Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) speaks during a campaign stop at Bearfoot Tavern in Macon, Georgia, November 7, 2022.
The election results surprised many pundits and Republicans, but not those who were following the surveys conducted by Democracy Corps and the articles I wrote for the Prospect. They showed the Democrats with a small lead in the generic House vote in September. That slipped to a tie and 2-point deficit with October’s likely voters. With 107 million votes counted, Democrats are losing the House by a 3-point margin. The surveys showed the potential for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians to disappoint those looking for an engaged base.
The very low turnout of African Americans and Hispanics was not surprising and likely cost us a greater Senate majority (one that might have been willing to get rid of the filibuster) and House control.
Many were relieved that Democrats defied history. I was angry.
We are at a moment where Democrats have a policy offer that makes lives appreciably better. Republicans just decry inflation and Democrats. They plant powerful cultural bombs that leave Democrats badly damaged on crime, the border, and love of country.
I was angry because in this campaign the White House was just cheerleading over a “strong economy,” and some leaders gave this message: Re-elect us because we accomplished so much. Instead, they could have shown sympathy on income and the cost of living, pushed back against corporate power, neutralized the crime issue, and grown their numbers.
More from Stanley B. Greenberg
Over 70 percent of eligible voters do not have a four-year degree, my measure of working-class. And in this midterm election, they were 61 percent of the voters. Over 80 percent of the Black and Hispanic voters were working-class, though that is usually closer to 70 percent in our campaign surveys.
And those voters were mad as hell about the economy. Two-thirds rated it “negatively” in my survey for Democracy Corps and PSG Consulting with 2,000 pre-election and Election Day voters. Two-thirds of voters said the country was on the wrong track. They were also mad as hell about the billions in campaign spending that corrupted politics. They are conscious that the biggest corporations, high-tech companies, and billionaires use their money and lobbyists to rig the game against working people.
They are mad as hell because they really haven’t seen a pay raise in two decades, which is even more true for African Americans and Hispanics. Their frustration was heightened by two decades of spiking growth in incomes and wealth for the top 1 percent and spiking spending on political campaigns.
The economy was the top issue for voters in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, of course. This year, maddening inflation stole away any marginal gain in wages. Everywhere in the world, working people are on a desperate edge, and the top issue is the cost of living and what governments are doing to help them.
And in this election, it was the top issue by far for the Democrats’ diverse working-class base of African Americans, Hispanics, millennials, and unmarried women.
Do you think they heard anything from the national Democrats that would have stirred them to get out to vote?
Why do my surveys and exit polls show that only in the 2018 midterms did Democratic voters cite an economic reason to vote for the Democrat?
I have written in the Prospect that these two decades of declining real incomes have created a strong appetite for government helping families to make work and life affordable. The Affordable Care Act set a precedent for government guaranteeing affordable health care. Both Clinton and Trump voters wanted what Trump promised: “terrific,” “phenomenal,” and “fantastic” health insurance.
The pandemic and resulting shutdowns put working people on the ropes. What Congress enacted changed the perception of what government could do effectively. It bumped up unemployment benefits, provided direct per-person payments to households, reduced health care premiums, added paid sick days for COVID, and greatly expanded the Child Tax Credit, paid monthly. The last was particularly important for our working-class base, including African Americans and Hispanics. That so few Democrats ran on it is a measure of Democratic leaders not seeing working people or feeling their lives.
This was not just a base issue, our surveys showed. Those policies were popular and important for all white working-class voters under 50.
So isn’t it time to ask this question: Why do my surveys and exit polls show that only in the 2018 midterms did Democratic voters cite an economic reason to vote for the Democrat?
The answer is not rocket science.
It starts with the uninterrupted train of “moderate” Democratic presidential nominees—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden—who have been cheerleaders for the American economy. Obama reminded voters that Democrats got the country out of the Great Recession, created millions of jobs, and got the economy “moving in the right direction,” despite the fact that median income did not reach pre-crisis level until his last year in office. Clinton said, “I will build on the progress that President Obama has made.” And Biden applauded the millions of jobs created and cheered a “dynamic economy” where “the United States is better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead.”
They didn’t get angry about what was happening to working Americans. Working people were seething that Wall Street got bailed out in 2008, the starkest possible confirmation that big money calls all the shots. And that is why, just a few years later, Donald Trump was more trusted than Clinton on the economy, and seen as a champion of working people. That is why Republicans, in this election, won on which party was better on the economy by 10 points.
And what were Democratic leaders really exercised about?
First was America’s deep divisions and partisan polarization. Obama was angry that an extremist Republican Party refused to work together to help get the country out of the ditch. And President Biden attacked the MAGA extremists and lamented how few Republicans embraced his bipartisan approach.
At the outset of Obama’s second term, he decided to take on inequality, but not the inequality driven by the top 1 percent and its raw power. Obama was upset America was falling short of “our founding vision” that “no matter who you are, or where you come from, here in America, you can decide your own destiny.” He pointed at the left-behind manufacturing centers and inner-city neighborhoods, and called for more skill training and education to “rebuild ladders of opportunity for everybody willing to climb them.”
Hillary Clinton made that her principal political theme. “I am running for president to knock down all the barriers that are holding Americans back and to rebuild the ladders of opportunity that will give every American a chance to advance. Especially those who have been left out and left behind.”
Fighting for equality is now deep in the DNA of today’s Democratic Party, for working people, women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and immigrants, and now LGBTQIA+. But focusing on inequality does not answer the most basic questions. What is its cause? What would reduce it? And what are the policy priorities of those communities?
Those are empirical questions. And my polls have shown over and over again that taking on our rigged politics trumped messages focused on ladders of opportunity. That was particularly true for base voters.
As a result, we got disappointing turnout in African American areas in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia, allowing Trump to win in 2016. The same was true in 2020 where Black turnout significantly lagged other groups in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, as well as statewide in North Carolina and Georgia. In 2022, Democrats faced low turnout of their own voters in New York City.
What is striking is how patient these voters are waiting for Democrats to deliver a message on political economy. Before the election, Democrats got to an even split on reaction to a cost-of-living message, which was a lot better than the party’s overall standing on the economy. Actual voters this year, in our poll taken in November, gave Democrats a healthy 8-point lead on this message.
When asked what stood out in that message, voters embraced “no pay raise,” “Washington isn’t listening,” and “Democrats lowered costs for working families.”
The lesson is clear: Any Democratic candidate determined to crash past parity will have to run against the Democratic establishment.
DEMOCRATS FACE DAUNTING WALLS TO CLIMB on the economy, crime, the border and immigration, China, and patriotism. The foundations for those high barriers were laid in 2020.
Trump jumped on every event to elevate racial tensions. The George Floyd murder led to nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that demanded greater attention to police abuse, accountability, and reforms. Trump convinced his own supporters that antifa led these protests and the violence. A great many Americans thought many ended in looting and attacks on the police. Prominent Democrats proposed defunding the police and Republicans’ closing ads pictured African Americans looting and decried that extreme plan. The police unions endorsing Trump and Republicans confirmed that narrative.
Violent crime was surging in 2020, and our polls showed that was a major reason why voters pulled off to choose Trump, including many in our diverse base.
In the 2020 presidential election, economic and crime issues were more important for Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters than police abuse and racial justice, as I wrote in the Prospect right before the midterm. The gap between the cultural elite prioritizing of racial justice and police accountability and working-class concerns with crime only grew through 2021.
In the last two months of the midterm election, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans prioritized the cost of living and crime, despite Democrats not speaking about either. In the election survey, they prioritized cost of living, inflation, and economy and jobs—barely intersecting with the priorities of the national Democrats.
Democrats make necessary gains when they make a strong offer on crime.
This encouraging result shows the vacuousness of the Republican position on crime. It is simply an attack on the Democrats without any real policy offer. Democrats become competitive with a reassuring position combined with a big policy offer—100,000 more police—that also includes urgent reforms. That message achieves parity with the Republican crime message in this survey where Democrats are losing the crime issue by 10 points. It is stunning how strong the response is for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian voters.
Democrats break through parity when they call out the handful of Democrats who decline to talk about violent crime and public safety and the need to get more police into our communities. A message that says Democrats will not “defund in any way” and support “first responders” gets 7 points more warm than cool responses, in a midterm electorate that Republicans won by 3 points. Tackling your own party on crime is a good way for Democrats to break through.
The border is an issue that will also need to be addressed to restore Democratic credibility, but I have focused here on where I have my own survey data.
To get to a sustainable majority, we have to maximize our vote with African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. That requires breaking with the cultural elites who have a strong presence in our universities, and many philanthropies that are deeply out of touch with the priorities, beliefs, and patriotism of those communities.
The cultural elites have been saying since the George Floyd murder and nationwide protests that America’s history of racism must take priority over all other issues. They say that America is a racist country where white supremacy has shaped all its institutions. They see a country that has stopped making progress in addressing its greatest challenge, and are deeply pessimistic about this country being able to change. America is exceptional in its embedding racial supremacy in every institution.
Biden embraced the Black Lives Matter movement and selected the first African American (as well as Asian) woman as his vice president. He said he had a mandate “to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.” And in his first year, Democrats highlighted giving more grants to Black farmers, offering targeted housing vouchers to Black communities, funding the removal of all lead water pipes, and raising funding for historically Black colleges and Hispanic institutions.
This could not be more important. And the Inflation Reduction Act refreshingly includes so many measures to address environmental justice, to address the legacy of discrimination and impact of climate change.
But those important changes do not require prioritizing racial justice over issues like the economy and crime. They might just as well have been part of an American story that continues to make progress in its own unique way.
So step one is recognizing how angry the Black community is with its economic struggle and how frustrated it is that Democratic leaders have not focused on the safety of its communities.
Step two is embracing America as an immigrant country that has welcomed so many people from oppression globally and allowed generation after generation to make progress. You can’t privilege only one community’s story and build a progressive coalition that wins change.
You can no longer ignore the finding that big majorities of Hispanics and Asian Americans are opposed to the teaching of critical race theory. It is seen as denying America as an exceptional nation.
Our survey shows that Democrats have to acknowledge they did not prioritize Hispanics and Asian Americans, who have contributed so much to the American story. Over 70 percent of each group embrace that message. Democrats have to campaign for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian voters who are all part of the Democratic mission.
As I wrote in the Prospect, Barack Obama declared, “I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story” and “in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.”
That was the spirit of Speaker Pelosi’s departing remarks when she said, “In this House, we begin each day with a prayer and a pledge to the flag. And every day I am in awe of the majestic miracle that is American democracy.” She added, “I look forward to the unfolding story of our nation, a story of light and love, of patriotism and progress, of many becoming one.” The incoming leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in his acceptance speech, “We love this country, we love our democracy, we love the Congress and the House of Representatives, the institution designed to be the closest to the people.”
They set the Democrats on a course to break the parity by reclaiming that vision of a Democratic Party working for working people, making progress for all that makes America truly exceptional.
