Former Candidates, Strategists Push Democrats to Focus More on Economy Instead of Healthcare
Maybe Democrats *and* Republicans should look at rural communities for the answer on messaging.
The Democrats might have ousted President Donald Trump and kept the majority in the House, but no one can describe 2020 as a blue wave.
Instead, it might be a sign of things to come if the Democrats do not change their focus.
The Democrats lost seats in the House, coming out with the slimmest majority since FDR’s time. There is not a lot of wiggle room to push through pet projects.
The Republicans will likely keep the Senate.
It seems when the Democrats are stuck in a hard place former candidates and strategists plead with the party to focus on the economy and jobs instead of healthcare.
Remember, just because someone is amplified and screaming *cough*AOC*cough* doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with that person.
People care about their jobs and money in their pockets to provide for their families, especially in the wake of COVID-19:
“I think that the message needs to shift more towards the economy,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who lost her race in November in a Miami-Dade County district that swung toward President Trump after voting overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“There’s a lot of fear that many people here will not be able to get back to work, that they don’t know where they’re going to be able to find their next paycheck,” she said.
Following the election, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell wrote an opinion column that in part argued Democrats need to focus on the economy to win back support among Florida Latinos. Democratic lawmakers have also squabbled in private calls over what policies to run on.
Democratic National Committee spokesman Chris Meagher boasted the party used a successful message since they kept the majority and beat Trump.
Maybe it’s the people I speak to, but jobs and the economy are the most important issue. A poll a month before the election showed the same results.
The Protect Our Care group found coronavirus relief at the top of the list for voters.
So which is it? Republicans used healthcare in a lot of ads as well.
Is it possible the dominant message should combine jobs and healthcare? Look at rural communities. The people in those places are losing jobs and they have rundown hospitals.
Bill Hogseth is the chair of the Dunn County Democratic Party in Wisconsin. He wrote in Politico that Democrats lose in rural counties because the national party “has not offered rural voters a clear vision that speaks to their lived experiences.” He continued:
The pain and struggle in my community is real, yet rural people do not feel it is taken seriously by the Democratic Party.
My fear is that Democrats will continue to blame rural voters for the red-sea electoral map and dismiss these voters as backward. But my hope is for Democrats to listen to and learn from the experiences of rural people.
The signs of desperation are everywhere in communities like mine. A landscape of collapsed barns and crumbling roads. Main Streets with empty storefronts. The distant stare of depression in your neighbor’s eyes. If you live here, it is impossible to ignore the depletion.
Hogseth’s county chose President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but went all in for Trump in 2016 and 2020:
This is a large part of why Trump won Dunn County decisively in 2016 and in 2020. I have spoken with supporters of the president who were well aware of his shortcomings or admitted to disliking his leadership style, but who nonetheless believed he was willing to stand up to “elitist” Democrats and fight for citizens like them. For years, rural people have heard they are voting “against their own self-interest” when they elect Republicans, or that they vote the “wrong way” because they are uneducated. These are arrogant and damaging messages that are not easily forgotten. The reality, as I saw in my conversations with voters this year, is that many rural people have lost trust in the Democratic Party.
Hogseth noted that Biden attempted to reach out to those in rural communities, but that “trust is earned slowly.” His community loved Obama due to his promises to take on the big agriculture monopolies, but his Department of Agriculture laughed “when it came time to enforce anti-monopoly rules such as those in the Packers and Stockyard Act, and failed to enforce Country of Origin Labeling, which would have allowed independent farmers and ranchers to better compete within the consolidated meat industry.”
Then Obama’s administration “presided over a series of corporate mergers in the food and agriculture sectors, including the Kraft-Heinz and JBS-Cargill mergers.”
Those two moves, including others probably, made the voters lose trust in the Democrats because it showed them Obama “did not have the backs of family farmers.”
I say it again: Why not both? The Democrats have become an elitist party. The Republicans should jump on this and keep reaching out to small-town America.
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Comments
You mean Biden needs to plagiarize from President Trump?
They want to lull people back into complacency so they can continue the looting of our nation.
“The reality, as I saw in my conversations with voters this year, is that many rural people have lost trust in the Democratic Party.”
Why would ANY honest/moral person ever trust the Democrat (not Democratic) party? Bunch of crooks and perverts.
And traitors just like the Rinos…..
Yeah, I left out ‘liars’, too.
“We will not go gently . . .”
This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.
But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.
And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.
— Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the “Socialism of Imbeciles” and Refusing to Submit
Unfortunately the r can’t seem to come to grips with the essential issue of creating a working health care system. That is the favorable tax treatment of expenditures for health insurance. This is an anomaly from the WWII era.
Unions will fight any change to this system. Large non union employers will fight any change. The insurance industry will fight any change.
No real progress can be made until we decide as a nation to end the favorable tax treatment which exacerbates our have or have not health insurance system.
It seems the Communists have two options:
1. Do the hard work of reaching out to voters and creating policies that address those needs. This will involve compromise and negotiation, and at least occasional defeat.
2. Rig the electoral system and use censorship so they cannot possibly get voted out of power. They can continue to demonize and dehumanize “racists” while flaunting their own supposed moral and intellectual superiority.
I think the Communists will go with Option 2.
Who cares?
The two major political parties in this country have not really been at odds since the 1980s. And neither party has been responsive to the needs of the conservative and middle class population of this country since Reagan left office. The Republican controlled congress passed several bills to eliminate Obamacare, while Obama was in the WH. Yet, that same Congress was unable to pass even one, when they had a President, who would sign the bill, in office. The two new political parties, in the US, are the Establishment and their underclass serfs and the free men and women who actually work for a living.
Stand by for a grand realignment in politics.
With “both” parties imploding in the eyes of their voters, there has never been a better time for a new major party. Politicians don’t care a whit about voters and they are not shy telling us.
I don’t care which party your belong to, re-register to unaffiliated independent as soon as you can and lie to the pollsters. Let’s make these corrupt rats stew in their own feces in fear of the next election.
Until January 5th, 2021, the Dems will be more focused on voter fraud. I don’t know what happens after that.
I live in a rural community.
I don’t want those corrupt, venal, rapacious bastards looking at my community. Forget we exist – we’ll take care of ourselves.