5 Lessons Democrats Can Learn From The 2020 Elections

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The big mystery of this election is why there was a disparity between President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive win and Democrats’ disappointing down-ballot performance.

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Many Maine voters split their tickets, as Biden won the state easily, but Republican Sen. Susan Collins also won reelection handily.

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Robert F. Bukaty/AP

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Biden won Arizona’s Maricopa County, helping to flip the state to Democrats in the presidential race.

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The second bit of conventional wisdom punctured this year is that high turnout helps Democrats.

«Universally, high turnout does not help the Democrats, Lake said. «It depends on who’s turning out.

Republicans — at least when Trump is on the ballot — were a lot better at getting their voters out than Democrats expected, with the «blue wave of the 2018 midterms failing to wash ashore again this year. It’s similar to the pattern of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Democrats turned out big in presidential years, but Republicans dominated in the midterms.

4. Simplify the message

Democrats say they also need a way to fight back when Republicans brand them as dangerous «socialists who want to «defund the police. Only a small handful of progressive candidates were actually in favor of defunding the police. A majority of House Democrats, along with Biden, rejected that slogan, but they couldn’t stop it from being weaponized against all of them.

That failure, says Rocha, is on the Democrats.

«There’s no way that that helps you, he said. «There’s just such a better way to get in front of that. Black men are being killed in the street by cops and we are filming it, and we can’t think of the right way to say that that has to change? It’s just — it’s disgusting that we would let that happen.

Many Democrats admit they need a simpler, more populist message on the economy, starting with policies that have broad bipartisan support, like infrastructure, debt-free college and a $15-per-hour minimum wage, which 61% of Florida voters approved in November as Trump won their state by 3 points.

«Donald Trump, he put his policy on the front of a red hat. That’s how he did it, Rocha said. «Like, we’ve got to get a lot more simplistic about our messaging and bring it way back down to where working-class people can understand who’s with them and who’s against them.

The key for Democrats, he thinks, is an economic message that speaks to both non-college-educated white voters and people of color, and that can help Democrats expand their appeal geographically.

5. The cities and suburbs are not enough

Suburbs are the new battleground, and Democrats did do very well in them. But for Democrats to achieve a true governing majority, they need a broader geographic reach.

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«We should take a lot of lessons from how Joe Biden put together a winning coalition, and we have to expand that, particularly in more exurban and rural areas, said Mark Riddle, a Democratic strategist who runs the Future Majority PAC. «There are parts of our country that see things differently, and we have to have a larger conversation with them in order to get more seats.

The challenges of taking office without a clear governing majority may become apparent very quickly, and overcoming them presents Biden and his party with a lot of familiar hurdles.

«If you’re looking at 2022, we’re going to have to win in Wisconsin. We have to win in Pennsylvania again. We’re gonna have to win in Michigan, Riddle said. «It’s the same battleground.

Except next time, Democrats won’t have Trump to run against the way they did so successfully in 2018. Typically, the incumbent president’s party loses seats in Congress during the midterms.

So with all the other lessons, Democrats are going to have to figure out how to defy history over the next two years if they want to turn a demographic majority into a political majority that’s big enough to actually govern in Washington.