Hindsight is 2020: Why The Blue Wave Failed
Joe Biden ran on a platform of cross-party unity, did that cost us votes down the ballot?
Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump has been spun by outlets and pundits alike as amazing, breathtaking, and a defining moment for American politics.
But is no one going to talk about the fact that 47% of the voting population, over 70 million Americans, managed to vote for the alternative, objectively the worst and most corrupt president in U.S. history? A racist, demagogue, sexist con-man whose childish behavior and inaction continues to results in thousands of American deaths? Why?
And more importantly, why did the party he represents cling onto their seats so effectively in so many different places?
Establishment Democrats seem to be suspended in some sort of strange disbelief, unwilling to fully acknowledge how badly the election was blown. This race was supposed to bring in a full-blown blue wave. Mark my words, Republican leaders across this country are celebrating these results.
What happened? Where was that blue energy? How come Cal Cunningham’s brilliant smile couldn’t defeat such a widely unpopular senator?
I’ll argue that it’s because of our own party, starting with Joe, and branching down to candidates like Cal, who decided that the incoming wave actually shouldn’t be blue at all, but instead some vaguely reddish-purple.
Vaguely reddish-purple does not come in waves.
Joe and Cal refused to campaign on true concrete policy, instead spending their campaign messaging, money, and time on talking about the virtues of a magical and ethereal cross-party unity. How when Trump would be gone, Democrats would easily be working together with their Republican colleagues.
Did anyone actually believe that enough Americans were dumb enough to buy into that?
In my wholly unprofessional opinion, this messaging was a massive mistake and a huge missed opportunity on the part of the Democrats. The party invested way too much into looking attractive to the right-wing of this country, into convincing the right-wing that the partisan attacks on the Democrats aren’t accurate.
If we’re spending our time indulging this rhetoric, why do we even bother running for office at all?
I vehemently believe the Democrats overestimated the amount of Republicans who actually disliked Donald Trump, just as they overestimated the amount of non-voters and independents who would be turned on about empty platitudes of cross-party unity over the alternative of, I don’t know, actual policy?
More importantly, I vehemently believe they underestimated the number of Americans who were willing to turn out and simply vote blue down the ballot just because Donald Trump was a big bad man.
How can you expect that to happen, when your own messaging about your own party is one of internal division, self-doubt, and indulging the attacks that you are somehow too radical and need to be watered down. How can that happen when you spend your time talking about unity with the other side?
Republicans adore the fact the Democrats can’t believe in themselves, and perhaps we should start asking why.
The last time the Democrats won a full sweep of the legislative alongside an executive branch win was 2008. More than a decade ago. It might be hard to remember, but back then, radical leftist dreamer Barack Obama, who was initially ridiculed by his own establishment as being too outside-of-the-box to win, brought people out to vote blue down the ballot.
He campaigned on solid change and solid policy proposals. His literal motto was “Yes, we can!” That ‘can’ was alluding to the idea that some in the party believed he never could.
Obama critiqued Republican control of government without holding back. Without avail, Obama believed in his own party’s ability to deliver real definitive change to the country. America bought it.
While Obama did truly talk about unity and coming together, it was actually his youthful energy and fresh ideas which excited people, even non-Democrats, and brought them to the polls to vote Democrat down-the-ballot in a way the party had never seen before, and may never see again.
In 2012, Obama had grown gray hairs. His messaging was now different, and so were the Democrats as a whole. No longer were they talking about building on concrete policy changes, but instead excusing their inaction and apologizing for their own policy beliefs. They were on the defensive.
Obama won against Romney, but his party did not receive a congressional mandate.
I never doubted that Joe would lose this election. Trump was simply that bad of a president. But my worst fears did come true: if the Democratic Party failed to convince the electorate at the grassroots level that they deserved their vote down-the-ballot because of fresh policies that would be beneficial for the electorate, then the Democrats’ momentum would effectively be lost in all races non-presidential.
I did not see Joe hammer down on voting blue down-the-ballot. Frankly, I didn’t see Joe discussing fresh policies, or talking about why he believed in these policies. What I did see, was Joe constantly apologizing for Republicans and the right-wing, and saying that he believed they had more in common than they did apart.
This is a cute message but does not convince people you deserve their vote.
The Democratic Party seems to be obsessed with the idea that what must be unpopular to its own establishment, is most certainly unpopular to anyone who isn’t a registered Democrat.
I, on the other hand, have the radical belief, just as Obama did in 2008, that that idea is a bunch of a malarkey. People will believe in something if it is substantial and real.
Frankly, what is popular with the progressive wing of the party is popular for a reason. It is what gets people excited. We have to ask ourselves, why does this excitement happen? What possibly prevents us from exciting non-Democrats about these things if we just tried?
What people dislike about the Democrats aren’t empty-handed attacks about us being communists or social justice warriors. No one with half a brain would normally take these ad-hominem attacks seriously.
Unless, of course, the Democrats themselves indulge and use these attacks.
People dislike Democrats because Democrats don’t seem to stand for things anymore. We don’t seem to deliver on policies. We indulge attacks on our character, and we even internalize and use them against our own party members unabashedly.
How dare certain members of the Democratic Party stand for true policy changes? Fresh new ideas in a party of progressives is apparently a big no-no.
Instead, we should clearly focus more on convincing the people that we’re actually quite similar to the Republicans, because that’ll definitely bring out the vote where we need it (/sarcasm).
Whether or not we will ever admit it, we lost a record amount of Latino and Black voters to Donald Trump and the Republicans in this election cycle. It wasn’t because members of the party were somehow too far to the left, although I’m sure some Democrats (I’m looking at Speaker Pelosi and Senator Manchin) would love to believe that.
These attacks on leftism only work if the left itself entertains them. They only work, if the left itself indulges these attacks.
The problem is, the Democrats do. All the time.
It is the exact same reason that when Republicans do not internally indulge conversations on how fascistic or radical they are, and instead continue to stand in internal unity for their concrete policies, that they win.
People just want real change.
They’re willing to hear any direction in which that change is because change in itself is part of addressing a societal issue. Empty platitudes of cross-party unity and flowery friendship will continue to fall on deaf ears. Because those things don’t fix real problems. They don’t put meals on the dinner table. They don’t pay the bills. It’s not that these messages aren’t somehow positive or beneficial, it’s just that they don’t excite people and they fail to strike at the heart of the reality of American politics.
Americans know how Republicans and Democrats are diametrically opposed. They know how a split Congress works, or lack thereof.
We had split-party power for the last six years of the Obama presidency. Americans know that Republicans refuse to negotiate with Democrats 95% of the time.
We are all cognizant of this reality and aren’t convinced that this fact is going to magically change overnight because Joe Biden, who was Obama’s VP through that same exact last six years, says it will.
Americans are simply tired of politicians that don’t work for them and politicians that don’t deliver on policy promises.
Furthermore, when you run on a platform that says that the other side will work with your side and that you are all for cross-party unity, then how are you going to convince people that your party deserves the vote down the ballot?
The same people that vote for you as president won’t feel nearly as bad about re-inviting Republicans back into office because you just encouraged them!
The hypocrisy of Joe’s messaging showed when the Democrats didn’t sweep the Senate and he was asked if he wanted them to win in Georgia. He stumbled. Deep down, Joe knew that if he said he needed that win he would capitulate his entire campaign’s message about how he could work with Republicans. Joe knew, deep down, he had hoped that message wouldn’t really matter as the Democrats would have a clean sweep and control the legislative branch. All their internal polling had suggested it was possible.
Joe Biden likely knows his failure in hammering down on voting blue down-the-ballot, just like his failure to defend blue policies, is likely what put the Democrats in such a predicament.
We can call Trump whatever we want, but we cannot deny that he somehow failed to deliver for his party in the last four years. The Republican strategy is to turn out and excite the base of the party. That strategy might not net them wins everywhere, of course, but it nets them enough votes to maintain power.
Republicans know that because Trump actively does things, you simply can’t argue that he is a man of empty words.
Policy promises delivered equals votes. People want policy.
We all know that in a two-party system, one left, and one right, cross-party unity is a sad joke. Politicians know that the harsh reality is Republicans and Democrats are diametrically different from each other in their solutions to real issues. When you put them in a room together to figure out solutions, you’ll often get watered down policies that don’t fix the issue at hand.
Americans are given two choices, then. One is to vote for a party who seems to do nothing but waste time, money, and energy on convincing the other party’s members to vote for their watered-down version of a policy. The other choice is to vote for the other party that stands by its beliefs and continues to deliver on its platform.
Can you really blame someone for somehow not being excited about the Democrats? Can you blame someone for simultaneously voting for Joe Biden, but then not being convinced that the Democrats down-the-ballot deserve their vote?
When the Democrats don’t get down-ballot votes, it isn’t anyone’s fault except the Democrats.
We’ve decided that the Democrat Party should be a big-tent party. But we’ve spread the tent out so far and so vaguely, that now the tent has no legs to stand on. Meanwhile, people who sit on the edges of this tent do nothing but attack people at the base of tent constantly and with the support of the party’s own establishment.
It’s a nightmare. No one wants to sit in a tent that won’t hold its ground and provide them with cover. Meanwhile, the Republicans’ tent stands strong on solid legs that are unwavering in their radicalism. They don’t worry about growing the size of the tent, as long as the tent is stable and nets votes.
So, can anything still be done?
Well, if we want the Democratic Party to win in Georgia, we need both candidates to hammer down on concrete policies such as cannabis reform, minimum wage, and medicare-for-all. A strong majority of Americans support these things. These policies win on direct-ballot initiatives in red states for a reason.
When Democrats don’t win, it’s because they don’t capitalize on what it means to be a Democrat.
I’ll say it again, it’s why anti-medicare-for-all moderate Democrats lost in this election.
Yes, these exact policies don’t excite the centrists in our own party, I won’t pretend for a second they do. But the centrists frankly need to get over it, because they do most certainly excite independents, non-voters, and the progressive wing if we can simply convince them. That is the same coalition that brought America a true blue wave in 2008.
We need a grassroots effort to get people excited about what the Democrats represent. That means representing something more than just an empty platitude on cross-party unity and friendship with the other side. If we believe we haven’t convinced enough people about a progressive policy, then we need to work harder on convincing them, not drop the policy altogether!
When you decide to drop a policy, you haven’t somehow earned that person’s vote, you just lost your own base’s vote. So congrats, you just played yourself.
Cal was called an adulterer, but I believe that his choice to represent himself as an establishment figure by choosing to capitalize more on his service to the country than on actual concrete policies that would help North Carolinians hurt him. I am not surprised that North Carolinians aren’t going to be convinced to vote for someone when they have such little to go off of.
Politics have changed and the Republicans recognized this. North Carolinians want to see bold campaign slogans and ideas. They want to see campaigns that hammer down on policies.
A party that tries to play it safe by not selling the American people on its own policies, because it’s so deathly afraid of being viewed as radical, and instead drops these policies altogether at the first sight of a focus group, is a party that is doomed for long-term failure.
The Republicans show us that even widely unpopular policies can net you elections if you can excite and convince people to come out and vote.
The Democrats have actual popular and exciting progressive policies. If independents and non-voters aren’t convinced, we need to convince them instead of dropping the policy at the first sign of a bad poll.
Politics requires internal commitment and confidence in self.
When we fail to look unified as a party and are willing to forgo our own platform half the time, and when we indulge in the attacks the right sling at us, we will have done nothing as a party to earn independent and non-voter’s votes and everything to lose our own party’s momentum and energy.
As I said before: in a two-party system, you cannot have the right hand serve the right, and the left hand spend its time and energy in trying to convince the right hand that the left hand isn’t actually left at all.
I truly wonder what the election results would have looked like if Joe Biden’s speeches and adverts had instead hammered down on specific popular progressive policies, and the Democrats proudly, without attacking their own base, stood on a platform of internal party unity and progressive change, versus empty platitudes on friendship with the diametrically opposed side.
My word of advice for the Democratic establishment? Stop being afraid of your own base. The grassroots progressives’ ideas are the most genuine for a reason. They are birthed and forged from real problems in our society. They are solutions to the issues that people have in this country.
Sell the people on real solutions instead of attacking those ideas for change, because these solutions represent real problems everyday Americans have. These solutions deserve the backing of a party in a two-party system!
FDR served the terms he did because he wasn’t afraid to stand for radical policy changes. He didn’t worry about what a focus group told him. He defended his ideas. He stood strongly behind ideas that had never been tried in America before. He sold the American people on those ideas and earned their vote.
The Democrats would do well to learn from FDR’s success.
Democrats need to convince America that progressivism is better than the conservatism because you’ll never be able to convince enough people that nothingness is somehow better than conservatism.
We blew our blue wave, and we need to learn the lesson that we failed to learn in 2016. I’m not sure how many more chances our party will get to rectify this mistake, but what I can say with confidence is that in this election…
…hindsight truly is 2020.
