Dear Democrats: Let's Talk About the Politics of Progress

Once news of the Delta variant began to subside, pundits and policymakers began to obsess over inflation. That talk of inflation triggered the memories of the gas lines from the pair of energy crises in the 1970s that helped spur the Great Inflation.

Less than a month before the election, the economy showed a surge of consumer prices of +5%, a severe supply chain, and labor shortage while demand was high.

I even know of people who are planting full-on gardens in their backyards and storing food because of the fear driven by the inflation and hyperinflation talk.

Over the last few days, I've tried to think through what I can add to this discussion that gives people a little fertilizer.  So, this will not be a standard postmortem of last week's elections.

I do want to mention one standard observation - pollsters.

Why are we still listening to them? Something is wrong with their statistical models. After three elections of inaccurate data, one would assume that pollsters would review their modeling to improve accuracy or refine the way they share data with the public. For example, in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, Monmouth Polling Institute's poll had Governor Phil Murphy with an 11 point lead days before the election. In the end, Governor Murphy won by a razor-thin margin. Monmouth is generally viewed as the 'gold standard' in political polling. But given how Democrats performed, I doubt the cracks in public opinion polling will receive the attention it deserves. However, if we're serious about restoring faith in the overall political process, these failures warrant a thorough review. But I'm just a country girl from North Carolina - some may discount my view as not worth that much.

Let's park this conversation, there is a bigger picture that deserves our attention, and that's the purpose of this essay.

By now, though, you've read or seen that the pundits and various news outlets have all written the Democrats' obituary for 2022. From my contrarian view, I'm not sure it's that cut and dry, but maybe I am overly optimistic (remember: I'm a poor country girl).

I will leave it to the political pundits to tell you the breakdown by the numbers, but I want to point to two issues that I think we've seen consistently with the Democratic leadership.

In my view, there is a consistent weakness by Democrats, which is their failure to understand where people are in their lives. And then how to translate that understanding to a message that resonates with a broad swath of voters.

Without looking at numbers in Virginia, for example, a place where I have campaigned in every off-year since 2001 - except this year.  There is always an expectation that African American voters in Richmond, Petersberg, Hampton Roads, Portsmouth, and Newport News areas of the state will turn out, for turn out's sake.

Yes, Black voters, particularly Black women voters, are crucial to the base of the Democratic Party, and that is true in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

But, if we can sum up the last election and the past five years, it's a race to how quickly we can highlight our differences.  So, here is where my discontent with Democrats comes into play.

I simply cannot understand Democratic strategists.  It's like they have an allergic reaction to a message of self-determination and economic opportunity.  Instead, there seems to be a bunch of garbled promises, and perhaps this year too much finger-pointing, but this election cycle, voters didn't see a lot to be hopeful for and, most importantly, did not see the results they believed they voted for in 2020.  I'm not sure I disagree.

A good brother whom I recently have become acquainted with told me that two basic human emotions drive us fear and love. Of course, we can argue about its validity, but if we analyze the last four election cycles (or the 2010 thumping Democrats witnessed), the idea of fear is sitting on the balcony like the ghost of Christmas past.

So it's no wonder Senator Mitch McConnell was stoking fear with his inflationary commentary weeks before last week's elections.

Why don't politicians understand these basic elements?

As humans, I think we all want the same (and perhaps need) thing. So instead of trying to placate us by playing identify politics, Democrats should focus on creating narratives that resonate with more people.  I'd argue for building their narratives or their policy proposals on a love ethic.  Dig it: the way I see it, we all gravitate to wanting:  1) to provide the basic needs for our families and loved ones. 2) our kids to be safe, and 3) our children to be better off than we were.

A quick run-down of what happened

Instead of focusing on these issues or on the fears people are feeling around the talk around inflation, Democrats in Congress ran to the media spotlight hosted another Congressional hearing this time around a tech company's "whistleblower." How is a Congressional hearing about a whistleblower remotely helpful to my uncle in North Carolina in his late-70s planting food in case of a food shortage? It's not.  

A former GOP operative recently noted that Democrats could not beat the GOP fear-mongering with facts. But isn't that missing a bigger piece? Democrats' failure is not trying to beat the GOP with facts. It's that Democrats have failed to articulate the facts. Instead, they are stuck party in-fighting and sounding like Charles Brown's teacher on issues like critical race theory and vaccine mandates. Remember this summer's "take your mask off if you're vaccinated" -  Say, what now?  I told y'all, it's like Charlie Brown's teacher.  

One would think that Democrats would focus on delivering a message of how they might positively change people's lives.  

On the other hand, the GOP taps into one of the two emotions of fear. If Democrats built a message that taped the emotion of love, perhaps there would be more exciting. In my view, voters are more likely to support the politics of progress than a politics of protest. In other words, they want to see and feel change, but Democrats have yet to articulate anything substantive.

Not once during the election did we hear that since the Biden Administration took office, the child poverty rate fell by a quarter.

The message voters had for Democrats on Tuesday was clear: my life is not better than a year ago when I voted for you.

What does all this mean? First, it means that instead of blaming Senators Manchin and Sinema for their inability to get things done, it's time to pivot to a message that taps into people's emotions.

Here is what I mean - people want to believe in the politics of progress, not the politics of division and confusion.

Given that the entire wealthy world is experiencing inflation, I would argue the roadblock is not whether or not Democrats win or lose, but how the Biden Administration tackles the narrative around inflation.  

Even though some pundits point to the continued economic uncertainty as a political stranglehold for the Democrats in the mid-term elections, my view is much more optimistic. Last week's election should be a pivot for Democrats.  The biggest test is how the Administration handles this next few months, and my money is on framing the narrative on the politics of progress.