David Shor, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked on President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, believes that the highly-educated, liberal staffers that dominate the institutional Democratic Party are out of touch and too far to the left of the voters Democrats will need in order to win future elections. As a result, the Democratic Party stresses issues deemed important by highly-educated white liberals, but not so much to the moderates of different races that the Democratic Party actually needs to win over. For example: In one study, 23% of Democratic staffers reportedly thought that inequality was the biggest problem facing the country. Among voters, it was under 1% (see remarks, Electoral-vote.com).
In my opinion, Mr. Shor's assertions and conclusions have been obvious for several years. As I've stated before, the farther to the left we go, the less support we will have. "Defund the Police", "Open Borders", "Abolish ICE", and all the other radical-left rhetoric needs to be publicly denounced by the Democratic Party. To win future elections (especially in Texas), we need to focus on the issues important to most voters and adopt mainstream, centralist positions that accurately reflect the majority opinion of voters and the Democratic Party. While our base and targeted voters do care about climate change, inequality, student loan forgiveness, LGBTQ issues, and our "soft infrastructure" initiatives (e.g. paid sick leave, free junior college, expanded Medicare, etc.), those issues are not the daily focus of most voters. Currently, I believe most Texas voters are focused on inflation, the economy, violent crime, immigration enforcement (secure borders), taxes, health care (e.g. COVID-19), and our "hard" infrastructure needs (e.g. flood control, electrical grid, roads). In addition, the expanded Child Tax Credit appears to be very popular with most voters and should be extended (those funds could be used to help pay for child care). To be successful during the 2022 election cycle, our local Democratic candidates must focus on the core local issues that will help us retain, expand, and turnout our base.
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