MGP & Shor Show the Way for Democrats
Democratic over-performer Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and data analyst David Shor are speaking at WelcomeFest on June 4.
As you’ve probably heard, WelcomeFest is June 4 in Washington, DC!
We’re two months out and excited to announce two speakers directing Democrats on the path back to power: Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and David Shor.
Politico hailed "The cult of Shor" in 2021 to explain the influence of the Democratic data guru leading Blue Rose Research. Barack Obama touted his persuasive explanations of the 2020 election, and Shor’s recent interview with Ezra Klein defines what many Democrats think happened in 2024.
Shor is a leading proponent of the theory that Democrats should embrace popular proposals to win. He explained to Klein what went wrong in 2024, and what Democrats must do to regain power. And he's got the data to back it up - Shor conducted 27 million polling interviews last cycle, giving him a uniquely credible understanding of Democratic mistakes and a clear view of the changes that should be made.
Shor asserts that Democrats must regain trust among voters on issues like crime, immigration, the cost of living, the economy, and inflation. Voters don’t trust Democrats on these issues, which results in Democrats being put into difficult positions in an effort to regain that trust.
When we measure issues, we measure how important voters find it. Then we just measure: Do you trust Democrats or Republicans more on this issue?
What you see here is, if you look at the top issues that voters care the most about — cost of living, the economy, taxes, government spending, the deficit, foreign policy and health care — other than health care, where Democrats have a narrow lead, Republicans have massive trust advantages of about 15 points on all of the issues that voters care the most about.
The story that I would tell in response to your question is that in this election, voters trusted Republicans way more than Democrats on all of the most important issues, but they also bought into this idea that Donald Trump was a terrible person who couldn’t be trusted with power. That’s what made the election close.
But four years from now, Donald Trump will not be the nominee. And maybe they’ll nominate somebody who’s just as terrible and unlikable, but if we don’t get out of this trust deficit, we’ll have a lot of problems.
Hear more from Shor about the electorate and what changes Democrats should make to regain voters’ trust at WelcomeFest June 4 in Washington, DC.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will also be joining us at WelcomeFest to share insights from the perspective of a two-time Trump district winner. Since being elected in 2022, she’s been outspoken about the party’s need to win over blue-collar voters:
“Before she was elected to Congress, in 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez ran an auto-repair shop with her husband; her professional and personal acquaintances still largely consist of people who work in the trades — construction, carpentry, woodworking.”
“Too often, she believes, policymakers are not only disrespectful to people who work with their hands, but also ignorant of the reality of their day-to-day lives. ‘If the commission had had somebody who has worked in construction in the body, they would know that if you raise the cost of a table saw by $400, people are just going to put a circ saw on a sheet of plywood — and more people are going to lose their fingers,’ she says.”
Perez has twice beaten Republican challenger Joe Kent, an extremist who Trump has worryingly elevated. Her victories in Washington’s third congressional district were due to her unique talent to convince Republicans to reject Kent’s extremism, even if that meant supporting a her — a Democrat.
When we endorsed Perez in the 2024 election cycle, we highlighted her ability to win over Republican voters:
“Patrick Reynolds, a lifelong Republican, [said] he’ll vote for her in November — after voting for a third GOP candidate in the 2022 primary and then abstaining from the general. With one daughter in the trades and another hoping for a military career, he likes where Gluesenkamp Perez stands on those issues. He also was impressed with her as a person, saying she once left him a voicemail based on a Facebook comment he made.”
Perez doesn’t let pundits tell her whether or not she can win. Despite forecasters giving her just a 2% chance of winning in 2022, MGP (as she’s commonly known) stunned the political world by beating Kent by less than 3,000 votes.
And she doesn’t let pundits tell her how to govern, either. As a member of Congress, she’s not afraid to vote independent of her party when it’s in the best interest of the people of her district. She notably bucked Biden on student debt cancellation because she simply couldn’t make the math work for her district:
Gluesenkamp Pérez said she has sympathy for people saddled with student loans, including some of her own friends and family, but she concluded that Biden’s debt cancellation would hurt people in her district more than it would help.
She cited an analysis of federal data by the National Association for Independent Colleges and Universities that shows Washington’s 3rd Congressional District accounts for only 3% of student loan debt in the state. The 5th District, home to Spokane, and the 7th District, which covers most of Seattle, each account for about 31% of that debt.
“This is not a policy that’s tailored to deliver value to my district, and I didn’t think it was striking the structural reform that we all are desperate for,” she said. “And this is not just about, like, ‘I didn’t get my share of the pie.’ We can’t just give out party favors at the expense of structural reform and expect things to get better for our kids and the next generation.”
Gluesenkamp Pérez also pointed to a June 2023 report from the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank, that estimated the debt forgiveness plan would have benefitted Washington, D.C. — where the average adult would have had $2,224 forgiven — more than every state except Georgia. Washington state ranked 46th on the list, with the average adult standing to get $1,412 forgiven.
Shor’s analysis suggests more Democrats need to run like MGP and gain an intimate understanding of the blue collar, working & middle-class people who make up the majority of our country.
You can hear more about their ideas at WelcomeFest on June 4 in DC.
Check out a recap of last year’s WelcomeFest here.
