I found a segment on AM Joy this morning cautionary for the Democrats regarding the 2020 Presidential elections. The segment was on CA Senator Kamala Harris as a potential candidate for the Democratic Party.
Let me preface this by saying Kamala Harris is my Senator, and I voted for her both for the Senate in 2016 and for CA Attorney General before that. The following observation/opinion is not directed at Kamala Harris running or not running for President, but at the messaging and direction of the Democratic Party and the progressive media as they prepare the ground for the 2020 Presidential election.
There were two points in the AM Joy segment that I found cautionary. The first was a statement by Joy that the Democratic Party needs to coalesce behind a candidate soon. I disagree. The Democratic Party needs to start coalescing around the issues and positions that they will put forward in 2020 first. And this needs to happen now because honing and marketing those issues is just as important next year in the 2018 state and local elections as it will be in the 2020 elections.
The 2020 Presidential primaries should be about selecting who best can carry the basic Democratic issues forward. Which specific primary candidate carries these issues forward as the Presidential candidate in 2020 should be based on who is best at communicating those issues and the Democratic solutions. Besides, coalescing behind an individual early, making the primaries a pro forma exercise, has not been a reliable, or even particularly effective strategy in past elections.
The second cautionary point was that virtually the entire discussion focused on Senator Harris’ gender and ethnic background rather than on the issues and positions she has proposed and supported. Yes they presented that as a junior senator she stood up to Sessions in the nomination hearings, and I applaud her for that. But that is not an issue that will resonate with most voters in 2020. And, that point was not the focus of the majority of the AM Joy discussion.
Rather than focusing attention on gender or ethnic characteristics of any candidate, Democrats need to start focusing on the issues that affect every citizen and begin supporting candidates based on who is the most credible in addressing those issues. This is not to say that gender and ethnic issues are not important in this country, but is a recognition that the more primal issue, economic inequality, is basic to ethnic and gender issues AND to the vast majority of all voters, including many who voted for Trump in the last election. Trump won because the established candidates in both parties had a history of giving cursory lip service to economic inequality issues, then governing in favor of the economic elite.
Trump has turned out not only to be no different from, but actually worse than, past administrations in this regard. However, this hyper-duplicity just increases the cynicism of those who voted for him based on the “what do we have to lose” argument. This also means that merely running against Trump is not going to be the strongest strategy. Democrats need a solid platform that not only attacks Trump’s cynical approach to governing, but also makes it clear that the Democrat’s focus is on leveling the economic playing field. The messaging needs to stress this as their number one commitment and be based on explicit policies they will pursue if they win.
I hope that shows like AM Joy will start to focus on how the general economic inequality issues are the foundation that underlies many ethnic and gender issues, and how these individual groups need to unite under that understanding rather than fall prey to the divide and conquer strategy that has served the economic elite so well in the past.
As we approach the 2018 and 2020 elections it is increasingly important that Democrats and the media start educating the public on this connection instead of pushing the need to coalesce behind specific candidates this early in the cycle. This is important because the connection between the underlying economic inequality issues and ethnic and gender issues currently is not part of the mainstream media memes and will take time to penetrate and ferment in the general voter pool.
*errata
“Economic Inequality As An Issue.” The headline character limit and my (apparently misguided) assumption that the “as an issue” was implied apparently bothered some of the readers. It was stated explicitly as “the issue of economic inequality” in the body of the article.