When the Narrative Meets the Ballot
Invent confidence, avoid the record, question the voters, and repeat. Democrats’ midterm problem is that a familiar campaign script still needs an audience willing to believe the ending.
The perfect Democratic voter would have an excellent memory for everything Donald Trump has ever said and a concussion covering everything Democrats have ever done.
Unfortunately for the party, Americans keep recovering.
They remember the promises. They notice the contradictions. Some have even begun engaging in the dangerous practice of comparing the sales presentation with the delivered product.
That creates a problem for a political operation built around the premise that the real problem is always somewhere else.
Trump. Fox News. Misinformation. An insufficiently diverse committee. A voter who misunderstood how much better his life had become.
As Americans vote in the midterms, I suggest walking through the process that brought Democrats here. Follow the steps carefully. By the end, you may understand why so much political commentary sounds like a hostage statement delivered by somebody who volunteered.
Step One: Establish That Trump Is Mean
Start with the strongest material.
Trump says something abrasive. Democrats recoil. Cable news convenes a panel to determine whether the republic can withstand a sentence.
Then an ordinary person asks about the issue Trump was discussing, which is terribly inconsiderate.
That’s where the strategy encounters trouble. The voter may agree that Trump could have phrased something differently. He may even wish Trump would occasionally let a perfectly good insult remain a private thought.
But agreeing that Trump can be abrasive doesn’t obligate a voter to support Democratic policy.
Democrats keep confusing those two transactions.
They believe that if they can get Americans to disapprove of a remark, the next logical step is accepting their entire governing agenda. That is an ambitious conversion rate for a facial expression.
The question voters face is broader: Who will govern more effectively? Whose priorities make sense? Who will enforce the law, respect taxpayers, and answer for failures?
A campaign devoted to proving Trump is unpleasant still has to explain why Democrats would be better.
Step Two: Make the Poll Sound Like the Result
Polling has a legitimate purpose. It can also become a very expensive way for political people to tell one another what they hoped to hear.
This cycle gave us something worse than an inaccurate forecast.
Median Strategies admitted publishing fabricated polling results. The American Association for Public Opinion Research condemned the fabrication and explained that the purported responses had been invented; no people had actually answered those survey questions.
That gives “likely voter” a whole new meaning.
Likely to exist would have been a useful first screening question.
Then, in October, another operation, Wedgewood, acknowledged fabricating polling data after scrutiny from the polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne.
These episodes don’t establish that every poll is fraudulent or that every fabrication serves Democrats. They establish something serious enough on its own: Published political numbers can acquire credibility before the people circulating them establish that the underlying work exists.
Think about the chain.
Numbers appear. An outlet publishes them. A campaign circulates the article. Somebody else points to the campaign circulating the article as evidence that the numbers matter.
By lunchtime, a fabrication has references.
For a party already inclined to confuse favorable coverage with public consent, that is a dangerous environment. A flattering number becomes emotional support. Question it, and people react as though you kicked the campaign’s therapy dog.
My advice to Republicans is simple: Vote.
My advice to Democrats is also simple: Vote.
The actual electorate has a useful qualification that fabricated respondents lack. It can show up.
Step Three: When Persuasion Gets Difficult, Try Confusion
Alaska supplied an especially instructive episode.
The state’s lieutenant governor issued a June determination finding that a second Sullivan candidacy sought to confuse voters through the use of a similar name and newly adopted Republican affiliation. Subsequent reporting described Democratic recruitment of the same-name candidate and a dispute continuing into the final days of the election.
The legal questions deserve to be resolved on the evidence. The political question is available right now.
How confident are you in your message when another candidate’s name becomes part of your strategy?
Most campaigns try to distinguish their candidate.
This one leaves voters wondering whether they need to bring a photo directory.
And remember who constantly lectures the country about protecting democracy.
Apparently, democracy includes respecting the voter’s judgment, provided nobody makes it unnecessarily easy for the voter to identify whom he’s judging.
Step Four: Convert Every Policy Question Into a Test of Your Decency
Ask about immigration enforcement, and the conversation becomes whether you possess compassion.
Ask about fraud in a social program, and suddenly you must establish that you like poor people.
Ask whether a criminal justice policy protects the public, and somebody wants to discuss your unconscious biases.
This is an effective way to avoid answering questions. It is a poor way to run anything.
A restaurant cannot respond to a customer’s food poisoning by demanding to know why he hates the chef.
Democrats have spent years trying to make their intentions the only admissible evidence. The proposal was compassionate. The program was historic. The initiative centered the right people.
Fine. What happened?
Did people become safer? Did the intended recipients receive the help? Was the money accounted for? Did the policy achieve the goal?
Those questions are how adults evaluate performance.
A party claiming superior compassion should welcome scrutiny of whether its policies help people. Otherwise, compassion becomes a credential officials award themselves while the public handles the consequences.
Step Five: Treat Every Defection as a Defect
Democrats have another problem whenever somebody who was supposed to support them starts asking uncomfortable questions.
The first instinct too often seems to be examining the voter.
What happened to him? Who influenced her? Why are these people voting against what we have determined their interests to be?
Consider the arrogance embedded in that last question.
You live the life. They identify your interests. You provide the vote.
That arrangement works beautifully until the voter develops an opinion.
I’m particularly interested in Black voters who challenge the party’s assumptions. No party should believe it owns a person’s political loyalty through ancestry, neighborhood, or a historical speech somebody gives every election year.
A vote is earned in the present.
And if a voter believes another candidate offers a better answer on schools, safety, opportunity, faith, or the cost of running a household, the party should address that judgment.
Calling the voter confused is easier. It also has the unfortunate side effect of confirming why he wanted a different conversation.
Step Six: Make the Whole Party Defend Its Loudest Activists
Every coalition has disagreements. Republicans certainly do. I have watched Republicans agree on the destination and then spend an afternoon arguing about who gets to unfold the map.
The question is how a party handles its internal disagreements.
Can its candidates tell an activist no?
Can they support law enforcement without first delivering an apology?
Can they distinguish helping vulnerable people from accepting every proposal offered in their name?
Can they tell voters clearly where the party stands when its factions want different things?
Democrats cannot indefinitely campaign as reassuring moderates while expecting voters to ignore the demands coming from inside their own coalition.
If the activist is wrong, say so.
If the activist is right, defend the proposal.
Voters should not need a decoder ring to determine what happens after they elect you.
Step Seven: Prepare an Explanation That Requires No Self-Examination
Here is my prediction about the reaction to Democratic disappointments: We will hear plenty about messaging.
The message failed to break through. The accomplishments were insufficiently understood. The information environment was challenging.
There will be consultants available to explain all of this for a fee.
At some point, a useful person in the room should ask whether voters understood the message and rejected it.
That possibility deserves consideration before commissioning another study of why Americans cannot appreciate what Democrats insist they delivered.
The same applies to Republicans. Winning creates an obligation to perform. A voter angry about unaccountable government has not issued a lifetime exemption to the other party.
But today’s question is who needs voters to overlook more.
Who needs another conversation about Trump’s tone?
Who needs a favorable poll to do the work of a persuasive argument?
Who needs the public to mistake good intentions for competent government?
I believe Democrats have made this election harder for themselves by assuming those questions could always be postponed.
Election Day ends the postponement.
The voters are about to provide a very large sample.
And this time, the respondents exist.
