Can Jason Carter Win The Middle?
In the AJC, Greg Bluestein covered a speech by former State Senator Jason Carter, who once ran for Governor and may do so again, if you take the tenor of his remarks as sincere.
“The same way Romney was wrong to write off 47 percent of the vote, Hillary Clinton was wrong to write off the deplorables,” [Carter] said, invoking Clinton’s off-the-cuff jab at Trump backers.
“It’s something we can’t abide by, especially because we’re a party that’s built on inclusion. We can’t write off whole swathes of the geography of the state.”
That has a good mouthfeel, to steal a word made up by pretentious wine critics. Any successful political enterprise needs to be inclusive, and the Democratic party just hasn’t looked inclusive for a while. Their messaging has focused on the disenfranchised at the expense of the mainstream. While it may make some folks feel good to wail about a “hetero-orthodox- patriarchy” there’s a whole lot of straight males out there. If there’s a white power structure that governs society, the average Trump voter in Banks county probably doesn’t notice it.
It’s not that Democrats’ messaging has been wrong. It’s been ineffective because it’s been presented as a strictly binary choice. Take same-sex marriage as just one example, and imagine being told that you’re an ignorant, homophobic bigot if you don’t support it. You’re not likely to support the folks telling you that. Indeed, you might even develop an antipathy toward them, one that might become deep-seated and habitual. If you feel you’ve been wrongly assigned that label, you might even take a perverse pride and poke your critics in the eye by voting for a former reality show star for President.
Those voters weren’t literally disenfranchised, but they did get tired of being treated that way.
Jason Carter seems to think that voters shouldn’t have to pick a side, and seeks to “create a lot of room in the middle.” That’s a tall order, but it’s a bolder and better strategy than just waiting for white voters to die.
None of the half-dozen or so Republican candidates angling to become Georgia’s governor in 2018 is likely to aim for the middle -they have a primary to win first, and Republican primary voters don’t usually see moderation as a virtue. And while Carter would like face a primary of his own -House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams is seen as a potential candidate- he would likely have his strategy of inclusion all to himself.
How his message is received -by members of his own party- will be worth watching.
About Author
Mike Hassinger
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
For the record, if you’re anti-marriage equality, yes, you’re a homophobic bigot, no matter which party you’re from or how you choose to justify it. Either you believe gay folks deserve the same rights as you or you don’t. That one really is a binary choice.
And, no, folks didn’t vote for Trump simply because someone pointed out their homophobia and bigotry.
Great rant! You should bring this up at your local Mosque and let us all know how things turn out.
“Any successful political enterprise needs to be inclusive, and the Democratic party just hasn’t looked inclusive for a while. Their messaging has focused on the disenfranchised at the expense of the mainstream. ”
Perhaps not in Georgia. But a party that’s won the popular vote in 6 of the last 7 elections is comfortably within the mainstream of 21st Century America.
The Democrats used to perform well in rural Georgia…and then came Roy Barnes. And things haven’t been the same since. Unless the party can improve its showing in the “other Georgia” (yes, where people “cling to their religion”), it may be after 2020 before a Democrat wins statewide again…basically involves waiting for metro Atlanta to turn overwhelmingly blue.
That’s more or less true. Though if you had a Clinton ’16 performance in the Atlanta area and an Obama ’08 performance in the rest of the state, Republicans would only have a lead of a little over 2% statewide. The thing there is that Dems need better rural black turnout to keep that out of state margin down. That being said: The non-Atlanta percentage of the vote keeps shrinking. In 1992 it was 47% of the state, now it’s under 40%. (It’s grown in raw terms by 600,000 during that time, but the Atlanta metro’s vote doubled in size). If Gwinnett and Cobb are the next Fairfax and Prince William Counties (traditionally red GOP Suburbs in VA that went from voting narrowly GOP to being solidly blue) though, then Georgia’s going to end up a lot like Virginia: A deep red rural state where the land is outvoted by affluent, college educated suburbanites + minorities. She won Metro Atlanta by 160,000 votes despite not spending much money down here. If a future Dem can get that up another 50-100,000 and do better on rural black turnout, that could be enough.
That’s probably going to take some time. But if anyone can challenge that, it’s a party tied to the hip with a President entering office with sub-40% approval ratings. If Trump had lost, I’d have been more likely to see the narrow result in Price’s district as a fluke from people who otherwise would vote Romney or Rubio. But with 4-8 years to put his stamp on things, that’s a bigger problem for downballot GOPers and future nominees in that space.
Dave, Gwinnett is more likely to turn heavily blue in near future than Cobb—I think a lot of the Trump win in Cobb was due to moderates dissatisfied with Trump (especially in ‘Country-club” East Cobb), while in Gwinnett it was probably more the combination of defections and demographic change. 20 years ago, the only solidly D part of Gwinnett was along I-85 and Peachtree Industrial in northwestern Gwinnett, but today that belt includes almost all of Gwinnett south of Hwy 78 and a lot of the Lawrenceville area.
Tom Price’s district saw its share of ticket-splitting, arguably the most moderate of Georgia’s 10 GOP-held congressional districts. Trump won just 48% there, but Isakson won 58% in the district. Doubtless if Rubio or Kasich had been the nominee, it would not have been so close in presidential voting there.
For the record, even though black registration in Georgia increased while Obama was president, the total black turnout since his 2012 re-election was down by over 40,000 here, while white turnout was up about 90,000. In Sanford Bishop’s southwest Georgia 2nd CD, more whites than blacks voted last fall, even though the district is majority-black in population. Last fall, Clinton got fewer votes in DeKalb (251,370) than Obama won there in 2008 (254,594), and among other places ditto for Richmond County/Augusta (48,814 votes for Clinton last time, 52,100 for Obama in 2008).
With regard to Virginia, it arguably is the southernmost northern state. Clinton probably would have won the Old Dominion even without Kaine on the ticket, but in any event her margins in NOVA (Northern Virginia) were unprecedented in modern times—basically 2-1 over Trump up there. And she also won the traditionally GOP Richmond area while also winning the politically marginal Tidewater area. In that state, the divide is more between the urban/suburban east along 95 and 64 and the more rural and conservative west, like the Shenandoah Valley, southwest Virginia and Lynchburg/the southside west of 85 and 95. The question for Democrats there is whether they can sustain their momentum in this off-year (Virginia elects its governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general this fall), when it is harder to motivate voters in DC-focused NOVA. In 2014, the Senate race in that state (Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Ed Gillispie) was much closer than expected—Warner had been heavily favored but only won by a point or so.
Oh, I agree on alot of this. I think Gwinnett, because of demographics, is more likely to go hard blue than Cobb: I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s say, 55-45 in four years. while Cobb is 50-50ish. Onthe ticket splitting re: Price: If Rubio or Kasich was the nominee, I suspect that they would have had similar margins there to Romney or McCain. And if Trump had lost, I think people would look at it as a fluke, and whoever was the 2020 nominee would be there with similar margins (give or take demographic migration and the like). But the thing is that Presidential politics always filters down to the local level, and whoever runs in that seat, whether this year, in 2018, or 2020, will be stuck at the hip with Trump. He was already unpopular in the district, and now he has to be compared to the ideal, not just the alternative. (Such as it always was: If Kerry beats W, Connecticut probably still has 3 GOP Congressmen instead of 0. If Bush beats Clinton, Buddy Darden and co. probably keep their seats in 1994, and if Bush lost to Dukakis, they’d have lost them 4 years earlier.)
Also agree on the black turnout: You only have to look at what happened in Hancock from ’12 to ’16: R vote went up from 769 to 843, while Dem dropped from 3,308 to 2,701. Now, how much of that can be recaptured if you actually focus and allocate resources on a state (i.e. Enthusiasm was up for the black vote because of Obama in ’08 even though our votes ‘didn’t matter’ in Georgia, so can you goose the enthusiasm if they do).
With respect to Virginia, I broadly agree with your assessment, though I think they ought to do well this fall. I think part of the problem with Warner is that he thought he was better than the way other Dems have been winning in Virginia. In 2001 he won his big gubernatorial victory by performing really well in Rural Virginia: Won counties in appalachia and elsewhere. In 2008, he won essentially unopposed with Zell ‘2000 like numbers and a Zell ‘2000 like map, winning darn near every county in the state. So he thought he’d just roll like that again, with his solid brand with rural voters, even as Kaine, Obama, (Obama and Kaine), and McAuliffe had all shown the actual route to election as a Democrat in Virginia in the intervening 13 years, (and Creigh Deeds, who tried to rerun Warner 2001, showed it didn’t work anymore). So I agree with you on the divide: Warner just forgot on which side of it his bread is buttered. So as much as anything, Warner got caught with his britches down touting an out of date message and I suspect the Dem ticket in the state this fall won’t be so arrogant.
In general, that was also a midterm where Dem turnout cratered without a compelling national message (Turnout in Virginia was down from the previous year’s governor’s race, something that was not the case from 05 to 06). Part of that was trying to protect Red State Dems from Obama (didn’t work), but that’s something that gets crystalized in opposition anyway: “Not Trump” should be a message that works everywhere other than Appalachia for the next 3 years or so. He’s already as unpopular as W was in ’06-’07, when “Not Bush” was good enough to elect Democratic Congressmen from Connecticut to Mississippi to Arizona.
I disagree with some arbitrary HOPE income cap. It needs to be graduated after a certain income. We’re talking about 10K/year, that isn’t a trivial amount to most citizens. Say there is a cap at 90K and I made 88K; I think that would be an issue.
As far as taxing the rich folks in the northern part of Fulton and even in DeKalb, how has that worked out so far? Those property taxes are pretty high now, how much is enough? You can’t fix broken homes and areas of Atlanta where the prevailing culture simply doesn’t value education with taxes.
Since there are only two viable parties at the moment, yes it is a binary choice. To use your terminology, you are either pro-ignorant, homophobic bigotry or anti-ignorant, homophobic bigotry.
I don’t understand bringing up same-sex marriage with respect to Trump voters. That issue is over a decade old from being on anyone’s political radar and has since been resolved by the Supreme Court.
Agreed. It would be like bringing up abortion.