These two paragraphs from Politico are eye-opening:
“During a closed-door lunch last week with some of his most vulnerable incumbents, House Democrats’ campaign chief delivered a blunt warning: If the midterms were held now, they would lose the majority.
“Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney followed that bleak forecast, which was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the conversation, with new polling that showed Democrats falling behind Republicans by a half-dozen points on a generic ballot in battleground districts. Maloney advised the party to course-correct ahead of 2022 by doing more to promote President Joe Biden’s agenda, which remains popular with swing voters.”
What that says, in not so many words, is this: Democrats are losing the message war.
Maloney’s warning comes as Democratic strategists have become increasingly concerned about the focus of their most liberal members on issues like defunding the police and the “Green New Deal” that simply do not resonate with swing voters.
“How do Democrats win in places like North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and Georgia?” former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges asked in an interview late last month. “The circus has left Washington and Biden has already cleaned up the mess. I’m not sure why Democratic candidates would stray from that message – particularly in purple states.”
The problem for Democrats is that they are in the midst of a power struggle between the younger and far more liberal activist wing of their party and the most staid, moderate and establishment types.
Tuesday provided a perfect illustration of this ongoing struggle.
In an Ohio special election, the establishment candidate – Shontel Brown – beat early favorite and progressive darling Nina Turner. But back in Washington the protest on the steps of the US Capitol led by Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, an outspoken liberal, moved the Biden administration to take action to reverse itself and continue the eviction moratorium.
Both sides of the fight for the future control of the party could rightly then claim an important victory for their side on Tuesday. And while President Joe Biden is quite clearly an establishment type, many of the other leading voices in the party – Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – are on the liberal, activist end of the party.
Maloney and other prominent Democrats suggest that talking more about the economy – through the lens of Biden and what he and his administration are doing to help voters recover from the massive slowdown triggered by the pandemic – is the recipe for what ails the party’s message.
Maybe, according to polling. An NPR/Marist/PBS poll released last month showed 50% of adults approve of how Biden is handling the economy while 45% disapprove. Among electorally-critical independents, 48% approved while 47% disapproved.
Those numbers are good but not overwhelming. But there’s no question that talking about the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package that passed Congress earlier this year and the bipartisan infrastructure bill currently working its way through Congress is far better political ground for Democrats to fight on than more “woke” issues like defunding the police.
The question is whether Maloney (or any other Democratic leader) can convince the liberal end of the Democratic caucus of that fact.