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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Democratic Postmortem

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses issues, organization, and voter demographics.

Alexander Burns at NYT:

Democrats defeated President Donald J. Trump and captured the Senate last year with a racially diverse coalition that delivered victories by tiny margins in key states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

In the next election, they cannot count on repeating that feat, a new report warns.

A review of the 2020 election, conducted by several prominent Democratic advocacy groups, has concluded that the party is at risk of losing ground with Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters unless it does a better job presenting an economic agenda and countering Republican efforts to spread misinformation and tie all Democratic candidates to the far left.

The 70-page report, obtained by The New York Times, was assembled at the behest of three major Democratic interest groups: Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund, which promote Black and Hispanic candidates. It appears to be the most thorough act of self-criticism carried out by Democrats or Republicans after the last campaign.

The document is all the more striking because it is addressed to a victorious party: Despite their successes, Democrats had hoped to achieve more robust control of both chambers of Congress, rather than the ultra-precarious margins they enjoy.

From the report:

  1. Voters of color are persuasion voters who need to be convinced
  2.  Republican attempts to brand Democrats as " radicals worked
  3. Polling was a huge problem - even after 2016 adjustments
  4.  COVID-19 affected everything
  5. Year-round organizing worked, as did cross- Party collaboration
  6. Our hopes for 2020 were just too high