Elissa Slotkin Braces for a Democratic Civil War

[brooklynite]

Politico

Sitting down with the 44-year-old congresswoman, I could immediately tell she wasn’t in the mood to be cagey or cute. Slotkin had won reelection by just 4 points, half the margin her very high-priced polling had foretold; Trump had once again carried her district, which her internal data had said was improbable. She watched friends in Congress lose their jobs as a crush of undetected voters swamped the ballot box. She had listened to moderates blame the party’s left wing for polluting the Democratic brand and watched progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez critique the centrists as stale and outdated in their approach. Having spent the previous four days stewing on all this, Slotkin came out firing in a manner that caught me off-guard. She wasn’t just interested in settling scores with the liberal left. She was intent on making her case that Trump, one of the most divisive and hated politicians in American history, had exposed a weakness in her party that could lead to its destruction.

“You know, the one thing I will say about Donald Trump,” Slotkin began. “He doesn’t talk down to anybody. He is who he is, but he doesn’t talk down to anyone. And I think that there is a certain voter out there because of that who identifies with him and appreciates him.”

Top: Slotkin talks to her family in her living room on Election Night. Bottom: Field director Sophia Brown, 23, and campaign manager Matt Hennessey, 28, talk to Slotkin about election results as information trickles in.

This was new terrain for Slotkin. As one of the Democratic majority-makers who flipped a longtime GOP-held seat in 2018—and as one of the seven freshmen moderates who forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand and launched an impeachment inquiry—Slotkin knows her opinions carry weight, and she often reserves them accordingly. In our numerous interviews these past six months, her only positive references to the president—and there weren’t many—came in the context of bipartisan bills he had signed. She was otherwise pitiless in assessing his wrongs: the kowtowing to tyrants, the naked abuses of power, the weaponizing of America’s racial divides for political gain. Now, she allowed a strange, grudging praise for the president—and by extension, a stinging reprimand of her own party.


“It’s not just that he eats cheeseburgers at a big celebratory dinner. It’s not just that he does things that the common man can kind of appreciate. And it’s not even because he uses kind of simplistic language—he doesn’t use complicated, wonky language, the way a lot of Democrats do,” Slotkin said. “We sometimes make people feel like they aren’t conscientious enough. They aren’t thoughtful enough. They aren’t ‘woke’ enough. They aren’t smart enough or educated enough to just understand what’s good for them. … It’s talking down to people. It’s alienating them. And there’s just certain voters who feel so distant from the political process—it’s not their life, it’s not their world. They hate it. They don’t like all that politics stuff. Trump speaks to them, because he includes them.”

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Huh? He "doesn't talk down to anyone?"

people shouldn't stretch to grow and learn? We should be in a race to the simplistic bottom?

[brooklynite]

2. Al Franken used to tell a joke...

Last edited Fri Nov 13, 2020, 09:30 AM - Edit history (2)

"There were two cars in a parking lot, one was owned by a Republican, the other by a Democrat. The one owned by the Republican had a bumper sticker that said CUT TAXES - STRONG DEFENSE - FAMILY VALUES. The one owned owned by the Democrat had a bumper sticker with 20 lines of 2 pt time that ended with: "continued on the next bumper sticker".

Sadly, our simple messaging ("DEFUND THE POLICE", "GREEN NEW DEAL&quot tend to play only to the base voters; we're not reaching the working class Independents and moderate Republicans.

[NRaleighLiberal]

14. the missing piece in her comments is around fox and rush brainwashing

the longer the dems don't realize what a problem this, the worse it will get.

[brooklynite]

15. Let's assume that's correct (which I don't...) You need messaging to counter it

(Rush and Hannity don't turn liberals into conservatives; they reinforce biases that conservatives already have)

You can't "get rid of talk radio" and you can't "set up liberal talk radio" (we tried this). You still need solid campaign messaging for the reachable voters.

[NRaleighLiberal]

17. the key word is "reachable"

[durablend]

3. Politico: "Democrats in Disarray OH NOES!"

[brooklynite]

4. So POLITICO shouldn't report on political news...

That's a unique perspective.

[Klaralven]

5. "one half of the country believing it is enlightened and the other half resenting it"

At the root of our polarization, Slotkin argued, is one half of the country believing it is enlightened and the other half resenting it.

Multi-party systems seem to work better because then the centrist parties can create center-right or center-left coalitions that satisfy a larger proportion of the electorate.

[brooklynite]

7. Rarely works in a Government where the Executive has a separate power base

[Klaralven]

11. I don't think we could get to a multi-party system in the US

There are way too many laws and regulations that have institutionalized the two-party system.

Getting to a single party with one or more minor parties is somewhat more likely. It would result in something more similar to the Japanese LDP. Many states function that way now - e.g. California & Utah. Locally, the most important division is between the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats.

[apnu]

6. Slotkin has a point. Its about messaging.

Dem policies are fine. The people like them. But how we sell it to people needs work. People aren’t sophisticated and simple messages stick. Look to FDR, he was a master at this.

[JI7]

8. These people are racists and other types of bigots. FDR had their support when minorities did not

have equal rights.

[uponit7771]

18. That doesn't explain the horrid polling, the message could be fine tuned when people know about them

We could do light years better in polling data in the US, no other country puts up with polling this bad.

[lostnfound]

19. I think "health care for all" would have worked fine in FDR's era

The Republican base has been preprogrammed not only to like the simple messages presented on the right, but to hate appropriate simple messages on the left.

Limbaugh blabbing for years about socialized medicine, for example. Like mouse traps set to go off when certain ideas wander across.

The very idea of the common good has been annihilated.

[JI7]

9. I agree that it's talking down to them when you make excuses for them by saying their problems

are ecomic anxiety instead of just admitting they are racists.

[Amishman]

10. Very glad she was reelected, she gets it

We are way to eager to tear down anyone who isn't 100% onboard with us. Very quick to slap labels of racist and bigot on anyone who doesn't vote for us. We even eat our own (look at the recent attacks on Manchin here in DU)

We need to get back to the 50 state plan and the big tent philosophy.

[Celerity]

22. Attacks on Manchin?? lol, he was the one who attacked fellow Dems and it turned into a dump on AOC

shitshow here.

We need to get back to the 50 state plan and the big tent philosophy.

Tell that to the centrists, moderates, and conservative Dems (what Manchin calls himself, a moderate conservative) who came out guns a blazin' and are trying to crucify the left (and by using RW talking points and memes), all of whom busted their arse to help get Biden elected. So much for a big tent, which is a two-way street.

Trump had a HUGE turnout (might end up being the 2nd biggest total ever) and yet Biden will end up beating him by 6, 7 million votes. A shedload of those new Dem votes came from us younger folk and from the further left. I really cannot wait to see the breakdowns, but I sure as hell guarantee that there was FAR more younger and left-leaning voters (both new and repeat) than there was Rethugs drug over from the right by the Lincoln Project (especially when TLP is fairly measured above and beyond the normal defector rate).

Every election has a tonne of bleed off to the other party (or 3rd party or stay at homes after the primary.) in 2008, around 25% of Hillary primary voters went to McCain, and around 5% simply did not vote in general. ZERO chance we had that kind of haemorrhage this time, and a lot of that credit has to go to the left, as well as the huge new voter turnout they help achieve. Run them out of the party and watch the Rethugs go on a ripper for cycle after cycle. Almost all of the first 8 (7 of them) of the districts (the 8th was the reddest district held by a Dem, Peterson in MN) seats we lost in the House were simply 2018 Blue Wave freshman/women whose districts returned to their historical Republican norm (in some case 40 plus years of Rethugs) when the Rethugs had the added benefit of a POTUS election driving Rethug turnout in their sails.

[Kid Berwyn]

12. Respect.

It’s what politics needs.

[OneGrassRoot]

13. Maybe I don't understand what "talking down" means to everyone...

I understand the elitist charge leveled at the "intellectual left" (which, to me, is simply people who read a variety of resources, know some modicum of history, follow current events, etc), but I think Trump and his minions demonizing half of the population by saying they're sheeple following fake news, they're snowflakes, idiots, Satanic pedophiles...that's talking down to a group of people in my view.

[lostnfound]

20. A hundred times this, Nt

[uponit7771]

16. ***"half the margin her very high-priced polling had foretold"*** Then MAKE these firms answer to

... what went wrong.

No other country puts up with polling this wrong for this long tilted towards one party

[Hortensis]

21. Politico clickbait. Slotkin herself is a member of the largest

ideological caucus, moderate liberals, with over 100 members. Second largest is the progressive caucus, with nearly 100 members. BOTH are strongly liberal and strongly progressive in ideology. Over 200 current members of our two liberal caucuses have the same ideals and big goals, just differing in the details.

Yes, some're currently insisting the other is somehow to blame for not winning better in this bizarre election year when all the old patterns had been smashed.

But whatever: This is mostly about something now far more important to all: the jockeying for caucus power and personal advancement in leadership and committee assignments that takes place every 2 years.

The current dissident squad of Ocasio, Omar, and Tlaib do not, but they'll no doubt feel far more empowered once another couple who ran from the far left are seated in 2021 and the 3 holding their lonely table in the house cafeteria increases to 5. Presuming neither newcomer does an Ayanna Pressley and distances, of course.

The new 117th congress will be sworn in on January 3, 2021.