Copyright The Boston Globe
Nonsense, say middle-of-the-road Democrats. If you really want to see the future, cast your gaze across the Hudson River to New Jersey — and south to Virginia. That’s where a pair of center-left Democrats with national security credentials — former Navy helicopter pilot-turned-congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and former intelligence officer and US Representative Abigail Spanberger — won governor’s races with kitchen-table pledges to bring down health care costs and shrink energy bills. Moderation, they say, is the way forward. The truth, of course, is that the party needs a bit of both. It has to accommodate both the centrists of Virginia and the leftists of Manhattan. It has to be elastic. The trick is not stretching too far in one direction. And in recent years, the party has done just that, reaching way out to the left and damaging the Democratic brand in the process. Too many voters now associate the party with its most progressive members — deeming “the Democrats” overly focused on cultural issues and not enough on economic ones. That’s evident in any number of polls showing moribund approval ratings for the party. But it may be most powerfully demonstrated in recent research by the Center for Working-Class Politics. The think tank presented voters in four swing states with an economic populist message. And in three of them — Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin — support for that message dropped 11 to 16 percentage points when it was delivered by a hypothetical Democrat rather than a hypothetical independent. The center calls it a “Democratic penalty.” And wiping out that penalty must be the party’s primary focus over the next couple of years. Of course, that can be a challenge when democratic socialists like Mamdani are winning at the local level. But Democrats can do it if they pick the right national leader. The last few decades have seen several examples of presidential candidates who managed to change the vibes around their party in a single election cycle. Four years after Michael Dukakis’s Taxachusetts liberalism sank Democrats in the 1988 presidential election, Bill Clinton Bubba’d the party into power; 16 years later, Barack Obama delivered hope and change; and Donald Trump singlehandedly transformed the GOP into a populist force. It’s too early to say which of the Democratic contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination might have that kind of impact. But if the last presidential election is any guide, a candidate with Kamala Harris’s woke history will struggle to convince voters that the party is headed in a new direction, no matter how hard she leans into a moderate message. It’s going to take someone without the baggage. Someone willing to make a clear break with progressive orthodoxy — and real overtures to purple America. Democrats won important victories in New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia this week. But if they’re going to reclaim national power, they’re going to have to be competitive in a lot more places.
