The Democrats Cannot Afford an Echo Chamber

David Shor

If you've been following politics and political debate in the past couple of weeks, the name "David Shor" has been inescapable.  One of the country's most prominent data scientists, Shor has worked for both President Obama and Nate Silver, and was profiled for the New York Times by Ezra Klein, who made arguments (some quite circular) about Shor's assessment that Democrats need to reassess their public policy debates, and potentially stop talking about major issues that the Democratic Party has made central to conversations (such as criminal justice, racism in America, & immigration) if they want to be able to win in places that they cannot currently do (and they need to do all this with a clock that is counting down to zero).

Shor's assessments have been, to say the least, polarizing.  Some have accused him of insensitivity or even tried to "cancel" him for some of his beliefs, namely when he brought out data that racial protests (like those that happened in the wake of the murder of George Floyd last year) can lead to a decline in support for the Democrats in future elections.  Klein tried to frame Shor's views as a devotion to "popularism," which is essentially making all of the debates that Democrats are having publicly be about issues that are popular.  This shouldn't be confused with "moderation" or "independence"-one issue that Klein repeatedly talks about is negotiating prescription drug prices, which is wildly popular with American voters, but they cannot pass through Congress specifically because of moderates like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Political theory is not my expertise, but because this conversation is so central to the 2022 & 2024 elections, I didn't want to let it fly by without comment.  To a large extent, I agree with Klein & Shor.  I do think that Democrats have struggled to connect their most popular political issues with the average voter, and instead find themselves discussing issues that are not popular, which has put them at a disadvantage with non-college educated voters, particularly white voters and Latino men.  A great example of this is Missouri in 2018, where a ballot initiative on minimum wage was on the ballot.  Democrat Claire McCaskill supported the initiative, her Republican opponent opposed it.  In the end, the ballot initiative passed, but McCaskill still lost-the campaign was not able to connect McCaskill's viewpoints enough to make the supporters of the initiative get behind her campaign even though they agreed with her.

This is a dicey conversation to have.  Shor & Klein (and, since I'm adding to the conversation here, me) are white men, and it is a bad look for white men to be having a conversation about how advocates for racial equality & immigration reform cannot take the central square in American politics, and there are aspects of Shor's work I would like more clarity on from the man himself.  Specifically the conversation around "Defund the Police" and whether or not this movement is actually hurting the cause it is espousing is a conversation I wish Shor would be more forthright in his data on.

But I do know the Senate map, both in the past decade and in the coming decade, and Shor is right to be concerned and to tell Democrats they are not prepared to have this debate.  Both Joe Biden & Donald Trump won 25 states a piece in 2020, an election where Joe Biden won 51.3% of the vote.  That's a tough goal to win every cycle, and since the Democrats are foolishly not adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia to their state count, we have to operate under the guise of winning those 25 states, and more importantly, expanding them.

Of those states, though, when it comes to the Senate, three of them (all Biden states) were won by less than 1% of the vote (Georgia, Wisconsin, & Arizona).  Five more were won by less than 5% of the vote, three for Biden (Pennsylvania, Nevada, & Michigan) and two for Trump (North Carolina & Florida).  If we expand the definition of "close states" to the loosest conversations (10% or less), we only add three more states for each side (Minnesota, New Hampshire, & Maine for Biden, Texas, Ohio, & Iowa for Trump).  The point here is that the Democrats have far more states that are "swing-y" than the Republicans do.  Practically speaking, the Democrats have six states that are deeply achievable for the Republicans in a bad cycle (PA/GA/AZ/WI/MI/NV) while the Republicans have at least three (NC/FL/TX), and the Democrats struggle mightily in all of them despite plentiful recent opportunities.

Sens. Raphael Warnock & Jon Ossoff (D-GA)

The way that Shor argues the Democrats can win here is right (in a vacuum).  Focusing on popular issues is how, for example, Jon Ossoff & Raphael Warnock pulled off upsets in Georgia in January (Shor points to 2012 quite often in his arguments, but 2021 Georgia is a far better comparison for modern politics).  They ran on bread-and-butter economic issues, specifically about the Covid-19 recovery, and about Trump's attacks on elections.  They did not make "Defund the Police" central to their campaigns (both Ossoff & Warnock oppose the movement), and largely focused on issues that were extremely popular with a wide swath of the electorate.

This isn't always possible-if there's a gap in Shor's logic, it's that the shifting Democratic electorate (moving toward a more news-friendly, intellectual progressivism) has made it impossible to ignore the activist wings of the party, because they are so central to the conversation.  If Hillary Clinton had ignored Trump's attacks on Mexican immigrants in 2016, she would've been crucified & hurt by the left-Shor doesn't allow for that in his assessments.  Also, the media wouldn't have allowed it.  Trump opened up a new chapter in American politics because he was someone without shame or morals, and someone without shame or morals is able to manipulate a media focused on fake conspiracies & ratings controversies, and a media too stupid or greedy to stop feeding such a machine.  There's a reason that we all know the word "antivaxxers," and while it's partially about Trump, it's mostly because the media saw a way to make a settled issue into a "both sides" issue that would make each part of the American political process irate (and keep watching).

But if the Democrats are going to win in these states (like Texas & Florida), which include deeply Hispanic/Latino communities who are leery of words like "socialist," they need to rethink branding.  It needs to be less about what they believe, and more about branding.  Mark Kelly is to the left of Kyrsten Sinema-he still gets moderate credentials, mostly by focusing on economic issues & supporting popular policy.  Kelly's wife is one of the country's most prominent gun control advocates, he shares those beliefs on an issue that's polarizing in Arizona.  It's something he rarely brings up in his campaign ads.  The same can be said for Ossoff, for Warnock, for Jacky Rosen or Bob Casey.  Democrats need to stop being in a Twitter echo-chamber of self-flagellation when it comes to deciding whether or not a brand or an issue is being put forth enough, because ultimately electing a Mark Kelly or a Jacky Rosen or a Bob Casey is exponentially better for the party than letting someone like Martha McSally or Rick Scott hold those seats.  Dismissing David Shor because he doesn't immediately cater to your own worldview is dangerous not just because he might be right (and in some ways, he very much is), but also because Democrats do not have enough people in our echo chamber to sustain majorities (and democracy) while we figure out our problems.