An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

1
Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.

A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.

The 73-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.

The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.

In part, the study found, Democrats fell short of their aspirations because many House and Senate candidates failed to match Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s support with voters of color who loathed Mr. Trump but distrusted the Democratic Party as a whole. Those constituencies included Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters in California, and Black voters in North Carolina.

Overall, the report warns, Democrats in 2020 lacked a core argument about the economy and recovering from the coronavirus pandemic — one that might have helped candidates repel Republican claims that they wanted to “keep the economy shut down,” or worse. The party “leaned too heavily on ‘anti-Trump’ rhetoric,” the report concludes.

“Win or lose, self-described progressive or moderate, Democrats consistently raised a lack of strong Democratic Party brand as a significant concern in 2020,” the report states. “In the absence of strong party branding, the opposition latched on to G.O.P. talking points, suggesting our candidates would ‘burn down your house and take away the police.’”
he report, chiefly written by a pair of veteran Democratic operatives, Marlon Marshall and Lynda Tran, is among the most significant salvos yet in the Democratic Party’s internal debate about how it should approach the 2022 elections. It may stir skepticism from some quarters because of the involvement of Third Way, which much of the left regards with hostility.
The study spanned nearly six months of research and data analysis that scrutinized about three dozen races for the House and the Senate, and involved interviews with 143 people, including lawmakers, candidates and pollsters, people involved in assembling the report said. Among the campaigns reviewed were the Senate elections in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as House races in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas, and in rural New Mexico and Maine.

The study follows an internal review conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was unveiled last month. Both projects found that Democratic candidates had been hobbled by flawed polling and pandemic-imposed limitations on campaigning.

In the D.C.C.C. report, the committee attributed setbacks at the congressional level to a surge in turnout by Trump supporters and an inadequate Democratic response to attacks calling them police-hating socialists.

Some lawmakers on the left have complained that criticism of left-wing messaging amounts to scapegoating activists for the party’s failures.

Yet the review by Third Way, the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund goes further in diagnosing the party’s messaging as deficient in ways that may have cost Democrats more than a dozen seats in the House. Its report offers a blunt assessment that in 2020, Republicans succeeded in misleading voters about the Democratic Party’s agenda and that Democrats had erred by speaking to voters of color as though they are a monolithic, left-leaning group.

Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who last year helmed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”

“That’s been a ridiculous idea and that’s never been true,” Mr. Cárdenas said, lamenting that Republicans had succeeded in “trying to confuse Latino voters with the socialism message, things of that nature, ‘defund the police.’”

Quentin James, the president of the Collective PAC, said it was clear that “some of the rhetoric we see from coastal Democrats” had been problematic. Mr. James pointed to the activist demand to “defund” the police as especially harmful, even with supporters of policing overhauls.

“We did a poll that showed Black voters, by and large, vastly support reforming the police and reallocating their budgets,” Mr. James said. “That terminology — ‘defund’ — was not popular in the Black community.”
Democrats maintained a large advantage with voters of color in the 2020 elections, but the report identified telling areas of weakness. Mr. Biden and other Democrats lost ground with Latino voters relative to the party’s performance in 2016, “especially among working-class and non-college voters in these communities,” the report found.

The report found that a surge in Asian American turnout appeared to have secured Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia but that Democratic House candidates ran behind Mr. Biden with Asian American voters in contested California and Texas races. In some important states, Democrats did not mobilize Black voters at the same rate that Republicans did conservative white voters.

“A substantial boost in turnout netted Democrats more raw votes from Black voters than in 2016, but the explosive growth among white voters in most races outpaced these gains,” the report warns.

There has been no comparable self-review on the Republican side after the party’s severe setbacks last year, mainly because G.O.P. leaders have no appetite for a debate about Mr. Trump’s impact.
Largely unaddressed in the report is the immense deficit Democrats face among lower-income white voters. In its conclusion, however, Mr. Marshall and Ms. Tran write that Democrats need to deliver a message that includes working-class whites and matches the G.O.P.’s clear “collective gospel” about low taxes and military strength.

“Our gospel should be about championing all working people — including but not limited to white working people — and lifting up our values of opportunity, equity, inclusion,” they write.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/p ... ction.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

2
I've been a life-long Dem voter but haven't considered myself a Democrat for several years now. The only reason I voted for Biden was because of the terror another 4 years of Trump would have cost my fellow citizens. If the Dems have lost me, I'm sure they've lost many others. They have, just like the Republican party, become elitist and do very little but lip serve those down the socioeconomic ladder.

Re: An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

7
lurker wrote: Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:52 pm
highdesert wrote: Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:46 pm Over ten years ago I went Independent
that moment for me was before 2000 ('95? '98?) when i first started shooting and realized neither major party accurately represented my interests. i lean left on most issues, but ... well. you know. i was even an NRA member for 1 year. :wtf:
I do know, same here. For me it's been liberating. I look more deeply at issues and not the BS broadcast by each party and then weight which issues are most important for me.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

10
INVICTVS138 wrote: Mon Jun 07, 2021 6:29 pm Same. I have almost always been an independent. I lean left on most issues, but I’m right on Second amendment rights, and National defense spending (though I am not an interventionist.) I think diplomacy, and international organizations/alliances should be used instead of unilateral military actions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
By "right" on Second amendment rights, I would like to think you mean "correct", but I think you meant "right-wing". I would offer that a pro-2A stance is not "left-wing" or "right-wing", but actually one of the most liberal positions that you could take as an American. That really is the final bulwark against tyranny, at least according to the Black members of my family, as well as the Deacons for Defense. This is why, as a liberal, I support the 2A so strongly.

The other stuff, I'm with ya. Diplomacy is far and away preferable to military action...but for that diplomacy to be effective, it requires a strong military capability. It is with good reason that Hitler and Mussolini left "little, tiny" Switzerland alone when the Axis were invading just about everyone else in Europe. That's why Admiral Yamamoto gave that stark warning to his superiors in Japan:

"Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices."

He may not have said "there would be a rifle behind each blade of grass". But having attended school in this country and knowing of our marksmanship heritage, he certainly knew good and well that this would be the case. Marching across the United States would not have been possible with so many of us armed. Hirohito knew it, too.

That's why an armed populace matters. Just ask Switzerland; they'll tell you.
"SF Liberal With A Gun + Free Software Advocate"
http://www.sanfranciscoliberalwithagun.com/
http://www.liberalsguncorner.com/
Image

Re: An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

12
Representative Tony Cárdenas of California, who last year helmed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee, embraced that critique of Democratic messaging and said the party should discard the assumption “that voters of color are inherently more progressive.”
Yes, Democrats shouldn't assume that every minority supports, abortion or contraception or premarital sex or ..., they fail to understand the pull of culture and religion in minority communities even after the first generation. And Democrats assumption that Hispanics here legally automatically support Hispanics who come illegally is totally wrong, like saying that white Americans here legally automatically support European whites who came here illegally. Republicans aren't the only ones who stereotype.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: An internal Democratic report analyzing the 2020 election

13
There's been a lot of casual racism implicit in Dem assumptions about monolithic cultural bloc support for a party that is still predominantly white.

The right didn't just mobilize low-propensity white rural voters - they peeled off minority groups through carefully calibrated microtargeting. Savvy social media strategies looking for highly-motivated single issue demographics to leverage or suppress. Say, older white liberal gun owners?

Solidarity, my droogs. We stand together, or we fall apart.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: senorgrand and 3 guests