Michelle Goldberg is saying things I want to hear (so take her optimism with a grain of salt), certainly I agree with her concluding recommendations:
For
the past year, the Democratic Party has been engaged in an angry
internal debate over identity politics, which are often framed in
opposition to a purely class-based appeal. At times, it feels like
progressives are doomed to re-litigate the 2016 Democratic primary
forever, tearing each other apart while Trump tears down the republic.
But if you squint at Tuesday’s results, you can sort of see a synthesis
emerging between Obama and Hillary Clinton’s theory of the emerging
Democratic electorate -- in which Democrats win by appealing to a
coalition of white professionals and minorities -- and Bernie Sanders’s
focus on grass-roots organizing and economic populism.
In
some ways the election was the revenge of the Obama coalition. Educated
white liberals joined people of color to elect an amazingly diverse
group of candidates. A Latina single mother, Michelle De La Isla, was
elected mayor of Topeka, Kan. Wilmot Collins, a refugee from Liberia,
won the mayoral race in Helena, Mont. Seattle elected its first lesbian
mayor, Jenny Durkan. After a year in which liberals have been bludgeoned
by demands that they abandon identity politics and empathize with
resentful Trump voters, the election was a reminder that white men
needn’t be the center of the political universe.
Yet
class politics and identity politics aren’t really a binary, even if
they’re sometimes presented that way. Murillo, for example, the first
person in her family to graduate from either high school or college,
told me that affordable housing was a central issue in her campaign.
Overall, Tuesday was a great night for economic populists. Before this
week, the Democratic Socialists of America had 20 elected officials
among its membership. On Tuesday, 15 more won local office, including
30-year-old Marine veteran Lee Carter, who unseated the Republican
majority whip in Virginia’s House of Delegates.
Ultimately,
the main lessons from Tuesday are probably more strategic than
ideological. Democrats need to contest every seat they can, no matter
how red. (In the wake of the Washington Post’s revelations
about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s past sexual relationships
with teenagers, it’s a good thing there’s already a strong Democrat in
the race.) They should also recognize that young people are crucial to
their fortunes, and make it easy for them to run. One person who played a
key role in Democratic victories on Tuesday was Amanda Litman, a
27-year-old veteran of the Hillary Clinton campaign who co-founded Run
For Something, which trains and supports progressive millennials seeking
political office. (Her group backed both Bennett and Roem.) More
millennial candidates, Litman told me, “means more millennial voters,”
and millennials are largely left-leaning.
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