Can the Democrats Win?

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Reuters
La Jornada Maya

Tuesday, July 2, 2019

A few weeks ago, I was asked by a number of Mexican journalists if I thought that President Donald Trump would win the 2020 U.S. election.

At the time, I replied that I thought that this would be the most likely outcome.

The President has a lock on his far-right and Republican base supporters and seems to continue to enjoy all of the free media coverage that he needs to ensure that his messages get across.

He has met his obligations to his core voters. He has kept his main promises made during the 2016 campaign. He has renegotiated NAFTA, taken on China like no one before him, done all that he could do to keep Muslims out of the United States, did all that he could to build his wall, taken radical steps to address border crossings from Mexico, and he has improved the economy.

He can blame his failures to deliver on all of these promises on Congress and on the courts. As well, he has transformed the Republican party into the party of Trump – some, like conservative icon George Will, consider the party to have an almost cult-like status given Trump’s control of the party’s apparatus and its rank and file´s slavish devotion to the President.

If one monitors the media on a daily basis, one sees how his constituents, even those who are suffering the consequences of the current trade war with China, continue to support Trump out of a sense of nationalism and because, in the words of one farmer who is losing thousands of dollars a year, “he has our backs”. The trade war with China has had limited consequences overall and may well be required, given the need to contain the Chinese for strategic economic and geopolitical reasons. Their cheating on trade, disregard for intellectual property, their “Belt and Road” global transportation initiative, and growing dominance in technology are serious strategic threats.

Thus, the President remains a strong contender for re-election.

When asked why the Democrats would likely lose, I told journalists that the Democrats are deeply divided between the centrist wing of the party, currently personified by former Vice-President Joe Biden, and the far left-wing of the party, represented by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Both sides appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum with little common ground between them. Indeed, the one main thing that seems to unite them is a desire to see Trump gone.

In addition, at the time of the interviews, I saw no chance that any Democrat leader could unite the party going into the 2020 campaign. In recent years, Democrats have tended to fight among themselves and be their own worst enemies.

However, the first Democrat candidate debates have left me thinking.

On both nights, candidates generally avoided the bitter hatred and infighting that marred the Republican primary campaign of 2016, preferring to generally concentrate their ire on the President while agreeing to mostly politely disagree on certain issues. I was impressed that many candidates appeared to make their points strongly while not trying to destroy their opponents. The only major moments of contention came when Senator Kamala Harris took former Vice-President Joe Biden to the woodshed for his then lack of support for busing during the 1970’s to racially integrate schools, and Senator Sanders underscored his differences with Biden over the Iraq War.

After the debates, I came away with three main conclusions

The first, that while Sanders has a strong core following, he will have great difficulty, as a self-declared socialist, to bridge both wings of the Democratic party on the one hand, and attract the independent and centrist voters to the Democrat fold on the other.

The second, while Biden may have started with strong support with the center, he may well be far too “establishment” to coalesce support from the left, and has a lot of political baggage from decades of contradictory stands on key issues. While he may well argue that he has changed with the times, opponents could accuse him of a lack of consistency in his core values.

The third, while Senator Elizabeth Warren is a strong performer, her politics are, like Sanders’s, perhaps too far to the left to appeal to the mainstream voter. However, she may well be seen as more palatable than Sanders.

So, by the end of the second debate, I came away more receptive to Senator Kamala Harris’s style and arguments, although Senator Tulsi Gabbard, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg were also impressive in their messaging and delivery.

Senator Harris demonstrated the poise and policy knowledge that could serve to create the image of an intelligent candidate capable of dealing with the mercurial and capricious President in a debate. She came across as strong and determined, capable of wit and intelligence while also capable of attacking with little malice.

As well, she showed her ability to formulate strong, simple, and memorable messages that will stick with audiences. This as opposed to the complex and convoluted messages delivered by then candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.

She showed her skills at story-telling as well as a strong ability to connect with audiences through personal narratives. Her politics meld the objectives of the center and the left, and her public persona is that of a fighter without being an insulter. She could stand out as a rational and sane candidate when compared with a President who engages in insults and tantrums, who is sometimes incapable of speaking clearly and coherently, or of outlining a consistently positive vision of where he wants to take the United States during a second mandate.

As a part African-American and part Indian female candidate (her mother is from India, her father Jamaican), Harris would stand out from the white male Trump team and could attract voters from minority communities, many of whom are social conservatives but are put off by President Trump’s apparent moral failings.

As a former California Attorney General, she would bring a strong background in governance and knowledge of the law to the White House – something sorely lacking in today’s Republican administration and party.

As a woman, she could attract the votes of educated women turned off by Trump’s misogynistic and sexist persona, not to mention the past and current accusations of sexual impropriety making the rounds.

While it is still early, I must admit that my views are changing albeit slowly, and that I am no longer completely convinced of Donald Trump’s invincibility in 2020.

To stand a chance, the Democrats must select their candidate carefully considering electability over ideology and unity over division.

With this in mind, they must select a candidate who can unite the party and generate enough enthusiasm among supporters, as well as from independents, in order to get the voters out in droves in 2020 rather that stay at home as many Sanders’s supporters did in 2016.

Finally, in today’s world, the preponderance of septuagenarian frontrunners may no longer generate enthusiasm among younger voters who are the future of the country.

While I feel that the first debate cast Harris as a winner, there may be others who will shine in subsequent debates as candidates are scrutinized by the media and hitherto unknown truths, personality, and political traits are further revealed.

These two nights of debate revealed some of the possibilities with respect to potential candidates. Subsequent debates will hopefully reveal more.

Regardless, Democrats must remember that winning the presidency is more important than being ideologically correct. And they must convince voters that they can make their lives better than Trump has but, importantly, at no added cost to the middle class.

To loosely paraphrase the question that Ronald Reagan asked in 1980 – is America a better country and are Americans a better society than they were four years ago?

As a communicator, I place special emphasis on a candidate or party’s ability to generate two of three short and succinct key messages that will quickly connect with voters and become engraved in their psyche.

If Democrats can successfully meet Trump’s current slogan of “Keep America Great” with their own slogans such as “Take America Back”, they may well give the President a run for his money and could well beat him at his own game.

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