Complaints Welcome

Admitting Democrats could have held the House is a motivator for action, not a downer. Organizing still beats debating, we just have to do more of it.

This is our 52nd weekly Substack — thanks for reading! 🎉 We appreciate any and all feedback, especially critiques.

Last week, we made our position on the midterms clear:

1. There was a “Red Wave” this November 

2. Democrats overcame the wave in many swing districts by differentiating from the Democratic brand in a moderate (and often bipartisan) direction

3. Democrats may have held the House if there was more investment in brand-differentiated candidates in potentially winnable districts

That perspective garnered a bunch of critical emails. Why are we being downers after a big “win”? Why are we criticizing the far-left if we advocate for a Big Tent?

Our writing is always connected to action: it’s informed by our direct work and focused on elevating the leaders and voters we believe need more attention. The results of the 2022 election confirmed our core theses: Democrats were not as screwed as people thought, individual seats are more valuable than ever, brand-differentiated candidates did better, and the far-left didn’t beat a single Republican (but Democrats who learned from the far-left put red seats in play with a moderate approach).

Reflecting on the confirmation of our hypotheses is not an “I told you so” moment. It is a “we should have done more” and a “we can do more next time” moment. We should have raised more money, spent it earlier, and done so in more places. This is about learning, action, and “starting from where the world is, as it is, not as we would like it to be.”

We identified a problem and called it out, but didn’t do enough to fix it. Our first weekly post a year ago argued that moderates must organize, not debate the far-left. It is as much our fault as it is anyone’s that it didn’t happen more. No one wants someone who points out problems then doesn’t do anything to solve them. If we sound like that, email us.

As for critiques of the far left? We focus on putting their impact in context, but we do have one explicit ask: please don’t cause harm in swing districts (and, if you’re in the media, please do not pass the mic to people who’ve never won swing districts when there are plenty of Democrats who have). We’ve spent more time learning from the far-left than asking them to change their behavior. Leftists gonna leftist. Winning the middle requires learning from them, not hoping they’ll change.

And as for “The Democrats”? Political parties are not structured to take smart risks and efficiently allocate resources (especially compared to groups like the Supreme Court-swinging Federalist Society). There’s no such thing as “The Democrats, Inc”, just a loose-knit ecosystem of candidates, committees, interest groups, activists, and voters. As a result, blaming “The Democrats” for our problems is as helpful as blaming “the media”. The market is broken — if we want to fix it we need to go do something about it.

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The far-left is doing its job (which is not beating Republicans)

The far-left rolled up its sleeves and did the hard work of building an organized and coherent political faction. That faction built its own machinery and achieved an outsized impact in reshaping (and rebranding) the Democratic Party. As we put it in a 2021 interview with Slate soon after WelcomePAC launched, we don’t blame the far-left for doing what its supposed to do:

“A lot of the infrastructure that’s been built up is made by a highly energized left who is building those on-ramps for just one end of the party. And it’s not the fault of those groups… the left gets a lot of blame for doing what the left should do.”

With an organized faction comes the power to influence the dominant media narrative. Here’s what WelcomePAC co-founder Lauren Harper wrote in a fall op-ed:

“The progressive left’s frustration with Joe Manchin was a front-page news story for months, with episode after episode of conflict and criticism dominating the headlines. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders’ seemingly uncanny ability to suck up so much of our collective attention isn’t an accident. Entrepreneurial progressive organizations like Justice Democrats (which recruited AOC) and Our Revolution (which spun out of Bernie’s 2016 presidential campaign) have spent years and millions of dollars building the organizing infrastructure to elect and grow ‘The Squad’ and consume the airwaves with a far-left message.”

In real life, politics is shaped not by the mythical “marketplace of ideas” but by actual marketplaces of money and attention. The far-left faction has accrued a wealth of both, enabling it to flex its muscle and have an immense impact on the public conversation. They figured out a market to get clicks and cash that changed the narrative  — and they deserve props for being good at it.

The Online Left is good at their job — beating impure Democrats. They clearly don’t see their job as beating Republicans: Justice Democrats and Our Revolution have never flipped a single Republican-held seat (a drought that continued this November).

Republican pollsters and ad makers, presumably also good at their jobs, have spent billions of dollars on research and media determining that elevating far-left leaders and policies is the best way for Democrats to lose.

Accepting this reality is essential. We are not shrinking a tent or excluding anyone, nor saying “I told you so” (others forecast this more eloquently!). 

We are heeding Saul Alinsky and accepting reality as it is: the far-left prioritizes beating fellow Democrats — not beating Republicans — and Republicans use far-left leaders and policy positions to beat Democrats.

Those are the facts. As Barack Obama’s favorite theologian said, we must accept the things we cannot change to change the things we can. We’re not trying to change the far-left — we are accepting their impact while trying to change what we can.

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The center-left must do the same

Instead of pointing fingers at the far-left, those of us who want to see Democrats be a big-tent that wins the middle should take a page out of the far-left’s playbook.

That means that when AOC comes out after the midterms and says Democratic can go unpunished (and even get rewarded) for running to the left, we must respond with reality: the candidates who overperformed differentiated from the Democrats’ toxic brand, reached out to the middle (and center-right), and ran moderate-style campaigns. That’s the truth, and in today’s inefficient political marketplace, people need to hear it.

There’s a market for what the far-left is offering, but as political practitioners who advocate for a different way of viewing politics, the center-left must prosecute the case for winning the middle — and how to do it.

(Speaking of winning the middle, Third Way did another spectacular debrief on Democrats’ Path to 50% in Swing States & Districts.)

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Onto the next chapter

As the dust settled after the midterms, we told the New York Times that “it kind of feels like Democrats are celebrating in the locker room because we lost by four” (four points on the national ballot or five seats in the House). Democrats left some important plays off the board and “could have played in another dozen districts.” Looking forward to 2024, we must not repeat the same mistake.

We expanded on this perspective yesterday in a “Beyond Politics” podcast interview with former US Representative (and seat-flipper) Paul Hodes and former congressional staffer and campaign manager Matt Robison. Listen here, and keep the feedback coming.

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