Consider This from NPR - Stunned By Congressional Losses, Democrats Debate The Future

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Democrats went into the election expecting to gain seats in the House. Instead, they lost at least eight of them. Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger speculated about why in a Nov. 5 conference call, audio of which was obtained by The Washington Post. NPR's Juana Summers reports that the young, activist coalition that voted for Joe Biden plans to pressure his administration to deliver on bold, progressive policies. Outgoing Democratic Sen. Doug Jones tells NPR that bold action in Washington won't be possible without appealing to a broad swath of voters. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The good news for Democrats this election was the White House. The bad news was just about everywhere else. And if we are classifying Tuesday as a success from a congressional gentleman, we need to look at f***ing torn apart in 2022. That's Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger of Virginia in a conference call with House Democrats from November 5th. The audio was leaked to The Washington Post. It was a tense call because Democrats had been forecast to gain seats in the House,

expanding their majority. But instead, We lost members who shouldn't have lost. The math was brutal. At least 10 Democratic incumbents lost their races. Some in districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Democrats kept their majority, but it shrunk. Spanberger said she almost lost her own race in a district that's only been controlled by Democrats for two of the last 20 years. Spanberger flipped it blue in 2018. This year, she said, she met voters who

were wary of Democrats because of one thing. Defunding the police. She said Democrats let Republicans paint them with false attacks about socialism or defunding police. And I've heard from colleagues who have said, oh, it's the language of the street. We should respect that. If we don't mean we should defund the police, we shouldn't say that. And we need to not ever use the word socialist or socialism ever again. Because while people think it doesn't matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of that. Consider this. When Joe Biden becomes president, he won't only have to deal with the divide between parties. He'll also have to bridge a split within his own party.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, November 23rd. Since the 1980s, hip-hop and America's prisons have grown side by side. And we're going to investigate this connection to see how it lifts us up and holds us down. Hip-hop is talking about what we live, trying to live the American dream, failing at the American dream. I'm Sydney Madden. I'm Rodney Carmichael. Listen now to the Louder Than a Riot podcast from NPR Music.

Where we trace the collision of rhyme and punishment in America. It's Consider This from NPR. House Republicans gained a net of eight House seats this year. Nine races haven't been called yet. So why did the GOP do so well? Well, one version of the argument goes like this. Democrats lost in a lot of areas where President Trump was really popular. You have to say that he did a very good job of mobilizing and registering new voters this time around and driving them to the polls. Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, and she told NPR, Democratic turnout was good, but in some places, Republican turnout was just better.

We need to do more organizing all year round, not just right before the election. You know, I'm an organizer. That's how I came to Congress. And it matters when you are out organizing for four years or two years, not just 30 days. She said Democrats cut back on some field organizing this year because of the pandemic. And as for the districts Democrats lost this year? Do we have a shot of winning those districts back in 2022? Absolutely we do because Donald Trump won't be on the ballot. But we've got to keep our folks engaged.

OK, reality check. Midterm elections like 2022 usually don't go well for the party that holds the White House. And this time, that'll be the Democrats. So congressional Democrats have to figure out how to keep their voters engaged. And that means answering a question they have struggled with many times before. Do they emphasize issues that appeal to the base, even if that alienates swing voters? Or do they reach across the aisle to work with Republicans? I acknowledge, first of all, just the really hard fight that a lot of our swing district members had.

New York Democrat and progressive star Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told CNN after the election that Democrats should not abandon progressive ideas just because of Republican attacks. Very effective Republican attacks are going to happen every cycle. She says Democrats should just get better at defending themselves. For example, our digital campaigning is very weak. And this is an area where Republicans are actually quite strong. You know, President Trump, he won the 2016 election, as we know, largely on digital organizing and strategy, whereas the Democratic Party is still campaigning largely as though it's 2005. And I know a lot of us don't want to hear this, but 2005 was 15 years ago. So we can do

better. She wants the party to keep supporting policies like a Green New Deal or Medicare for All. Biden has not endorsed either of those policies. And his administration will have to work with congressional Democrats to govern with young progressive activists who are dead set on holding them accountable. My fellow Americans. NPR political reporter Juana Summers has more on that. When Joe Biden addressed the nation for the first time as president-elect, he said that his victory was supported by the broadest and most diverse coalition in history. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives, moderates, conservatives, young, old, urban, suburban, rural, gay, straight, transgender, white, Latino, Asian, Native American.

Now, Biden is facing high expectations from one big and especially diverse segment of that coalition, young voters and particularly young progressives who say they want to see him deliver on their priorities. Many of these young voters had been engaged in major social movements around gun laws, climate change, and race injustice. I think the role of these activist movements in getting young people off, you know, off the fence and into the streets or into the polling place, it can't be ignored. Ben Wessel is the executive director of NextGen America. It's really this sense of agency that young people say, there's something to rebel against, but I'm hopeful that we can fix it. According to an analysis by Circle, a research center at Tufts University,

somewhere between 50 and 52 percent of eligible voters under the age of 30 cast a ballot in November's election. At the same point in 2016, Circle estimated youth voter turnout in the low 40s. Those young voters, according to Circle's analysis, preferred Biden over Trump by a 25-point margin, and Biden received overwhelming support from young voters of color. President-elect Biden does have a mandate with young people. Maxwell Frost is the national organizing director of the student-led group March for Our Lives. The people who voted for him the most were young people. So his greatest mandate is with us. And we expect him to use that bully pulpit and to use the presidency

to educate millions of people on our issues and set an agenda that will set the foundation for change. There is a sense of urgency among young progressives, mixed with a hope that a Biden administration will be receptive to their issues. They've pointed to instances in which Biden has shifted left on issues like forgiving student debt and climate, as well as the joint policy task forces that Biden announced with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders after the Democratic primary came to an end. We've got to ensure that the president understands that young people helped deliver this victory and young people are terrified about the climate crisis.

Varshini Prakash is a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led activist group. She was a member of the Climate Focus Task Force. After Barack Obama was elected, she says activists waited too long to put pressure on him. We can't make the mistake that the climate movement made with Barack Obama in 2008. We have got to be out on the offensive on day one. The Sunrise Movement is already publicly pressuring the incoming administration to appoint progressives to key cabinet roles. But Prakash said that even if Republicans hold the Senate, Biden must still be accountable to the groups that helped him win the White House. We've also got to be clear with Joe Biden that even if he doesn't have the Senate, that is not an excuse to not do everything in his power to address the climate crisis.

Progressive leaders also warned that if Biden does not pursue their priorities, there's a risk that a generation that showed up in November may become disengaged in the future. NPR political reporter Juana Summers. While progressive activists want Democrats to take big, bold action, some members of the party say that kind of action won't be possible without first appealing to a broader coalition. In order to get things done in Washington, D.C., you're not going to be able to deliver a far right or a far left agenda. Nobody's been able to do that. Alabama Senator Doug Jones was the only incumbent Democratic senator who lost

re-election this year. And it wasn't even close. Former football coach Tommy Tuberville beat him by about 20 points. And I think when you look at the votes that we got, you're going to see that we got a good cross-section of folks that had not voted Democratic before. We just couldn't overcome the Trump presidency. Jones and I spoke about where Democrats go from here, particularly in the South, and why he believes the party needs to focus on appealing to a broader audience. You know, when you were elected in 2017, about 674,000 people voted for you. And this year, about 914,000 people voted for you, many more, and yet you lost in a landslide. So how do you interpret that? Well, I still think that I'm still going to look at it as a lot of positive things going on.

An extra 300,000 votes is a significant amount. And I think there are really solid votes. I think they're a solid base that we built. You know, when you're running in an election year that is as polarized as this one was and with the president being as popular as it was, we always knew it was going to be tough. Well, let's talk more broadly about this question of whether Democrats can turn the South blue again, because on the one hand, Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia. On the other hand, Democrats lost key Senate races in Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama. What do you think the future of the party in the South is?

Well, I think it's a very positive. I think that things are looking up. I mean, the fact that we're even having this conversation, I think, shows that there are things that people see out there as things moving for Democrats in the right direction. But at the same time, I think what's missing in a lot of these discussions, Ari, is the fact that what is the goal? How do you get to a certain goal we can disagree on, but we all agree, for instance, people need to have good healthcare. They need to have easy access to good, affordable healthcare. How you get there, we can have the policy difference. I think it's the keys to how you get to these goals. Better education, lower cost of higher education, getting people good jobs, bringing jobs back overseas. All of those are so-called populist issues. The question is how you get there. You say everybody wants good education and everybody wants good health

care, and those are not controversial positions. But the question is, do you pursue those goals with programs that Republicans could use to paint Democrats as, quote unquote, socialists? Or do you try to find something that might not be as ambitious, but might get a broader swath of of the elected officials behind it? Well, in my view, you're going to have to work to get a broader swath. It's the only way you're going to get enough people in both houses of Congress to get something passed. That's going to be difficult to do. But we didn't get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed without getting a broad swath of people coming on board to help. We didn't get the Voting Rights Act done. We didn't get the ACA even done without a broader support of that, even among

Democrats. So we can do it. It's just going to take some work. I don't want this to sound rude, but there are going to be people listening to you, thinking to themselves, he lost by 20 points. Why should we give any weight to what he has to say? And it's a fair point. It's a fair point. I can't argue with that, but all I can do is I can tell you what's on the ground. I know that the folks that I have talked to following the election, the people around the state, they're disappointed. They're sad, but they are no less enthusiastic about the prospects for the future on both a local and a statewide level. But again, it is not going to happen overnight. You've got to get into these communities and work these every day, every week, every month. You can't just

wait till and roll around an election. I think that that's been the biggest problem of Democrats in the South and other areas over the last 20, 30 years. We just go from one candidate to the next. We go from one election to the next. We really hadn't done the spade work that needs to be done. Outgoing Democratic Senator Doug Jones. His loss in Alabama makes what's about to happen across the border in Georgia even more important. Democrats need to win both Senate seats in Georgia's January 5th runoff election if they want to gain Senate control. And early voting in that election starts in just three weeks. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.