A not-so-subtle theme of the Democratic primary debates, and much of the conversation about the 2020 presidential election, is the choice between pragmatic centrism and inspiring progressivism.
Can the Dems afford a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren, who might upset middle-of-the-road, middle-American sensibilities with bold plans for universal health care, free college, and confiscatory taxes on corporations?
What about all those white, working-class voters who helped elect Donald Trump across the Upper Midwest? Would they reject a progressive candidate?
On the other hand, Joe Biden—the safe, establishment candidate—is looking increasingly out of it. Each debate has given Biden new chances to show how little he has evolved over his very long political career, and has teed up some new gaffes. He’s still ahead in the polls, but Warren, Sanders, and the rest of the field have seriously damaged Biden’s aura of electability.
Could this marathon election season end with the re-election of Trump, the worst President in American history?
As the Dems keep reminding each other on the debate stage, the nation is being torn apart from within. The real enemy is neither progressives nor centrists, but the dangerously unhinged megalomaniac in the White House.
So what should the Democratic Party do?
The Washington Post recently reported that the next presidential election will likely be decided by just four states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin. All four went for Donald Trump in 2016 by narrow margins.
“One obvious wild card is the identity of the Democratic nominee and how that shapes the general election debate,” the Post’s Dan Balz wrote. “Will that nominee be running on a platform that moderate voters see as too far left? Will that nominee be able to energize the party’s woke base and still appeal to white working-class voters?”
But Ben Wikler, the new leader of the state Democratic Party of Wisconsin, advises the pundits and national party to set aside the snark about a “woke base” versus working-class voters. Wikler—who returned to his home state from Washington, D.C., where he ran the campaign to defend the Affordable Care Act for MoveOn.org—is casting a wider net.
“The thing I’m frustrated by every day is the idea that you can’t fight for both white working-class voters and voters of color,” he says. “Guess what? There are people of all races in the working class. And all of them want schools and jobs and safe communities and air they can breathe. And none of them like the effects of Trump’s actual policies—even if some of them think they might like Trump as a guy.”
As for the national debate about whether Democrats need to drive their base to turn out or persuade Trump voters to vote for the Democrat, Wikler says, “in Wisconsin we have to do both.”
Trump’s small margin of victory in 2016 could have been overcome by slightly better returns for the Democrats among disaffected voters in the state’s sparsely populated rural areas, or with higher turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, or with more enthusiasm for the Democrats in the suburbs. All of those areas need to be targets for the Democratic candidate in 2020.
Getting a candidate who can drive turnout among young people and voters of color while also speaking to the aspirations of farmers and residents of struggling manufacturing towns who have felt neglected by both parties is crucial to changing the political map in the Upper Midwest.
And as Trump works to rev up the hardcore, anti-immigrant, angry, white base, Democrats have an opportunity to present a better, broader, more progressive vision that appeals to everyone else.
A progressive, populist message is not only possible but necessary to win in Wisconsin. Take it from Senator Tammy Baldwin, an outspoken progressive and out lesbian who has won by big, healthy margins in Wisconsin by talking about manufacturing, dairy farming, and the need to resist both job-killing trade deals and dangerous trade wars launched by Trump’s itchy Twitter finger.
“People across Wisconsin want solutions to their challenges and are not all that interested in Republican versus Democrat,” Baldwin explained in a recent interview. “They’re interested in who you’ll stand up to, and who you’ll stand up for.”
Wikler agrees. “The key thing to understand is that Wisconsin voters are less centrist than they are conflicted,” he says. “There’s a populist streak that has both leftwing and rightwing flavors that runs through the state. And the fundamental question that voters are asking is: ‘Is this person on my side?’ ”
And as Trump works to rev up the hardcore, anti-immigrant, angry, white base, Democrats have an opportunity to present a better, broader, more progressive vision that appeals to everyone else.
The same could be said of voters across the country who belong to the two groups most important to Democrats—working-class people who were open to Trump’s burn-it-down, anti-establishment rhetoric, and young people and voters of color who just didn’t feel motivated enough to come out in big numbers for the centrist, Wall Street-connected Hillary Clinton.
Elizabeth Warren, who is moving up in the polls with a message that appeals to both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, put it best in a debate exchange in July, with a centrist rival:
“I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for President of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”
At a deeper level, grassroots movements that speak to the crisis in our democracy are bringing people together. These movements—treated dismissively by pundits and professional politicos as the “woke base”—are on the leading edge of transformational change in the country, whether or not the eventual Democratic nominee has caught on to it yet.
A bipartisan movement for fair maps in states including Wisconsin that have been so gerrymandered they give new meaning to Warren’s catchphrase “the system is rigged,” offers new hope for a broadly inclusive, progressive politics. About 63 percent of Republicans in Wisconsin agree with the idea of nonpartisan redistricting, along with 76 percent of independents, and 83 percent of Democrats.
On guns, Beto O’Rourke was not really going outside the mainstream when he declared during the September debate: “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” Americans across political lines are fed up with mass shooting after mass shooting followed by thoughts, prayers, and government inaction.
According to the latest Marquette Law School poll, 81 percent of respondents in Wisconsin favor “red flag” laws allowing police to take guns from people who have been found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others, and 80 percent support expanded background checks. Support for background checks was 74 percent among Republican voters, 94 percent among independents, and 76 percent among conservatives.
It is inspiring, and daunting, to see the level of hope in grassroots activists who are determined to take back American democracy—and who have both justice and majority opinion on their side.
Immigrant-rights activists in Wisconsin are forming phone banks to reach out to farmers in Republican parts of the state that depend heavily on immigrant labor to get support for restoring driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.
As United Against Hate founder Masood Akhtar put it at a rally for immigrants after the horrific mass shooting in El Paso, “This singling out a minority . . . is not what America is all about.”
Akhtar, who has made common cause with former white supremacists to work to overcome bigotry and racism and to foster understanding, gave up his Indian citizenship to become a citizen of the United States, and describes himself as “a proud American Muslim.”
The “saddest day of my life,” he said, was when a TV producer called him in 2016 to ask for his reaction to news that there was discussion in the White House about starting a Muslim registry.
Who better than a recent immigrant to remind America of its highest ideals?
Primitivo Torres, an organizer with the Wisconsin-based advocacy group Voces de la Frontera, moved to Wisconsin from Texas to help run the statewide coalition pushing to restore driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. He came to that same immigrant-rights rally to express his optimism about a bipartisan bill to help immigrants.
Torres is working with Republicans in the legislature and reaching out to industry officials to make the case for driver’s licenses. Previously, he worked at immigrant detention centers on the border, where he witnessed family separation firsthand. In Texas, he helped people who are stranded and terrified get in touch with immigration lawyers and family members on the outside.
Imagine retaining your optimism about justice, democracy, progress, and people’s essential goodness in the face of that.
Whoever emerges as the Democratic candidate must recognize that the broad appeal of a progressive vision will be the formula not just for defeating Trump, but also for putting our country on a better path.