Guest Post: How Democrats Win

The Democratic base: Churchgoing, Moderate, Patriotic.

     

     The dispossessed believe that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it... The old American virtues have already been eaten way by cosmopolitans and intellectuals."

     Sociologist Daniel Bell, 1959

Democrats could blow this election.  Or win it.

A Guest Post observation.


Economic populism is a winner for Democrats. Trump faces a problem that is real, measurable, and widely felt: the rich have, indeed, gotten richer, and the broad middle class has gotten poorer. Voters at the margin, persuadable ones, understand that the 2017 tax bill rewarded corporations and the richest. Democrats are the ones addressing the kitchen table issues of health care, wages, and college.

The problem for Democrats will be cultural populism. That is how Trump communicates he is on the side of struggling Americans.

Larry DiCara is an attorney and civic leader in Boston, Massachusetts and an astute observer and practitioner of politics. As a young man he was elected to the Boston City Council, having negotiated the ethnic political divides in a city where the immigrant melting pot melts slowly and incompletely. It is mostly an "Irish" city, making DiCara a minority, indeed doubly so since DiCara is also a fish-out-of-water Harvard educated liberal.

DiCara thrived politically for five decades because he understands and respects the cultural conservatism of his neighbors. The lesson for Democrats as they sort through the potential candidates: they need to demonstrate cultural respect and empathy. 

DiCara writes occasional newsletters to friends and college classmates (he is yet another) and these are observations he shared.

Guest Post by Larry DiCara

"How Democrats Win"

DiCara

Winning the Presidency, and the Congress, and State Legislatures in 2020 requires that Democratic candidates be responsive not only to the noises emanating from the loudest cymbals on the political fringes, but also to the great majority of Americans. 

There are certain hot buttons that Democrats should push at their peril--terrorists should be allowed to vote; private health insurance should be discontinued; reparations for slavery; Colin Kaepernick is always right. These are topics which are likely to drive the common man, who may consider himself “dispossessed” as Bell and others referred to him, to vote for Donald Trump, notwithstanding that they consider him an ignorant bully. 

Trump has already begun his campaign by suggesting that Democrats are nothing but a bunch of warmed-over Godless Socialists. The American people never elected Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas, and they will not elect Bernie Sanders or anyone who agrees with his socialist platform. 

We must be careful to protect our base and expand it, rather than to drive good and decent people into the other camp. I agree with Governor Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island that “We cannot become the party of the checklist” but that “we should focus on economic security for all Americans.” 

We cannot succumb to what Matthew Yglesias has termed The Great Awokening. We must resist what Natalia Dashan has discussed in Palladium as 'a new ideological orthodoxy that is trickling down from elite colleges into the rest of society and is resulting in a nation which is becoming more polarized.' We must embrace patriotism, which means not pandering to one interest group or another over the good of the nation.

I would argue that Democrats cannot dismiss people who go to church, drink Budweiser, and eat red meat. Many of them should be on our team. Economic issues are far more important than the culture wars. The common man was the loser in the recent tax bill; their sons and daughters are the ones sent to fight wars without reason, not the sons and daughters of the rich. 

The great majority of the American people are not “deplorables” even if they may not frequent Starbucks, or Whole Foods, or hot yoga ('Bikram,' as I’m told it is called). Democrats cannot demonize their fellow citizens because they celebrate ethnic holidays. Democrats cannot permit themselves to be labeled as a party which is Godless and un-American. We have been losing that battle for a long time. Professor Theda Skocpol from Harvard has advised all of us: 'The road to national power does not run primarily through California, Massachusetts, or the TV studios of MSNBC in New York City. It runs through middle-American suburbs, cities, and rural counties. To win in 2020 and beyond, Democrats have to organize everywhere and project a national message that resonates widely.”'

Getting elected is about winning. I play to win, on behalf of my clients, my family, at squash, or at softball, but certainly in politics."