General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe successful Democratic electoral strategy: Inside, Middle, and Outside
For Democrats to win key swing states in 2020, the formula is this:
1. Inside Tier: Maximize turnout of their base of support that's centered in large urban population centers, Miami, Atlanta, Raleigh, etc. Get the base pumped up and excited.
2. Middle Tier: Win solid majorities in the suburban regions just outside of these urban areas. Aim for double digit majorities. Here's where Trump helps us the most. He's too vulgar for America's suburbs. These are parents raising children and want their president to be more of a role model.
3. Outside Tier: Peel off support in the exurban and rural areas. This is where Trump's base lives. Democrats cannot win here. However, they don't need to if they win points 1 and 2. What they need is to peel off just enough support to put them over the top. The entire focus should be on the young voters in this region. Appeal to them and write off anyone over the age of 35. Micro-target the young out here. Use social media to reach out to them.
One criticism that I heard about Beto was that he spread himself a bit too thin. Spent a little too much time in areas where he had zero chance of peeling off enough support. If he had spent more time in the Inner and Middle tiers, maybe he could have pulled it off.
That's the strategy in a nutshell. The question for 2020 is which candidate is best at executing this strategy.
yardwork
(61,408 posts)We also have to match candidates to their electorates and states.
The candidate that can win in Texas is different from the candidate that wins in Massachusetts. We need to view the Democratic Party as a rainbow that represents every state.
Howard Dean's 50 state strategy wins.
alwaysinasnit
(5,037 posts)cheating by Republican operatives?
DeminPennswoods
(15,246 posts)because this is what these folks want to hear, that the gov't will provide the basic income floor vs social security and health insurance via medicare and medicaid and overall fairness in income tax burden.
crazycatlady
(4,492 posts)For example, many college towns with a large college are dots of blue in a sea of red. While most are located in red districts, the Democrats can and should put a lot of effort into these places.
1) A consistent opportunity for new voter registrations
2) Locals who have financial ties to the school and funding for the school (if the college is a state school, this is a big deal). We're not only talking professors. If the GOP legislature cuts the budget, the janitor or the cafeteria worker at the college could be out of a job.
3) Larger than normal base of volunteers (interns?) at these college towns. They could be used to knock or call into other Outside Tier places.
Yavin4
(35,354 posts)Reach out to the high schools in these areas. Speak to their future. Paint a positive picture of the world and their future.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)But I think Beto got it right. He should have had a few drivers though. One of my concerns is national candidates don't send a big hitter into smaller population like mine. While my county may have only 200,000 votes total, you add 10 of a size like that, the numbers add up. If a Dem trimmed 2% from a republican in a county like mine, at the end of the night, that is 10,000 votes, or more, that the repug doesn't get in his or her column.
Awsi Dooger
(14,565 posts)We need the Democratic party to become associated with a few big picture issues, like Republicans have brainwashed everyone to think they are the party of lower taxes in April, and protecting religion, and protecting gun rights, etc. Otherwise it's a start-anew frantic scramble every two years. That's not going to pay dividends.
The recommendations I have made are climate change as an issue and "Remarkable You" as slogan. Maybe not perfect but I'm convinced they are superior to our current methods. Last thing I want to see or hear is Chuck Schumer announcing his latest wandering 10-word slogan, one that fits one cycle and one cycle alone.
67% of the Florida exit poll said climate change was a very important issue. Our party may be held in higher regard than Republicans toward climate change but hardly to the point it is automatically associated with us.
Your three are good. #1 needs to be top priority because obviously that's where the votes are and bottom line the net among 100 black voters is roughly +86, while it is going to take 418 voters to net +86 in a block that is 60/40.
I saw #3 fruitlessly attempted by Nevada Democrats for years before they figured out to maximize Clark County. Candidates like Dina Titus would try to establish a presence in the cow counties but ended up with nothing but soiled shoes.
If you're going to do that...exactly, don't actually go there (often) but target younger rurals by social media.
Most importantly, everything needs to begin now. The other side doesn't wait until the final two months to suppress or target their rural voters.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)On further discussion and understanding of the OP and just what happened Tuesday and why, American Prospect has a good article . "...were essentially indistinguishable from Poland."
Democrats claimed the cities and gained the suburbs. Republicans turned out the hills and the dales. Two nations, unhappily bound together as one. The clearest takeaway from yesterdays election is that were essentially indistinguishable from Poland.
Poland, it turns out, just held elections for municipal and provincial governments. In full revolt against the countrys xenophobic and semi-authoritarian Law and Justice Party, which controls the national government and has sought to abolish the countrys independent judiciary, the more liberal and cosmopolitan opposition parties won 103 of the nations 107 mayoral races over the past week. On the other hand, Law and Justice won pluralities in nine of the 16 provincial legislatures, and outright majorities in six of them. Which is to say, Polands Trumpies got clobbered in the burgs, but turned out enough votes in the sticks to do well at the regional level.
Sound familiar? Here in the states, there wasnt a major metropolitan area last night that Democratic statewide candidatesboth the winners and the losersfailed to carry, and they did well in the suburbs surrounding those cities, too. But President Trump retained his abilitywith the assistance of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilkto gin up turnout in the hinterlands. Those two surges explain why and how the Democrats took the House last night, while the Republicans expanded their margin in the Senate.
In the network exit polls, Democrats carried the urban vote by a 65 percent to 32 percent margin and the split the suburban vote with Republicans at 49 percent each. They lost the rural vote 42 percent to 56 percent. Add all that together and the Democrats still won a clear majority of the 2018 votes for the House, but cities arent distributed evenly over the national landscape. South Dakota (which was a Republican Senate pickup) and Montana (which may well be a Republican Senate pickup) have no major cities whatever, and in Missouri (another Republican Senate pickup), St. Louis has been downsizing for decades.
The Senate, that is, is our primordial gerrymander, where seats are apportioned with no regard whatever for the principle of one-person-one-vote. Like the 2016 election, yesterdays offers a clear lesson in how Democrats can win a popular vote majority and still lose lots of states.
Democrats can look at the election results and feel good that they are expanding their electorate, claiming a higher share of college-educated white women (59 percent), voters under 30 (67 percent) and minority voters as well. The Republican electorate isnt expanding categorically (getting a group to switch allegiances) or chronologically (they carried voters 45 and older by one point, 50 percent to 49 percent, while losing voters under 45 by a 36 percent to 64 percent margin), but the Trumpified Republicans have managed to get high levels of turnout from older, disproportionately rural white voters by stoking their fears of immigrants and their resentments at more diverse and liberal America that appears to be passing them by.
On economic issues, even conservative voters in the most Republican states are relatively progressive. ...
http://prospect.org/article/what-each-side-won-yesterday
Speaking of peeling, Harold Meyerson is only one observer to note that Tuesday showed that progressivism is alive and kicking among conservatives in spite of massive, long-term Republican/plutocratic efforts to kill it.