Democrats Are United Against Trump, Divided on Everything Else
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While Democrats are unified in their opposition to President Trump, they are at odds over which strategy and message are needed to end the party’s losing streak.
Democratic candidates are split on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposal to create a national single-payer health system. They disagree about whether the party should focus on mobilizing its liberal base or instead try appealing to swing voters in the middle. Since the November general election, the Democratic National Committee has posted lackluster fundraising numbers and the party has failed to win back Republican seats in four high-profile special House elections.
Some political strategists warn that contentious primary races could produce nominees too liberal to flip a Republican-held district, despite GOP divisions that have become increasingly and loudly aired in public. “The Republicans went through their tea party phase,” says Tom Davis, a former GOP congressman from Virginia who led the party’s national campaign committee. “Now, Democrats are going through their herbal tea party phase.”
There is a stampede of Democratic candidates for the 2018 midterm elections. A total of 391 Democratic challengers had filed and raised at least $5,000 apiece for their House campaigns as of Sept. 30, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. By comparison, there were 184 Republican candidates by September 2009 for House seats held by Democrats during President Barack Obama’s first term. The 2010 midterm election ended up being a GOP landslide.
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After Mr. Trump’s election victory, Democrats were in a tailspin as they confronted the unexpected loss of the White House, which few of them saw coming. There also was a downside of Mr. Obama’s eight years in office. While he held together a coalition that won the White House twice, the party deteriorated at the state and local level. Its national infrastructure crumbled.
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Some critics say Democrats still lack a message to reach the many working-class voters who deserted Mrs. Clinton last year.
“When you ask people what the Democrats stand for, there’s a pause and a silence,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, said in September. Despite its traditional support of Democrats, more than a third of union members voted for Mr. Trump in November. Mr. Trumka said Democrats “really do need a face lifting. It’s not enough to just have a message. People have to believe you will fight for the agenda you espouse.”
In past election cycles, Democratic Party leaders worked behind the scenes to clear a path for preferred candidates, hoping to avoid intraparty battles. Now, though, the DCCC is in a quandary. With so much grass-roots activism and suspicion of the party establishment, its endorsements could carry little weight—or even trigger a backlash against candidates.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-struggle-with-their-own-tea-party-moment-1509031265
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