Archive for the ‘Democrat’ Category

It’s Not Just White People: Democrats Are Losing Normal Voters of All Races – The Intercept

Last Monday, a Democratic firm hosted focus groups with women in Virginia who voted in 2017 for Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, in 2020 for Democratic President Joe Biden, and then this month for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin. It was centered on suburban women: a group that pivotedsignificantlyto the right in the governors election.

ConsultantDanny Barefoot said that Anvil Strategies called roughly 30,000 people in Virginia. Most didnt answer, but several hundred of them fit the criteria he was looking for: people whovoted Democrat, Democrat, Republican in the last three elections. Those people were called back and offered a $100 gift card if theyd do a lunch-hour Zoom and talk about why they voted the way they did. Ninety-six women, a fifth of whom were not white, were broken into three different sessions. Barefoot sat in on one of them and got permission from the funders to share quotes and results.

Focus groups are put together differently than surveys, which weigh the responses to reflect the population at large. While 96 respondents isnt enough for a robust polling sample, its a chance to dig deeper into the views of a slice of the electorate. Virginia is about two-thirds white, and this sample was 79 percent white so slightly whiter than the state at large but not by a ton. Eleven percent of them were Black women, 6 percent Latina, and 4 percent Asian American. They came from around the state. Barefoot said he didnt ask about college education, because what he was interested in was people who lived in the suburbs regardless of race or educational background.

What Barefoot found is that while the women agreed with Democrats on policy, they just didnt connect with them. When asked which party had better policy proposals, the group members overwhelmingly said Democrats. But when asked which party had cultural values closer to theirs, they cited Republicans.

The biggest disconnect came on education. Barefoot found that school closures were likely a big part of their votes for Youngkin and that frustration at school leadership over those closures bled into the controversy, pushed by Republicans, around the injection of critical race theory into the public school setting, along with the question of what say parents should have in schools. One Latina woman talked about how remote school foisted so much work on parents, yet later Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee and former governor, would insist that parents should have no input in their childrens education. (Thats not exactly what he said, but thats how it played.) As she put it: They asked us to do all this work for months and then he says its none of our business now.

When asked which party had better policy proposals, the group members overwhelmingly said Democrats.When asked which party had cultural values closer to theirs, they cited Republicans.

The anger they felt at Democrats for the commonwealths Covid-19 school closure policy became further evidence of a cultural gap between these working people and Democratic elites, who broadly supported prolonged school closures while enjoying the opportunity to work remotely. Those with means decamped: Enrollment in Fairfax County schools dropped 5 percent, and fell by 3.9 percent and 3.4 percent in Arlington and Loudoun counties, respectively. Those who were left behind organized parent groups to pressure the schools to reopen. Though the groups tended to be nonpartisan or bipartisan at the start, Republican donors and conservative groups poured money and manpower into them, converting them into potent political weapons that blended anger at the closures with complaints about Democratic board members prioritizing trendy social justice issues all of it aimed at the November elections.

They keep saying a strong return to school, but theres no details, said Saundra Davis on Fox News over the summer, co-founder of one large group, called the Open Fairfax Public Schools Coalition. Their attention is on other things, like their pet projects and social justice issues, and the kids have been left to flounder and theres still no plan for fall.

Youll be surprised to know Im a Democrat, she said. Ive tried to warn them that theres a bipartisan tidal wave coming their way. They dont look us in the eye, they dont write us back. If we cant recall them one by one, theres an election in November. That fall, Davis cut an ad for Youngkin, citing his commitment to keep schools open as decisive.

And while the group made a Democrat angry at Democrats the face of its opposition, behind herwas a coterie of Republican operatives. The bulk of the groups financing came from N2 America, a conservative nonprofit, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Snyder. Its co-founder was a Republican who lost a 2019 race for school board, and the rest of its officers were Republican operatives too. A slick nonprofit named Parents Defending Education was launched in 2020 to help guide the local groups. Little effort was made to conceal who was behind it: A longtime Koch network operative, Nicole Neily, was placed at the helm of the grassroots organization. Aside from Davis, nearly every mom and dad brought onto Fox News to complain about critical race theory held a day job as a senior Republican operative.

It was the purest expression of the way Republicans have driven the fight over schools and then capitalized on it. The fear of public schools indoctrinating our children has been a GOP theme for its base voters for decades, but in the wake of Trumps rise, the party watched in horror as suburban voters recoiled from Republicans into the arms of Democrats. Casting about for an issue that could win some of them back recall that this is a game of margins, not absolutes the party landed on schools. Around the country, the conservative media apparatus, unrivaled by Democrats, gave air cover to the schooling issue handing local activists language to use, a story to tell, and the resources and platform to tell it.

The tactic was even more potent in northern Virginia, where many professional Republican operatives and lobbyists live.In Loudoun County this November, McAuliffe outpaced Youngkin 55 percent to 44. But Biden had beaten Trump there by 62 percent to 37. Youngkins showing was only 11,000 votes fewer than Trump won a year earlier, while McAuliffe notched 50,000 fewer votes than Biden had. While Biden carried Fairfax by 42 points, McAuliffe only took it by 31.

That the GOP didnt make even bigger inroads, given their heavy investment in the issue, may be the one silver lining for Democrats who, witnessing a dishonest astroturf campaign take shape and get twisted beyond all recognition on Fox News, decided, perhaps understandably but to their later regret, to ignore the question.After McAuliffes debate gaffe, in which he delivered up the perfect sound bite to Youngkin I dont think parents should be telling schools what they should teach he took weeks to respond, initially not recognizing the danger. Everybody clapped when I said it, McAuliffe insisted later.

Even where Republicans spent heavily against outmatched Democrats, they made only marginal gains in school board races. But if the issue continues to go uncontested, their luck may run out. National Democrats have no coordinated response yet, leaving school board members unstaffed, underfunded, borderline volunteers hung out to dry, with nothing to rely on but mainstream media assertions that theres actually nothing to see here.

A voter walks past election signs as she walks to the Fairfax County Government Center polling location on Election Day in Fairfax, Va., on Nov. 2, 2021.

Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

In the Virginia election, two arguments that have been running parallel in Democratic circles for the past several years finally collided. One is the question of how Democrats should position themselves in the ongoing culture war, with jockeying over fraught and contested concepts like wokeness and cancel culture. Critical race theory is one example of this;Democrats cant seem to agree on whetherits a good thing that should be taught and defended or a Republican fabrication thats not being taught in elementary schools at all. The other is the round-and-round debate over race and class: Are voters who flee Democrats motivated more by economic anxiety or by racial resentment and eroding white privilege?

While these debates have unfolded, Democrats have seen a steady erosion in support among working-class voters of all races, while gaining support among the most highly educated voters. That movement would point toward class divisions driving voter behavior, but the rearing up of critical race theory as a central plank of the Republican Party appeared to throw the question open again. Maybe its racism, after all?

Properly understanding how different voting blocs understand the terms of the debate, however, unlocks the contradiction: The culture war is not a proxy for race, its a proxy for class. The Democratic problem with working-class voters goes far beyond white people.

Now, for the portion of the Republican base heavily predisposed to racial prejudice, the culture war and issues like critical race theory easily work as dog whistles calling them to the polls. But for many voters, and not just white ones, critical race theory is in a basket with other cultural microaggressions directed at working people by the elites they see as running the Democratic Party. Take, for instance, one of the women in Barefoots focus groups. When asked if Democrats share their cultural values, she said, They fight for the right things and I usually vote for them but they believe some crazy things. Sometimes I feel like if I dont know the right words for things they think I am a bigot.

For many voters, and not just white ones, critical race theory is in a basket with other cultural microaggressions directed at working people by the elites they see as running the Democratic Party.

Barefoots results rhymed with the conclusions of a memo put out by strategist Andrew Levison, who has long made the argument that Democratic efforts at connecting with working-class voters are fundamentally flawed. The memo, published after the Virginia election but not directly responding to it, looks at how Democrats can win support among a growing number of anti-Trump Republicans. Rather than convince the entire white working class which is typically approximated in polls by looking for white voters without a college degree Levison argues that Democrats should identify a distinct, persuadable sector of the white working class and then figure out how to get members of that specific group to vote Democratic.

Levison, citing data from multiple election cycles, notes that Democrats roughly win about a third of white working-class votes. The party loses about a third right out of the gate: hardcore right-wing people who would never consider voting for Democrats and think even a Democrat like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer known for much of his career as Wall Street Chuck is a flaming socialist and a traitor. Levison calls that third extremists, and argues they are not gettable under any circumstances; he distinguishes them from the final third, which is made up of what he calls cultural traditionalists.

Strategist Andrew Levisonscharacterizations of extremist and cultural traditionalist voters.

Screenshot: The Intercept

His category of cultural traditionalists, he acknowledges, is not meant to capture every voter who is gettable by Democrats; likewise, many cultural traditionalists have competing and conflicting views on various issues. But just as corporations work to create consumer profiles before going to market with an ad campaign, Democrats need to define who that persuadable person among the white working class is. To do so, Levison relies on years of survey data, much of it collected by Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, that does tens of thousands of in-person interviews with working-class people around the country each year looking to identify those who are persuadable.

As Levison defines them, cultural traditionalists are people who dont follow the news closely but have an easy-going personality and an open mind contrasted with cranky, short-tempered people who are more likely to fall into the extremist category. They believe in patriotism and the American way of life but also believe that diversity, pluralism, and tolerance are essential characteristics of that American way of life. When it comes to race, these traditionalists have something of a Michael Scott view, rooted in the cliche that they dont see race or dont see color. They also have religious and moral values theyd happily describe as old fashioned but say they have no problem with people who have different views. When these voters shifted their views on marriage equality, accepting it as something that ought to be legal even if they were skeptical of it, the dam had broken.

Cultural traditionalists, according to Levison, also think of government as often wasteful and inefficient and of politicians as corrupt and bought off but they dont think government is inherently evil and can be convinced that it can do good things. Meanwhile, they think Democrats are a party that primarily represents social groups like educated liberals and racial or ethnic minorities while having little interest, understanding, or concern for ordinary white working people like themselves.

Levisons distinction between these cultural traditionalists and what he calls the extremists, except for that last part, can plausibly apply to many, many Black andLatino working-class people as well. And even that last part that Democrats dont have much interest or concern for ordinary white working people, specifically is not really a value judgment, its a widespread interpretation of Democratic messaging that is not uniquely held by white voters.

Theyre the sort of voter that would be gettable for Democrats without compromising on a racial justice agenda if it is sold as the United States continuously striving to close the gap between reality and its values. But, Levison adds, there are a number of cultural issues on which cultural traditionalists and extremists align, and Republicans have become adept at exploiting them. He defines them as: pride in their culture, background, and community; respect for tradition; love of freedom; belief in personal responsibility, character, and hard work; and respect for law, strict law enforcement, and the right of individual self-defense.

There are a number of cultural issues on which cultural traditionalists and extremists align, and Republicans have become adept at exploiting them.

In other words, they express the same sensibility as the women in Barefoots group who wanted to teach their children a positive history of the United States. One suburban Black woman in his group put it this way: Our kids should be taught about slavery and all of that awfulness but America is also a good country and thats what I want my kids to learn.

Few people read the full 1619 Projectput out by the New York Times in 2019, which is a rich tapestry of thoughtful essays and reporting about the role of slavery in the development of the United States. Instead, to the extent it has seeped into the public consciousness, it has done so around the notion of rejecting 1776 as the date of our birth and supplanting it with 1619 as our true founding, in a phrase that became so controversial it was deleted.

Times editor Jake Silverstein wrote in the introductory essay:

1619. It is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our countrys history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nations birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unanimously celebrated every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the countrys true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619?

That section too has since been edited, blunting some of its edge, and creating another situation where supporters of the project at once say that there was nothing off-base about it, while changing it in response to the criticism. As schools around the country began teaching the project, Republicans made a national issue out of it, one that cant be disentangled from the fight over critical race theory.

Liberals often suggest that parents who are skeptical of the New York Timess 1619 Project reject the idea of teaching the truth about American history. More often, as with the woman in the focus group, its a question of framing rather than truth. Believing or conceding that we as a people are defined by the worst of the past might actually be true, but the concession is seen as cutting off any hope of a better future. As an adult, if thats the view youve come to and I flirt with it often myself its a more than understandable conclusion. But we want our children to remain hopeful about the possibility of a better world, since its the world theyll inherit and build after were all gone. The argument that slavery was essential to the development of capitalism in the United States is well-established scholarship by this point. But absent a call to overthrow capitalism, that notion, particularly when compressed into something an elementary school student could absorb, loses any meaning beyond nihilism. And so of course parents of all races reject the framing and look askance at a party of elites who seem to be blithely suggesting though not really meaning it the overthrow of a capitalist system that benefits them before all others. And if theyre not suggesting that, then what?

Levison, meanwhile, argues that Democrats need to lean into the kind of patriotic rhetoric that makes many progressives recoil. Democrats have the potential to split extremists off from traditionalists by couching Democratic values as truly American, and extremists as un-American. As an example of such possible rhetoric, he offers, is, I love the American flag as much as any American but I would never use a flagpole flying our flag as a club to assault other Americans that I call my enemies. That is not the American way. Or: The values I grew up with are good values and I want them to endure. But the values of the people who want to turn Americans against each other and divide our country are not my values.

An attendee signs the campaign bus of Glenn Youngkin, Republican gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, during a campaign stop at the Alexandria Farmers Market in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 30, 2021.

Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

At the end of Barefoots focus group, the women were asked if theyd have considered changing their vote if Democrats had passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The bill, which was passed by the House the following week, is something that Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, has claimed would have helped win the election for McAuliffe.

Ninety-one percent of the suburban women said no, 9 percent said yes, and one woman laughed and said, What does that have to do with anything?

Shes right to laugh. But that 9 percent actually points to something hopeful. In a close race, a 9-point swing like that can matter. If Democrats had passed the reconciliation bill as well and could talk about universal pre-K, the child tax credit, clean energy investments, and subsidies for child care, they might have won even more back. And if Democrats were out of touch culturally, though, that swing could be even higher

A major new survey from Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working-Class Politics points to another way that cultural chasm can be bridged: with candidates who focus on these economic issues but dont talk like juniors at Oberlin.

The survey design was unusual:Instead of asking about issue preferences or messaging alone, it concocted prototypes of candidates and asked which of them was more appealing. When it came to a candidates background, the survey found somewhat awkwardly for a socialist magazine that voters of all races and classes had the most positive reaction to small-business owners. The most disliked candidates were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Working-class candidates teachers, construction workers, and veterans also fared well, though not as well as mom and pop.

Broadly, Jacobin did not find evidence to support the Great Left Hope that if the masses would turn out in full at the ballot box, theyd eagerly support democratic socialists candidates and policies. Many working-class voters in advanced economies have actually moved to the left on questions of economic policy (favoring more redistribution, more government spending on public goods, and more taxation of the very wealthy), while remaining culturally or socially moderate, they write. They contrast this from where mainstream Democrats have gone: left on culture while tempering their economic progressivism.

But the survey also pointed to how they could be won over, and the results mapped with Levisons and Barefoots findings. Language Jacobin described as woke created a cultural barrier between voters and candidates that diminished support for both woke progressive and woke moderate candidates, while universal, populist language did best for Democrats. Notably, woke messaging decreased the appeal of other candidate characteristics, they write. For example, candidates employing woke messaging who championed either centrist or progressive economic, health care, or civil rights policy priorities were viewed less favorably than their counterparts who championed the same priorities but opted for universalist messaging.Startlingly, the survey found a 30-plus point gap between support for a teacher running on a populist, universalist message versusa CEO running with a moderate economic platform, couched in woke rhetoric reminiscent of Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign.

A South Carolina National Guardsman meets a school bus as it arrives withBlack students at the Lamar School on March 23, 1970, in Lamar, S.C.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

In todays debate over critical race theory, its impossible not to hear echoes of the busing wars in the 1970s and 80s. Like with busing, Democratic elites are creating conflict within the working class while protecting their own class and cultural interests. By the early 1970s, white school districts had spent nearly two decades resisting Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in schools, and national attention had turned to redlining and the dug-in segregation of housing.

The 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act had banned residential discrimination and empowered the federal government to forcibly integrate neighborhoods. In 1973, Donald Trump and his father were suedby the Department of Justice for racial segregation in their housing and settled two years later. That same year, a Gallup survey asked Black residents to choose from a list of preferred solutions to school desegregation, and the top choice was the most intuitive: neighborhood integration and an end to redlining. Only 9 percent of Black residents named busing as their preferred approach to school desegregation which, again, is intuitive: Attending the neighborhood school is always preferable, all things being equal, than being bused somewhere else. The same was true for white voters: Just 4 percent supported busing.

But neighborhood integration would require white residents to give something up. Even today, according to law professor Dorothy Brown, the author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans and How We Can Fix It, when neighborhoods integrate, with the Black population reaching at least 10 percent, property values either decline or grow more slowly. Facing that systematic decline in wealth, many white residents fought neighborhood housing integration. Busing, meanwhile, could be avoided by the well-off by sending their kids to private school. And so Democrats went with busing over housing. Republicans began to use busing in campaigns as a dog whistle to bigoted parents resistant to desegregating education, banking on the fact that there was additional political gain to be had among a majority of voters who opposed it for a variety of reasons. In 1981, Gallup found 60 percent of Black voters supported busing as a means to integration, though opposition was strong as well.

Antibusing is a code word for racism and rejection, wrote Jesse Jackson in 1982. True, some blacks oppose busing, but not for racial reasons. Blacks sometimes are against busing because all decisions about desegregation are being made for them, not with and by them.

Battles over language are by definition divorced from the material reality that structures inequality.

White parents who couldnt afford private school fled to the suburbs, creating new school districts along racial lines; since busing only happened within a school district, that meant it was largely going on inside big cities, with the suburbs immune. White working-class voters who remained in the cities noted rightly that the professional class in the suburbs, which proudly supported busing in the city, was merely signaling its own virtue, while engaging in the same bigoted resistance to or avoidance of integration.

Todays white Democratic elites are also confronted with school systems that have substantially resegregated, persistent racial income and wealth gaps, and test scores that reflect those patent inequalities. Their answer has been to thoughtfully interrogate the concepts of white privilege and systemic racism by examining interpersonal relationships and developing a new vocabulary that gives its speaker license to feel as righteous about things today as white folks did in the Boston suburbs in 1975. But, as Jamelle Bouie writes, battles over language are by definition divorced from the material reality that structures inequality.

We must remember that the problem of racism of the denial of personhood and of the differential exposure to exploitation and death will not be resolved by saying the right words or thinking the right thoughts.

Thats because racism does not survive, in the main, because of personal belief and prejudice. It survives because it is inscribed and reinscribed by the relationships and dynamics that structure our society, from segregation and exclusion to inequality and the degradation of labor.

Bouie answers with Martin Luther King Jr.s admonition to look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

Telling the truth about King and his politics has always been too much for American liberals. The vulgar version of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives popular in boardrooms and school workshops is meant to fill the void created by a refusal to assault the roots of racism; they provide a way to talk about racism that strips it of its material reality and slots it instead into the world of individual self-improvement. Without the systemic context, it merely trains people in how to enact roles, identify people failing to play their proper role, and properly call them out.

One woman in the focus group, asked how she understood critical race theory, said, It teaches our kids America is defined by the worst parts of its past. Instead of hiring corporate consultants to pretend to tear down white supremacy in the classroom, Democrats could dedicate themselves to the pursuit of living up to the values on which the nation claims it was founded. Frederick Douglasss famous speech delivered in 1852 What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? pounds at the conscience of the nation by describing the gap between its founding principles and its everyday reality.

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nations destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost,Douglass said.

Teaching the truth about American history, including all of its awfulness, doesnt require teaching kids that they or their country are defined by the worst of its past. Quite the opposite: Americas greatest heroes have always defined their project within the outlines of the promise and spirit of the nations founding, daring and challenging it to live up to its promises.

Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country, Douglass concluded on that Fourth of July. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope while drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions.

Thats something cultural traditionalists can all get behind. It would still, of course, trigger the far right. But the resulting fight would isolate the extremists, exposing their hostility to Douglasss message as the raw racism it is. Democrats win the argument when its about Charlottesville, but lose if its Loudoun County. But Loudoun County isnt Charlottesville, just as Glenn Youngkin isnt Donald Trump. Let the right lose its mind attacking Frederick Douglass. Make him and his allies like Robert Smalls those who fought oppression against the worst odds the true heroes of American history. And not one more word, for the love of God, from Robin DiAngelo.

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It's Not Just White People: Democrats Are Losing Normal Voters of All Races - The Intercept

Dems on verge of seizing control of Monroe County Legislature; first time in 30 years – Democrat & Chronicle

Democrats appear to have taken control of the Monroe County Legislature for the first time in more than 30 years.

Unofficial absentee and affidavit counts, tabulated Monday, pushed two Democratic incumbents into the lead who had trailed their Republican challengers on election night, and solidified Democratic candidate Dave Long's victory over Legislature President Dr. Joe Carbone, R-Irondequoit.

The result would be a slim 15-14 Democratic majority come Jan. 1, replacing a similar margin for Republicans. But the matter is more complicated, as a handful of disaffected city Democrats had previously joined with the GOP to deliver a super majority in overriding Democrat County Executive Adam Bello's vetoes on multiple occasions.

More on the election: Monroe County Election 2021: Why did the Republicans sue, what it means and what's next?

More: 5 takeaways from the 2021 Monroe County elections

The primaries eliminated the breakaway faction save for one, Legislator Sabrina LaMar. Reached Monday night, LaMar said she was still weighing her options, and that the Democratic caucus had not yet reached out.

"I don't know what moving forward looks like as of now," LaMarsaid.

Republicans seemed poised to retain control in initial results reflecting early and Election Day voting.

Turnout was about 38% countywide; hovering around 17% in the city challenging either party to claim amandate or statement by the electorate.

Still, Monroe County Democratic Party chairman Zach King said the upending of the Republican majority in the Legislature, and Carbone's apparent defeatdid send a message that "playing politics with government functions" is not to be tolerated: "I think people just want to see government work."

With Democrats in control both of city and county government, there can be no excuses.

"It's time to put up or shut up," King said."It is time for us to make sure we are delivering on these promises."

The last time Democrats had a majority was in the late 1980s, but it was short lived. Voters rejected a referendum on a redistricting in 1991, and Republicans retook the majority a year later.

A lot hinges on LaMar.The Legislature races that turned with absentee and affidavit ballots were those of incumbent Democrat Michael Yudelson in Henrietta and Minority Leader Yversha Roman in the city.

There remain several dozen ballots to be hand counted, be it they were damaged and could not be scanned or had other special circumstances. Those will be tabulated on Tuesday. There is a possibility of an automatic recount in the county court judge race, where three seats were up and incumbent Democrat Douglas Randall edged into that third spot with the latest totals.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Contact reporter Brian Sharp at bdsharp@gannett.comor at 585-258-2275. Follow him onTwitter @sharproc.This coverage is only possible with support from our readers.

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Dems on verge of seizing control of Monroe County Legislature; first time in 30 years - Democrat & Chronicle

Democrat Bowen is 3rd to enter race for lieutenant governor – Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) The campaign for Democratic lieutenant governor became a three-way race among state lawmakers Monday when Rep. David Bowen announced he was running for the position.

Bowen said he wrestled with the decision to run for lieutenant governor but said a primary faceoff is good for democracy, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

I was dragged into politics kicking and screaming, said Bowen, the son of Jamaican immigrants. I am not the typical person that had that dream and Im realizing it now as an adult from once I was a child.

Bowen will face off against state Rep. Sara Rodriguez, of Brookfield, and state Sen. Len Taylor, of suburban Milwaukee, in the August primary. The winner will be paired with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers as his running mate.

Bowen said he would focus on young voters and vulnerable voters who deserve to have something to vote for, not just something to vote against.

Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is not seeking reelection so he can run for U.S. Senate instead.

Republicans running for lieutenant governor include state Sen. Patrick Testin of Stevens Point, Lancaster Mayor David Varnam, and Ben Voelkel, former communications director for U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.

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Democrat Bowen is 3rd to enter race for lieutenant governor - Associated Press

Do Democrats Have a Messaging Problem? – The New York Times

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When Republicans lost big in the 2012 election, the party commissioned a post-mortem analysis that arrived at a blunt conclusion about the way it communicated: The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself, said the report, informally known as the autopsy.

After the elections last week, in which Democrats across the country lost races they expected to win or narrowly escaped defeat, some are asking whether the Democratic Party is suffering from a similar problem of insularity in its messaging.

Critics and some prominent liberals like Ruy Teixeira, a left-of-center political scientist, have argued that Democrats are trying to explain major issues such as inflation, crime and school curriculum with answers that satisfy the partys progressive base but are unpersuasive and off-putting to most other voters.

The clearest example is in Virginia, where the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, lost his election after spending weeks trying to minimize and discredit his opponents criticisms of public school education, particularly the way that racism is talked about. Mr. McAuliffe accused the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, of campaigning on a made-up issue and of blowing a racist dog whistle.

But about a quarter of Virginia voters said that the debate over teaching critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework that has become a stand-in for a debate over what to teach about race and racism in schools, was the most important factor in their decision, and 72 percent of those voters cast ballots for Mr. Youngkin, according to a survey of more than 2,500 voters conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization.

The nuances of critical race theory, which focuses on the ways that institutions perpetuate racism, and the hyperbolic tone of the coverage of the issue in conservative news media point to why Democrats have struggled to come up with an effective response.

Mr. Teixeira calls the Democrats problem with critical race theory and other galvanizing issues the Fox News Fallacy.

These issues are ripe for distortions and exaggeration by Republican politicians and their allies in the news media. But Mr. Teixeira says Democrats should not dismiss voters concerns as simply right-wing misinformation.

An issue is not necessarily completely invalid just because Fox News mentions it, he said.

In an interview, Mr. Teixeira said his logic applied to questions far beyond critical race theory. I cant tell you how many times I analyze a particular issue, saying this is a real concern, he said. And the first thing I hear is, Hey, this is a right-wing talking point. Youre playing into the hands of the enemy.

Fox News is not the only institution capable of producing this kind of reaction from some on the left it was just the one Mr. Teixeira chose to make his point as vividly as possible.

What to Know About the 2021 Virginia Election

The conservative news media is full of stories that can make it sound as if the country is living through a nightmare. Rising prices and supply chain difficulties are cast as economic threats on par with the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a comparison that is oversimplified because neither inflation nor unemployment is as high now. Stories of violent crime in large cities are given prominent placement and frequent airing; the same is true of coverage about the record number of migrants being apprehended at the southern border.

The Biden administration has struggled to address concerns about all of these issues. Critics pounced when the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, posted a tweet that cast inflation and supply chain disruptions as high class problems, seeming to dismiss the anxiety that Americans say they have about their own finances.

And despite border crossings hitting the highest number on record since at least 1960, when the government began tracking them, the Biden administration has resisted referring to the issue as a crisis. President Biden has faced persistent questions about why he has not visited the border.

C.R.T. is not new. Derrick Bell, a pioneering legal scholar who died in 2011, spent decades exploring what it would mean to understand racism as a permanent feature of American life. He is often called the godfather of critical race theory, but the term was coined by Kimberl Crenshaw in the 1980s.

The theory has gained new prominence. After theprotestsborn from the police killing of George Floyd, critical race theory resurfaced as part of a backlash among conservatives includingformer President Trump who began to use the term as apolitical weapon.

The current debate. Critics of C.R.T. argue that it accuses all white Americans of being racist and is being used to divide the country. But critical race theorists say they are mainly concerned with understandingthe racial disparities that have persisted ininstitutionsandsystems.

A hot-button issue in schools. The debate has turned school boards into battlegroundsas some Republicans say the theory is invading classrooms. Education leaders, including the National School Boards Association, say that C.R.T. is not being taught in K-12 schools.

Then theres crime. After a year and a half of calls from the progressive left for drastic policing reform, voters across the country last week rejected candidates and policies aligned with the defund the police movement. In two of the most striking examples, Minneapolis voters said no to a referendum to dismantle their citys troubled police department. And New Yorkers elected as mayor a former police captain, Eric Adams, who strongly opposes defund efforts.

One liberal who apparently recognized the broader problems that Democrats have had explaining their platforms to voters was Maya Wiley, who ran against Mr. Adams in the mayoral primary as a proponent of sweeping police reforms. In an opinion essay for The New Republic this week, Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer, wrote that while Republicans distorted the debate over critical race theory in Virginia, they also offered a more compelling message on education.

If you only heard evening news sound bites, you would think all he talked about on the campaign trail was critical race theory, Ms. Wiley said of Mr. Youngkin. Not so. In fact, he sounded like a moderate Democrat, with the notable exception of C.R.T.

Despite the dog whistling, Wiley said, the message was effective because it was empathetic. He was saying he understood their pain, she said.

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Do Democrats Have a Messaging Problem? - The New York Times

Opinion | Democratic Socialists Have a Long Road to Electoral Victory – The New York Times

In my political circles, the socialist and activist left, the recent defeat of India Walton, a democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, seemed all too familiar, even if she lost in an unusual way to the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron Brown. Ms. Walton prevailed against Mr. Brown in the Democratic primary, but for the general election, he ran a write-in campaign to retain his position.

That outcome saddens and disappoints me. Like many admirers of Ms. Walton, I believe she was terribly mistreated by the New York Democratic Party, which largely fell in line behind Mr. Brown, even though he was not running as a Democrat. Its not fair that Ms. Walton had to run against him twice, with the weight of a lot of centrist Democrats and Republicans behind him in the general election, and that he enjoyed the support of several prominent labor unions and much of the citys and states larger party infrastructure. (Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand did endorse Ms. Walton.)

Nevertheless, I am willing to say something far too few leftists seem willing to: Not only did Mr. Brown win, but he won resoundingly (the race is not officially over but stands at roughly 59 percent for Mr. Brown to 41 percent for Ms. Walton); its time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.

What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats dont seem to realize is that its perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply arent very popular.

They frequently claim that Americans want socialist policies and socialist politicians but are prevented from voting for them by the system. Or they argue that most American voters have no deeply held economic beliefs at all and are ready to be rallied to the socialist cause by a charismatic candidate.

This attitude toward Ms. Waltons defeat specifically and toward the political landscape more broadly is part and parcel of a problem that has deepened in the past five years: So many on the radical left whom I know have convinced themselves that their politics and policies are in fact quite popular on a national level, despite the mounting evidence otherwise.

As New York magazines Sarah Jones put it over the summer, Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, theyll meet many Americans where they are. We are held back, the thinking frequently goes, not by the popularity of our ideas but by the forces of reaction marshaled against us.

But the only way for the left to overcome our institutional disadvantages is to compel more voters to vote for us. Bernie Sanderss two noble failures in Democratic presidential primaries galvanized young progressives and helped create political structures that have pulled the party left. They also helped convince many of a socialist bent that only dirty tricks can defeat us. In the 2016 primary, the superdelegate system demonstrated how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be. Mr. Sanders won every county in West Virginia, for example, but the system at the time ensured that Mr. Sanders did not receive superdelegates in proportion to his vote totals (many superdelegates defied the wishes of the voters and supported Mrs. Clinton). In 2020, it was widely reported that after Mr. Sanderss victory in Nevada, former President Barack Obama had an indirect role as the minor candidates in the primary rallied behind Joe Biden to defeat the socialist threat. There is little doubt that the establishment worked overtime to prevent a Sanders nomination.

But the inconvenient fact is that Mr. Sanders received far fewer primary votes than Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020. He failed to make major inroads among the moderate Black voters whom many see as the heart of the Democratic Party. Whats more, he failed to turn out the youth vote in the way that his supporters insisted he would.

Whatever else we may want to say about the system, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the voters of the liberal party in American politics twice had the opportunity to nominate Mr. Sanders as their candidate for president and twice declined to do so. If we dont allow this to inform our understanding of the popularity of our politics, well never move forward and start winning elections to gain more power in our system.

This may be seen as a betrayal of the socialist principles I stand for, which are at heart an insistence on the absolute moral equality of every person and a fierce commitment to fighting for the worst-off with whatever social and governmental means are necessary. But I am writing this precisely because I believe so deeply in those principles. I want socialism to win, and to do that, socialists must be ruthless with ourselves.

The idea that most Americans quietly agree with our positions is dangerous, because it leads to the kind of complacency that has dogged Democrats since the emerging Democratic majority myth became mainstream. Socialists can take some heart in public polling that shows Americans warming to the abstract idea of socialism. But socialism is an abstraction that means little without a winning candidate. And too much of this energy seems to stem from the echo-chamber quality of social media, as young socialists look at the world through Twitter and TikTok and see only the smiling faces of their own beliefs reflected back at them.

Socialist victory will require taking a long, hard road to spread our message, to convince a skeptical public that socialist policies and values are good for them and the country. Which is to say, it will take decades.

Americans have lived in a capitalist system for generations; that will not be an easy obstacle for socialists to overcome. If you want socialist policies in the United States, there is no alternative to the slow and steady work of changing minds. My fellow travelers are in the habit of saying that justice cant wait. But justice has waited for thousands of years, and we all must eventually come to terms with the fact that we dont get to simply choose when it arrives.

Fredrik deBoer is the author of The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice and publishes a daily newsletter.

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Opinion | Democratic Socialists Have a Long Road to Electoral Victory - The New York Times