What Went Wrong

Although it is impressive that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris managed to unseat a sitting president, we need to acknowledge two very unpleasant but vital facts. 

Down the ballot, Tuesday November 3rd was a disaster for Democrats, and unless we figure out what went wrong, 2022 will make the down-ballot carnage from 2010 look tame by comparison.

For anyone who attempts to sugarcoat the down-ballot results in the comments, if denying reality improved reality, COVID-19 would have gone away and Donald Trump would have won a second term by a decisive margin.

I will attempt a first-glance autopsy here and make some proposals on what Democrats need to do going forward to avoid a down-ballot bloodbath in 2022 and even gain some ground in the process.

But first, it is time to look at what caused such serious down-ballot problems in the first place and decide which issues were forgivable and which were not.

Some Races Were Unwinnable with Trump on the Ballot

An example of this is the Minnesota 7th Congressional District race. Representative Collin Peterson, after close to three decades in the House, lost his seat. Keep in mind that this is western Minnesota, a mostly rural district with a Partisan Voting Index of R+12, meaning it votes 12 points more Republican than the country does as a whole.

Other seats that went red simply because of the makeup of those districts—such as the Oklahoma 5th—I can understand and forgive.

Put another way: some of these losses were going to happen sooner or later.

The rest of the losses, I cannot forgive.

The Entire Polling Industry Suffered a Systemic and Catastrophic Failure

The polls were off in 2016 by a normal margin—a little bit more off in the statewide count. I can’t say the same for 2020.

For example, the polls predicted that President-elect Joe Biden was up in Wisconsin by 6 points according to the Real Clear Politics polling aggregator.

He only won by less than 1 point.

According to district polling, Democrats were supposed to gain seats.

Instead, we are on track to lose up to ten seats or maybe even more.

These types of failures are unacceptable.

Several plausible reasons exist as to why polling failed so badly this year. I like this one the best.

Either way, Democrats need to find alternative metrics for how races are going and how to identify what races they need to defend, and, most importantly, they need alternative means of identifying targets.

I had thought that the entire polling industry would need systematic failures if they were to get things wrong on Election Day on a scale not seen since the 1948 presidential miss.

It turns out that is exactly what happened.

Now that I have gone over mistakes and circumstances that were in part outside of Democrats’ control, it is time to look at what Democrats themselves screwed up so gravely.

Relying Too Much on Ads and Phone Calls

I get why the policy was made, but suspending door knocking and in-person events in many areas in favor of phone calls, digital operations, and ads was a really bad idea. Having been on both winning and losing campaigns, how effective your door-knocking game is can either secure victory or cost you the race. It is much better to do things face-to-face than attempt to do them over the phone because it is far easier to clear things up in person than over the phone and it is easier to make critical connections in person.

I get that we are in the middle of a pandemic and that we need to rethink how we reach people, but it was foolish for Democrats to unilaterally disarm one of our best tools in the most important election in our lifetime.

The end result of this was that down-ballot Republicans controlled the narrative in many critical districts and were able to reach more voters than Democrats could.

State Legislative Candidates Lacked Critical Support

While things at the down-ballot level went poorly overall, it was a massacre at the state legislative level, Minnesota included. Democrats failed to flip a single state legislature and, in fact, lost two chambers: the New Hampshire Senate and the Alaska House.

Everything being said about what went wrong applies at the state legislative level but with another critical caveat.

Many of these candidates lacked critical support, they had poor understanding of how to identify different types of voters, and coordination was a mess. As a result, Democrats at the state legislative level were frequently outspent and out-messaged despite fighting like dogs for these chambers.

Turns out that Democrats still have much to learn about how to campaign at the state legislative level.

Democrats Did Really Poorly with Voters of Color in Critical Places

I need to be clear about something critical here.

Voters of color delivered this country from four more years of Donald Trump. In Arizona, Latino and Navajo voters were essential for victory. In Georgia, black voters endured hell to deliver the state for Biden. It has been more than twenty-five years in both cases that a Democrat won either state and decades since they last won both.

On top of this, voters of color waiting in absurdly long lines in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were essential in rebuilding the blue wall. Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit came through for America.

When I say Democrats did really poorly with voters of color, I am talking about Texas, Florida, and California. We lost two congressional seats in South Florida and two in Orange County because of how Democrats did with Latino voters in Miami-Dade and Asian American voters in Orange County.

To be clear, Latino and Asian American voters encompass a stunningly diverse group of people. Factors such as ethnicity, age, education, gender, wealth, and if they are recently arrived or have been here for generations are all critical to understanding how these two diverse groups vote.

Needless to say, Latino support for Democrats plunged during the 2020 elections in Texas and Florida, while a serious dip among Asian Americans in Orange County (which Biden won, I might add) cost Democrats two seats in Congress.

In Texas, meanwhile, Democrats hemorrhaged support on the Texas–Mexico border, a source of traditional support for Democrats in the Lone Star State. Even though there were no losses suffered, Democrats failed to pick up a single seat in Texas despite the abundant opportunities. This is a catastrophic failure in a state that is rapidly growing and poised to gain more influence.

Although the Biden campaign did a lot right, I would argue its biggest failing was its Latino outreach strategies in Florida and Texas. Although I don’t blame the Biden campaign entirely for losing both states, its lackluster approach with this diverse demographic demonstrates clear down-ballot carnage.

Democrats can’t just rely on the racism of Trump’s base going forward; they need to reach out to all voters of color directly.

Too Much Money Was Wasted on Long-Shot Races

One of the few things down-ballot Democrats (with the exception of state legislative candidates) did really well in 2020 was raising money. This is essential because campaign material, office space, food, and fuel cost a lot of money—which is nothing compared to what campaign staff cost, especially if you are paying them living wages.

It is both smart and right to pay people who are working on your campaign. Campaign work is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting work that has little margin for error, especially when you are running in a tight race or against an incumbent. You will likely get better results from people if you have professionals running campaigns, not volunteers. In my experience, volunteers can be flaky.

With the above being said, Democrats donated money to races that had no chance of winning instead of focusing on the races that they could win.

To their credit, John Hickenlooper and Mark Kelly were both able to win their races. As a result, the money was well invested in both races to make net gains in the Senate.

Unfortunately, more than $100 million went up in smoke investing in Senate races in Kentucky, Iowa, and South Carolina. Thanks to a catastrophic polling miss in Maine and the fact Cal Cunningham (the Democrat who ran against Thom Tillis in North Carolina) could not keep his dick in his pants, hundreds of millions more went up in smoke as well.

The kind of money Senate candidates raised is absolutely necessary, but it is not sufficient to win races.

House candidates raised a lot of money as well, but some big misses by district polls, poor tactics and strategy, and serious down-ballot damage by the regressive left’s reckless actions made that money go up in smoke too.

The main group not to raise enough money was state legislative candidates, and the especially brutal bloodbath reflects that.

Not Planning for Unprecedented Turnout from the Republicans

To their credit, Democrats and the Joe Biden campaign were able to turn out opponents of Donald Trump to an unprecedented degree.

Unfortunately, the Trump campaign and the GOP were able to turn out their base in unprecedented numbers as well.

Fortunately, Biden’s unprecedented numbers prevailed in the race for the White House. Unfortunately, Trump’s numbers were enough to overwhelm quite a few vulnerable Democrats across the country, and thanks to little ticket splitting, many of the Senate races turned out to be a bust, such as Montana and Iowa.

Turnout on both sides broke records.

The fact that Democrats (myself included) failed to plan for this shows an inexcusable lack of foresight.

It is generally true that higher turnout is usually a good thing for Democrats—except when Republicans are able to bring out their people who usually do not vote.

Both sides went full force this election, and the numbers demonstrate that.

The Regressive Left

Remember how the blue wave in 2018 was fueled in part by the naked cruelty of the Trump administration and his enablers? How reckless actions conducted by the most extreme Republicans did serious damage to their more moderate counterparts in down-ballot races all over the country?

Well, it turns out that it cuts both ways.

In quite a few attack ads, Republicans would attack AOC, the rest of “the Squad,” and Bernie Sanders, not the candidates themselves.

As a slogan, “Defund the Police” was political malpractice of the highest order, second only to encouraging the myth (intentionally or not) that Democrats are socialists in immigrant communities that fled for their lives from communist regimes in Asia and Latin America.

Don’t take it from me; take it from a legend, Representative Jim Clyburn, the same leader who brought Joe Biden’s campaign back to life when it looked dead.

I have more to say about why “Defund the Police” is a slogan that needs to be dropped like a hot potato. Needless to say, because of the confusion around the messaging, it did real damage down the ballot (and aided the stupidity/cruelty of white leftists playing revolutionary in struggling neighborhoods) and, as Spandan Chakrabarti argues here, may have actually increased support for law enforcement and, more importantly, decreased support for badly needed reforms.

When elected officials, policy makers, or any kind of officials make policy proposals, they need to be precise and mean exactly what they say because these people saying or ordering something carries a great deal of weight.

Representative Spanberger has an excellent point when she says that they are in Congress, not the street. As a result, their language matters a lot more.

The locations where the regressive left did the most damage were California, South Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Arizona.

What to Do Going Forward

The good news is that the 2020s will be a slightly less one-sided fight than the 2010s were for Democrats thanks to some victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Minnesota in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. All these states have either divided governments or, as in the case of Virginia, have Democratic trifectas.

The bad news is that because Republicans still have trifectas in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona, Democrats in these states will have a slogging match that will be just as difficult as it was in the 2010s, if not more so.

The good news is that it is not impossible to win in the face of a GOP trifecta. At the start of the 2010s, for example, the GOP dominated all levels of the Virginia government. But it was a slogging match that took years of thankless and grueling hard work.

Democrats need to do several things to recalibrate for the post-Trump era and not get slaughtered in 2021 and 2022.

The most important task is to figure out what we stand for outside of opposing Trumpism. Discovering this will help Democrats understand what kind of messaging to focus on, how to conduct operations, what type of candidates to recruit, and how to campaign more generally. Most importantly, it will help discover who we should make the face of the Democratic brand. I already have President Obama in mind as the main face, but I am open to other suggestions.

In addition, Democrats need to stop relying on polls to measure how popular a candidate is, considering just how badly they performed this year, especially at the district level. Instead, discern how Biden’s data team was reading the numbers and adopt its methodology. Whatever that team was doing worked well. I would also suggest looking at Google searches as a method of determining things in a given area.

Democrats also need to get the idea that demographics are destiny out of their heads yesterday. The election results have demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea is malarkey. While voters of color are being discussed, it is vitally important that these voters are not mindlessly lumped together.

For example, if Latino means anyone born in Latin America or descended from anyone born in Latin America, then you already have an incredibly diverse group from more than fifteen countries, multiple language groups, massive cultural diversity, and quite a bit of racial diversity as well.

When I worked for the census, Latino was classified as an ethnicity and not a racial group for a reason.

White, black, and indigenous Latinos are a thing. These differences carry huge consequences, within both the Latino community in the United States and Latin America itself.

As a result, it is vital that Democrats start to de-aggregate data about the Latino voting population inside the United States. Look at factors like age, wealth, race, education level, country of origin, and what part of the United States they live in.

For that matter, let’s stop grouping together all Asian American voters as well. As in the case of Latino voters, it is not logical or right to lump together people from such a huge and diverse continent. Factors like ethnicity, country of origin, age, gender, education level, and if they are recent immigrants or have been American citizens for several generations play a huge role in how Asian Americans vote. As what should be done in the case of Latino voters, de-aggregate the data so that campaigning can be more effective.

I can say the same thing about Native American and black voters as well. It is not very smart to consolidate recent immigrants from Africa and African Americans. It is the same for the various Native American tribes.

When Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona’s 7th Congressional District said to stop using the term Latinx, he was making the larger point that when talking to Latino voters (or any voters you are looking to persuade, for that matter), you need to talk to them on their terms. You also need to be present for these communities in off years as well.

In terms of candidate recruitment, Democrats need to run more women and people of color. That strategy is what helped us win in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The GOP ran more women and people of color this time around, and it paid dividends in the down ballot races. It is clearly a winning method. Don’t abandon it. In addition, Democrats need to provide more support and vetting to their candidates.

Obviously, Democrats need to make some major overhauls in their digital operations. Ideally, we’d have someone from Silicon Valley or Biden’s campaign team look over how to make campaigning on the internet more effective. It would also be easier to reach younger voters because many of them spend more time online than in person.

It is of vital importance that Democrats work out how safely to conduct in-person events and register voters. One of the flashing red warning signs for Democrats in hindsight was how many more voters Republicans were registering than Democrats were in key states like Florida.

I would argue that Democrats need to have a purge of the Bernie-like elements because of how much damage they did down the ballot and how they are in part responsible for Donald Trump getting elected in the first place.

Anyone associated with high-level decisions made at the House, Senate, or state legislative levels for 2020 needs to be purged for the serious failures at those levels and replaced by people who worked on successful campaigns. This will help with messaging and disarming GOP attack ads of one of their most potent weapons, and it will help Democrats function more like a political machine rather than an unstable coalition that falls apart easily.

Either way, I recommend some type of purge.

Democrats need to make the face of their brand someone objectively popular with the public.

I have suggested President Obama as a start. He is objectively popular with a wide range of Americans. But again, I am open to other suggestions.

Defeating Trump was an outstanding victory, no doubt, but it was costly.

To avoid a bloodbath in 2021 and 2022, we must all pay attention, fix what went wrong, think strategically not ideologically, and start preparing for the elections in 2021 and the midterms in 2022.

Now.