The Trump Era

The Democrats have a choice to make:  This was a Trump Election or This is a Trump Era.

Democrats need to fix what is wrong with their policies and their message.

Trump won the Republican primary by creating enthusiasm among voters who were comfortable with the "talk radio" version of the Republican party--which was a plurality, not a majority, until the very end when Trump consolidated his party under the banner of GOP unity.  The talk radio segment is more race conscious, more populist, more nationalist, more anti-immigrant than the party as a whole.   But when Trump was clearly his party's winner Republican voters accepted him.   

What Democrats need to learn from is what happened next.  Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin narrowly, and she lost Ohio and Iowa decisively.  She won the national popular vote but lost the upper midwest.  It cost them the White House.

Democrats are not a national party if they cannot win most or all of those states in the upper midwest.  Those states do not carry the burden of being a slave state with a Jim Crow past, with all the attendant tradition of racial segregation and prejudice.   Democrats can remain the non-racist and pro-woman alternative to the Republican party.  They will be the party that overtly opposes racial and gender and sexual preference discrimination and will be the party of opposition to Republicans on this social issue.   This is a principled and winning strategy.  They may struggle in the Old South, but by losing Alabama they win New York and California.   (And conversely, the GOP's fealty to Alabama values, shown most immediately in the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General, could easily amount to a net negative to them nationwide, especially if Sessions is noticeable in pushing policies that offend the sensibilities of moderate voters elsewhere.)

But losing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin is not like losing Alabama.  It reveals a problem.

Why did they lose?   It wasn't just Hillary.   Hillary's baggage was not dispositive.  After all, she won a majority of the national popular vote.  Her baggage did not kill her in New York (which often elects a Republican governor) or California which she won big.  Hillary was a flawed candidate but the problem for Democrats wasn't personal.  It was policy, and it showed up as the surprise loss of a key region.

Trump had a message of jobs and a proposed solution: stop illegal immigration, stop offshoring of jobs, stop importing stuff we should be making here.  That was the message that resonated int the upper midwest sufficiently that people who voted for a black president with the middle name of Hussain turned and voted for Trump rather than Hillary Clinton. 

That is the big problem that Democrats must internalize and confront.  One can Google Hillary and find reasons to say that, actually she did made jobs an issue, but that is a distraction and excuse to avoid confronting the fact that she did not own this issue.  Trump did. Trump was the one visible and out front on this.  It was "the economy, stupid," all over again, and the economy issue showed up as lost jobs to the very visible threat from offshoring and imports.  Trump was the leader in condemning those things.  Not Hillary. 

I place below strong advice from Thad Guyer, who predicts a Trump era not a one-off Trump election, and he proposes a solution to the Democrats: follow the lead of Democratic Minority Leader, the pragmatist Chuck Schumer, not the liberal voices of the Democratic and Socialist parties, Sanders and Warren.  

I will let him make his argument but will forewarn readers that I see the problem and solution differently.  I don't think the electoral college loss was a rejection of liberalism, with centrist pragmatism as the solution.  Yes, the identity politics of Democrats created messaging problems with how they handle political correctness and how to describe jihad terror, and on messages of patriotism and faith and street violence and crime but these are problems of messaging that are national.  A Democratic candidate with roots--or at least instincts-- outside the coastal bubble can fix this.   And there is nothing "liberal" or "conservative" about condemning crime or expressing pride in one's country.  A liberal can go ahead and condemn terrorist bombings without reservation.  A liberal can condemn black-on-black violence.  Surely, it must be politically acceptable for a Democrat to condemn acts of violence and murder.   This is fixable message.

The deeper Democratic electoral problem is that policy problem that showed up in the loss of the upper midwest.  Democrats have not yet figured out how to have an industrial jobs and manufacturing message that is consistent with their broader policies that reflect the interests of creators of intellectual property and technology and of well-educated coastal consumers.  The academic philosophy of free trade and free movement of capital and the many winners of globalism among the various knowledge-workers on the coasts and in cities all have a political interest very different from the employees of rust-belt manufacturers.  

This is not an issue of left vs. center, nor of liberalism vs. pragmatism.  It is an issue of Democrat's having chosen technology and globalism over blue collar manufacturing and protectionism.   They chose California over Ohio--and suffered the electoral vote consequences.

From Clinton campaign website

In subsequent blog posts I will outline how Democrats might adequately satisfy both, but it will take more than the current advice of Democrats: displaced tire factory workers should simply go to college or graduate school, and we will assure you low interest loans to do so.  

Democrats can not ignore the interests of displaced middle and working class people whose jobs are being squeezed by technology and automation, but which Trump successfully blamed on foreigners and imports.   Trump's argument isn't accurate, but it is believable.  Hillary's message was, in effect, "yeah, you are screwed, so we will re-train you," which may be accurate but it was not acceptable.  My diagnosis is that the problem was industrial policy and the solution is to create a realistic and sensible one that addresses the needs of both exporters and blue collar manufacturers, then to sell it to the nation with pride and conviction.  I don't have the policy yet, but I know what the policy has to address.

 Then Democrats can re-win the upper midwest, plus all the states they won this year, plus North Carolina and Florida.  Landslide.  Otherwise, it is the Trump era.

Here is Thad Guyer's warning--and solution:

Thad Guyer

Reagan, Bush, Clinton Redux”

I agree with UpClose that Trump is going to own all of the losses and gains in the economy and foreign affairs. That ownership will likely have little effect on the 2018 midterms, may have some mild consequences in 2020, but will probably not have dispositive consequences until 2024 when voters decide whether to give Republicans a third term. The progression of Reagan, Bush and Clinton from 1980 to 2000 is good history to consult in postulating whether Trump’s messaging will have much to do with the fate of Democrats. 

A centrist democratic president might be possible in 2020 or 2024, but only if senate minority leader Charles Schumer's pragmatism prevails over Elizabeth Warren/Sanders progressives. Otherwise, like Reagan, Trump is unlikely to not get his 8 years. When the anti-political correctness bombastic messaging of a thoroughly disreputable candidate like Trump can bring low the entire liberal democratic establishment (presidency, senate, house and states), its safe to assume no “love trumps hate” liberal messaging is going anywhere. Trump is like Reagan. Ted Kennedy and the left railed against Reagan to no avail, he easily dispatched liberal Mondale in 1984, and Bush 1 did the same to liberal Dukakis in 1988. Democrats lost with their predominantly anti-Reagan backlash strategy. Indeed, had it not been for illiberal, law and order, jail dark-skinned teen predators, cut welfare, centrist messaging of Bill Clinton in 1992 after defeating his liberal messaging primary opponents, Bush 1 would have won a second term. Even Clinton’s centrism was not red enough, and Gore’s new left message was rejected in the electoral college in 2000. John Kerry’s anti-Bush messaging lost in 2004. Only economic and military calamity in the Bush second term finally returned us to the White House in 2008.

Pragmatic Centrist

Trump’s messaging, poetry and prose will not be measured in a vacuum, but against the messaging of Democrats. Schumer, with his Brooklyn grit, will keep our messaging pragmatic until the 2018 midterms and keep the anti-Trump Move On type diatribes outside the beltway. As he has publicly stated, Schumer is not going to let leftist outrage doom the 10 Democratic senators running in Trump states, and rabid anti-Trump messaging would doom them, and thereby give Trump 60 Senate votes. If we want to run a Republicanesque vote down everything Trump wants, we need one thing Obama-haters had that we don't-- a majority in the senate and house. Hopefully, Schumer will have calmed us down by January 2018, so that we can start getting serious about crafting winning messages for 2020 and 2024. Free tuition, open borders, cops are bad, and Russia stole our election won’t be the winning messages. If that’s what we go with, then Trump will have carte blanche for any messaging he wants, in spite of the “reality of governing”.