The Democratic Party’s Identity Crisis

0:06Hi, Liz. Thanks for being here. Hi, Clare. Thank you for having me. Of course. Of course. Well, Liz, you've worked on a number of Democratic campaigns you and I met when you were on Pete Buttigieg's 2020 campaign. And you've been in plenty of conversations about the party's future. Does this current moment feel unprecedented, or does it echo another time when the party was trying to figure its way back from the wilderness? I think the Democrats are pretty close to rock bottom. And, you know, it's not worth hand-wringing or bedwetting about it, I think. But I do think we've got to get really, really serious about rebuilding.

0:44For the last 10 years, a lot of us in politics have talked about Donald Trump as someone who has been very bad for the Republican Party and ruinous for the Republican Party. I think there's a case to be made that he's almost been worse for the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party sort of got out of the ideas business, thinking about what it stands for, and has oriented itself almost completely around reacting to Donald Trump and being anti-Trump, and voters have sent a very clear message that that is incontinent for them.

1:22That's Liz Smith, the strategist who helped turn Pete Buttigieg from the little-known mayor of South Bend into a serious presidential contender in 2020. She's made a career out of advising Democrats on how to talk to voters, and she wrote about it in her memoir, Any Given Tuesday, a political love story. The Democratic Party is facing what many see as an identity crisis. They lost the presidency in 2024, their base is shrinking in the polls and in voter rolls, and Trump, despite being deeply unpopular, still looks stronger than they do. Democrats are left debating why voters seem to hate their brand even more than Trump's and having tough conversations about what kind of party they want to be.

2:03I wanted to talk with Liz about how Democrats got here, the coalition they thought they had, and the different messages and strategies they're testing now to try to win back voters. This is The Political Scene. I'm Claire Malone, a staff writer here at The New Yorker, subbing in for Tyler Foggett.

2:25After the 2024 election, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville wrote that the Democrats should, quote, play dead and wait for Trump and the Republicans to spiral into low approval ratings. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight, he said, and make the American people miss us. We're now eight months out from the election, and that doesn't really seem to be going very well. Trump's approval rating is in the low 40s, but it doesn't really seem like the American people miss the Democrats. In a recent Wall Street Journal poll, just 33 percent of voters approved of Democrats, while 63 percent held an unfavorable view.

2:59So just to table set our conversation, you know, I wanted to cast back a little bit, Liz, to there was this memo from Aaron Strauss, a data scientist in the middle of the 2024 election cycle. And he's a Democrat. He focuses on how to elect Democrats. And The Washington Post reported on its existence in part because it was causing such waves among party insiders. And Strauss warned that continuing with the longstanding strategy of registering as many non-voters as possible could backfire because young people and voters of color were trending towards Trump. And in my memory, I found it sort of an interesting reaction because a lot of Democratic insiders freaked out because he seemed to be, you know, going against what was what had been party wisdom for a long time.

3:43And I have to say, in wonky circles, like, you know, people seem to be a little bit like this is data denialism. The numbers are showing you exactly what is happening trend-wise. Why do you think there was that kind of response within insider Democratic circles to that memo? Because the conventional wisdom for a long time, if you look at a state like Texas, for instance, that Democrats have been pursuing very hard since 2012, is that the only obstacle between Democrats and winning statewide in Texas is voter registration. And the more voters we register, the more we'll win. See Beto O 'Rourke.

4:20Right. Because the people who aren't registered tend to be younger. They tend to be Latino. They tend to be working class. So the view was, obviously, if we register more younger people, obviously, if we register more Latino people, obviously, if we register more working class people, Democrats will do better. Well, flash forward, and now we are hemorrhaging with all those groups. If you look at Trump's numbers with Latinos in 2024, it was about even with Kamala Harris. He made big gains with younger voters. And there's been a complete realignment among class and education lines where Republicans are doing much better with non-college educated voters.

5:03And Democrats are doing much better with college educated voters. So to me, that signals that the issue here, Democrats love to talk about tactics. They need to say, we're going to register voters and we're going to turn out the voters. But we need to fix the message. We need to fix the product we're selling. We need to get in the persuasion business because registering these voters just isn't enough. Because right now, the people that and the parties that they're gravitating toward are Republicans. Can I ask just about that, though, that do you think it took a massive loss like the 2024 election to get people to pay attention to the trends?

5:38Is there something, you know, groupthink happening with Democratic strategists? What's the psychology of that? Yeah, so let's back up. Let's look at the Obama coalition in 2008, 2012. I was on the 2012 campaign. The Obama coalition, huge support among non-white voting populations, huge turnout among young voters, and a mix of college-educated white but also non-college-educated white voters. 2016 is when you start to see a shift. Those Obama-Trump counties that everyone was talking about. Yeah, and a lot of it is white working class voters. And there was this attitude in the Democratic Party that was like, well, you know, they say economic anxiety, but it's really about race.

6:24And they're, you know, deplorables. We can cast them out. They were going to be Republicans anyway. Okay. Then you get to 2020. Then 2020, you start to see more of a shift where it's not just white working class voters. You start to see shifts very small among black voters toward Republicans and slightly more significant among Latinos. And their voters, Democrats afterwards, were like, well, you know, not significant enough. Maybe the exit polls were wrong. Then 2024, it became undeniable then. Three is a trend, basically. Three elections makes people confident enough to say, oops. Yeah, because then it's a very significant shift among Latino voters.

7:05It's a more significant shift among black voters. And it's clear that this is a very big trend that's happening and that Democrats across the board are losing ground with non-college educated voters, working class voters. And it's not because of just, you know, quote unquote racism. Yeah. Were there other reports or warning signs like that that pointed to a larger or maybe currently that point to a larger or more existential crisis in the party? Well, one thing I feel like has gotten short shrift in the post-2024 analysis is too often we just look at the battleground states and say, oh, look at the shifts here, look at the shifts there, because those are the things that determine the presidential election.

7:52But the congressional districts that had the biggest shift from Democrat to Republican were actually, I think it was AOC's district, Richie Torres' district in the Bronx, and Grace Ming's district in Queens. What do those districts have in common? Grace Ming's is heavily Asian American. Richie and AOC's heavily Black and Latino. And that shows underneath the surface that we had huge issues there. And what was causing that shift toward Republicans? I think here in New York, we had some unique circumstances. One, public order, law and order is always going to be a thing. Black, Latino, Asian voters tend to be more conservative on law and order issues.

8:36They want their communities to be safe. They want police there. Two, you had the migrant crisis here. And, you know, very visibly on the streets. And then a lot of concerns in these communities that public benefits were going to the migrants and not to them. And then, of course, inflation, costs, and just this existential dread and feeling that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, that you just are not able to keep up with costs, whether it's the cost of housing, of child care, you know, energy costs, groceries, and that Democrats weren't speaking to those issues. On Latino voters, because it's kind of been this like, you know, old saw that George W.

9:17Bush and his strategist in Texas way back in the day said Latinos are natural conservatives. And then I feel like there was sort of this line in the past, let's say, two election cycles where, well, Latinos are, you got to take them in their different states. So Puerto Rican voters in New York will vote differently than Cuban voters in Florida or second-generation Mexican-American voters in Texas. And the implication was Florida and Texas voters will go vote more conservative because they're in more conservative states with more conservative issues. Is there sort of more of a flattening of everyone's paying attention more to nationalized issues and the biggest issues are the migrant crisis and inflation?

9:53Or are there still sort of these unique pockets of, you know, with Latino voters' interest or trends? Yeah, and I'm someone I've done a fair amount of work in the Dominican community and Puerto Rican community here in New York. And yeah, the concerns are different. But overall, I would say that you've seen among all of those groups a shift to the right. Because if you look at the demographics of the NYPD, right? You got a lot of Latino police officers, so the defund rhetoric doesn't resonate with them. You got a lot of people who live in communities where police is important. But you also have people, again, Black, Asian, Latino, who I think had a very negative reaction to seeing this big influx of migrants.

10:47You know, say what you will about Governor Abbott and his strategy to relocate migrants to these cities. But he turned places like New York City essentially into a border state and made immigration a top issue up here. And I do think that negatively polarized a lot of people in these communities against Democrats. So there is, you know, a sense of disorder, immigration, all that. But generally, what we've seen is that across the board, the Latino community, whether it's Dominican, Puerto Rican, Mexican, has—and again, for a variety of reasons. It's a little bit different if you look at South Texas.

11:25Down there, also more conservative on immigration, more conservative on border enforcement and law enforcement. A lot of second-generation, third-generation people from Mexican backgrounds work in energy. Right. So when the Green New Deal, you know, that doesn't do it for them. They work in border control. They work in law enforcement. So a lot of Democrats' language on those issues can be seen as very alienating to them. Yeah. Let's talk about voters. What are the candidates you're working with hearing from voters about why they're less likely to identify as or vote for Democrats? And I'm curious, who are like, you know, where and who are the candidates?

12:05And like just to give people a sense of, you know, geography. Yeah. So I had an interesting anecdote recently from Sandra Haudigy. She is an assemblywoman in Nevada. She's a leader of the Nevada House Dems. And she is a Democrat. But in 2024, she won a district that actually went for Trump. And I think she was the only Democratic assemblyperson there who did that. And she said that when she would go to the doors and she would have the Harris or Biden, then Harris messaging, the messaging often led with climate, with abortion, with gun control, with LGBTQ rights and democracy and how these are all existential issues.

12:48And definitely, you know, they are all in their own ways. But voters in her district who are, you know, a lot of Latino voters, a lot of Asian voters who may have been pro-choice or pro-gun safety were like, well, you know, the existential thing in my life is like staying above water economically. It's costs. It's keeping up with the cost of housing, of child care, of groceries, of, you know, energy bills. And why aren't you leading with that? And across the board from other Democrats I heard who were able to win in Trump districts, whether it's people like Marie Glouz and Cam Perez in Washington State, Jared Golden in Maine, Pat Ryan and Angie Craig in Minnesota and New York weren't in Trump districts, were two of the top over performers.

13:34What they all had in common, what those congressional candidates all had in common was that they led their campaigns not by talking about abortion, not by talking about democracy, but by talking about costs. And very importantly, doing ads early on stating their support for law enforcement, for border enforcement, and breaking with the Biden administration on their disastrous border policies. And that sort of approach generally among Democrats, right? Some people would say, oh, they ran as more moderates. I actually think the successful model for Democrats right now is more of a heterodox model where you're a little bit more to the left on economic and cost issues, but more, you know, to the center on things like law and order and the border.

14:22How is that sort of shift of Trump's kind of right about the border? How is that received by the Democratic Party leaders or people who are giving out money? I mean, do those funders and leaders chafe at those kinds of strategies and campaigns? Well, I was really disappointed to see the Biden and Harris campaigns in 2024 and really not adopt that. You know, I worked on Tom Suozzi's special election in New York's 3rd District. And the consensus was that Tom Suozzi was going to get smoked because the number one issue there for voters, it was cost of living, inflation, and immigration. Again, a migrant issue front and center.

15:02And he did something that other Democrats didn't do. He didn't avoid it. He took it on head on. We ran ads on it. And he went on the offensive and said that actually that he wanted to really take this issue on. He realized it was a problem. He wanted bipartisan immigration reform. And you know what? He'd take a little wall. He didn't want a wall. He'd take a little wall if you could, you know, give a pathway to citizenship for more people. And he attacked the Republicans and Donald Trump for tanking, you know, our best shot at bipartisan immigration bill in decades. And rather than taking that approach, I just saw Democrats sort of avoid it.

15:35They were like, we don't want to make this more salient by talking about it. But it is already salient. Like with the media environment now, these things are being forced out. It's in the bloodstream. Yeah, it's in the bloodstream. So you have to talk about it. And I do still see that. I see that on a number of tough issues that there is more activists, I think, than donors. But they're like, well, don't even talk about trans issues. Don't even talk about immigration. Those aren't our issues. and we shouldn't give them any oxygen. And it's like, well, I'm sorry, that's just not how politics works anymore.

16:06And if you do what the Harris campaign did in 2024, which is not even respond to millions and millions and millions of dollars of ads saying Kamala Harris is for they, them, and Donald Trump's for you, then the Republicans completely define the debate. There's lots of critiques floating around in the post-2024 election cycle, But there is certainly a critique that the Democratic consultant class bears a responsibility for the loss, basically that they were wrong about what demographics and slices of the country would be necessary to win. So I'm putting on the hot seat a little bit as a Democratic consultant.

16:41But do you think that's fair? And what do you make of the backlash against strategists? Yeah, I do think it's fair. And I share a lot of those concerns and criticisms of my colleagues. And, you know, after the Pete's 2020 campaign, I felt a little bit like I was going insane. I was on an island when we had gone out there in 2020 and we had done this sort of go everywhere media strategy where it's, you know, not just talking to MSNBC, New York Times, The New Yorker. We talked about this, right, for a story. Go out and talk to Barstool. Go on Fox News. Go on The Breakfast Club. Go to TMZ. Talk to sports outlets.

17:21All of that. But then Biden ran like a very, very conventional media campaign and didn't do any of that. And we saw that with Harris's campaign. You know, they turned down things like Rogan and Theovan and flagrant. So, you know, I think I would be very critical of my fellow Democrats for not being more creative and not seeing the need to do that. And I think, yeah, they deserve criticism for trying to run a base-only strategy that was rooted in the flawed idea that the Democratic base, like Latino voters, are going to be liberal on immigration. When, in fact, they are oftentimes more conservative on immigration than white voters.

18:07That the way to talk to black voters is to talk about, I don't know, criminal justice. and rather than talking about economic opportunity and education. And there is this, I hate the term because it means so many different things to different people, but Democrats post-2016 really got into this identity politics trap, which is the way to appeal to women is you talk about abortion, the way to appeal to Latinos is you talk about immigration, the way to talk to black voters is you talk about criminal justice. And I think it's led us down a really, really bad path. And we need to understand that voters have really cross-cutting issues.

18:42But the biggest cross-cutting issue of all is this existential threat pain that people feel about the economy, their kids' futures, and the idea that even if they do everything right, they can't get ahead and they have even greater fears for their children. Hindsight being 2020, anything you got wrong or anything you missed?

19:07I underestimated how open voters would be to a second Trump presidency. I did believe that Trump would win the Republican nomination, but I had a hard time believing that voters who had chosen Biden over Trump in 2020 would vote for Trump in 2024. And I was wrong about that. And it spoke to just this really deep frustration with Democrats and really with the status quo. Because Democrats, again, oriented so much of their identity around being anti-Trump that when he talked about tearing down these institutions, Democrats then just said, no, no, no, protect them and didn't even talk about any of the flaws.

19:50There was a lot of knee-jerk reactions without nuance, maybe. Yeah, and I think he also just got the tone of the electorate and the sort of vibes a little more, which is that people were feeling pretty pissed off, pretty angry. There are a lot of grievances, whereas like Democrats were sort of running on, you know, a lot of joy. The economy is actually doing pretty well. Bidenomics. Yeah. Right, Bidenomics, probably one of the most miscalculated like slogans of all times. So, yeah, I underestimated voters' openness to going back to Donald Trump after he lost in 2020. Not only lost in 2020, but sort of left office in disgrace with the impeachment on January 6th.

20:33Let's take a break, and when we return, I want to get into the path from Obama's coalition to the current moment. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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21:26So download the New Yorker app for new games to play every day.

21:39I want to go back a little bit and talk about how we arrived at this moment. It seems like a version of this narrative is that in 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama seemed to have built out a durable national majority. Young voters, voters of color, and college-educated professionals. But then Democrats lost the 2010 and 2014 midterms, state parties weekend, And the 2010s saw a class and education divide deepen. Millennials were supposed to be the forever blue generation and Gen Z was supposed to be even more progressive. But in 2024, Harris underperformed Biden significantly with both groups, especially young men.

22:16Obviously, that's a very broad sketch. But since you're someone who's worked on campaigns throughout that time period, I want to place the Democratic Party's current state within a historical context of what did or didn't allow them to make certain gains over the course of the past decade or so. So maybe let's start with Obama. Why didn't Obama's national success translate into stronger Democratic power at the state and local level? Because so much of the effort was just on the presidency. The Republicans for decades had built an operation to build power starting at the bottom. School boards, state legislators, state councils, all that.

22:56Democrats just did not have that. Republicans had also built out this entire thought network, you know, with ALEC and funded by these right-wing billionaires that was helping to develop a playbook for once, you know, you had these governors elected. of how they could crack down on public sector unions and— Basically writing legislation for state legislatures and pushing through a conservative. And Democrats just had nothing, nothing like that. And if you look at the amount of time, effort, money we put into down-ballot elections, meaning state legislative, gubernatorial, all that, it paled in comparison to what the Republicans were doing.

23:35I also think that is paired a bit with that there's been a shift in the Democratic Party. There used to be a bigger tent Democratic Party. And I would say that starting really after 2012, we saw a shift away from heterodoxy, away from understanding that Democrats in Nebraska, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Dakota, North Dakota, all places. Yeah. Arkansas, where we had Democratic senators and Democratic legislatures. You know, now you had to take maximalist positions on gun control. Why? Is that the national media environment? Is that the Democratic Party changing? So where I first remember it happening was one of the first things I remember was in 2017, there was a mayoral election in Omaha, Nebraska.

24:27And Tom Perez went out to campaign for the candidate, as did Bernie Sanders. And NARAL released a statement just saying, this is horrible. We'll pull our funding for you because the candidate is pro-life. I mean, it's Nebraska. And Sanders did that in a couple other places, if I recall. He supported candidates who had pro-life positions. Yeah, and I am someone who, before I worked in New York politics, before I just did presidential politics, I, you know, cut my teeth in South Dakota, knocking on doors in South Dakota as a press secretary in Missouri, as a communications director in Ohio. I worked in Kentucky.

25:07I worked in Virginia. And I worked in West Virginia. And I saw that it's really important to understand there's no one way to be a Democrat. But that a Democrat in West Virginia who is self-described pro-life, pro-gun, pro-business is going to be infinitely better than a Republican. You know, a good example is Earl Ray Tomlin, former governor. He had the endorsement of West Virginia Right to Life. And when a 12-week abortion ban came to his desk, he vetoed it because he said he had constitutional concerns. The subsequent governor, a Republican, signed into law some of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country.