This week on The Brief: Crucial statehouse races & how Democrats can strengthen their messaging
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This week on The Brief, host Kerry Eleveld was joined by guest host Carolyn Fiddler, Daily Kos’ communications director and nation’s foremost authority on state legislatures. They discussed important ways to shape Democrats’ messaging as we head towards November with Joe Sudbay, a host on SiriusXM Progress and political strategist with over thirty years of experience at both the state and federal level, who shared his thoughts on important messaging opportunities to help Democrats improve their chances in this year’s midterms.
With so much at stake in this year’s midterm elections, Eleveld and Fiddler wanted to highlight some of the really great opportunities for Democrats across the country to focus on and offer listeners important information that they can use to make informed decisions about the issues they care most about. Eleveld pointed out that the true power to create change lies with voters: “The [real] heroes in 2018 and 2020 were voters—a coalition of white, Black, Latino, and Asian American voters who came together to save the country from a slide towards fascism under Republican rule. We can do it again, and we want you to have the knowledge of what we’re seeing so that you can use it, too, in your everyday lives.”
Fiddler had just returned from assisting with a candidate training in Pennsylvania—a key midterm swing state that’s home to a major gubernatorial race, a “hugely consequential” U.S. Senate race for an open seat, and state legislative races this cycle—and offered updates from this critical battleground.
In Harrisburg, Fiddler joined forty or so candidates running for state legislative office for the first time and learning how to run a winning campaign:
This is the first cycle in at least twenty years where the maps for the state legislative maps are remotely competitive. These candidates have a lot on their plates … These maps are new, fairly recently settled. Democrats do have to pick up a decent number of seats, and it might be a multi-cycle prospect, but we said that about Virginia in 2017, too … but [in Virginia] it definitely changed the landscape dramatically to have Democrats within one seat in the majority, and working working towards that in Pennsylvania will absolutely be a worthwhile endeavor, even if they don’t win the majority this time around—which, there is a path. It is narrow, but it does exist.
“The energy in the room was just really, really great,” she added.
Fiddler also named fracking and education as major issues. “There are a lot of bad things Democrats have to invest time in rolling back when they do win back power.”
“Does it help that Democrats and President Biden ushered through a big bill to address infrastructure needs? Is that like a help to candidates?” Eleveld asked.
Fiddler highlighted the need for Democrats to be more vocal and aggressive in taking credit for their accomplishments and all of the work they do:
It is, especially if Biden’s approval numbers improve by the fall. The credit-taking is a big deal, and Democrats are notoriously bad at it … There are things for which Democrats can claim credit in Pennsylvania through this bill, but in terms of how much it’s like, ‘Hey, Biden did this great thing for us,’ you know, that sort of inserting state legislative campaigns into the national narrative on purpose may or may not happen. The landscape is still taking shape. Republicans are going to attach Democrats to Biden anyway, it’s what Republicans do—they nationalize everything, because they don’t have anything local to run on.
“Nationally, they don’t have much to run on, either,” Eleveld quipped.
Sudbay then joined Eleveld and Fiddler to share more about how “Republicans keep handing Democrats issues on silver platters” and why he wants to see Democrats claim credit more aggressively for what they do to address these issues.
According to Sudbay, cracks in the GOP are being exposed on a near daily basis: “Republicans are in extreme disarray—I mean, they’re fighting amongst themselves all the time. Mitch McConnell fighting with Rick Scott, some of them hate Trump but they’re afraid … Trump dumps candidates he doesn’t support. A bunch of Republicans in Georgia trying to defeat Herschel Walker because he’s kind of a damaged candidate. So they’re all fighting amongst themselves.
“There’s almost like a rule in the media, you know, if Democrats are holding a press conference and someone sneezes, the Capitol Hill press corps immediately describes [it as] ‘Democrats in disarray,’” he noted.
“You know, it does feel like that’s the narrative as opposed to Republicans clearly infighting just consistently over the last year,” Fiddler agreed.
Sudbay believes it is incumbent upon Democrats to lean in on good news and to take credit for the good things they do:
[Democrats] are doing good things. Is it everything we want? No. But is it markedly better than if Donald Trump had won [in 2020]? Absolutely. The vaccine rollout was amazing. We more or less have COVID under control—not as much as we want to but … that’s an important move forward. We have Democrats trying really hard to pass good legislation. Last week alone, on Thursday, Democrats in the House passed a bill to cap insulin prices. That is a real issue for the American people. Now it’s going to the Senate.
Sudbay listed off other things to be excited about, including House Democrats passing federal marijuana legislation and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s coming confirmation.
Eleveld believes voters need to be given more positive reasons to care and get more involved:
Thinking about how you can talk to people about these issues [is] kind of interesting … for a lot of people, that just shuts them down—hearing that things are so bad that they’re about to collapse, or hearing your worst fear—it just kind shuts them down. It’s too overwhelming … [we need to] make them feel empowered. Make them feel like can be part of something that’s bigger than themselves, and they have the power to vote, they have the power to get involved, they have the power to enact the change that they want to see through casting their vote, knocking on doors to help other people cast their vote, writing them, calling them … giving money, whatever their gig is.
She also called out this opportunity for older generations to lead the way and make a difference for younger generations:
As [a] Gen Xer … this is our chance to make a difference. We haven’t had a chance to make a difference for future generations yet; this is our chance to do it. But we can do something real here—we can do something fundamental. We can do something important for future generations … It feels like a slog, but if you invest in it, if you say, ‘Look, this is really important that we win this fight,’ and god, if you want to see people who are fighting the fight, look over at Ukraine. Look at what the folks there are enduring in order to fight for freedom, in order to fight against what a horror show President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is. We can do this, and this is our chance to really make a difference. I invite everybody to get involved.
You can watch the full episode below:
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