The New York Times
Democrats beat Trump in 2020. Now they are asking: what went wrong?
Democrats emerged from the 2020 elections with full control of the federal government and a pile of lingering questions. In particular, party leaders and strategists have grappled with a dilemma: why was President Joe Biden’s convincing victory over Donald Trump not accompanied by widespread Democratic victories in the vote? With this puzzle in mind, a group of Democratic advocacy groups quietly launched a review of the party’s performance in the 2020 elections with the aim of shaping the Democratic approach to next year’s midterm campaign, seven people said. familiar with the effort. There is particular concern among Democratic sponsors of the initiative about party losses in House districts with large minority populations, including Florida, Texas and California, people informed of the initiative said. The review is investigating tactical and strategic choices across the map, including democratic messages about the coronavirus economy and pandemic, as well as organizational decisions such as avoiding personal prospecting. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning. Democrats predicted they would be able to expand their majority in the House, advancing to historically red areas of the Sun Belt, where Trump’s unpopularity had destabilized the Republican coalition. Instead, Republicans took 14 Democratic-held seats in the House, including a dozen Democrats won in an anti-Trump election just two years earlier. The results surprised the strategists of both parties, raising questions about the reliability of electoral polls and apparently highlighting democratic vulnerabilities in rural areas and suburbs to the right of the center. Democrats also lost several disputed disputes to the Senate by unexpectedly wide margins, even when they narrowly took control of the House. The strategists involved in the Democratic self-assessment began to interview elected officials and campaign advisers and to communicate with legislators and former candidates in the main House and Senate contests, in which the party narrowly won or lost. Four main groups are supporting the effort, covering a range of Democratic-oriented interests: Third Way, a centrist study center; End Citizens United, a clean government group; the Latin Victory Fund; and Collective PAC, an organization that supports black Democratic candidates. They are said to be working with at least three influential bodies within the Democratic caucus in the House: the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist legislators. The groups hired a Democratic consultancy, 270 Strategies, to conduct interviews and analyze election data. Democrats are feeling considerable pressure to refine their political handbook before the 2022 congressional elections, when the party will be defending tiny majorities in the House and Senate without a presidential race to boost attendance on both sides. Dan Sena, a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said there was recognition in the party that, despite Biden’s victory, the 2020 cycle was not a complete Democratic success story. “I think people know there were good and bad things in ’20, and there is a desire to look under the hood,” said Sena. Among the party’s goals, Sena said, should be to study its gains in Georgia and look for other areas where population growth and demographic changes could provide the party with strong electoral goals in 2022. “There were a number of factors that really made Georgia work . cycle, ”he said. “How do you start finding places like Georgia?” Matt Bennett, senior vice president of the Third Way, confirmed in a statement that the four-way project was intended to position Democrats for the midterm elections. “With the narrow majority of Democrats in Congress and the Republican Party under the domination of seditionists who support Trump, the stakes have never been higher,” he said. “Our organizations will provide Democrats with a detailed picture of what happened in 2020 – with a wide range of contributions from voices from across the party – so that they are fully prepared to face the Republican Party in 2022.” In addition to the external review, some of the traditional party committees are taking stricter measures to examine the 2020 results. Concerned about the drop in support for Latino men, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee led discussion groups in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas earlier this year, said a person familiar with the study. It is not clear exactly what conclusions came out of the exercise. So far there is no equivalent process underway on the Republican side, party officials said, citing the general lack of appetite among Republican leaders to deal openly with Trump’s impact on the party and the debris he inflicted on major regions of the country. As a candidate for re-election, Trump fell into the Democratic-tipped Upper Midwest – giving up his most important findings of 2016 – and lost to Biden in Georgia and Arizona, two traditionally red states where the Republican Party has suffered an abrupt decline in recent years. The party lost all four Senate seats in these states during Trump’s presidency, three of them in the 2020 cycle. But Trump and his political retainers have so far responded with fury to critics of his party administration, and there is no apparent desire to try your ire with a comprehensive analysis that would probably produce unflattering results. An unofficial review, conducted by Trump researcher Tony Fabrizio, concluded that Trump had shed significant support because of his treatment of the pandemic, with losses particularly damaging among white voters. In the past, Democratic attempts at self-scrutiny have tended to produce somewhat mushy conclusions designed to avoid controversy across the party’s multifaceted coalition. The Democratic Party appeared briefly on its way to a public settlement in November, when the party absorbed its setbacks in the House and its failure to overthrow several Republican senators that Democrats considered ready for defeat. A group of centrist members of the House blamed left-wing rhetoric on democratic socialism and the expropriation of the police for their losses in a series of conservative-looking suburbs and rural districts. Days after the election, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, of Virginia, said that the party should renounce the word “socialism”, attracting resistance from progressives like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York. This diffusion of differences did not last long: Democrats quickly closed their ranks in response to Trump’s attacks in the 2020 election, and the party’s unity stiffened after the second round of the January 5 election in Georgia and the July 6 attack. January to the Capitol. But there are still significant internal differences over the campaign strategy. Eight years have passed since any of the political parties conducted a comprehensive self-assessment that recommended complete changes in structure and strategy. After the 2012 election, when Republicans lost the presidential race and gave up seats in both chambers of Congress, the Republican National Committee formed a task force that demanded major changes in the party’s organization. The so-called 2012 autopsy also recommended that the Republican Party embrace the cause of immigration reform, warning that the party would face a bleak demographic future if it did not improve its position with communities of color. That recommendation was effectively dismissed after House Republicans blocked a bipartisan immigration agreement approved by the Senate and then completely obliterated by Trump’s presidential candidacy. Henry Barbour, a member of the RNC who co-authored the post-2012 committee’s analysis, said it would be wise for both parties to consider their political position after the 2020 election. He said Democrats were successful in the election by competing against Trump, but that the party’s leftward shift alienated voters who could be beaten, including some black, Hispanic, and Asian-American communities that gradually shifted toward Trump. “They are driving out many middle-class Americans who work hard to live in the countryside or in big cities or suburbs,” said Barbour. “Part of that is because Democrats have gone too far to the left.” Barbour said Republicans should also have a clear view of their performance in 2020. Trump, he said, has not done enough to expand his appeal beyond a large and loyal minority of voters. “The Republican Party has to do better than that,” he said. “We are not just a president’s party.” In addition to the four-way review on the Democratic side, there are several more restrictive projects underway with a focus on addressing research deficiencies. Democratic and Republican officials found serious shortcomings in their polls, especially in House elections, which failed to predict how close Republicans would be to retaking the majority. Both parties emerged from the campaign feeling that they had significantly misjudged the scene of House disputes, with Democrats unexpectedly losing seats and Republicans perhaps having lost the chance to win the Chamber as a result. Leading Republican and Democratic political action committees focused on House disputes – the Congressional Leadership Fund and the House majority majority PAC – are studying the 2020 elections and debating changes to the 2022 campaign, people familiar with their efforts said. . The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican group, is conducting a slightly more extensive review of its spending and messages, although it is not expected to issue any broader diagnosis to the party. “We would be foolish if we don’t look seriously at what worked, what didn’t and how you can evolve and move forward,” said Dan Conston, the group’s president. Several of the largest Democratic research companies are also meeting regularly in an effort to address the gaps in 2020 research. Two people involved in the talks said there was a general consensus that the industry should update its practices before 2022 to ensure leaders Democrats who would not be taken by surprise again. Anna Greenberg, a Democratic researcher involved in reviewing polls from the last cycle, said the party was only now deepening in the results of the 2020 elections because the past few months have been dominated by other crises. Several Democratic and Republican strategists warned that both parties faced a challenge in formulating a plan for 2022; more than a decade ago, she said, since a mid-term campaign has not been dominated by a larger-than-life presidential personality. Based on the experience of the 2020 campaign, it is unclear whether Biden is destined to become such a polarizing figure. “It is difficult to know what an election is like without an Obama or a Trump,” said Greenberg, “just normal, normal and ordinary people running.” This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company