The Way for Democrats to Win: Do What We Believe

Wm. Gregory Harman

Politico, admittedly a Left-leaning source, reported in early March on a meeting of national Democratic Party leaders and consultants sponsored by Third Way (the article can be found here).  Given those invited to the forum and its sponsor, it was only natural that they concluded that the Democrat’s path to future victory is to move right.  This seems supported by polling, specifically a Gallup Poll administered in early January.   However, the conclusion is spurious.  It is over-general and the data sources suspect. 

First, no breakdowns of data are readily available for the January Gallup poll.  One fact revealed about it by Newsweek’s report was telling: The sample was 1,001 people.  Bear in mind that the poll also accounted for Republican views, so we can pretty safely guess that around half of the sample was responding to their satisfaction with the Democratic Party, which means closer to 500 people.  When you consider that the number of registered Democrats is slightly over 45 million people, that means the sample is of .002% of the total number. I don’t care how ingenious your sampling methods are, there is simply no way to generalize that small a sample to that large a total population. 

Better sources certainly show with greater veracity that likely Democratic voters are farther right than the platform of their party was on the issue of immigration in 2020.  Immigration has been posed as such a bogeyman that it has reached into the Left.  While most Democrats don’t believe immigrants are a mob of murderers like MAGAs do, many Democrats don’t want more people entering the country. Right or wrong in the end, this is the one issue where substantial data supports the conclusion about moving right. However, it has already happened!  The shift was widely recognized by the party.  Platform and policy actions have changed rightwards over the past five years. 

The other area where data suggests Democrats might wish a rightward turn is in the discourse surrounding identity politics.  As with the immigration issue, many Democrats’ concern about this is inflated by rightist propaganda.  There is nothing in Democratic platforms or policy that champions critical-x ideology.  It is a misconception spun by MAGA sources.  As usual with such propaganda, it is a lie derived from a germ of truth. Most Democrats are committed to equality under the law, in the economy, and to people’s rights to self-determination.  Of course Black Lives matter.  Of course trans people should be respected in their decisions about their gender.  These are matters of societal and legal equality.  In this sense, most Democrats sympathize with what today’s social-justice-warrior-activists believe,  However, most do not concur with critical-x ideology.  Most don’t believe we must live in a constant state of anxiety over our privilege vs. everyone else’s oppression or be making policy based upon that anxiety. Likely Democratic voters who are concerned that the Party supports that kind of critical-x consciousness are being misled. There is nothing in platforms or realistic policy presented anywhere which goes beyond most Democrats’ convictions about legal equality and personal self-determination.  Rather than “moving right,” Democrats simply need to reclaim how social justice is talked about both from the Right and from the farthest socially Left.

The third factor that may be leading to the conclusion that Democrats should become Reagan-Republicans is age.  I suspect that the older the person being asked, the more likely it is that they want the party to move right. I know from my own experience as someone verging on sixty that my tendency is to moderate, to consider the complexities of real policymaking, etc.  But in light of what happened in 2024, my wife and I have both had to admit that our sons’ generation has been correct all along.  Their anger about how Democratic Boomers and X’ers have contributed to the mess we’re in is justified.  The party should take account of that.  It should do so not only because it’s correct, but because time dictates it.  Boomers and X’ers may put the moderating view into a slim majority now, but we’re necessarily a dwindling number.  How many of us will be voting in four years? In eight?  In twenty-four? That is a major factor. Long-term strategy is why Republicans have been succeeding and we have been failing. It has become quite clear in recent weeks that Chuck Schumer and his ilk are the past.  The party should have replaced them years ago.  People like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Murphy are the future.

Even more important is to point out that we have been discussing a very restricted view of what going Left or Right even means.  Immigration and culture wars are, in the end, ridiculously small matters.  We have let MAGA determine that these are the parameters of the conversation.  While they distract us all, Left, moderate, and Right with that nonsense, they consolidate the massive theft of the society by the very richest members.  The vital components of policymaking for a society are the ones where most Democrats welcome a hard steer to the Left: democracy and economics.  Most of us want:

1.     Representative government.  Find me any Democrat who thinks the gerrymandered, partisan allocation of districts is desirable.  Find me any Democrat who is a hardline supporter of the electoral college.  Find me any Democrat who is not annoyed by the limiting nature of our first-past-the-post voting.

2.     Re-distribution of wealth.  Find me any Democrat who believes that anyone should be able to own five homes while anyone else in society is homeless.  Find me any Democrat who doesn’t believe in a deeply progressive income tax and closing of all loopholes so that the rich pay what they owe.

3.     Social medicine.  Find me any Democrat who believes a rich person should get a needed treatment that a poor person gets denied.  Find me any Democrat that believes it makes sense for private shareholders and CEOs to take dollars that could be being spent on patients.

4.     Social regulation for the environment and safety.  Find me any Democrat who believes federal lands should be wide open for extraction.  Find me any Democrat who believes polluters should be allowed to ruin our air and water.  Find me any Democrat who favors big oil over green energy. Find me any Democrat who thinks corporations should be allowed to self-govern their safety measures (i.e. Boeing). 

5.     Retirement guarantees.  Find me the Democrat who thinks abandoning social security in favor of private options is a great idea.

6.     to support democracy across the whole world.  Find me the Democrat who believes we should not support the Ukraine in its fight against a fascist, imperialist invasion or does not support some form of self-determination for Palestine.

There is so much to win on here!  Yet we lose for two reasons:

1.     Timidity:  We are afraid both to set limits on what the party accepts and to open up what the party supports. 

We are afraid of the social left and the economic right among our own supporters.We are scared to alienate critical-x’ers, but they need to understand that their ideologizing is toxic to achieving real gains.  So long as we host rather than moderate critical-x ideology, we serve to alienate people from the party who would otherwise be a part of it, plus we boost the opposition.

We are terrified of losing rich donors, both individual and corporate.  But the ones who don’t agree with our relatively socialist positions are already Republican.  The ones who are still with us are those who would rather be successful members of a successful society than outrageously privileged members of a failed society (i.e. Costco).  They are with us in the better direction.

We are scared of the term ‘socialism’ or anything that could remotely be labeled that by the opposition.  We need to reclaim the term with pride, to educate the public to discern between authoritarian, statist communism and positive democratic socialism so that the Right cannot make hay simply by using the word against us.  Ours is a mixed system with capitalist and socialist elements.  So long as socialism is vilified, that mixed system can never reach the correct, utilitarian balance between the two approaches.

2.     Wonkiness: We try to sell views as policy rather than telling the voter how it is about each of them.  Everyone is the main character in their own life story.  They see everything in terms of themselves.  The Republicans have been far ahead in understanding this. 

If we want to socialize healthcare, don’t go on about the percentage of Americans who don’t have any.  Rather, focus on the shortcomings that the target voter experiences.  Show them again and again how someone in Europe just goes to the doctor and everything is taken care of in contrast to their own experiences.  People on both the Left and the Right were sympathetic to the killing of a medical insurance CEO.  That’s quite telling. 

If we want to spread the wealth, we need to stop showing data charts of wealth disparity and instead say: “You are two paychecks away from homelessness.  You are poorer than your own grandparents! That’s because you’re being robbed!  Take your money back!” 

The truth can be powerful, but it has to be personalized truth.

Senator Sanders’ success among people not only on the far Left, but many who believe themselves to be on the Right is an illustration of how fearlessness and personalization of the message can work.  The common person’s utter frustration and anger at the medical care they don’t get favors us. The common person’s indignation that they have to live in a tiny, rented apartment or a trailer when their grandparents owned homes favors us.  People’s concern that they don’t have safe water to drink or clean air to breathe, and that their grandchildren will be living on a desert planet, favors us.  We simply won’t take advantage of it, which is the most outrageously stupid thing in all of American politics.

If you are so certain heading right is the best thing to do, become a Republican. Work to reclaim that party alongside disaffected, Lincoln-project Republicans.  That is a worthy project, something which most Democrats would love to see.  But don’t stop the Democratic Party from being champions of an ever-expanding, democratic New Deal, marketed to voters in terms of what it does for each of them.  Not only is it the winning direction, it’s the one that takes our nation where we want it to go.  We need to do the things we believe in.

Wm. Gregory Harman has 2 Masters' degrees & a doctorate in Education.  His undergraduate degree was a political science oriented bachelors’ in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University.  He taught U.S. history, civics, and government (including AP sections) for over a decade and prepared social studies teachers for two decades. He was a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Green Party of MN in the late 1990’s-early 2000’s when the party obtained major party status in the state.