The party’s campaign arm made several strategic errors, leaving their majority in doubt in 2022.
www.politico.com
excerpt:
If Democrats had any hope of seizing back a GOP seat in Virginia’s Trump country in 2020, it rested with Cameron Webb.
Webb — a Black doctor who served in the Obama and Trump administrations — was running against a far-right Republican who was underfunded and opposed gay marriage and birthright citizenship. But in the end, Webb’s message of strengthening health care and rising above partisanship was drowned out, and he lost by 6 points.
“My opponent only talked about three words: Defund the police,” Webb told a group of House Democrats on a private call this week, according to several sources on the line.
"There were ads being run all over the country about socialism and about the Green New Deal and in some parts of the country that didn’t help,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said in an interview. "I think it would be irresponsible for a person in our family — in the Democratic Caucus family — who is concerned about it not to mention it."
Others were more blunt: "From my standpoint, as a moderate Democrat ... it’s crystal clear we need a different message than what we’ve been having,” added Rep. Kurt Schrader (Ore.).
Top Democrats had braced for the GOP police-focused ads. DCCC polled the issue over the summer as nationwide protests over social justice began dominating the headlines, finding it “incredibly damaging,” according to a Democratic strategist familiar with the data.
Shortly after, DCCC partnered with the Congressional Black Caucus’ political arm to attempt to produce a campaign message that addressed the systemic inequalities without handing the GOP a win on the policing debate. They created some ads, including ones focused on policing reform that aired in the Black community in seats held by vulnerable Democrats.
“We want the caucus to be accurately depicted. And if you look at the Democratic Caucus, if you’re going to accurately depict it — unlike what Republicans did — we’re not for defunding the police and we’re not socialists,” Meeks said. “We’re going to be doing all that we can to make sure that we win in Georgia.”
Most endangered Democrats struggled to counter the flood of GOP ads on the issue: Republicans aired roughly 70 different broadcast ads that mentioned “defund the police,” according to data from Advertising Analytics, a media tracking firm.
“Democrat advertising barely uttered a word besides Donald Trump and preexisting conditions and these were messages that just did not move voters down-ticket,” said CLF President Dan Conston. “We spent the better part of a year testing the most effective ways to lay out the Democrats' economic agenda as well as their most radical ideas, when 'defund the police' came up as a core issue.”
In a Staten Island-based seat with a large population of cops and firefighters, CLF saw Democratic Rep. Max Rose’s image rating drop 21 points in the months after they began airing “defund the police” spots
Republicans were relentless as they aired 30-second attack ads that swarmed vulnerable incumbents. In red-leaning districts, such as Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi's (D-N.Y.) in upstate New York, the “defund the police” ads emphasized violent protestors and looters. In a purple suburban Philadelphia seat held by GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who won reelection, the ads featured a mom who worried a smaller police budget would make her family less safe from robbers.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said her biggest takeaway from the GOP’s upset in South Florida, where two incumbents were unseated, is that Democrats failed to take her warning seriously in early 2019 that GOP attacks on “socialism” were resonating with her home state’s expat community, including many Cubans and Venezuelans who fled communist regimes decades earlier.
“I'm not sure that as a party we took that attack head on, and provided our counter narrative,” Murphy said. “It’s not enough to say what you’re not, you have to define what you are. And we have to define it in a way that doesn’t scare the American people.”
But other Democrats argue that the overall strategy and message mattered less than the GOP’s turnout. Vulnerable incumbents were suddenly — and unexpectedly — forced to outperform Biden by double-digits, and many simply couldn’t, showing the strength and popularity of Trump.
“Expectations did get high. But if we’re being honest, it wasn't just expectations. We all missed something in our analytics and our polling data, and we really have to take a deep objective look at what we’re missing,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), chairman of the moderate New Dems Action Fund. “We’ve got to break the party down and rebuild what our brand is.”
