6 Ways Democrats Failed in 2020 and 6 Ways to Fix It
By: Conor Bronsdon
Tags: Democratic Party, US Elections, Elections, Democrats, Election 2020

What’s at risk:

The GOP is hard at work attempting to entrench minority rule: millions of more votes were cast for Democrats in the US Senate and for the presidency, yet with the electoral college and the composition of the US Senate, plus gerrymandering in the US House of Representatives, Republicans still hold significantly more power than their vote share should enable. With the work of Mitch McConnell to entrench conservative judges throughout the judiciary and the record number of Republican judges appointed during the Trump presidency, the courts are going to make progressive legislation difficult. There is a reason Democrats need to talk about court reform, adding seats to the Supreme Court, making DC/Puerto Rico states, abolishing the electoral college, and more — Republicans have rigged the system in their favor and are ruthlessly using the levers of power.

The scariest part of this is who that Republican minority will be composed of; in the Trump era, young people who are conservative and actively involved in Republican politics are not driven by tax policy or beliefs in smaller government. Instead, they are driven by racism, QAnon, and white supremacy. Racial resentment has led College Republican recruitment for years, and the alt-right has only increased that. With less than a third of Generation Z identifying as conservative, the new leaders of the Republican party will be members of the alt-right, across the board.

Even so, Democrats can fight back.

Reasons to be encouraged:

Democrats need to recognize that while their sky-high expectations of a blue wave didn’t materialize, they still unseated an incumbent president, a rare and challenging feat. For the last four years, Trump dominated American life, commanding an incredible amount of media attention and crowding out so much other discourse. Incumbency is a powerful tool, and Trump leveraged it to his advantage, breaking rules and norms to hold the Republican National Convention at the White House, plus setting the national agenda and defining the discussion in a way that you can only truly do when you’re in power. Trump used the powers of the executive branch for his benefit, and yet he lost. The 2020 election became a referendum on Trump.

Could Democrats have done better down-ballot? Certainly, the fact that the election was such a referendum on Trump might have harmed Democrats down-ballot as so much of their case became about unseating the President while Republicans were messaging about how Democrats across the board were the problem. This imbalance led many people to vote for Joe Biden and then vote down-ballot for Republicans. They also had to fend off the millions of people who Trump-inspired and brought to the polls — few other Republicans have shown they can tap into those voters. It is possible that many of them won’t be as inspired in 2022 or 2024 without Trump on the ballot (though he could very well run again in 2024).

Democrats will need to adjust their pitch (Trump bad!) is no longer going to work, but without Trump standing in their way, they can act and take credit. If Democrats win the Georgia Senate special elections and institute economic stimulus, Biden should have his name on every check sent out. Should President Biden follow through on forgiving student loans, every person with a loan forgiven should get a letter signed by the President. Democrats can act legislatively and executively to make positive changes and gain support through their actions.

There are also encouraging signs for Democrats in how engaged the Left was in this election; progressives and younger voters were highly involved and turned out in record numbers. Combined with critical reforms to fix the party, Democrats have an opportunity for unparalleled success. We can nitpick Joe Biden’s campaign (and believe me, many strategists already are), but in the end, he won. He beat an incumbent president, he will win 300+ electoral votes when all is said and done, and his team closed with a message in Build Back Better that was intersectional with climate change and racial justice.

House Democrats and Senate Democrats have no such defense. To take the US Senate, Democrats will need to win a dual January 5th runoff in Georgia for two US Senate Seats. Instead of picking up seats, Democrats have lost them in the US House. Yes, gerrymandering plays a role, but it isn’t the whole story. Many democrats made messaging mistakes across the board, underspent on digital, ignored field, and far too often failed to understand the Latino vote and other BIPOC.

To win up and down the ballot, Democrats must fix those issues going into the 2022 mid-terms.

How to fix it:

1. Stop thinking of Latinos (or Blacks, or anyone else) as a monolith.

Far too many folks on the Left think of Latinos as a single voting bloc. They ignore the vast array of cultural differences in these communities, thinking that the white supremacy and anti-immigration stances on the right mean these communities are guaranteed Democratic votes. This is a vast misunderstanding — Latinos is a broad term; it bundles up Cubans in Miami-Dade Florida with Tejanos in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and other communities across the country. It ignores the distinctly different policy desires and needs of these communities, which Republicans did not, targeting distinct Latino communities differently. In Texas, Trump targeted Texas Tejanos, a traditionally Democratic group but with a specific set of concerns such as the oil and gas industry, gun rights, and more. They tailored their message — meanwhile, national Democrats largely ignored this distinct community.

The same thing happened in Miami-Dade County, where Cubans and Venezuelans in Florida helped Trump to win the state after his campaign invested in Spanish language radio ads, organized in these communities, and spoke to them about issues — and stoked fears — that resonated with them. Trump also spent less time rallying against and insulting immigrants in 2020 than in 2016 or 2018 — yet Democrats didn’t see their losses in these areas coming. If there is one major thing Democrats take away from 2020, it should be to stop treating these crucial communities as monoliths and to talk to not just Latino communities but other Black and brown communities about their issues, not only their identities. Know your audience and quit assuming that you can spend all of your efforts expanding your coalition rightwards (or white wards) without losing votes — Black people, Hispanic people, women, LGBTQ — they are not locked down.

Want to improve on this? Invest in organizations led by Black and brown organizers. Listen to folks like Chuck Rocha. Instead of creating a Latino department, and siloing them off, give them power and influence, hire people of color throughout your campaign infrastructure at every level.

2. Stop overprioritizing white people!

Look, I am not saying the Democratic party should abandon appealing to white people, but my goodness, do Democrats need to stop prioritizing white voters who are less likely to vote for them than people of color. Trump won over 73 million votes in 2020, the vast majority of them from white voters, and liberally used white supremacy and racism to rile his base into a furor. Most of these voters knew what they were voting for — they have gotten four years of Trump in office to see what’s on offer. Socialism as a dog whistle is often about “the wrong people” getting handouts — this is code for people of color. White people have enjoyed a longstanding advantage in American life. Whether they fully articulate and accept it, many voters support Republicans out of fear of losing their privileged position in American life. Often, cultural Republican voters — mostly white and often suburban, may have voted against Trump and then voted down-ballot for Republicans due to ideological reasons, seeing their job as done.

White voters should certainly not be ignored entirely, but Democrats are clearly at a disadvantage when it comes to gaining the population's votes that broadly supports white supremacy. Efforts to defuse misinformation and be more precise on the economic benefits provided by Democratic policies should be used to make a difference, but choosing to ignore people of color in favor of fighting losing battles for white voters is a drastic misuse of resources. Instead, Democrats should consider regional outreach that could bring in rural voters of all stripes. The weatherization program that Biden included in his clean energy plan is an excellent example of this kind of policy outreach, as are investments in rural hospitals, programs that benefit farmers including adjusting subsidies to better help family farms instead of large corporations, expansion of broadband internet, developing the mass timber industry, and more.

3. Embrace popular progressive policies.

Republicans have spread propaganda about socialism and used it as a dog whistle for white supremacy for decades. They paint any progressive policy as socialist. Yet when you dig into the numbers, progressive policies are popular. Democrats need to stop letting Republicans and centrists scare them away from winning messages with deep popularity and instead embrace populist progressive messaging.



Even “Defund the Police,” the slogan that many in Democratic leadership have blamed as toxic to down-ballot Democrats in 2020, shows little evidence of having been a disastrous as folks contend. Suppose activists saying “Defund the Police” (something most Democrats didn’t even embrace) was somehow the problem. Why did Minnesota, where George Floyd was killed igniting Black Lives Matter protests across the country, go from Dem +1 in 2016 to Dem +7 in 2020? Images of the burning Minneapolis police precinct blanketed news coverage for a time. Yet, the Democratic vote share went up, and the organizing of Rep. Ilhan Omar and others in and around Minneapolis helped deliver Minnesota firmly to Joe Biden.

I said it in my previous piece on why democrats need to embrace popular progressive policies. Still, far too many Democrats choose running as ‘Republican-lite’ instead of standing for issues and working people. In 2020, every swing seat Democratic incumbent who cosponsored the Green New Deal or Medicare for All won re-election. There are other factors than just support of popular progressive policy; however, such policies demonstrate a positive vision for the country, are effective organizing tools and show voters that you stand for something.

Voters prefer someone who stands for ideas, even something they may disagree with, over politicians who seek to poll test every message and move with the times like a weathervane. We want leaders, not just representatives.

Regardless of support for progressive policies, Democrats can expect socialism accusations — they are dog-whistle racial resentment attacks. You are not going to make them go away. However, you can make them less effective. It is not progressive policies that lose; it’s letting Republicans frame the narrative.

4. Build Leftwing media

Republicans are framing the narrative through their massive media arm, from Fox News to conservative talk shows, to social media. Democrats need not only to work to fix modern media, but they also need to develop their own left-wing media to espouse progressive politics. Republicans are more effective than Democrats at pushing out a consistent, across the board message. They reach much more significant social media numbers with regularity; Democrats need to develop their own media apparatus to level the playing field. Efforts such as Crooked Media are a good start, but much more needs to be done.

One of the alt-right tools has been misinformation and sowing distrust, often through conspiracy theories that morph into movements such as QAnon. For Democrats to beat back the radical right, efforts to combat misinformation must be encouraged, and the Left needs a much more effective messaging and communications operation.

5. Go Digital

Part of that effective communication must be a massive investment in digital media and digital infrastructure. Long gone are the heady days of 2008 where Barack Obama’s insurgent campaign seemed to herald a rising progressive digital infrastructure. Democrats have struggled to adopt those concepts, let alone keep up with today’s digital trends. With a major media disadvantage, this can be disastrous to many democratic campaigns and policies.

At every level, the national and local parties need to invest heavily in developing digital infrastructure and ensuring that candidates are using digital advertising. Any consultant that believes direct mail and mass-market television are inherently more effective than digital ads is either out for themselves or an idiot. Stop listening to them and start building digital infrastructure. Look to the work done by AOC, Ed Markey, the Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats, and others for examples of successful digital operations. Even better, bring in digitally native organizers from Gen Z, give them resources, and let them work. Embrace people with digital competency and develop digital competencies within organizations.

6. Invest in year-round deep organizing.

Organizing is how you make Republican attacks less effective. Investment in year-round deep canvassing makes a substantial impact, and there is data that shows this type of organizing work blunts the force of racial resentment attacks at the polls. The Democratic party traditionally gets grassroots organizers excited to get folks elected, then doesn’t stay in touch and continue outreach — abandoning these communities is a waste of resources. Additional investment in year-round canvassing can build long-term infrastructure that is easier and cheaper to activate electorally.

This is one of the areas that Democrats will have to evaluate in the 2020 election data as they consider why House Democrats lost so many seats and underperformed in many places that President-elect Joe Biden won. The decision to stop knocking on doors (the most effective form of organizing outreach) may have cost many members their seats, even though it was done with public health in mind.

In 2021 as a vaccine is distributed and during the Georgia runoff elections, we will have to continue to consider how to organize in a COVID-19 safe way effectively. Democrats clearly could have and should have done better on this. The Trump campaign was knocking on a million doors per week as the election closed, and that was a decisive advantage for them in key states and kept this election as close as it was. Typically, Democrats have Black, Brown, and youth organizers who are doing incredible work on the ground to ensure Democratic victories: this year was an exception for much of the country, with the pandemic in full swing. Hopefully, this will lead Democrats to recognize their impact and give them the resources, trust, and attention they deserve.

By embracing the future and moving away from the past, Democrats can enact positive, progressive change — and win up and down the ballot. Failing to do so and failing to do the deep anti-racist canvassing needed in this country will mean Democrats continue to lose their white vote shares and allow Facebook to radicalize more people across the country.

The opportunity to change the paradigm is there, but Democrats need to act fast and make the changes necessary.