"We Didn't Have a Ground Game" A Democratic congresswoman on why she lost her seat

[tulipsandroses]

“We Didn’t Have a Ground Game”
A Democratic congresswoman on why she lost her seat

Shalala’s seat had been reliably Republican for years before she won it, but plenty of people assumed she was safe in 2020. Shalala herself felt a little differently. “I felt vulnerable, very vulnerable, because it was a presidential year, and Trump was going to do very well in my district,” she said. “There was going to be a huge Republican turnout. They turned out 85 percent of their voters, and Democrats turned out only 75 percent of their voters. And that made the difference.” On Tuesday’s episode of What Next, I spoke with Shalala about her loss and what Democrats can learn from it. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: Your seat was supposed to be relatively safe.

Donna Shalala: Yeah, I know, but I didn’t trust the polls because I could feel that there was going to be a real challenge in my district. I saw the attack ads, but I also heard from people as I walk through Little Havana, for example. I was called communist once in the primary, but now it became a consistent theme.

What do you make of the fact that we’re a few weeks out from the election and we seem to have this split ticket situation where Joe Biden won, but down ballot, a number of representatives and people, even at the state level, did not gain ground when that was the argument for Joe Biden to be top of the ticket a few months back.

I think that if we had run against a reasonable Republican, we would have gotten beaten. Donald Trump so turned off people that were Republicans that they voted for Joe Biden. But they then straight-party voted after that. And the turnout by Republicans cut both ways. It helped Joe Biden with suburban women, for example, and others that were just turned off by Trump, but it didn’t help the down ballot.

“Joe Biden is going to need a two-year strategy or we’re going to lose the House of Representatives.”
— Rep. Donna Shalala
Republicans registered a huge number of voters, probably a quarter of a million voters. In the last 60 days, they registered 5,000 in my district alone. Even though people had poured millions into Florida, we just never got the kind of sophisticated ground game that they put together. So we learned a lot of the process. We simply have a lot of work to do.

Snip---
No, it was a completely different set of issues because the president had mismanaged COVID.Our economy, when I ran before, was in much better shape. It was a disaster now, because I represent a tourist area. I represent the cruise lines, the hotels on Miami Beach, the restaurants. It was a completely different race in terms of issues.

What did that mean when you went out and spoke to people? Did you feel like those issues were resonating with the voters?

I felt like the governor and the president’s mismanagement of COVID was biting. But I also felt the pressure on the economy because once people ran out of their unemployment and their savings, they just wanted the economy open at any cost.

[link:https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/donna-shalala-house-democrat-defeated-what-happened.html|



I don't live in her district. I live in SWFL. A beach town, lots of small businesses that depend on tourism, weekenders, vacationers. There was a lot of griping about opening the economy. I'm sure people voted with that in mind.

[elleng]

1. 'It's the economy, stupid.'

[MFM008]

2. Biden didnt lose it

she did, lets not catastrophize 2 years hence.

[JI7]

4. Biden did lose Florida . And this does explain why we lost which isn't that bad a thing

the lack of ground campaign was becsuse of a pandemic. Republicans didn't care with risking people's lives.

We need to come up with same ways to either have a ground campaign or ways to get around it.

The lock down was an issue for many businesses but what too many don't get us even without a lockdown business will be hurt becsuse of the virus.

Getting the virus under control is what will really help businesses.

[MFM008]

7. the election

Its up up to the individual office holder to keep their seats.

[JI7]

8. No, it's not that simple. The Party does work together ,especially in swing states . Biden himself

did not want a ground campaign to protect people. There is nothing wrong with that. But we need to learn from it for the future and come up with safe ways to do a ground campaign or alternative ways which could get similar results .

[former9thward]

24. Then why have political parties?

If its everyone for themselves?

[treestar]

14. Other Democrats won their Florida seats

Too much is put onto the Presidency. It's not as if Biden losing FL in the EC meant every other office had to follow.

[treestar]

13. Yes, I was getting that vibe

She says Biden needs a plan to win the House next time? Like it's his problem? These people have to win their own elections.

[former9thward]

26. If the House was lost in 2022, yes it would be a problem for HIM.

[treestar]

42. But the individual should run as hard as they can

And we should show support for Biden even if he does not do everything we individually want, or we will get the usual backlash. The Rs managed to keep the house for 6 years for Bush.

[TomDaisy]

3. 2022 cycle starts right now.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. The lack of ground game from Biden was a calculated, responsible risk.

It burned him in Florida but was the right thing to do. But Shalala has completely deflected any responsibility for losing her seat and frankly, that's bullshit.

Yes, Biden decided to not play the traditional GOTV game, along with registering voters - but what the hell did Shalala do to keep her seat? Sounds like she was essentially banking on Biden carrying her.

[treestar]

15. +1

[StarfishSaver]

27. Exactly!

I just can't with the "It's Biden's fault I didn't keep seat" complaints.

It reminds me of how Rep. Tim Ryan blamed Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton for Trump carrying his district in northeastern Ohio - and claimed that as one of the reasons why HE should be Speaker. I kept waiting for him to explain why, if he was all that, couldn't HE deliver HIS district to the Democratic nominee, but he never did.

[OnDoutside]

41. I agree. Actually for most of the year Rick Wilson had been warning that Biden needed to 5% or

greater in the polls, to win Florida, because the Republican ground game is so good and those running the Democratic ground game aren't at the races, consistently. In short, the Republican machine are far superior at GOTV. Of course there's no reason why that should continue, but you'd wonder what inquest is being performed there ?

[LeftInTX]

36. We had a problem in Texas

The state party did not allocate resources for a ground game until the last minute. It was all gonna be digital. County parties and state parties work together to help all candidates. Shalala is correct here. She needed ground game resources

Although it isn't Biden's fault, it is the Democratic Party's fault, from DNC, state and county. Close races are often won with assistance of local counties and not just the campaign itself. Counties relied on state resources

[betsuni]

6. But in 2016 Trump didn't have a ground game, ran a terrible campaign, was a flawed candidate

and didn't have much money.

[Cosmocat]

19. He is the absolute kind of grievance politics

that, sorry for saying it, trumps retail politics.

THAT is the bind democrats are in. People want to think that negative campaigning is a problem, but fact is that it is the most effecient and easiest ways to mass campaign.

I was saying going into this election that democrats were playing with one hand tied behind their back with them doing traditional retail politics and dems respecting the virus AND they simply have more mass appeal with their simple (yes, its bullshit, but the masses eat it up) communism, socialism screeds vs our policy related approach.

Being frank, this country is simply too fucking stupid and emotional at this point for us to win unless we get a unified and effective campaign to negatively cast republicans, which we won't.

[flying rabbit]

32. +1

Hope the Dems figure this out by 2022.

[Cicada]

9. We can build a ground army of those inoculated, by June

We can target registering young people hired to build environmental infrastructure. My dad in the depression at 14 joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, sent from Mississippi to Nevada where he told me they planted a million trees.

[Boogiemack]

10. I do not believe we have given Tom Perez enough thanks for

the job he did. We lost some down races. that in hindsight, are proving to be due to some dark money actions from the GOP and the RW. They put up "ghost" candidates in several races across the country which split out voters, some losing by as few as 32 votes. The especially happened in state races. I believe this was and still is the case in GA. There were too many candidates for the Senate seats and Warnock seemed to be a victim of a Dem candidate that few people even knew. Citizens United is still the demon SCOT:US vote that has hampered Democrats on every turn.

The GOP has used these methods to a large extent in non-Presidential years, even going so far as to have some candidates register as Democrats and being voted into office only to be a RW pawn. What Democrats need to do a better job of is to study the minor candidates running in each race across the country and expose them as either bots, ghost candidates, or troll candidates. Some money invested in this now will save us a lot of heartache later. Either we fight them or join the GOP in their deceit.

[uponit7771]

11. Unnnnn, her polling should've told her that from the bat. If that was the only thing she had to ...

... change the data would've been there.

These guys either go by the "gut" too much, ignore data, don't use data at all or the data sucks.

People, humans aren't mysterious ... ask, a lot of humans would love to tell you their opinions

[progressoid]

12. "if we had run against a reasonable Republican, we would have gotten beaten"

Yep. We are going to have to do something big in the next 2-4 years to win back these lost seats and keep the White House. 'Murica is swinging right again.

[Cosmocat]

22. YEP

We are in a lose, lose situation.

They hate us more now than ever because we found the where with all to give a budding dictator the boot.

We are fucked.

[Turin_C3PO]

25. We're not fucked.

We gained in the Senate, kept the House and won the Presidency by six million. We can learn from our mistakes and adjust. The brain power of Democrats is much greater than that of the Republicans. If we take an attitude that we're fucked, then most assuredly we will be. We can do good in 2022.

[Cosmocat]

28. This was the going WITH the momentum

running against a complete unhinged POTUS with just 45% support. IF this country was not stupid as fuck it should have been a bloodbath across the board. They picked up MORE state chambers, beat the odds with a senate that should have flipped by a few seats and picked up more house seats.

NOW, we going to have a D POTUS with republican control of the senate tying his hands, the right wing losing its mind over him and the media completely forgetting about 45 and going back to its norm of both siderism.

Yeah, our brain power is greater, but it has been for a long damn time. They are meaner, more committed against a singular enemy (The evil liberal) and will cheat, lie and do ANYTHING to win power while we play the by rules with a flag football mentality.

Yes, we CAN do good in 2022, but only if the democratic party gets in the game that is being played now and gets a completely unified message to cast republican as the chrisofascist they are, which we won't.

[progressoid]

34. +100

[Turin_C3PO]

23. I wouldn't say

America is necessarily swinging right. BLM is a lot more mainstream now than it was 3 years ago. People agree with Dems on issues. Unfortunately Trump manages to get a ton of dirtbags out to vote who normally don't care about politics. I wouldn't really say they're card carrying Republicans. What hurt us down ballot was that we didn't have a ground game due to the virus, which is understandable and fixable for 2022. Another thing was we were tied unfairly to socialism and "defund the police". And those are the reasons, in my mind at least, why we didn't do as good as we should have down ballot. If we can counter Rethug messaging and have a good ground game, the sky's the limit for the Democrats.

[tulipsandroses]

30. Its so easy to blame losses on socialism and defund the police slogans. This article makes it clear

that its a bit more complex. As Shalala pointed out, economics in her district was a big factor. At the end of the day, all politics is still local.

So when Republicans run their propaganda ads demonizing Pelosi and tie Freshman democrats to her. So do we say Nancy Pelosi lost them their seat?

In other, more Republican/Trump-friendly districts, first-term Democrats such as Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico’s 2nd, Ben McAdams of Utah’s 4th and Kendra Horn of Oklahoma’s 5th were hammered with ads noting they voted with Speaker Nancy Pelosi around 90% of the time. Since these Democrats can’t win in presidential election years without ticket-splitters, such partisan loyalty can have consequences.
[link:https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/11/16/who_deserves_blame_for_democrats_lost_house_seats.html|

[Turin_C3PO]

31. I'm not blaming socialism

or defunding the police. What I'm saying is that Republicans were successful in many close races at unfairly painting Democrats with those things. Ads that tied Dems to police-haters blanketed the air waves. Of course it was bullshit propaganda but it was somewhat successful. So I think we need to get good at countering the GOP bullshit. But I would say that our lack of a ground game was an even bigger factor. We did the responsible thing due to the virus but it did come at a price.

[tulipsandroses]

35. I've been questioning this narrative. I know that's been the story, but so far

the reasons seem quite varied.
I've been looking at each race individually to see what happened. Haven't looked at all the races yet. But so far I am seeing a lot more varied reasons than socialism and defund the police that have been thrown out there as reasons for losses.

So far - it seems that the two places that Defund the Police may have had an influence was in Max Rose's race and interestingly he doesn't think it played a part. The reason I think it did. Its Staten Island. I've said it before. Its notoriously racist. Its trump country.
Its always been a problem in NYC that many police officers do not live the communities they police. They don't come from the minority communities in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens. They come from places like Staten Island and Long Island. So yes, I do believe Defund the Police was a contributing factor in Max Rose losing that seat.

It may have influenced Ben McAdams race. He won that seat from Mia Love, a black republican. He was replaced with another black republican that did his best black trump impersonation. He is noted for saying white supremacy does not hold black people back, its black elites that hold blacks back. Saying white privilege is racist. So the whole trump schtick probably worked, not just the ads.

In Kendra Horn's race they aligned her with Nancy Pelosi and being against oil and drilling which would cost jobs in the state- Again all politics being local. That was propaganda- they are good at that as you have rightly pointed out.
These Freshmen democrats that flipped these seats were going to need more support in a year when trump was going to be on the ballot. He was not on the ballot in 2018 when they won, which meant some his tried and true base voters probably did not bother to turn out. It definitely was going to be a numbers game to hold on to some of these long held republican seats.

Republicans were making ads saying Xotchitl Torres Small supports the Green New Deal. She does not. She drew fire from people that support The Green New Deal. Republicans took her acknowledgment of climate change to say she supports the Green New Deal. So ie to acknowledge climate change exists = socialism. There were also ads being run to rural voters that Torres Small was going take away gun rights. Which prompted Torres Small to release an ad of herself shooting a gun saying that is how she unwinds.

The Republicans have mastered propaganda. The ground game and voter turn out will be our bread and butter to counter their propaganda. It has to be year round. Not just during an election cycle. Take a page out of Stacey Abrams and Latonya Brown and the other organizers in Georgia's playbook. All politics is local. We can't say that enough. We need to make sure candidates have the support they need to address the issues in their own communities. We are a big tent party. What is going on in New Mexico are not the same issues in The Bronx.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

16. our dem rep lost in a republican district to a crook.

CA 48th went from Rohrabacher to Rouda to Steel.

It was the ground game. In part because Dems take Covid seriously and the usual ground game couldn't work. The logic of a split ticket worked for Biden in once Republican OC. So it was a blue wave for the White House.

Not so much in Congress. We can flip in 2022 though with a strong ground game.

Orange County backed Biden, but Republicans poised for dramatic comeback after ‘blue wave’

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-07/orange-county-went-for-biden-but-the-blue-wave-might-all-but-disappear

[Klaralven]

17. Why does a ground game necessitate physical gatherings and meeting people?

It seems that you can still organize local campaign volunteers, do local advertising and mail pieces, have local phone banks contact D&I registered voters, etc.

In short, do everything except face-to-face door knocking and working streets and businesses. If schools and businesses can use Zoom, so can political parties.

[LeftInTX]

37. The phone numbers are wrong!

[tavernier]

18. South Florida was magat central all year.

Enormous RV’s with Trump logo selling Trump signs and posters and billboards and flags circulated neighborhoods and set up in weekend flea markets to sell their crap. The streets and highways were back to back trump advertising. Boats cruised up and down canals with Trump signs. I’m quite sure that people who didn’t watch tv had no idea that a democrat was running as well. Polling places on Election Day were saturated with Trump flag wavers often almost blocking the parking entrances. They were wound up to a fever pitch by the local Republican Party representing their candidates daily on local talk radio shows.

Yup, they worked their butts off and it paid off down here.

My couple of attempts to volunteer were met with lukewarm response. I could help with phone calling but nothing else was really being done. Obviously.

I purchased my own magnetic Biden sticker and proudly slapped it on my car. I never once saw another. I counted two Biden yard signs, and one small street sign on Election Day. Three Vote Blue signs, one in my SIL’s yard.

Thankfully there was a lot of work done in other counties and many went blue. I personally think south Florida lost because of the Cuban vote. They were very vocal and involved. But at the same time, our party apathy sunk us down here, IMO.

[Celerity]

20. She is right about the House in 2022. Very real chance we lose it, and do not take back the Senate.

The last two first midterms (1994 and 2010) for a newly elected Democratic POTUS have been utterly disastrous. In 2010 we lost a net 63 House seats and a net 7 lost Senate seats.

Obviously it will not be to those numbers, but there are 30 or so seats we retained that will be truly in play. The Rethugs will try and block and cripple Biden from day one, banking on depressing the vote via splintering the broad coalition that elected him, especially the younger voters and then the leftmost third to half of the party's voter blocs.

[doc03]

21. I live in Ohio where Democrats had pretty much written off the state as far as the

presidential race. It seemed like the local races were written off too. There has always been a Democratic headquarters in my county
but this year the nearest one was 35 miles away. I finally got a yard sign for Biden when I found one someone had run down on a bank beside the road. I wasn't even aware who Democrats were running against District 6 Congressman Bill Johnson until I went to vote.
Bill Johnson ran against AOC, de-funding police and BLM.

[calguy]

29. I've said this before and gotten a lot of negative feedback

But the DNC is going to have to find discipline in our messaging. It's nice for everyone to be able to express their voice but doing it with an undisciplined approach does us more harm than good. When the most liberal voices among us go up on the rooftop and loudly scream about issues like free education, reparations, free everything, I cringe inside because I know that every time they do that they turn away the moderate independent voters we need to establish a sustainable working majority in government.

To be effective the DNC needs to establish a more unified message that appeals to a wider range of voters. Unless we can be more consistent in turning out our own voters, which we've done poorly the last ten years, we need to appeal to a larger portion of those voters who do turn out for every election. How that should be accomplished I do not know. That's why I'm not running for DNC chair. But if we don't change the way we reach out to those voters in the middle, we will have a harder road ahead.

The run offs in Georgia are going to tell us a lot.

[Turin_C3PO]

33. If you're suggesting

we get better at messaging, I agree, although I think the focus should be turning out our base, which is black and brown voters, at higher rates. If we can get registered Dem turnout to 85%, which is the rate registered Republicans vote, we’ll win a lot more elections. I don’t think we can tailor our message rightward and win any so-called moderates (btw, if they voted Trump, they’re not moderate). But we do need to counter GOP propaganda and make some “propaganda” of our own including generating negative ads (which do work) about the Repubs.

[treestar]

43. This "messaging" thing has been a problem for decades and is never overcome

The media does not amplify it for us. We are also a big tent and some messages will offend one of the groups. Just vaguely saying we are bad at in, as on DU since at least 2006, has not yielded any real ideas for improvement, or shown any way to do it that would work. We are not as "same" as Republicans are.

If we work on appealing to the middle, we'll the get "centrist" "corporatist" complaints from the left which will stay home. If we appease them, we lose the middle. I don't think there is a way to have a "disciplined" message. Democrats have so many who resist "being in lockstep" and it's hard enough to get them to support the candidates they elected if the candidate does even one thing they don't agree with.

Putting it all on the DNC is not right. It's ourselves who need to learn to compromise and accept that it's not all glamour and excitement (how many millions of posts I have read on candidates not being exciting enough is reflected here). Otherwise, the Rs will rule and they are mostly the same and will fanatically support their candidates no matter what they do.

[peggysue2]

38. I think messaging was absolutely a problem

How many times and how many elections do we hear that Dems are all socialists/communists? Defund the Police was a disastrous message, one that we handed the GOP on a silver platter. When you need to 'explain' a meme, you're losing the messaging war. Same thing with the civil unrest this summer, legitimate, peaceful protests that were stirred up, violence provoked by Trump and his 'private' enforcers. Those images playing again and again and again had a profound effect on voters, so much so that too many voters split their ticket to 'rein in' a Biden/Harris ticket.

I had another conversation with my Republican-leaning friend in NJ. Ultimately, she voted for Biden, uneasily she said because she really doesn't like the Democratic Party. But she couldn't stomach Trump. She split her ticket, however, because of those images of 'burning cities,' images with which the media swamped the field without context or background. She split her ticket to limit what a Biden/Harris ticket could do because that made her 'feel' safer.

She obviously wasn't alone in that decision.

We also had the disadvantage in the field without person-to-person, old fashioned door-knock campaign techniques to which we need to add Joe & Kamala's restricted public appearances. When candidates and their surrogates get to schmooze and rub shoulders with prospective voters, you reduce the effectiveness of an opponent's disinformation program.

The restrictions were done for all the right reasons because of the Covid threat. Trump and the Trumpers didn't care and that lack of caring gave them an obscene advantage to spew their propaganda nonstop.

I'd love to see us pickup the two Georgia seats. But it will be a very heavy lift because traditionally these run-offs favor Republicans. This year, the voters who split their tickets on November 3rd? They'll need to be convinced to change their minds, to recognize that McConnell's Senate advantage is truly an obstruction to real progress. We also need to beat the weeds for every available vote after an endless campaign a few weeks ago. I remains to be seen if the GOP is able to rally their voters without Trump on the ticket and with all the nonsense of 'rigged' elections.

2022 will really rest on what Biden and Harris are able to accomplish in addition to the Democratic Party's ability to message any and all successes effectively. Even President Obama's historic success in getting healthcare passed was driven over the cliff by the Republican message machine and their refusal to support the program in any way.

Have we learned our lesson? We shall see.

[Dem4Life1102]

39. I agree

We need to do a better job pushing back on Republican bs. Especially since the media loves to parrot their talking points. What is true is that no democrats ran on socialism or defund the police, but many don’t know that.

[peggysue2]

40. That's exactly right

What is true is that no democrats ran on socialism or defund the police, but many don’t know that.

Republicans repeated those falsehoods again and again and again. It's what they do and they do it very effectively.

We need to start fighting fire with fire. Otherwise, the Repugs will continue to get a leg up and the media will continue to repeat their explosive lies.

Because good TV and eyeballs.

[calguy]

45. You just said exactly what has been on my mind

[Jose Garcia]

44. Shalala was an awful candidate

She barely won last time, despite the district being fairly blue and there being a strong anti-Trump sentiment among voters. She never bothered to learn to speak Spanish, despite her district being over 70% Hispanic.