A Smarter Left Electoral Politics

I really appreciated this Politico interview with Sean McElwee on how the left needs to be thinking about electoral politics. McElwee, who co-founded Data for Progress, came into the spotlight in 2017-18 with the #AbolishICE meme. That didn’t really go anywhere in terms of policy, unfortunately, but it did create a concrete slogan on the left against a fascist agency engaging in active ethnic cleansing that continues unabated today. So that’s good in itself, even if not successful. Since then, McElwee has been heavily involved in polling and data. He’s a personal friend as well, in all disclosure. But the reason I link to this is not that or for that matter the polling itself. It’s the clear-eyed view of electoral politics on the left that we need a lot more of. A couple of choice bits, especially about the huge mistakes of the Sanders campaign.

GRUNWALD: But Sanders seemed to do great for a socialist; he raised so much money and generated so much excitement. What do you mean by “severe strategic missteps”?

MCELWEE: If you had to boil it down to one problem, it was the belief the Sanders people articulated early on that in a big field, they could win the nomination with 30 percent of the vote. You know, elections tend to be won with 50 percent of the vote. If you’re not even trying to attract 50 percent to your vision, it leads to this view that you don’t need to persuade anyone, you just need to lock in the base and mobilize new voters. That’s setting yourself up for failure. And it’s inspired some very pernicious thinking in the progressive world: Those people who don’t believe what we believe, we can’t win them, so fuck them. You saw this most aggressively on Twitter, where you saw people say: “We need to crush these people, they’re forever lost to us.”

GRUNWALD: Bend the knee!

MCELWEE: Some people are like oh, Twitter, that’s not real. But the campaign articulated the same strategy! When we shut ourselves off from conversations about how to persuade voters, we’re making it a lot harder for progressives to win elections and deliver on progressive policy goals. Talking about which policies could work politically in Trump districts is not a fun conversation to have, but we need to have those conversations.

Look, one problem with running a campaign as a movement is that movements exist outside public opinion. It’s notable to me that Sanders and Warren both chose not to rely too much on pollsters. They got a lot of praise for that, but politics is about creating a nervous system for public opinion. You need constant feedback on your issues. I think one reason South Carolina and Super Tuesday came as such massive surprises was the campaigns focused on what moves small-dollar donors on Facebook and Twitter and so forth. Yeah, a viral ad with heated rhetoric can raise millions of dollars, but you don’t see the Americans who get turned off by it. There’s no emoji for that. They just go about their daily lives and don’t vote for you; you’re not even trying to reach them.

….

GRUNWALD: But was it really just bad targeting? I mean, it’s hard to win a Democratic primary when you’re not a Democrat, and you’re expressing contempt for Democrats.

MCELWEE: It was smart of AOC to identify as a Democrat, because most Democrats do believe the things that progressives believe. And most Democrats have quite intense party loyalty. One of the biggest misunderstandings on the left is the idea that the Democratic brand is bad. In fact, the Democratic Party brand is one of the strongest brands in the country. It’s something millions of Americans trust. That includes the African American and Latino voters who are sympathetic to progressive ideas, and are voters we need to persuade to support our candidates. Running as an independent outsider would have helped Sanders in a general election, but it was definitely a problem in the primary.

Look, the Democratic Party is a coalition party with five partners: African American groups, Latino groups, women’s groups, unions and progressive groups. If you’re only one of five factions, maybe one-fourth of the party, you should only expect to win about one-fourth or one-fifth of the victories. You need to work with other groups in the coalition to achieve political success. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose, that’s how life works. Ocasio-Cortez has figured that out, but not all progressives have.

GRUNWALD: Bernie is arguing that progressives won the ideas primary. Is that even true?

MCELWEE: It’s certainly true that most Democrats believe in very progressive ideas. It’s hard to find a progressive policy that doesn’t have strong support among Democrats. But this primary was about electability, and progressives weren’t able to persuade a majority of Democrats that their ideas are shared by a majority of the country. And that’s partly because Sanders and Warren didn’t emphasize the most popular progressive policies.

I mean, look at the Blue Dog Democrats. They don’t campaign on how Wall Street and pharma should be free to do whatever the fuck they want. They run on giving small-business loans to the troops, and protecting people with pre-existing conditions, and then after they win they vote to deregulate Wall Street and protect pharma. We should be talking about the parts of our agenda that are winners with voters, because there are progressive ideas that can fire up the base and persuade general election voters.

GRUNWALD: Like what?

MCELWEE: I’d propose a focus on paid family leave and childcare; ambitious climate action and clean energy; and lowering drug prices. You’ve got to narrow your agenda, because it’s hard to get voters to focus on too much. They have a lot going on their lives, from the Vanderpump Rules to getting their kids to school. With just those three priorities, you can show voters an agenda that will make their lives better, weaken major industries that are harming them, and put more money in their pockets. Why not focus on things that are popular?

Honestly, it’s astounding that Sanders ran such a horrible campaign in 2020. And in the end, it really was horrible. It looked like it might work for a second, when he did so well in Nevada. But that’s before it was blindingly obvious that they really thought that winning 30% of the vote would be enough to make it happen for them because all these lame candidates would stay in and fracture the vote? I mean, when has that happened in modern times? And there are two things that the left has to understand. First, you can’t win the Democratic nomination by running against the Democratic Party. Second, you can’t win the Democratic nomination without winning black voters. It is outright impossible on both of these points. And yet, Sanders’ advisers, and really much of the left, learned nothing from 2016. Elsewhere, McElwee notes the complete failure of the left’s attempt to organize rural whites they claimed wanted socialism, while Democrats’ gains in 2018 were almost all from the suburbs. I think there are some levels of political problems with a center-left party with a strong base among well-off white people, but it is what it is and I’d certainly rather have those voters right now than not have those voters.

Moreover, the political advice offered here is also probably right on. As much as people want to believe that Medicare For All is a popular slogan, it wasn’t popular enough to convince Democrats to vote for Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren. We might turn up our nose at political consultants, often for good reason, but there is something to be said about understanding how voters actually think and then adjusting your message to them. As McElwee points out, the Blue Dogs don’t run on embracing Big Pharma. They just take their money and do that after offering their voters a different platform. There’s plenty to learn from there. There are lots popular policies on the left. We see this over and over in polling. But they do have to be packaged in a way to get votes. McElwee, again:

MCELWEE: Again, I think the first thing the left and Biden need to understand is that the progressive agenda isn’t just a mobilization agenda; it can be a persuasion agenda. There are core groups with progressive voters but also persuadable voters, and I think those policies I mentioned can really help.

Take young people, A lot of young independents and Republicans who pulled the lever for Trump in 2016 are worried about core elements of Trump’s agenda, especially climate change. I think a strong climate agenda that emphasizes job creation as well as equity issues can be a central element of a persuasion agenda. And remember, not all African Americans and Latinos are Democrats. We need to hit those voters with compelling messages that fit with their lived experiences, and a focus on environmental justice and clean water and clean air can be very persuasive.

The next group I’d look at are suburban women. They’re not all Democrats, either, and plenty of the ones who voted for Trump are now persuadable. A paid leave and childcare agenda could really speak to the rising economic costs they’re facing. And then you’ve got older persuadables. Trump has absolutely failed to deliver pharmaceutical reform or reduce drug prices, and Democrats could make inroads on those issues. So I’ve named you a bunch of progressive policies that poll at 70 to 80 percent. Those would be some great issues where Biden could be looking to embrace the left.

Again, some of this might not be that surprising for some of you. But for much of the left, these sorts of points argue directly against a mode of politics that simply hasn’t worked electorally. Maybe it could. But it hasn’t. There’s almost no 2020 downballot left-wing momentum (possibly undermined by COVID, but unlikely in my view anyway) and going all-in for Bernie just didn’t work in the end. I am curious where the left does go from here in electoral politics since, well, who is the next leader? As long as Bernie is alive, the dead-enders will want him to run, even in 2024. But that’s an obvious non-starter. Since Warren is now Snake Emoji Traitor to the Left and even AOC is being criticized for being too nice to Nancy Pelosi and whatnot, I don’t see much of an electoral strategy. I’ve long stated that politics must include both electoral and non-electoral components as there is multiple ways to make change and both need the other. But the left has to figure that out and I don’t really see that conversation happening right now. It needs to.