Avoiding Democratic Suicide in Red States

This did not "just happen."  .

Democrats don't have an insurmountable political problem.  They have an attitude and style problem.   It is fixable.

Democrats need to stop signaling they are primarily the party of the coastal elites.   This map happened because too many Democrats are snobs.  

Democrats did well in major coastal cities and poorly everywhere else.   Happily for Democrats such a voter base is almost enough to win a presidential election.  But not quite.

I have described a Democratic party policy and style that makes perfect sense for Cambridge, Massachusetts and Manhattan and San Francisco, but which are simply wrong for rural and manufacturing areas.    I have described the archetypal Democratic voter as a single, professional, highly educated, non-churchgoing woman who lives in a large city on the east or west coast (or in a college town if mid-continent) and who works at a desk doing emails, making phone calls, and handling data of some kind, e.g. as a lawyer or accountant or financial manager. 

Of course, this is a stereotype.  It is over-simple.  It leaves out multitudes.  And, yes, there are some women who meet all those criteria who still voted for Trump.

It is a stereotype and indeed polls showed that such people were overwhelmingly for Hillary instead of Trump.  It is a person who lives such a life can have attitudes that create resentment by people who live other lives.

Such a person is more likely to be comfortable with diversity, seeing more of it in their workplace and neighborhood.

Such a person receives agricultural, manufactured, and resource-based products but is removed from their sources.  The person sees clean, washed, packaged produce, not truck farms.  The person sees a gasoline station, not a drill site.

They are accustomed to sharing things--public transportation, elevators, sewerages--and they have quick access to police and fire services.  

Such an educated, urban person can experience and project the values of urbanity.   I do not consider "urbanity", with its connotation of sophistication and worldliness, as bad.  But I recognize that people who aren't urbane resent enormously what they perceive as the sneering condescension of those who are.

 Frequent guest poster Thad Guyer described it in a recent comment:

There's a name for the Democratic orientation you describe- coastal elitism. Elite education, elite social values, elite economics, elite environmentalism, elite music and elite cuisine. The non-elites can't afford to be part of our hyper bourgeois life and values. Non elite Dems are told to accept our brand of trickledown-- job retraining, higher minimum wage, indentured pathway to non-deportation, and foodstamps.  

Trump's message aligned with Sanders'-- fight the sons of bitches trying to steal your life whether they're wearing red or blue. That message can't be countered with "resist Trump and his bigotry". 

Click here. Castrate hogs; respect for parental authority

A premise of this blog is that most political communication is simple and non-verbal.  The verbal content is only important as a signal of what side a person is on.  People profile others.  They "peg" them.  Especially for offices below that of the presidency people vote on the basis of scant impressions.   Political party, gender, age, looks, dress, tone.   What most people know about Joni Ernst, the new senator from Iowa is that she is a Republican, a woman, and she said with a bright confident face that she castrated pigs so she knew she could handle the politicians in Washington.  Pow!  Memorable.  Shocking.  It validated her as an opponent of the politically correct urban elites.

Some elements of urbanity are not problems.  Going to an Ivy League college or law school is not a problem.  Republican senators Cruz, Cotton, Sasse are all rising stars from red states and they attended Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.  It is OK to read the New York Times.  It is OK to get the jokes in The New Yorker.   Being educated and sophisticated is not the problem and even being urbane is not the problem. 

Duty and Sacrifice

 The problem is when a Democrat projects what Guyer called those "hyper bourgeois life and values."  Patriotism is a conservative moral value.  A Democrat who is electable needs to be fully comfortable with patriotism and the best way to project it is to have served in the military in a dangerous place.   Patriotic sacrifice demonstrates genuine patriotism.

A Democrat needs to show respect for authority.  Respect for authority is a conservative moral value.  A Democrat in a uniform of police, fire, or military demonstrates that.  Forthright and sacrificial actions on behalf of traditional authority signals respect.  A son who returns to a family farm to help a parent "save the farm" would be an example of this. 

People signal their values.  For example, a person who "follows my dream and passion to operate a farm" is projecting the opposite of the respect for authority.  This is an expression of  self actualization.  Note I am not against self-actualization but it is a value of personal fulfillment and self regard and the opposite of the value of respect and duty.   If a person's own biography and attitude is one of "follow your passion" then there is not shame in this but that person should move to a college town or coastal city and run for office there, where that value is more highly appreciated.  Duty and sacrifice are values more highly valued in rural areas.

Actually, what matters is the snobbery.

A Democrat needs to show respect for the life style of rural and suburban life, which include resource extraction, popular culture, popular food.    Coastal elites mocked Bill Clinton for being chubby and for eating McDonalds.  That did not hurt him; it helped him.  A great many people are chubby and a great many people eat at McDonalds.  That that was a brighter signal than was the fact that he was a Georgetown graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, and a Yale Law School graduate.  He was not fashionably and fastidiously thin.  He ate fast food and loved it, too much, like a great many of us.

Liberal elites do not understand how much they hurt themselves by mocking Trump for ordering his steaks well done, with ketchup.  People of all demographics hate the notion that snobs criticize their food choices.  Not only do a great many people like ketchup on things the important point is that people pick up on the snobbery and disdain.  Trump's election was a rejection of people who pushed urbane values onto them.

Must not fake this.

Note that I use the word "signal."  Political messaging is by big, bold actions.  A successful Democratic candidate can in fact come from a college town and can have progressive politics, but he or she cannot have those and simultaneously project urbane tastes and attitudes win election.   The candidate needs to signal they share the values of the people of their district which is not done with policies.  It is done with actions that are undeniable and un-falsifiable.   John Kerry in a duck hunting vest looks like what it is:  false messaging.   A person who served in Iraq carrying a gun is sticky messaging.  Saying you castrated hogs is sticky messaging.  

This cannot be easily faked because voters are alert to fakery.   A three day crash course in country music will not suffice.   It will look fake because it would be fake.  A Democrat needs to signal who they are, not who they are not.