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What Kansas Didn't Do For Democrats (Politico)
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/james-thompson-ron-estes-kansas-election-215017Emphasis mine:
Sanders’ acolytes saw a kindred spirit in Thompson, but he stopped short of embracing the entirety of the Vermont senator’s platform. For example, he said of Bernie’s signature health care proposal, “I like the idea of single payer [but] I don't see it getting accomplished in our current political environment.”
But he campaigned with Sanders, credited him giving him the inspiration to run and relentlessly used Sanders’ frame of “fighting for the working class.” Thompson was also unabashedly liberal on combating climate change, protecting LGBT rights and providing undocumented immigrants with pathways to citizenship, though he mixed in support for “the right to bear arms.”
“Thompson felt he had already won” reported The Huffington Post, “because he had shown that Democrats could make a Republican district competitive by running on an unapologetically progressive platform.” True enough. Thompson’s gun-toting progressive populism was a marked improvement over last November’s blowout. But Michael Dukakis was an improvement over Walter Mondale; it didn’t mean Democrats should run as diminutive technocrats.
The hypothesis that a progressive economic populism can fully flip a white working-class district from red to blue remains unproven, especially when confronting a competing right-wing populism that intertwines protectionism with promises of deportation and environmental deregulation. In fact, Thompson’s populist pitch hit a similar wall that Hillary Clinton’s pragmatist campaign did. The only part of the Kansas district that Thompson won outright was urban Wichita; he failed to make a significant dent in the surrounding rural areas.
But he campaigned with Sanders, credited him giving him the inspiration to run and relentlessly used Sanders’ frame of “fighting for the working class.” Thompson was also unabashedly liberal on combating climate change, protecting LGBT rights and providing undocumented immigrants with pathways to citizenship, though he mixed in support for “the right to bear arms.”
“Thompson felt he had already won” reported The Huffington Post, “because he had shown that Democrats could make a Republican district competitive by running on an unapologetically progressive platform.” True enough. Thompson’s gun-toting progressive populism was a marked improvement over last November’s blowout. But Michael Dukakis was an improvement over Walter Mondale; it didn’t mean Democrats should run as diminutive technocrats.
The hypothesis that a progressive economic populism can fully flip a white working-class district from red to blue remains unproven, especially when confronting a competing right-wing populism that intertwines protectionism with promises of deportation and environmental deregulation. In fact, Thompson’s populist pitch hit a similar wall that Hillary Clinton’s pragmatist campaign did. The only part of the Kansas district that Thompson won outright was urban Wichita; he failed to make a significant dent in the surrounding rural areas.
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