared with all swing voters:
The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
A small but significant group of Americans is considering casting their vote this fall for a third- party “protest” candidate. Some are thinking they may not vote at all. They say they don’t like any candidate enough to vote so they will “sit this election out.”
I realize many of the Americans considering a third-party vote — or sitting out the election — have sincere, deeply-held feelings that are driving their actions. Some are just disgusted by what they think is a vitriolic tone of the campaign.
Unfortunately the media encourages that kind of cynicism and disgust by presenting the attacks mounted by each side in the campaign as equally credible.
But while it is easy to understand the reasons that some people might be inclined to choose a “protest” vote — or decide to sit on their hands — the fact is that either of these actions will have one and only one result: putting Donald Trump into the White House.
And “trust me,” the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States will have long-term consequences that will make it ever so clear why every voter has to overcome his or her cynicism, or personal likes and dislikes, and go vote — for Hillary Clinton.
History makes the results of third party “protest” votes in modern American elections crystal clear.
In 2000, thousands of idealistic young Americans chose to vote for Ralph Nader rather than cast their vote for Vice President Al Gore. There were 50,000 Nader votes in Florida. Gore lost the presidency by 537 Florida votes.
Had Gore won, there would have been no Iraq War in 2003 — and likely no ISIS today. There would have been no Bush tax cuts for the rich. There would not have been the massive Bush-era deregulation of Wall Street that led to the Great Recession.
And for those who care deeply about climate change, remember that it was private citizen Al Gore who, after losing the election, sounded the climate change alarm with his amazing film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Had Gore been President, the United States of America would likely have initiated the battle to curb global carbon emissions over a decade and a half ago.
And you can bet that if they knew what would happen in a Bush presidency, many of those 50,000 Nader voters would have begged to reverse history and let them vote for Al Gore for President instead of cast the “protest vote” that cost us all so much.
Of course it’s not just the 2000 election where third-party protest votes have been decisive. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 — and the whole right wing “Reagan Revolution” — would likely never have happened, were it not for the third party candidacy of John Anderson.
Remember that none of the 2016 third-party candidates has any credible chance whatsoever of becoming President of the United States.
Someone who casts his or her vote for one of these third-party candidates must be betting that the results of their own “protest” are more important that the consequences that a Donald Trump Presidency would have for the country — and for their lives.
But I would wager that a significant number of those 2000 Nader Voters personally suffered from the consequences of Bush’s two terms in office. Odds are good that many of their families lost loved ones in Iraq, or that their home values collapsed in the Great Recession, or that they lost their jobs or their pensions, or saw their college loans explode. Many suffered from rising health care costs that Bush failed to address through any form of health care reform.
I’m betting that many of those voters would agree today that whatever momentary sense of power they felt by sticking it to the system and protesting their presidential options in 2000 is now far outweighed by the regret they feel at the consequence of what they did.
If you’re considering casting your vote for a third party candidate, or simply abstaining from voting entirely, please think seriously about how you’ll feel about that vote next year, or ten years from now — if, like the Nader voters of 2000, your votes determine who will be president.
It’s one thing to cast a “protest vote” or decide to stay home, if you think the election is already decided. A month ago many people thought Hillary Clinton would run away with the election, so why not vote for a third party candidate? Not so today.
That’s exactly what happened in Britain during the Brexit vote earlier this summer. Many voters — especially younger voters — who opposed Britain leaving the European Union — thought they didn’t need to go to the trouble to vote because Brexit could not possibly pass. The day after the election, they were shocked to learn they were wrong — and then it was too late.
Polls showed that young people overwhelming opposed Brexit. But many of them didn’t take the time to vote. Now they wish they did.
Today, most millennial voters oppose the bigotry of Donald Trump. They also understand that a man with Trump’s temperament has no business with the country’s nuclear launch codes.
They want lives of commitment for themselves. They honor the sacrifice of leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Congressman John Lewis who were willing to lay their lives on the line for the welfare of others. And they understand that Donald Trump is the antithesis of a leader who has devoted his life to others and to the common good. They know that Donald Trump is a man who has done nothing in life but look out for himself — no matter who he hurt, no matter whose lives he ruined.
But if Donald Trump is actually elected President, that division, that hatred, that bigotry, that selfishness and the impetuous childish insults will define America. They will be our future.
In a close race like this one, no one can afford to make a “protest vote” that may end in that result. No one can afford to say: “my vote doesn’t matter.” No one can afford to allow their own disappointment with the result of the primary — or their wish that someone who is more to their taste were the candidate — to contribute to such an historic disaster for America and the entire world.
In many states, early voting — or mail balloting — starts in a matter of weeks.
If you were thinking about casting your vote for a third party — or staying home from the polls — please think again. You, your children and maybe even your grandchildren, will be glad you did.
Join us in stopping Trump. And in the process, help make history by electing the first woman president of the United States. Cast your vote for Hillary Clinton.
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:
Democrats far and wide are asking: is it really possible we might lose to the guy who seems to be trying to brand himself as the worst person in America? Spewing racist rhetoric and conspiracy theories? Check. Making one misogynistic comment after another? Check. Joking about the assassination of Hillary? Check. Encouraging his supporters to beat up protesters? Check. Cozying up to evil dictators? Check. He’s done it all and more, brazenly. And yet somehow Hillary is tied with him in some national polls, even behind in a few.
I will admit to being nervous, but I am always nervous before an election because surprising things often happen. I was far more nervous than most Democrats when we were ten points ahead in the aftermath of the two conventions and Trump’s idiocy in attacking a Gold Star family. You just never know what will happen in an election, even right up to the end. Indulge me in a little history on the topic of Election Day surprises (I won’t even mention all the times candidates who won were well behind in the late summer or September of the election year).
In 1980, right up until Election Day, the pollsters were talking about the election probably being one of the closest in history. A lot of people thought Carter would squeak out a win over Reagan. Instead, we got a historically big Reagan/Republican landslide that also lost us control of the Senate and working control of the House because things broke their way in the last few days. In 1994, very few people were predicting that Republicans would win the House and Senate; most forecasts had 20-25 House seat pick-ups for them. Instead, they picked up 52 House seats and 10 Senate seats.
In 1998, most people predicted that Republicans would pick up 25-30 House seats because of the Lewinsky scandal, but a late breaking “time to move on” movement (that launched Moveon.org) gave the Democrats a five seat pick-up. And in 2006, only a few people were predicting the House would go Democratic, and almost no one thought the Senate would, since that would require Democrats winning almost every single competitive Senate race. Democrats won the House with room to spare, and won seven of the eight closest Senate races, giving them control of both Houses.
So nervousness is warranted, but panic is not. Let me suggest an alternative: calm and focus. It is absolutely clear what is happening in this election and what the path is to Democratic victory. The underlying fundamentals in this race have not changed since Hillary and Trump established themselves as the forerunners in the nomination, and those fundamentals favor us Democrats if we effectively take advantage of them. The electoral-college math favors us, and the demographic math favors us, as the Democratic base groups of people of color, young people, unmarried women, union members, LGBT folks, and other progressive constituencies make up over 60% of the electorate. Plus Trump’s general offensiveness helps us a lot with higher educated suburban voters.
Here’s where we are not fully delivering on turning those fundamentals into a decisive victory: we are underperforming with our base. It isn’t rocket science to fix this problem, but we must pay attention and put some serious elbow grease into turning this around.
The polls are all over the map, but there are some trends suggesting that Clinton is not doing as well right now as Obama did among all of the major segments of the so-called ‘Obama coalition,’ with African-Americans, especially younger black folks; Latinos; young people; and unmarried women. You can check out the gory details here and here. There’s even one poll that has Trump getting 20% of the African-American vote.
A couple points to make here. First, Donald Trump is just not going to win 20% of the African-American vote or get a higher percentage of Latino voters than Romney did. Every presidential election I have ever been involved with, there are some fluctuations in the numbers for both parties in terms of their base voters, but certain things have never happened and will never happen.
A Republican presidential candidate has not gotten more than 12% of the African-American vote since 1964, and it is not to going to happen with Donald “look at my African-American over here” Trump. The man who called Mexicans rapists and murderers, and said a judge of Mexican-American descent couldn’t fairly rule on his case will not be more popular among Latinos than Romney.
The poll numbers don’t reflect that Democrats, people-of-color-led groups, labor, and other allies will spend the final seven weeks working these constituencies with reminders of every rotten thing Donald Trump has said. They will get the Democratic-leaning members of these constituencies out to vote.
The second point is this: the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party must focus on base turnout like a laser beam. I have confidence they will — they are already doing a lot of the right things. But this is where the ballgame is going to won or lost. Here’s what needs to happen:
1. We must put a lot more money in the closing weeks into Latino media, both Spanish- and English-speaking. Even more importantly, we need to invest far more than we have so far in Latino field operations for voter registration and GOTV. We are not yet maximizing our vote with this crucial constituency, and we have relied too much on the dislike of Trump among Latinos to drive GOTV. We need boots on the ground, and we need to give people a reason to vote for Hillary, not just against Trump. This, as you will see, is a repeated theme of mine.
2. We must invest a lot more money and attention into social media. Despite the big fundraising edge that Clinton has had over Trump, the Trump campaign has spent more on social media. He spent at least $19 million on social media in July and August alone. Hillary’s lagging poll numbers among young people are due in part to the fact that we are not paying as much attention to the media platforms they use as Trump has been.
3. We must get all the Bernie voters we can get. Admittedly, there are some Bernie bros who will reject Bernie’s plea, and almost every other progressive leader’s plea, to vote for Hillary. But there are still plenty of Bernie people who are genuinely torn. Only a tiny percentage of them will vote for Trump. Most are still deciding between Stein, Gary Johnson, Hillary, and not voting at all.
We need to make a sustained, positive, heartfelt series of pitches to them, to convince them that Hillary will get some good things done. Yes, we need to remind them that Trump will do the horrible things he has said he would do, but mostly we need to inspire and motivate them. Hillary Clinton has embraced a large number of progressive economic and social issues that Bernie voters care a lot about, like free college for most people and doing something big about climate change, and we need to make that case to the Bernie folks.
4. What all of these strategies have in common is the simple idea that we must make a much stronger case about voting for Hillary, not just voting against Trump. A campaign that is all negative with no positives will drive down voter turnout, so that only the people who always vote end up voting, giving us a Republican electorate. Check out 2010 and 2014 to see that electoral dynamic — the people who always vote are older, whiter, and better off than Democratic base groups. Disliking a candidate is rarely enough to get people off their butts and into the voting booth.
Democrats have the edge on the demographics and the issues needed to win this race — not just in the presidential, but across the ticket. We just need to focus on winning our natural coalition and do the hard work it takes to deliver that coalition to the polls.
Could younger voters actually prevent Clinton from winning the election? Ronald Brownstein addresses the possibility at The Atlantic:
Clinton struggled among Millennial voters in her 2008 primary campaign, her 2016 primary campaign, and in the 2016 general election. Against Donald Trump, Clinton has two big advantages—a policy agenda that polls show largely matches Millennials’ own preferences, and an opponent even more unpopular with them than with the public overall. But she also must overcome her own long history of failing to connect with this growing group of voters—a failure that is increasingly worrying Democrats as the overall race tightens.
“This could very easily be the difference between winning the election or not,” said Andrew Baumann, a Democratic pollster who is regularly polling Millennials during this campaign. “If she ends up with them at 50 percent [of the vote] or 55 percent or 60 percent, those are hugely different scenarios.”
In simplest terms, Clinton’s problem is that large numbers of Millennials have never warmed to her as a national candidate.
Brownstein shares figures showing Clinton’s deficit with Millennial voters vs. Obama in 2008 and against Sanders during this campaign’s primary season, in which Sanders bested her in 25 of 27 primary and caucus states. Brownstein notes that Clinton leads Trump in polls so far, but “show her failing to consolidate the enormous share of Millennials who express unfavorable views about Trump. Instead, many of those voters now say they will support libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein.” Brownstein shares some poll results:
Consider the recent George Washington University Battleground Poll conducted by Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster, and Celinda Lake, a Democrat. In that survey, 73 percent of Millennials said they had an unfavorable view of Trump, 68 percent said they trusted Clinton more than him to defend the middle class, 64 percent trusted her more to handle foreign policy, and 61 percent favored her over Trump to manage the economy. Yet in a four-way ballot test, she drew just 46 percent support, compared to 26 percent for Trump, 18 percent for Johnson, and 5 percent for Stein.
In last week’s ABC/Washington Post poll, which released results from adults 18-39, a group that extends slightly beyond the Millennial Generation, 70 percent of those younger Americans said Trump was not qualified to serve as president and 66 percent said he was biased against women and minorities. But in the four-way match-up, Clinton again drew just 44 percent to 24 percent for Trump, 20 percent for Johnson, and 6 percent for Stein.
A survey of Millennials in 11 battleground states released last week by Baumann’s firm, the Global Strategy Group, for Project New America and NextGen Climate presents the same daunting contrast for Clinton. In that survey, 75 percent of Millennials say they view Trump unfavorably, 73 percent describe him as a “racist,” and 70 percent say he is “unfit to protect our country from major threats.” But among likely voters, this survey again found Clinton drawing 48 percent, to Trump’s 23 percent, 13 percent for Johnson, and 8 percent for Stein.
Brownstein notes that there has been some improvement in Clinton’s poll numbers with younger voters since July. Clinton’s deficit with Millenial voters is apparently not about policy. Clinton supports all of the right policies favored by younger voters, but “Big majorities of Millennials, the polls show, view her as untrustworthy, calculating, and unprincipled.”
It can be argued that young voter turnout rates have not been all that impressive. But close margins in key swing states could make them a pivotal constituency.
As the numbers noted above make clear, it’s not that Millennials prefer Trump: it’s more that too many of them are, at this late date, considering casting their ballots for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. Clearly Democrats have work to do to improve Clinton’s credibility and image, but also to educate these voters about Johnson’s right-wing economic policies, which couldn’t be much more detrimental to their interests and prospects.
The following article by managing editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies and coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State University and visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and Georgetown University Professor Sherry Linkon, faculty affiliate of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and editor of Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Moyers & Company:
When Mitt Romney dismissed the 47 percent of voters who, he predicted, would support Barack Obama “no matter what” as “victims” who depend on government assistance, liberal critics called foul. The quote, caught on video by a bartender at a Florida fundraiser in September 2012, reinforced Romney’s image as an elitist whose interests were firmly aligned with the wealthy. Not surprisingly, Democrats repeatedly used the line against Romney, and while we can’t blame his defeat in that year’s election on that one line, it sure didn’t help, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio.
Last Friday, Hillary Clinton said the following:
You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket – and I know this because I see friends from all over America here – I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas – as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.
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:
Yeah, okay, this hasn’t been the Clinton campaign’s best weekend ever. The media and the Trump campaign both have reasons to play the ‘basket of deplorables’ quote and the health issue up, so of course we will hear a lot of overheated talk about how horrible all this is for Hillary. The simple fact, though, is that neither a quote that needed a little tweaking (if she had said “some” of Trump supporters rather than “half,” the quote would not have been news), nor the news about walking pneumonia is going to change the fundamental dynamics of this race.
When Hillary performs well in the first debate on September 26th, all the health talk goes away — just ask the veterans of the Mondale and Reagan campaigns about good debate performances putting such questions to bed. If Trump wants to get into a discussion about the quote in that debate, it will just give Hillary a chance to pivot and talk about all the nasty racists who are part of his campaign. I guarantee she will not be playing defense on that topic.
So I’m not worried about this irritating weekend. What I am worried about is that Democrats will take off their eyes off the ball and forget the fundamentals of this election, which just aren’t that complicated and aren’t about the gaffe du jour. The 2016 election is about whether Democrats seize the day and get Democratic voters excited about this election. The Rising American Electorate (RAE), a term coined by pollster Stan Greenberg, consists of growing demographic segments within the American voting population: people of color, unmarried women, and young people. All of these groups will strongly support Hillary and other Democrats at the polls. The RAE is now over 55% of eligible voters. If we get them motivated and inspired to vote with a strongly progressive populist message, we will not only win big percentages of their votes, but win more than enough white working class voters as well.
The numbers are clear on this point. As just one example, the Washington Post‘s most recent poll gives Hillary Clinton a modest five point lead over Trump, but if Democratic voters turn out in equal numbers to Republican voters, the lead rises to 10%. Greenberg, who also coined the term ‘Reagan Democrats’ in the 1980s and has studied white working class voters for most of his career, points out, the white working class that is Donald Trump’s base is only 18% of the likely electorate this year. That’s half of what it was in the Reagan years. And we can get some of those voters with the same message that appeals to the RAE.
If Hillary and other Democrats focus the election on the economic narrative of leveling the playing field — the same economic narrative Hillary and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have all focused on over this election — we will win this election, and win it big. If we talk about creating good, new jobs through rebuilding roads and highways and investing in solar and wind power; if we talk about paid family leave and affordable child care; if we talk about raising the minimum wage; if we talk about holding Wall Street accountable; if we talk about free college for low- and middle-income students; if we talk about getting the drug companies to lower their outrageous price increases; if we talk about not letting big money control our politics anymore; in other words, if we talk about the Democratic platform Hillary and the entire party have already endorsed and campaigned on, we will win this election.
There just aren’t that many swing voters in the presidential election left in an America where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are people and brands people have known a whole lot about for a very long time. But there are two kinds of voters Democrats need to be worried about: people who would be voting for us yet might not vote due to a lack of enthusiasm, and people who would never vote for Trump and thus are Hillary voters. These likely Hillary voters are not necessarily sold on other Democrats down ballot in races they may not be paying much attention to yet. There are millions of voters in both categories, and rather than worrying about voters who might suddenly decide to vote for Trump because Hillary has a touch of walking pneumonia, we need to focus on making our case to those two crucial sets of voters.
Because of Trump’s historic weakness as a presidential candidate, but even more because of demographics and because this kind of economic agenda and narrative produces a strong majority in the polling, this can be a Democratic wave year of historic proportions. But we can still blow this huge opportunity. Democrats are spending way too much time worrying about Reagan Democrats when the guy who coined the term thinks we need to be focused on messaging to and turning out people of color, unmarried women, and young people. We need to stop worrying about voters we will never get, and we need to stop fretting about the little day-to-day stories that will take care of themselves.
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