Joe Manchin: If You Want More Liberal Policies, Elect More Liberals
Early this past year, Joe Manchin touched the essential political truth: if you want more liberal policies, elect more liberals.
At the beginning of 2021 when the new Congress was being sworn in with a three-vote majority in the House and the Senate tied at 50-50, progressives envisioned a “one chance in a generation” to transform politics and the American economy. Every wish was put on the table.
It was not to be. The votes were not there. Not every Democrat -- and every Democrat was needed -- was on board. The diversity within the Party, and more importantly, the diversity among voters, is too great.
Democrats are disappointed. Anger is directed at the Democratic holdouts. Pressure to change their minds has been intense. Delegations, rallies, petitions, withdrawal of support, threats of primary opposition, confrontations, shouted personal imprecations, have all been part of the effort to persuade. In our minds, it is their fault. They have to change.
It is also our fault, here in Wisconsin. We didn’t get the job done back in 2016 when Ron Johnson was re-elected by a margin of 101,000 votes. Russ Feingold would have been one more Democratic vote in the Senate.
Another 100,000 votes in Pennsylvania in 2016, 10,000 more in Florida in 2018, 96,000 more in North Carolina in 2020, would have added another three Democratic senators, giving the Party this year a 54-46 majority.
There is something elementary in Manchin’s advice. If we want more liberal policies, we have to elect more liberals.
How do we elect more liberals? By persuading residents in various states and congressional districts to become more liberal. By persuading those liberals who have opted out of politics for whatever reason that voting does make a difference. When voters are more liberal, office holders are more liberal.
There is a match between the voters in a district and the candidates who run and win. In conservative areas, conservative candidates run and win. In liberal areas, liberal candidates run and win. In areas with moderate voters, moderate candidates run and win.
Once elected, office holders continue to be the same persons they were as candidates. They continue to represent the same voters. Elections are not conversion experiences. In office, they vote as they campaigned. Their values reflect the values of their voters.
We see that pattern clearly in the Congressional House sponsors of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, two of the most progressive programs advanced in recent years. Some 136 Democrats sponsored one or both proposals. In Wisconsin, Mark Pocan from Madison sponsored both; Gwen Moore from Milwaukee sponsored the Green New Deal. Both represent districts that are more than 70 percent Democratic – even though the state is a swing state.
That pattern repeats in the rest of the country. Of the 136 sponsors, 105 come from 60 percent plus Democratic districts. Only 14 represent districts in which less than 55 percent of the voters vote for Democrats -- districts that might be defined as moderate. In 12 of those districts, the Democratic incumbents lost votes in the most recent election.
Voters really are the ones who decide.
If we want to change outcomes we have to concentrate on changing the minds of our neighbors, not badgering incumbents to change their votes.
It is with both amusement and despair that I read emails from progressive groups urging me to write to Ron Johnson and demand that he “do the right thing”.
Politicians are not dumb. They know where messages come from, and who promotes them. Messages that come from people who will never vote for them are ignored.
Making demands on elected officials is easy. They mean nothing. Talking to a neighbor in a way that changes an attitude is more difficult. But changing your neighbor’s vote shifts power in the U.S. Senate, changes policy, has the power to transform.
It is the long game we play if we want to succeed in turning the country around. A game that concentrates on building a broader, stronger, more consistent coalition of voters.
The absence of that stronger coalition has kept us from being able to enact much of our Party’s vision in the 40 years since 1980. For only four of those 40 years have Democrats held the presidency and majorities in both House and Senate: the first two years of the Clinton administration, and the first two years of Obama. If we continue to be one and done after two years, we will never get past the talking stage of moving the country forward.
It is our neighbors, the people who live in our communities, we have to convince.
With the political hype and drama that bombards us daily, the temptation is to see ourselves only as spectators watching the “real” action taking place on a public stage somewhere else. Whether we accept the role or not, we are the primary actors in the national political play. We decide, by our action, or inaction, who gets to be on stage and what the script will be.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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