Due to poor polling information and a weak strategy based on the national party’s poor decisions, democratic candidates — and especially colored candidates — were unable to hold themselves in front of a huge and severely underestimated Republican voter. wave. The situation is: If you are going to win a campaign, you have to campaign, which means we get in front of the electorate and meet them where they are. And that was the only thing Democrats going to Congress couldn’t do this year, at the behest of the party’s Washington campaign order.
In each election cycle, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the National Democratic Commission (DNC) and their largest and most influential allies exercise disproportionate influence through the weight of their approvals and the strength of their purse. They often work in a coordinated manner and encourage large donors to follow up, decide which candidates are “viable”, who deserves full financial support, how their campaigns work, and which consultants to hire. And this year, the direction set by the DC Democrats proved to be a very big part of why the House Democrats fell far short of the blue wave hoped for in 2020, instead reducing their militant majority won in 2018.
Their data was bad – the result of a poll that greatly underestimated how many Republicans will vote and that their growing allegiance to President Donald Trump supports GOP candidates all the way to the ticket. Even worse was their understanding of very specific voter beliefs in very different local districts – which is why Spanish voters, grouped in a non-differentiated, presumably pro-immigration and anti-Trump bloc, caused such catastrophic surprises for the party in South Florida. and Texas border areas. Although the party is not solely responsible for the use of erroneous data, it should have known better than using polls as a key indicator of future success and voter preferences. Indeed, 2016 warned abundantly that the poll was unreliable.
The dictates of messages from Washington — delivered to all congressional campaigns based on conference calls, reminders, and advisory advertising guidelines — were often left behind. They said the democratic campaigns we supported and often communicated hit Republicans hard for mismanagement of the deadly coronavirus epidemic. Still, the swing voters did not consider their local GOP candidates or officials complicit in the Russian roulette played by Trump White House around Covid. And the advice on conference calls we sat on encouraged candidates to run TV ads, saying they were “angry,” “enough,” and “frustrated,” and ridiculously unsuitable for almost ubiquitous colored candidates — especially black. for women -white districts.
The Washington guidance interprets the ban broadly by the campaigns personal administration was the most harmful decision of all – this mistake exacerbated all the others. It seemed to make sense on his face. But it was a form of democratic branding — as was the defiant lack of Trump rallies to wear masks for Republicans: OK walking in the low footsteps of typhus Mary, we turn to Tony Fauci on the big road. It has hit back terribly on campaigns across the country. In the weeks leading up to the election, instead of conducting safe election campaigns in swing districts and talking to voters in masks and social distance, like Joe Biden’s presidential election campaign, democratic campaigns had to rely on lessons learned that were filtered through misconceptions. number of pollsters and politicians in remote Washington DC They had no choice but to rely on poll data that a more powerful ground operation would have revealed inaccurate: Nothing measures the mood of voters better than a personal encounter with voters. So they had to get in touch with voters through TV ads, email blinks, and huge spending on social media.
Again, based on our experience with congressional campaigns, meeting a congressional candidate on screen simply doesn’t work – and that doesn’t particularly work for colored candidates who are considered “black candidates” or “Hispanic candidates” or “the Asian candidate” when they see them on TV, but they simply become “candidates” when they meet them in person. The lack of direct contact allowed the “radical left” label to be affixed to Midwesterner Lauren Underwood, who grew up in almost 90 per cent of her white district, sharing her neighbors ’health, economic and safety concerns, but this was portrayed. years in TV attack commercials that darkened his skin, made a cartoon of his features, and linked him to illegal “riots”. Therefore, despite Gina Ortiz Jones ’military service and long-standing South Texas home base, she can be portrayed as a rug for a Washington (rented) condominium owner and painted like all but irrevocably“ other ”Attack ads focused on her life with a female partner.
Now that Washington party leaders are failing (once again) into a much-popular “deep dive,” we suggest starting with some tough questions: Why do we Democrats know so little about our Republican peers — all the way to where to find them and how to talk to them, to conduct an accurate poll? Why does our national party not trust each campaign, especially the promising campaigns of colored candidates, to employ their own people and make their own decisions in terms of messaging and strategy?
Our party leaders must respect the judgment of candidates starting in cities, suburbs, and rural areas outside the zone. In particular, they need to do a better job of hearing the colored candidates, who are currently not very well served by the “top” professionals posted from DC to give them advice. And they need to significantly break the reins when it comes to potentially destructive, one-size-fits-all national strategies for local congressional competitions.
Washington is a top-down city, but today’s election landscape is a bottom-up, bottom-up world that simultaneously reflects and rewards diversity – not just candidates, but ideas and strategies. Losing sight of this truth is how to fail to win elections.
