Doubling down on the very reasons their voters bolted is not a viable plan.
They are embracing the alt-left, antifa, and Bernie Sanders wing of their party as the middle. Good luck with that. Your own party members are not that far left (yet).
An estimated 6.7 to 9.2 million Americans who voted for Obama switched to Trump in 2016, and the Democrats have no true understanding of why that happened. They have largely avoided serious introspection about their loss last November, let alone about the massive losses they accrued during Obama’s two terms in office. The result is Party-wide confusion and incomprehension that has manifested as seething anger, lashing out at anyone and everyone, and plowing forward with an agenda that the majority of the American people simply do not want.
The New York Times has a dense and richly-sourced article that highlights some key problems for Democrats moving forward. Here are a few highlights:
Busting the narrative that Trump voters who formerly voted for Democrats were mostly white, working class.
What the autopsy reveals is that Democratic losses among working class voters were not limited to whites; that crucial constituencies within the party see its leaders as alien; and that unity over economic populism may not be able to turn back the conservative tide.
Equally disturbing, winning back former party loyalists who switched to Trump will be tough: these white voters’ views on immigration and race are in direct conflict with fundamental Democratic tenets.
Democrats have hung their electoral hopes on tribalism, but they are hemorrhaging voters among their own pet identity groups.
A consistent theme is that the focus on white defections from the Democratic Party masks an even more threatening trend: declining turnout among key elements of the so-called Rising American Electorate — minority, young and single voters. Turnout among African-Americans, for example, fell by 7 points, from 66.6 percent in 2012 to 59.6 percent in 2016.
. . . . Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster, writes in his Prospect essay:
The Democrats don’t have a “white working-class problem.” They have a “working-class problem,” which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate, including the Rising American Electorate of minorities, unmarried women, and millennials. This decline contributed mightily to the Democrats’ losses in the states and Congress and to the election of Donald Trump.
Pew noted that black voter turnout was down in 2016.
A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008.
A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election.
One of the reasons for the decreased Democrat black voter turnout is a deep disappointment in Obama.
McClatchy reported in 2014:
Black voters’ disappointment with President Barack Obama, who they so eagerly embraced for so many years, could be costly on Election Day to Democrats, who badly need a big African-American turnout to win Senate and gubernatorial races in key states.
Instead, many African-Americans see an unemployment rate well above the national average, continuing problems with crime in many neighborhoods, and a president more interested in trying to help other voting blocs that didn’t give him such unwavering support.
He talks about same-sex marriage in a nod to the gay and lesbian community. He discusses immigration and its benefits, an issue particularly important to the Latino community. He fights for equal pay, a vital issue to the women Democrats so avidly court.
The black community, which gave Obama support like no other group, too often doesn’t see the investment paying off.
Among those voters Democrats are losing are a significant number who voted for Obama but then went for Trump in 2016.
The NYT continues:
Priorities also studied Obama-to-Trump voters. Estimates of the number of such voters range from 6.7 to 9.2 million, far more than enough to provide Trump his Electoral College victory. The counties that switched from Obama to Trump were heavily concentrated in the Midwest and other Rust Belt states.
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