فصل 89

89

Where Do Democrats Go from Here?

Republicans have another advantage: a powerful, permanent political infrastructure, particularly online. After Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012, and widespread praise for the Obama campaign’s technology, Republicans vowed to catch up. Between 2013 and 2016, the Republican National Committee invested more than $100 million in data operations. Outside groups such as the Mercers and the Koch brothers also spent heavily.

By contrast, the Democratic National Committee was badly outgunned. Tom Perez, the new DNC chair, has said, “We’ve got to up our game on technology.” He’s right. Perez pledged to “do a better job of building the data analytics platform that will enable us not only to succeed in elections today but to be the state of the art for decades to come.” That’s crucial.

If we want to win in the future, Democrats need to catch up and leapfrog ahead. And this isn’t just about data. We need an “always-on” content distribution network that can match what the right-wing has built. That means an array of loosely connected Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Twitter feeds, Snapchat stories, and Reddit communities churning out memes, graphics, and videos. More sophisticated data collection and analysis can support and feed this network. I’m no expert in these matters, but I know enough to understand that most people get their news from screens, so we have to be there 24/7.

There are other lessons I hope Democrats learn from 2016. Since the election, the party has been debating how best to set ourselves up to win in the future, starting with the midterms in 2018. I think most of the perceived drama between the center-left and the left-left on this question is overblown. We’re far closer together than any of us are to Trump and the Republicans, who just keep getting more extreme. Bernie Sanders and I wrote the 2016 platform together, and he called it the most progressive one in history. We share many of the same values and most of our differences over policy are relatively minor compared to the stark divide between the two parties.

You’d also be hard pressed to find any Democrat who doesn’t agree that we need to continue sharpening our economic pitch and that we should make a sustained effort to win back voters who switched from Obama to Trump. We’ll have to convince them that Democrats respect them, care about them, and have a plan to make life better, not just in big cities but also in small towns and rural areas. That might become easier as voters watch Trump break his populist promises and embrace a congressional Republican agenda that tilts the playing field even more toward the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working families. So far, their health care debate is about whether they’re going to take it away from 22 million Americans to fund tax cuts for the wealthy!

So yes, we need to compete everywhere, and we can’t afford to write off any voter or any state. But it’s not all kumbaya in the Democratic Party. We’re hearing a lot of misguided rhetoric and analysis that could lead us in the wrong direction.

One argument is about whether pursuing the Russia investigation is distracting from making the case to voters about health care and the economy. This is another false choice. It makes all the sense in the world for congressional candidates to focus on pocketbook issues, and the disastrous Republican health care legislation should be front and center. But that doesn’t mean Democrats already in Congress should stop doing their jobs. They should continue providing rigorous oversight and hold the Trump administration accountable. I have confidence that Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time. Plus, the ever-growing Russia scandal is showing Americans that Trump is a liar, and that will help us convince them that he’s lying about health care and jobs, too. And don’t underestimate how, if left unchecked, Russia’s covert operations can easily be used again in the future to defeat other Democrats. That torrent of misinformation helped drown out my message and steal my voice. It gave Trump cover to escape his own problems. This can all happen again if we don’t stop it. Oh, and for any Democratic members of Congress feeling squeamish about pushing too hard, just ask yourselves what Republicans would be doing if the situation were reversed.

Here’s another misguided argument. Some of the same people who say that the reason I lost was because I didn’t have an economic message now insist that all Democrats need to do to win in the future is talk more about jobs, and then—poof!—all those Trump voters will come home. Both the premise and conclusion are false. Yes, we need to talk as much as we possibly can about creating more jobs, raising wages, and making health care and college more affordable and accessible. But that’s exactly what I did throughout 2016. So it’s not a silver bullet and it can’t be the only thing we talk about.

Democrats have to continue championing civil rights, human rights, and other issues that are part of our march toward a more perfect union. We shouldn’t sacrifice our principles to pursue a shrinking pool of voters who look more to the past than the future.

My loss doesn’t change the fact that the Democrats’ future is tied to America’s in a fast-changing world where our ability to make progress depends an increasingly diverse, educated, young electorate. Even when the headlines are bad, there’s reason to be optimistic about the trend lines. I was the first Democrat since FDR to win Orange County, California. I made historic gains in the suburbs of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Charlotte, as well as in other traditionally Republican areas across the Sun Belt. Latino turnout jumped nearly 5 percent in Florida and rose in other key areas as well.

It wasn’t enough this time, but these trends hold the key to our future. That’s why the Republicans have worked so hard to keep young people and people of color away from the polls, and to gerrymander districts that protect incumbents. Democrats will have to work even harder to fight for voting rights, fair redistricting, and high turnout not just in presidential elections, but also in local, state, and federal midterm elections where the people who make the voting laws and draw congressional districts are selected.

I know we can do it. There are enough vulnerable Republican congressional seats in districts I won for Democrats to be well on their way to retaking the House in 2018, many of them in Sun Belt suburbs. And if we can flip some Midwestern blue-collar districts that went for Trump but are now disillusioned by his performance in office, all the better. We need a strategy that puts us in a position to catch a wave if it forms, and compete and win all over the country.

I do believe it’s possible to appeal to all parts of our big, diverse nation. We need to get better at explaining to all Americans why a more inclusive society with broadly shared growth will be better and more prosperous for everyone. Democrats must make the case that expanding economic opportunity and expanding the rights and dignity of all people can never be either/or, but always go hand in hand. I tried to do this in 2016. That was the whole point of “Stronger Together.” And it’s why I emphasized my commitment to help create jobs in every zip code, in neglected urban neighborhoods and in small Appalachian towns. That vision did win the popular vote by nearly three million (yes, I’m going to keep mentioning that). Unfortunately, zero-sum resentment proved more powerful than positive-sum aspiration in the places where it mattered most. But that doesn’t mean we give up. It means we have to keep making the case, backed up by bold new policy ideas and renewed commitment to our core values.

As for me, I’m sure I’ll keep replaying in my head for a long time what went wrong in this election. As I said in my concession speech, it’s going to be painful for quite a while. None of the factors I’ve discussed here lessen the responsibility I feel or the aching sense that I let everyone down. But I’m not going to sulk or disappear. I’m going to do everything I can to support strong Democratic candidates everywhere. If you’re reading this book, I hope you’ll do your part, too.