Democrats scrambled to regroup on Wednesday after a disappointing special election defeat in Georgia,
with lawmakers, activists and labor leaders speaking out in public and
private to demand a more forceful economic message heading into the 2018
elections.
Among
Democrats in Washington, the setback in Georgia revived or deepened a
host of existing grievances about the party, accentuating tensions
between moderate lawmakers and liberal activists and prompting some
Democrats to question the leadership and political strategy of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader.
But
the overarching theme among Democrats was a sense of sharp urgency
about crafting a positive agenda around kitchen-table issues.
Congressional Democrats have already been meeting in private to shape a
core list of economic policies, but their work did not reach any
conclusive point during a long season of special elections.
“The
Democratic caucus is united in our view that our message, heading into
2018, should be aggressively focused on job creation and economic
growth,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of the
Democratic leadership team, said on Wednesday morning.
Representative
Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, said the defeat was
“frustrating” and urged a shake-up at the top of the party.
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“Our
leadership owes us an explanation,” said Mr. Moulton, who voted against
Ms. Pelosi in the last leadership election. “Personally, I think it’s
time for new leadership in the party.”
By
fiercely contesting a congressional race in the conservative Atlanta
suburbs, Democrats had hoped to make an emphatic statement about the
weakness of the Republican Party under President Trump. Their candidate,
Jon Ossoff, raised about $25 million, mostly in small donations, and
assertively courted right-of-center voters with promises of economic
development and fiscal restraint.
That
vague message, Democrats said Wednesday, was plainly not powerful
enough to counter an onslaught of Republican advertising that cast Mr.
Ossoff as a puppet of liberal national Democrats, led by Ms. Pelosi.
While Mr. Ossoff made inroads by exploiting Mr. Trump’s unpopularity and
a backlash against health care legislation approved in the House,
Democrats said they would have to do more to actually win.
Representative
Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, met early Wednesday morning with a
group of lawmakers who have been conferring about economic messaging,
according to two people present who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mr.
Luján told the group that his committee would examine the Georgia
results for lessons, but stressed that Democrats have consistently
exceeded their historical performance in a series of special elections
fought in solidly Republican territory.
Representative
Eric Swalwell of California, a third-term lawmaker close to party
leaders, said Democrats would “crystallize our message on jobs, on
health care” in the coming months. The results in Georgia and other
special elections, he said, should encourage Democrats to campaign
across a huge map of districts.
“We
need to compete everywhere,” Mr. Swalwell said on Wednesday morning.
“We want to be the party that’s for your job, for your health care and
for your kids’ future.”
Others
in the party were far more caustic, calling Mr. Ossoff’s defeat a
warning to Democrats who see red-tinged suburban districts as the keys
to winning power, and saying that Ms. Pelosi would undermine the party’s
candidates for as long as she holds her post.
Representative
Tim Ryan of Ohio, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi as House minority
leader late last fall, said she remained a political millstone for
Democrats. But Mr. Ryan said the Democratic brand had also become
“toxic” in much of the country because voters saw Democrats as “not
being able to connect with the issues they care about.”
“Our brand is worse than Trump,” he said.
Ms.
Pelosi, of California, has consistently rejected calls to step down and
there was little indication on Wednesday that her leadership post was
at risk. A top aide dismissed the idea that her lightning-rod status
might have hurt the Democratic effort in Georgia, and pointed out that
in some polls the Republican speaker, Paul D. Ryan, is viewed even more
dismally.
Any Democratic leader would become a target for the right, said the aide, Drew Hammill, Ms. Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff.
“Republicans
blew through millions to keep a ruby red seat and in their desperate
rush to stop the hemorrhaging, they’ve returned to demonizing the
party’s strongest fund-raiser and consensus builder,” he said. “They
don’t have Clinton or Obama so this is what they do.”
But
in a possible omen, the first Democratic candidate to announce his
campaign after the Georgia defeat immediately vowed not to support Ms.
Pelosi for leader. Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina lawyer challenging
Representative Mark Sanford, said Democrats need “new leadership now.”
“Time to move forward and win again,” Mr. Cunningham wrote on Twitter.
Even
Democrats who are not openly antagonistic toward Ms. Pelosi
acknowledged that a decade of Republican attacks had taken a toll: “It’s
pretty difficult to undo the demonization of anyone,” said
Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey.
In some respects, the sniping over the Democrats’ campaign message mirrors a larger divide in the Democratic Party,
dating back to the 2016 presidential primaries and earlier. Senator
Bernie Sanders and his supporters have pressed Democrats to embrace a
more bluntly populist message, assailing wealthy special interests and
endorsing the expansion of social-welfare programs, while more moderate
Democrats in the party leadership have favored an approach closer to Mr.
Ossoff’s.
Document: Memo From the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
But
in four contested special elections in Republican districts — including
two, in Kansas and Montana, featuring Sanders-style insurgents —
neither method provided the party with a breakthrough victory.
In
the absence of a smashing win that might have settled the
left-versus-center debate, Democrats may face a longer process of
internal deliberation before they settle on an approach that is broadly
acceptable in the party.
The
goal of the party’s efforts so far, lawmakers said, has been to come up
with an economic narrative that can cut across regional and ideological
lines, that candidates can embellish with local and personal
flourishes.
Republicans
followed a similar model before they captured the House in 2010, using a
broad but cutting slogan — “Where are the jobs?” — that left candidates
ample room to match the political sensibilities of their districts.
Part
of the Democrats’ challenge now, though, is that the jobless rate has
plummeted since then and many of the districts they are targeting are a
lot like the Georgia seat: thriving suburbs filled with voters who have
only watched their portfolios grow since Mr. Trump took office.
Even
as they smarted from their defeat on Wednesday, Democrats signaled they
intend to compete across a vast swath of the country in 2018. Mr.
Luján, moving to calm the party, circulated a memo
to lawmakers and staff that declared there was “no doubt that Democrats
can take back the House next fall” in the midterm elections. He wrote
that there were six to eight dozen seats held by Republican lawmakers
that would be easier for Democrats to capture than Georgia’s Sixth.
Citing
snippets of private polling, Mr. Luján said there were Republican seats
in southern Arizona and Florida, northern New Jersey and the Kansas
City, Kan., suburbs, where Democratic challengers were already ahead of
Republican incumbents.
Democrats need to win 24 Republican-held seats in order to win control of the House.
On
the Republican side, jubilation over their victory in Georgia mixed
with lingering unease about the overall political environment. While Ms.
Handel defeated Mr. Ossoff by about 10,000 votes and nearly four
percentage points, Republican outside groups had to spend $18 million
defending a district where the party’s candidates won easily for
decades.
And
on the same night, a little-watched special election in South Carolina
gave the Republican Party another scare, as an obscure Democrat, Archie
Parnell, came within 3,000 votes of capturing a solidly Republican
congressional district, with voter turnout far behind the Georgia race.
Nick
Everhart, a Republican strategist in Ohio, said the party should not
allow its relief at having kept Democrats at bay turn into complacency.
Up to this point, he said, Republicans have been beating Democrats only
on solidly red turf.
“To
pretend that there are not serious enthusiasm-gap issues with the
G.O.P. base and more crucially, independents fleeing, is missing the
lessons that need to be learned before truly competitive seats are on
the board,” Mr. Everhart said.
Still,
the immediate aftermath of the Georgia election was plainly tougher on
the Democratic side, as the party endured a fourth special election that
ended with a better-than-usual showing by a defeated Democrat. That
pattern may put Democrats on track to gain power in the 2018 elections,
but 17 months is a long wait for a party so hungry to win.
D.
Taylor, an influential labor leader who is president of Unite Here, the
hospitality workers’ union, said the Democratic Party was “out of
excuses on its electoral performance.”
“In
red states or blue states, Democrats should be able to compete — and
win,” Mr. Taylor said in a statement. “Millions of Americans are
desperate to be led by political leaders who stand for something, are
willing to take risks, and are willing to tell the truth and engage
Americans where they live. That just isn’t happening.”
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