Democrats, try campaigning like human beings

Democratic congressional candidates should run on what they actually believe in. Is that too much to ask?

After the 2016 election left Democrats without control of the House, Senate, or White House for the first time in a decade, most campaign postmortems offered one of two predictable (and contradictory) arguments: to win in 2018 and 2020, Democrats should move left or center — toward either the “Bernie wing” or the “Hillary wing.”

But those analyses miss an even greater obstacle to electoral success. No matter the effectiveness of its message, the strength of its ground game, the direction Democrats move along the political spectrum, or the weakness of the Trump-led GOP, the party’s problem is more fundamental: too many Democratic candidates seem incapable of speaking like human beings with core convictions.

Democrats won’t retake the House or Senate solely by opposing Donald Trump or by telling voters what they should care about. They’ll win by campaigning sincerely and confidently on what they actually believe in. Yet even with Donald Trump in the White House, with less than a year until the 2018 midterms it’s unclear whether Democratic candidates will cast aside a pathological determination to please everyone and, instead, focus on connecting with voters on an honest and human level.

The challenge facing Democrats reflects one of the great ironies of modern-day American politics: the party whose empathy is genuine and whose convictions are real has gained a reputation as inauthentic and out-of-touch. Meanwhile, the party whose only true convictions are shrinking government, cutting taxes for the wealthy, and preserving tribal loyalty manages to claim the mantle of authenticity and a reputation for fighting for working people.

That’s not just Democrats’ fault. The media, with its tendency to falsely equate good- and bad-faith arguments from opposing sides, is also among those responsible. But when it comes to campaigning, too many Democratic candidates — and the insular circles of consultants and operatives whose condescension for the electorate knows few bounds — have decided they’re left with a binary choice of losing elections with integrity intact, or standing a chance of winning only by running away from their core beliefs.

There is, of course, an obvious third path for Democrats: speak with the courage of your convictions, and make an honest, sincere case to your prospective constituents.

Whether a candidate is to the left of Bernie Sanders or to the right of Joe Manchin, every Democrat who picks 2018 to run on a platform of lukewarm and uninspired-but-poll-tested promises threatens to tank the Trump-era Democratic resurgence even before the first anniversary of the Women’s March.

The party’s chances of taking back the House and Senate depend on a wave of enormous proportions. The unpopularity of Donald Trump and the GOP agenda alone cannot overcome the extent to which gerrymandered House seats and the Senate electoral map favor Republicans. That means a Democratic platform that consists only of not offending anyone won’t be enough.

The 2014 election cycle holds important lessons for Democrats. Take the Colorado Senate race that pitted incumbent Sen. Mark Udall against Republican Rep. Cory Gardner. Despite his liberal voting record, Udall had a compelling personal story as a mountaineer and was broadly well-liked by Coloradans heading into the 2014 campaign.

But instead of telling voters who he was or how he was fighting for his state in the Senate, Udall’s campaign so single-mindedly talked about reproductive rights that he became known as “Mark Uterus.” Moreover, rather than defending or even attempting to make a case for his liberal voting record — like his support for the Affordable Care Act — Udall tried to distance himself from it, even refusing to attend a fundraiser President Obama hosted for him in Denver, as if that patently political gesture would sway a single Republican voter.

Udall was on the record defending Democratic policies. He voted in support of President Obama’s agenda. His beliefs (and party registration) were clear. So why, then, when an election approached, did his campaign see the path to victory running through a blatant disavowal of most of his voting record and worldview? Udall lost to Gardner by 2.5 points.

The American political landscape looked vastly different in 2014 than it will in 2018, and every election is uniquely complicated and rarely determined by a single action or event. But the argument against Democratic please-everyone politics isn’t about a particular campaign or candidate. It’s not about whether the Democratic party needs to become more or less progressive. It’s not a screed for liberal purity or against compromise, or a “No Labels” meets “The Innovation Party” self-congratulatory call for a Mark Zuckerberg-John Kasich ticket in 2020. It’s not false equivalence disguised as post-partisan intellectualism.

This is simply a plea for Democratic candidates to start acting more like human beings who truly believe that government can improve the lives of the governed, and less like professional political operators with such disdain for voters that candidates don’t even try to make a compelling argument for what they actually believe in.

A key takeaway from the recent victories of Doug Jones in Alabama and Danica Roem in Virginia is that Democratic candidates can win competitive races because of — not in spite of — their core convictions. Across the country, there are plenty of examples of Democrats who’ve cracked the code of humanity in politics. Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana aren’t conservative by any measure, but they’ve repeatedly won in states that voted for John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump in the last three presidential cycles. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth is among the recent arrivals to the Senate who’ve built a reputation for speaking sincerely and passionately.

In the House, Reps. Maxine Waters and Keith Ellison are long-serving members of Congress who don’t try to please everyone and haven’t forgotten how to connect on a human level, while relative newcomers like Reps. Eric Swallwell, Cheri Bustos, Hakeem Jeffries, and Beto O’Rourke have risen quickly in prominence without forgoing the frankness and directness with which they first came to Washington. These members are just a few of the sitting elected officials whose elections and reelections demonstrate that humanity and honesty aren’t incompatible with electoral success. They, along with other recent candidates like Jason Kander — who in 2016 came within three points of unseating an incumbent Republican senator in a state Trump won by nearly 20 points — represent a Democratic party that can compete anywhere in the country.

Voters have a pretty good idea of who’s speaking to them directly. They recognize a candidate who tries to answer a different question than the one they asked. They see through a refusal to acknowledge disagreements or, when challenged, a reluctance to defend a position. They aren’t impressed by politicians who answer a yes-or-no question with winding paragraphs replete with hemming and hawing but devoid of conviction.

Bringing some sincerity and humanity to Democratic politics doesn’t just show a respect for the electorate; it also comes with the added benefit of localizing and personalizing a campaign. It’s hard to paint a candidate as a liberal stooge of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer if that same candidate is at your front door or a town hall answering your questions honestly and interacting with you like a human being.

The endemic Democratic insistence on running away from one’s convictions in hopes of pleasing everyone — the naive belief that voters will eventually realize the candidate knows what’s best — leaves supporters disillusioned and the rest of the electorate shaking its head at the audacity of attempted political expediency.

Democrats talk a lot about human dignity, and rightly so. They stand for the dignity that comes from holding a good-paying job, being able to send a child to college, and having reliable access to health care. For Democratic candidates, though, shouldn’t the same dignity they talk about on the stump also apply to their day-to-day interactions with other human beings whose votes they seek?

As the 2018 midterms approach, there’s an enormous opportunity for Democrats who don’t just offer steadfast opposition to the president but who actually possess the same qualities he falsely claims to have — candidness, directness, authenticity. Whether an aspiring Blue Dog or a socialist-turned-Democrat, candidates shouldn’t fear being honest with voters. Holding Donald Trump accountable is a constitutional and moral imperative, but no person’s worldview consists entirely of opposing Donald Trump. Why should a candidate’s campaign?

Even as Trump and his party no longer attempt to hide their appeals to white resentment and their allegiance to big business and the far-right, Democrats still risk allowing Republicans to set the parameters of what defines conviction and authenticity. In the era of Donald Trump, that’s a particularly ignominious and disheartening accomplishment. Not only does it push more of the Democratic base to the far left — a risk in itself — but candidates who try to win just by not losing leave far too many voters wondering what, exactly, they stand for. That’s an opportunity lost, and not a problem that slogans, messaging, or pivots can fix.

Donald Trump is the president of the United States. The risk averse playbook that has guided Democratic candidates— and created a generation of political operatives and consultants whose greatest fear is their candidate’s humanity — is no longer good enough.

Elections are complicated, and a little more honesty and authenticity isn’t going to paint the electoral map blue. But it might just be a step towards winning a few seats and restoring some sincerity to the Democratic party and the democratic process.

This column was originally published in the Medium publication ‘Extra Newsfeed.’