The question is on my mind because I live in one: Oregon's Second Congressional District.
Is there a strategy or issue-frame that might work to elect a Democrat?
I think there is.
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The second congressional district includes the reddest part of the state. Voters in rural Eastern Oregon wanted their own district where they could elect one of their own; Democrats gave it to them. The incumbent Republican U.S. Representative, Cliff Bentz, has been winning general elections by a two-to-one margin.
We have experience in what does not work for a Democrat to get elected. Good people have tried. They have been plausible candidates for winning swing districts. They visited the country fairs and talked easily with farmers and ranchers. They tried to sell themselves. [See? I'm a good person, a reasonable person, a Democrat you can like.] It didn't work. They still lost by 30 points.
Democrats have good issues. Gasoline and grocery prices are up, the tariff wars hurt agricultural sales, the war with Iran is going poorly, and billionaires got tax cuts. The district has a significant skew toward people who use the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's version of Medicaid. Republicans have tried to eliminate the ACA, and now, after the Big Beautiful Bill became law, people are learning that their insurance premiums will go up substantially, making coverage unaffordable for many people. Rep. Bentz is part of the caucus that fights the ACA and passed the Big Beautiful Bill. It should be a motivator for Republican voters to vote their interest on issues. They don’t. They vote their party.
Being well-known and having a reputation for hard work, moderation, and attentiveness to the district has been tried, and it fails. Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, has had town meetings in every county in the district, including the very small ones, every year, and has done so for decades. Wyden handily wins the state, but he failed to get a majority of the votes in this district in the 2022 election, losing to a Republican who didn't bother campaigning.
Winning this district any year would be hard. The Democrat's task is made harder by the fact that animal rights advocates circulated an initiative petition and got onto this November's ballot a law to ban fishing and hunting in Oregon. Really. I expect a giant turnout from rural Oregon voters.
There is another approach:
Make the election a referendum, an up-or-down vote on whether the country is on the right track under Trump and this Congress. Define the election as an opportunity to send a message. People are feeling ornery. Give them a clear, direct way to express that emotion. Strip away most of the salesmanship about what a great human being the Democrat is. Voters won't believe it. Sell something they believe: The status quo is bad and getting worse and any change is worth trying.
Such a campaign would take self-discipline for the candidate. Every candidate has an ego and a desire to please. But the more the campaign is about the fine, upstanding Democrat and his oh-so-reasonable Democratic positions on good issues, the more muddled the election would be as a referendum. Resist that temptation to make it about the good-guy Democrat, except insofar as it is about the candidate's good sense to be against an unsatisfactory status quo. The Democrat will have his views, of course, and Democrats and many non-affiliated voters will like them, but if the campaign is about selling the Democrat, then it is a comparison election. That is a loser. It is better that the election be about whether people are happy with the status quo, with Trump, and with a congressman who does nothing to put limits on Trump. Bentz-is-Trump-is-the-status-quo. Are you happy? Are you OK with a do-nothing congressman?
If you want change, vote NO on Bentz. Say no to the puppet Congress that lets Trump run up gasoline and grocery prices, no to high healthcare premiums, no to the White House ballroom, no to midnight tweets depicting Trump as Jesus, no to war with Iran.
Recognize that a lot of people like Trump. The strategy won't win every vote. But a majority of voters want change, so make that the slogan, theme, and brand for the campaign. Bentz is stuck trying to defend the status quo that Trump and Congress created. His is the harder job.
Democrats have work to do to return to being a party that wins majorities in rural America. A candidate who wins can begin doing that repair work in office by supporting good policies and messages. Good government is good politics.
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| Satisfied with how things are going: 21 percent. Dissatisfied: 76 percent. |
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| Approve of this Congress 10 percent. Disapprove of this Congress 86 percent. |
Will it work? When conditions are bad enough, it just might. People aren't happy, and the trends are getting worse.
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5 comments:
But it’s not NICE to call out the filthy rats. Politics ain’t beanbag.
Peter recently pointed out that Bentz is Trump. As we know, Trump is a dangerous criminal who doesn't care about anybody's interests but his own. His devotees don’t care. The GOP has become a cult, a suicide cult, in fact, like Jonestown, but determined to bring the entire country down with them. What a basket of deplorables!
Democrats in Portland and Salem frighten the eastern half of the state. The latest concern is this bonkers idea the banning hunting and fishing. It's an example of how out of touch the west side of the state is with the eastern side of the state. It's right up there with turning wolves and grizzly bears loose in the forest around them.
I think this strategy that Peter proposed would only work if the Democrats seemed like a reasonable alternative to conservative rural voters. That is not currently the case, and there is not enough time before November for the Democrats to turn that around, even if they were unified about how to do it, which they are not.
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