Time for some both/and thinking

The presidential primary is igniting a familiar round of Stupid between Democrats. One kind of analyst is arguing that if we don't pick a candidate who is persuasive to white lower middle class and working class voters, all will be lost. Meanwhile, we've got at least one aspiring president, who has a good chance of getting the nod, exuding confidence that he can mobilize new and young voters and sweep to victory. Proponents of these views are throwing data-filled brickbats each other.

Here's my bit of anecdata to add to the mix. In 2012, a year when Obama's re-election captured the energies of national Democrats and progressive interest groups were asleep at the switch, a highly conventional Republican picked himself up a Senate seat in Nevada. In 2018, Dean Heller lost that seat to Democrat Jackie Rosen in an election which Democrats made a referendum on Trump and health care. Getting to that happy outcome was a lot of work. Rosen ran a competent campaign with adequate TV advertising. Meanwhile advocacy groups and the hospitality workers union (UniteHERE/Culinary) worked to increase turnout. And we did, massively. A highly regarded New York Times poll in October said that if turnout was in its normal range, Heller would win. But if we could grow the aggregate votes cast, Rosen would prevail and she did, by 7 percentage points.

So did we achieve this by turning out suburbanites and the disgruntled white working class -- or was this a margin made by young people and people of color?

Yes. Both! Winning takes both kinds. Some places will lean toward one of these poles more than another, but winning the next election will inevitably require persuasion of reluctant friends everywhere. We went prospecting in Latinx neighborhoods and in new-built suburban gated communities for potential friendly votes. The people who we brought out were all kinds ...that's what high turnout means.

And further, that when people are not regular voters, whether moderate or conservative or liberal or simply muddled, getting them to vote always requires persuasion. There's plenty of alienation from the process out there. They aren't going to vote because they fall in love with some complex policy proposal. Most occasional voters aren't going to believe anything anyone tells them about what they might get from a politician. They vote because someone persistently asks them to, and this is what people around them are doing, and because they decide that, once again, they want to be part of it all, however remote that might feel from their daily lives. Voting is not that difficult and, just maybe, it might matter ...

2020 is going to be a referendum on whether we want to live through another four years of Trump. Polling makes it pretty clear that a majority doesn't want that -- not a huge majority, but nevertheless a majority. It's also true that none of the Democratic hopefuls inspire universal enthusiasm. All inspire anxiety as well as hope and the GOPers will work to amplify doubts. Whoever the Dems nominate, getting to a majority will take diligent persuasion to move people to the polls.

Democrats can't escape the need to persuade our less frequent voters regardless of who we nominate. We can, however, organize ourselves to make sure that the essential person-to-person persuasion happens.