18 June 2016
Democrats are in worse trouble than Bernie Sanders says they are in
Speaking to his supporters two days ago, thanking them for their efforts and accomplishments while signaling that his campaign for the Democratic nomination was no longer in high gear, Sen. Bernie Sanders addressed the predicament of the Democratic Party:
Here is a cold, hard fact that must be addressed. Since 2009, some 900 legislative seats have been lost to Republicans in state after state throughout this country. In fact, the Republican Party now controls 31 state legislatures and controls both the governors’ mansions and statehouses in 23 states. That is unacceptable. [Transcript]
And it’s actually worse than that. Writing at Vox on 19 October 2015, Matt Yglesias reported:
In what Democrats should take as a further bleak sign, four of the 11 states where they control both houses of the state legislature — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — have a Republican governor. This leaves just seven states under unified Democratic Party control.
Here’s how red the map is:
In Montana, Republicans control both houses of the legislature by substantial, although not veto-proof, margins. Only by vetoing dozens of bill each session have Democratic governors Steve Bullock and Brian Schweitzer been able to avert the adoption of the voodoo economics laws that now cripple Kansas.
If Greg Gianforte replaces Bullock as governor, something I think has an even chance of occurring, we might as well change our capital city’s name to Cold Topeka and brace ourselves for lower taxes on businesses and the wealthy, cash starved schools, and punishments for the poor that would make Scrooge wince.
That’s because although Montana’s Democrats may pick up legislative seats in November, there’s virtually no chance they will win control of even one legislative chamber. Democratic votes are concentrated in Missoula, Silver Bow, Lewis and Clark, and Cascade Counties, and six Indian majority house districts, where in most cases the margins of victory are wide.
Nationwide, the electoral map resembles Montana. Democratic votes are concentrated in urban areas, where Democrats win handily with a surplus of votes that are wasted in intra-state districts. The margin can be enough to tip a state to the Democratic candidate for president and governor, but maldistributed in a manner that produces Republican control of the legislature.
In Pennsylvania, for example, President Obama carried the state by 310k votes in 2012, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf defeated Republican incumbent Tom Corbett by 345k votes in 2014, but Republicans control the state assembly’s house 120–83 and senate 31–19.
Contributing to the Democrats’ misery is the failure of Democrats and the people who would be helped most by Democratic policies to vote, Alec MacGillis reported at Pro Publica last November:
Meanwhile, many people who in fact most use and need social benefits are simply not voting at all. Voter participation is low among the poorest Americans, and in many parts of the country that have moved red, the rates have fallen off the charts. West Virginia ranked 50th for turnout in 2012; also in the bottom 10 were other states that have shifted sharply red in recent years, including Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Many of these non-voters are members of the white working class (no college degree, working for wages or as small time independent contractors) that the Democratic Party disdains as unwashed Archie Bunkers.
Many Democrats believe that these problems notwithstanding, their party will prevail because of national demographic trends; that as the proportion of the population that’s white declines, a decisive Democratic majority comprising people of color and liberal whites will emerge. In recent years, the Democratic debacles of 2010 and 2014 notwithstanding, this majority of minorities hypothesis has gone from an unproven theory to what amounts to religious truth among large segments of the Democratic Party.
At Vox, John Judis evinces little faith in this dogma:
“The Republican party is in a death spiral,” Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warns in his new book, America Ascendant. It is in a “pitched fight” with what Greenberg calls the “new American majority,” which is composed of “African Americans, Hispanics, Millennials,” who “will constitute 54 percent of the electorate in 2016.” If one includes “seculars with no religious affiliation,” then this group amounts to 63 percent of the electorate that is sympathetic to the Democrats.
Greenberg’s claim is merely the latest version of an argument that Celinda Lake and other Democratic pollsters as well as analysts from the Center for American Progress have been making for the past three or four years. The heart of the argument is that the groups in the population that are likely to vote for Democrats are growing, while those that are likely to vote for Republicans are shrinking as a percentage of the electorate. As a result, Democrats will inevitably win political majorities.
This argument is at least half-wrong. Democrats could eventually reclaim the majorities they won in 2008 or enjoyed earlier in the past century, but it won’t happen simply because of demography. Republicans have rising groups of their own that could counter or nullify these trends. Considered merely on that basis, the parties are at a standoff. Which party wins the coming elections will depend on politics — what kind of candidates the parties nominate, what they campaign on, and what they do in office. Greenberg and other Democratic writers concede that Republicans will continueto win the white working-class vote — composed, roughly speaking, of whites who do not have four-year college degrees. In 2012 (http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president/), President Obama won only 36 percent of these voters against Republican Mitt Romney; in 2014 (http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/exit-polls), Democrats won just 34 percent of these voters in House races.
Defeating Donald Trump (if the Republicans nominate him, not yet a given) will not save Democrats, and the people the Democratic Party should represent, unless Democrats broaden their coalition and again beginning winning majorities that the state and local level. I’ll conclude with another passage from Sanders 16 June speech:
But the political revolution means much more than fighting for our ideals at the Democratic National Convention and defeating Donald Trump.
It means that, at every level, we continue the fight to make our society a nation of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.
It means that we can no longer ignore the fact that, sadly, the current Democratic Party leadership has turned its back on dozens of states in this country and has allowed right-wing politicians to win elections in some states with virtually no opposition – including some of the poorest states in America. The Democratic Party needs a 50-state strategy. We may not win in every state tomorrow but we will never win unless we recruit good candidates and develop organizations that can compete effectively in the future. We must provide resources to those states which have so long been ignored.
Most importantly, the Democratic Party needs leadership which is prepared to open its doors and welcome into its ranks working people and young people. That is the energy that we need to transform the Democratic Party, take on the special interests and transform our country.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
We need to start engaging at the local and state level in an unprecedented way. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers helped us make political history during the last year. These are people deeply concerned about the future of our country and their own communities. Now we need many of them to start running for school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and governorships. State and local governments make enormously important decisions and we cannot allow right-wing Republicans to increasingly control them.