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Today on The Argument, to win the midterms, should Democrats be talking more about race?

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Im Jane Coaston. And I dont know if you can tell, but Americas biggest political parties are at a crossroads and very mad. The Democrats are trying to figure out how to pitch themselves to voters. Granted, Fox News is going to call every Democrat a radical socialist cut from the cloth of Joseph Stalin, but what are Democrats themselves saying? Are they the party of Joe Manchin or A.O.C., defund the police or uphold the filibuster? What do voters actually want to hear?

And with their control of Congress teetering on a knifes edge, the stakes of figuring it out are high. So today, were going to try and solve a problem that Democratic strategists everywhere are wrestling with. Youre welcome. Come November, whose votes do the Democrats need to earn? And how do they do it without alienating other voters under the partys big tent?

We need to stand up for our values, but we also need to persuade people that were right. And we have to do both of those two things at the same time.

Youre either underappreciating or underemphasizing the centrality of white fear and anxiety about the changing composition of this country, and how that is the principal driving force of politics in this country.

Steve Phillips is the author of the book Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority, and he runs a political media organization called Democracy in Color. Steve thinks that the Democrats will lose if they dont mobilize a multiracial coalition standing united against the right.

I do consciously acknowledge and embrace coming of age in the context of Jesse Jacksons presidential campaigns because that puts me both on the left of the political spectrum, but also squarely in the racial justice framework. And so I actually have a lot of critiques of the left, but from a racial justice standpoint.

On the other side is Lanae Erickson. She works at the public policy think tank Third Way. Their argument is that you cant govern if you dont win, and that the surest way to victory is to run on mainstream popular ideas to bring voters over to the Democratic side.

I consider myself a pragmatic progressive. Im somebody who grew up in the rural Midwest, that had a very politically mixed family, so I dont want to see making progress one day because we get 51 percent, and then the next day it goes away. I really want to build support over time for the progress that I think is necessary for the country. And I also really want Democrats to win.

Where in the Midwest are you from?

Im from northern Minnesota, closer to Canada than Minneapolis.

Ah, Im from Ohio. Im from Cincinnati, so.

Im from Cleveland.

Ah.

All Midwesterners.

This is going to be the most polite conversation ever.

Thats right.

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So a couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry and Charlie Sykes, whos an anti-Trump conservative. Hes from the Bulwark. And we talked about what the Republican Party is right now, or, I think, more accurately, what it isnt in this very odd post and, potentially, pre-Trump moment.

And the reason I wanted to talk to you both is that I think Democrats are in a similar identity moment. Lets not call it a crisis, exactly, but a crossroads in which the party needs to decide and define itself to voters. So Steve, today, how would you describe the Democratic Party in one word?

Afraid.

Lanae, how would you describe the Democratic Party?

I mean, with the upcoming midterms, Im with Steve on that. But I think Biden. You know, voters chose Joe Biden to lead this party, and its his party right now. And were looking to him for that leadership.

When I say afraid, I think the party is afraid to confront the true nature of the threat that were facing, and they are afraid to fully weigh in on doing what it takes to bring about true justice and equality in this country. So thats what I mean by afraid.

What do you think is the Democrats biggest threat?

In terms of the partys biggest threat, its timidity, whereas the countrys biggest threat is white nationalist fascism, which is what we almost tipped over to in January 6, 2021. We should not be unclear about what there was an actual attempted coup in this country by people carrying the Confederate flag and wearing t-shirts saying MAGA Civil War. And so were engaged in a fundamental battle within the country around is this going to be a multiracial democracy or is this going to be primarily a straight white male Christian country that others are sometimes tolerated to live in.

So thats the countrys threat. The Democrats threat is their fear and reluctance to acknowledge that national threat and to really engage that battle. That timidity is potentially fatal politically because it fails to inspire your base and supporters and it does not win over who you think youre going to win over by being so timid. And that, to me, is the fundamental challenge and dilemma facing Democrats in 2022.

Lanae, what would you say is the Democrats biggest threat?

I think the Democrats biggest threat is losing to a bunch of white nationalist insurrectionists. I mean, the way that we keep those fascists out of power is by winning elections. And I listened to the episode about the conservative movement and the Republican Party, and was so excited to come and talk about how that plays out on this side of the aisle, but I think that people always forget that its not symmetrical. The Republican base is just fundamentally bigger than the Democratic base. The number of people that identify themselves as conservative is much higher than the number of people that identify themselves as liberal.

And Ill just give you an example from 2020. In Bidens election, just of Biden voters, 48 percent identified as moderates, 42 percent identified as liberals, and 10% percent identified as conservative. Thats great that we have this big tent. It means that our coalition is more complicated than theirs, because about 80 percent of folks who vote for Republicans are self-described conservatives. But it also means we cannot win if the only people were appealing to are that 42 percent.

A lot of pundits are anticipating Democratic losses in November. Whether thats, one, because the presidents party generally loses in the midterms, historically, or because of mistakes or perceived mistakes made by this administration, I think the heart of your disagreement is how does the party conceive of itself and how does it pitch itself to voters.

Lanae, you brought up an important point, that the Democratic big tent is a complex tent. And its one that contains multitudes, who dont agree about a lot of different issues, and I would argue, in some ways, in 2020, what they did agree on was they did not like Donald Trump. That was one thing that they could agree on. Steve, Id like to start with you. How should the Democratic Party conceive of itself, and how should it pitch itself to voters?

The first words out of Bidens first video when he announced his candidacy in 2019 were Charlottesville, Virginia. And he explicitly talked about that being a defining moment for this nation, the battle for the soul of the country. And he had images and pictures of the pro-Confederate white nationalist, white supremacist march. And he explicitly rooted his candidacy in opposition to that. We havent heard a whole lot about that type of leadership and that type of concern from Biden since then. I mean, they supposedly have a whole kind of racial initiative that they announced in January or February of last year, and Ive heard nothing about since.

So the party needs to confront the fight that is happening in the country, and do so explicitly, and offer itself as an explicitly unapologetic multiracial entity that is fighting for democracy and is fighting for justice for people from all different backgrounds. But I feel theyre reluctant to do that because they fear that theyre going to alienate some white voters by saying theyre too much for equality for people of color. And thats the essential dilemma.

My lens on the electorate, I think, is different than what Lanae was talking about, because I personally dont think that the labels are very descriptive, in terms of moderate, liberal, et cetera. And even if you look at the different communities of color, they have different labels, but 90 percent of Black voters always vote Democratic and a majority of white voters always vote Republican. And so the composition of the Democratic Party is 47 percent people of color, in terms of the Biden election.

And its very important that theres a meaningful minority of whites who are for racial justice and racial equality. And thats what I argue is the new American majority. So the party needs to inspire and clarify and convey a sense of urgency to that electorate to turn out in large numbers. And when that happens, we win.

I agree wholeheartedly that we need to appeal to voters of color, but I think the heart of the disagreement that Steve and I have in approach is that I dont believe we do that by going further left. In fact, Democrats of color call themselves more moderate than white Democrats. 55 percent of white Democrats identify as liberal. Only 29 percent of Black Democrats do, and only about 37 percent of Latino Democrats do. You can question labels. I agree, I think labels only get you so far. But we saw this in election results, too.

We saw the white primary in Iowa put Joe Biden fourth in terms of their preferred candidate. And then as soon as we got to South Carolina, all of a sudden, Black voters said, no, this is the person that I want to represent our party. And they rejected Bernie Sanders and the more extreme version of the left. So I think both in looking at the data around how people describe themselves and in how Black voters vote, we can see that theyre not looking for more extremism. They want pragmatism. They want progress.

When it came to South Carolina, yes, it was Black voters who rescued Joe Biden, but it wasnt because he was moderate. Its because Black people are very clear-eyed about white people. And so Black voters were like, to win in this election, to defeat this white nationalist president, weve got to get our own white guy. And we think Bidens the best white guy that we should put forward to be able to win this election.

Lanae, you mentioned being pragmatic earlier. And I think that what we saw in South Carolina was a lot of African-American voters thinking not necessarily about what they would want precisely, but on what they thought would appeal to white people in other places.

Exactly. And they were right. Any Black person who knows Black people knows theres a wide range of views. If youve been in a barbershop, you know that theres kind of crazy stuff that gets said and whatnot. So you can say that Black voters dont identify as many, you know, as liberal or progressive or not. Is opposing the police killing innocent Black people is that a liberal or progressive issue? And is Black Lives Matter liberal or progressive? And the polling shows that more Black people are supportive of Black Lives Matter than white people are.

So its incorrect, I think, to simply say Black voters are less progressive. I think thats very dangerous. Black voters, I would argue, are the most left and radical sector of the population because they are among the most oppressed and have the most to gain in terms of far-reaching social change.

Its interesting, Steve, and because I want to dive into this, you see how critical African-Americans are to Democratic politics, but what I see happening a lot is people talk at African-Americans and not to African-Americans about concerns of African-Americans. Recognizing that, for Democrats, African-Americans make up an extraordinarily solid base, but I am curious to hear from you, Steve, when it comes to talking to and about African-Americans, do you think Democrats are getting it wrong? And how could they do it better?

Yes, I think theyre getting it wrong, and I think theyre getting it wrong in terms of what drives Democratic politics and the people who are in charge of Democratic politics is trying not to do anything that might upset white so-called swing voters. Thats the dominant imperative of the Democratic Party. And youve seen it play out in the first 13 months of the administration, that the decision to move the infrastructure bill and to try to show bipartisanship before trying to move voting rights legislation, which people of color and African-Americans fought and died for, and still face these enormous threats of voter suppression with all this legislation passed in 2021, that was a race-based calculation around trying to appeal to the white voters by saying, see, we can be bipartisan, and we can all work together, and were not that identified with scary people of color things like immigration reform and redefining policing and things like that.

So theres a lot of lip service, I would argue, but not a lot of commitment, and that if they truly believed in the concerns of Black people, concerns of people of color, they would have led with voting rights. If they saw that population and thats a mathematical calculation do you see expanding the numbers of voters of color as a path to victory in a country where the majority of people turning 18 every year are people of color, or are you focused upon the elusive white swing voter, so-called Obama-Trump voter, and is that your primary imperative around what policies you move and when you move them.

I would characterize the problem similarly, but the solution differently. So I do a ton of public opinion research, and it drives me crazy that voters of color is one cross-tab. So you can say voters of color think this. Well, to your point, thats not Black men think this, thats not Latina women think this, thats not people with a college degree think this, people in rural areas. And with white voters, we really go deep on all these different things that really shape peoples perspective.

And what I would characterize the problem and the thing we need to fix before 2022 and beyond is what we found in our post-mortem analysis of 2020 that we did with the Collective PAC, which is focused on electing African-American candidates, with the CBC Pac, with the CHC Pac, so the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Latino Victory Fund. And what we found was that Democrats assume that voters of color are already with them. They take them for granted, and they dont think of them as persuadable voters. But voters of color need to be persuaded. We cant just assume they are in our pocket and we just need to turn them out, and once we turn them out, then theyre going to vote for Democrats. And thats a place that, I think, potentially Steve and I might agree.

Jane, can I flip this a little bit and put a question to Lanae on the reverse front?

Absolutely.

My analysis and premise and belief from lots of years of experience is that Democrats are very timid and hesitant to associate themselves with racial equality and racial justice because they fear that is going to alienate and drive away white voters. So not asking you to speak for all white people, Lanae, but whats your sense of that, in terms of do you think that the white voters, the white Biden voters will defect from the Democrats if they are too closely allied with issues such as immigration reform, such as reimagining policing, et cetera?

Absolutely not. I think that the Democratic coalition that put Nancy Pelosi in charge and put Joe Biden in the White House and got us 50-50 in the Senate actually agrees on those issues. So I dont believe that the right way to win that big tent coalition is to avoid issues of race or to avoid things like immigration reform, which the entire Democratic Party supports now, to avoid L.G.B.T. equality, which everyone but Joe Manchin supports, to avoid gun control, which is something that Ive worked a ton on.

We are now electing a different kind of moderate. And those folks are on board for all of those things, but they also dont think like Bernie Sanders. For me, the future of the Democratic Party is those candidates that were able to deliver majorities, because without majorities, we dont get to govern. Without majorities, the insurrectionists get to govern. So when you look at like the 2018 election, for example, both of the kind of theories that Steve and I have been talking about were tested.

We saw Justice Democrats and Our Revolution Democrats, who were endorsed by Bernie Sanders and the far left, run in swing districts. And we also saw moderates, who were endorsed by the New Democrats, run in swing districts. And in the entire Trump era, the Justice Democrats and Our Revolution did not flip a single seat. They added zero seats to Nancy Pelosis majority. New Democrats flipped 33 seats from red to blue. And I think it is totally legitimate for somebody to primary someone in a super blue district and make it bluer, but that does nothing to add to our majority and our ability to actually make progress.

One of the challenges I see is that there is a lot of focus on thinking about the Democratic agenda as a monolith, despite the fact that voters dont think about it in that way. We saw in downballot races in 2020 that non-white voters, specifically Latino voters in, say, Florida or Texas, many voted for Trump. Many also favored minimum wage raises. I think even the terms conservative and liberal sometimes fail us in these conversations. How do you get voters who dont explicitly identify as a Democrat to vote for Democrats?

You know, I think you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about what issues people care about most, because its true that if you held a national ballot initiative on something like universal background checks for guns or codifying Roe versus Wade, we would win every time. But unfortunately, I often say, people agree with Democrats on all kinds of things that they dont care very much about, and then they agree with Republicans on the top issues of the day.

And we saw this in Virginia. The top issues were education and the economy. And Glenn Youngkin won on both of those issues, was ahead on both of those issues. Terry McAuliffe was ahead on Covid response, but only 15 percent of people said that was their top issue.

And I think, going back to the assuming what voters of color care about, people always assume Latino voters prioritize immigration reform as their number one issue. They dont. The data does not bear that out. And, you know, I did a bunch of research with Latino voters during the Trump era, and it was harrowing. You know, they would say I hate what hes doing on immigration, but I think hes a good businessman and hes making the economy better, and thats more important to me.

Steve, what do you think works best to help Democrats win?

Well, first of all, a premise thats been woven throughout this conversation that I want to lift up, actually, a little bit more explicitly, is that I think we have a difference of opinion around just how many persuadable or swing voters there are in the country.

Right.

Right? Somebody who is very, very top-level in Georgia said to me recently, there are no swing voters in Georgia. To this question of what Democrats need to do to win, Democrats need to mobilize voters to turn out. And they need to mobilize the new American majority, which is largely people of color and, though, progressive whites who are consistently with us. The Democratic vote is always roughly low 30s to maybe periodically 40, 41 percent of the white vote, and then its always roughly two-thirds people of color, 80 plus percent African-Americans.

When that vote is mobilized in large numbers and sees the imperative and the urgency, and when theres massive investment in those communities, then we win. When voters of color and the new American majority does not turn out in large numbers, we lose. Thats what happened in Virginia. It wasnt that there was this big, persuadable electorate, and they had decided they liked Biden in 2020, and then they switched their opinion and they went over to Youngkin. What happened is that Youngkin tapped that same white fear that Trump tapped and people turned out in large numbers to support him, whereas McAuliffe ran a much more milquetoast campaign that did not convey a sense of urgency and importance to turn out to vote. And then we lost.

And that is the strategic direction. Are we going to organize, inspire, and mobilize our voters, or are we going to try to persuade this very small grouping of people who, I would argue, are very hard to get, and arent even that large, and are not as large as the number of people of color coming into the electorate every year? The majority of people turning 18 are people of color. Most of them are more progressive. That offers far more upside than trying to get the, you know, Obama-Trump voter in a diner in our beloved Midwest.

Let me just push back, because Terry McAuliffe got 200,000 more votes in Virginia than Ralph Northam did in the blue wave year of 2017. So it was not a failure to turn out voters 2017, people came out of the woodwork because it was just post-Trump.

He got a lot fewer voters than Biden did.

Yeah, because its an off-year election. That makes sense.

So yes, there was an increase in vote in Virginia, but the Republican increase was bigger. And so we did not do enough I think its dangerous, frankly, in terms of to primarily try to look at the labels of progressive, liberal, moderate, et cetera. I actually think its far more illuminating to have your primary lens on the electorate, on the country be a racial lens.

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Weve spent a lot of time in the past month talking about American politics and democracy on the show. If you havent heard our episodes about the future of the G.O.P. and what independent voters want from Joe Biden, go back and listen to those, too. As part of this big conversation, I asked you to tell me about your party and what you want to see from it going forward. A lot of you Republicans told us the Trump years really put you off the G.O.P.

I left the Republican Party after Charlottesville.

After January 6 and the whole thing, I became much less of a Trump fan.

It brought tears to my eyes, and to many peoples eyes, as we watched that atrocity happen. The final straw for me was Ted Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham.

All the things that I used to think were the bedrock have been given up for lie after lie after lie. I cant accept that.

You overwhelmingly told us you dont want Trump to run again in 2024, but there are some other people in the party youd be excited to vote for.

If Liz Cheney were to run, I would seriously consider voting for her.

I would vote for Adam Kinzinger.

Ive been a big Nikki Haley fan for a while.

I will vote for John Kasich if he runs again. Ron DeSantis. Hes just a stud, and really like the way hes handled Covid in Florida.

Im going to do a write-in candidate for Mickey Mouse.

But dont get ahead of yourselves, Democrats. Youre not much happier with your party.

Crime, inflation, and Covid are the three big issues. And I think, on all three of those issues, Democrats nationally and locally are kind of just in denial.

Democrats have all these plans and all these issues, and I support all those. And at the same time, Im left feeling like, how can I trust that theyre actually going to do any of this stuff?

Youve also got some thoughts about who you see as the future of the party and what issues you want them to be running on.

The biggest problems we have are gerrymandering and voter rights problems.

Economic and racial injustice, health care for every person, student loan forgiveness.

I feel strongly we need to get rid of qualified immunity. Literally none of this matters if we dont address climate change.

No, I do not think Joe Biden is the future of the Democratic Party. I would like to see young, fresh blood for 2024. I think Michael Bennet would probably be a great choice.

Pete Buttigieg.

Ayanna Pressley or Katie Porter. I really thought the Democrats kind of did Andrew Yang dirty.

As for whether or not Joe Biden should run again in 2024, oof. Ask me again in two years. Ill call you back.

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I always want to hear what you think of the arguments were having here and what you want to add to them. Call anytime and leave me a voicemail at 347-915-4324.

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I want to talk about a word that attempts to uncomplicate a very complicated issue. And that is the term popularism. Its a term thats been floating around Democratic strategist circles for a while, as they do. Essentially, the strategy of popularism is to figure out which views are popular, which arent, and frame your message accordingly. The easiest example is the slogan defund the police is unpopular, so Democrats running should stay away from it. Obviously, I am not a Democratic strategist, as anyone could tell. And so Lanae, one, am I getting that wrong? And two, is that a theory that you subscribe to? Why or why not?

It is not a theory I subscribe to wholesale, but I do want to win. And so heres how I think about it. I think actually what youre saying is take your Democratic values, lay out all the things the Democratic Party stands for and the progressive movement stands for, and then focus on the things that voters actually like within that realm. And I think that that is a really good idea because, like I said, there arent enough people in our base to make majorities in the swing districts we need to win to keep the House or in the Senate seats. And thats really how were going to make progress on any of those things. So when there are activist movements that are talking about their passion, that is absolutely something they should do. I was very much involved in the marriage work. That was what I worked on for about five years. And I think we need those folks to push the envelope, to say we need to go further than this.

But when you are a politician, you have to win, and you have to assemble a winning coalition. And for me, I just look at the data. So Democratic data firm Catalyst does a lot of analysis about the electorate from election to election. And what they saw in 2018, when we had a blue wave that brought in this majority in the House, was that 89 percent of the Democratic gains from 2016 to 2018 came from persuading vote switchers, not from turning out new voters who didnt show up in 2016.

So if 9 in 10 of our increased margin is from persuading vote switchers, there are vote switchers out there. And so when you just look at the data, there just simply arent enough people for turnout to deliver us. And weve seen over and over again that people do change their minds if well appeal to them.

Yeah, I would commend a different set of data to you, Lanae, in terms of the analysis, is that theres a fundamental level of data that people have not grappled with. Its like, for instance, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, right? So she was one of the main proponents of, oh, defund the police really hurt me and my campaign, et cetera, et cetera, and we lost all this support. She got more votes in 2020 than she did in 2018.

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Opinion | Do Democrats Win When They Talk About Race? - The New York Times