No Apologies, No Regrets
The election is over. Monday morning quarterbacks have already started to engage in “what if’ism.” Nowhere is this more pervasive than in the 5th Congressional District. As with all versions of post-election analysis, the focus is on finding someone to blame. Defeat is defined as whether or not the office holder is Red or Blue. Rarely does such second-guessing focus on the bigger picture. Never in these conversations do values get considered. Nor are long-term consequences factored in. A defeat today could well pave the path for a greater victory tomorrow.
Today, the restructured 5th Congressional District is Red. It wasn’t flipped because it didn’t exist before this election. The prior 5th CD had a 7%-plus Democratic registration advantage. The new 5th has a 1% edge, which was eliminated by the conditions that accompany a midterm. The second-guessers are claiming that if the former incumbent in the old 5th CD was the candidate in the new 5th CD it would still be Blue. Would it? And, at what cost?
The most probable outcome would be that the new 5th CD in a midterm election would be Red under almost any circumstance. This probability is increased, not decreased, if the former Representative was the candidate. Why? A number of reasons. Foremost is turnout. To win in the new 5th CD, any candidate has to motivate the base. Given the number of new Neighborhood leaders who were inspired and motivated by our actual candidate; and, given the unprecedented level of coordination between the campaign and our Neighborhood Leader program, the candidate chosen in the primary was the best candidate for the situation. Our County’s Democratic turnout exceeded state levels. Jamie exceeded the computer modeling predictions by 7%.
What would have happened if the former Representative was the candidate in the new 5th CD? With fewer volunteers and a more media-based campaign, the most likely scenario would be that the four state-level races (two Oregon State Senator and two Oregon House of Representative seats), which are now within a few hundred votes in our favor, would have been lost. Yes, any campaign can have coattails.
But there is an even more important consequence. By endorsing and supporting Jamie, the Party stayed true to its values. The most likely reason Kurt lost in the primary was his refusal to support the Party’s primary legislative agenda. His actions last summer to undermine Biden’s legislative agenda put in motion a number of reactions in the counties comprising the new 5th CD.
In Clackamas County, a small group of Clackamas County Democratic Precinct Committee People had several ad hoc conversations. The initial topic was Party discipline. What was a political party to do when one of its elected officials voted against the Party’s platform and helped foment an action that more than any other action doomed the Democratic President’s central legislative agenda?
This was neither a litmus nor purity test, but a far more practical “real politic” question of party discipline. If a Political Party develops a platform, if a Presidential candidate runs on that platform and is elected on the central issues in that platform and an elected Party member publicly acts to undermine it: Should there be a consequence?
The conversation among PCP’s eventually centered around the notion that such behaviors undermine the entire Party platform and betray every voter who votes for the Party’s candidates. If a Party claims to stand for a set of values and those values are abandoned or ignored during the legislative process, then such a Party should expect a more jaded electorate and eventually to face electoral defeat or at least to lose sizable voting blocs. We experienced this in 1980, when a larger bloc of the working class voted for Reagan. We saw it again in 2016. Was part of that vote racist? Of course. Was some of that vote frustration from workers being abandoned by the Democratic Party who consistently failed to pass labor law reform, immigration reform and climate change protections? Of course.
The end result was and is a growing lack of trust between voters and Party.
But what about the “Big Tent” notion that the Party is big enough for everyone? For that to happen everyone in the Tent must share the same values in order to develop compromises that advance all. If any one group inside the tent vetoes legislation that is core to others in the Tent, distrust and division is created. This is magnified if those who gain from such actions are those least in need and those who suffer are those most in need.
FDR’s Big Tent was something for everyone in need: workers, women, children and the poor. Yet, the Big Tent never included everyone. Lest we forget, FDR coined the phrase, “economic royalists” to describe those who put private interest and private profit ahead of the public interest. FDR taxed the rich to pay for his programs. He also signed into law social security, banking regulations, labor protections and massive public-works projects. He was willing to defend those in need. He was ready to defend the public welfare. And he was very clear what that meant. “Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.
The values at the foundation of the legislation of FDR, JFK, LBJ and now Biden are linked. They are the core values of the Democratic Party. Undermining Biden’s Build Back Better legislation placed Rep. Schrader outside the tent. FDR might have said that he put privileged enterprise in front of an opportunity for a decent living for a majority of Americans. In defense of those core Democratic Party values, four counties in the new 5th CD, independently of each other, voted to endorse a candidate who embodied those values.
What the County Parties didn’t anticipate was that the Representative would advocate against the Party and overtly support an alternative candidate for Governor while doing nothing to support the Party’s choice for the new district. Also unanticipated was the shifting of resources (about $500,000) out of the 5thCD by the DCCC during the last weeks of the campaign. Had the Primary turned out differently there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Jamie would have worked to deliver Deschutes County for Rep. Schrader.
This seat is Republican today because the National Democratic Party failed to listen to the County Parties. They substituted their national election expertise for local knowledge. The 5th CD is Republican today because the national Republican Party dumped tons of money into the 5th CD, and the Democratic National Party did not. The 5th CD is Republican today because too many Democrats decided not to vote in a midterm election. The 5th CD is Republican today because the SCOTUS mistakenly ruled that money is speech, and that speech doesn’t have to be either honest or accurate.
Where would we rather be today? Would we want a Republican 5th CD where the defeated Democratic candidate’s values were in conflict with those of the Party or where our candidate, who helped build and expand the base for the Party, endorsed and advocated our values? To do anything else, to put power before values would be to emulate a MAGA Republican. Neighborhood Leaders do not knock on doors and write letters for specific candidates but rather for the values of the Party. More than two-thirds of PCP’s did not vote against a specific candidate but rather they voted based on the values those two individuals represented.
Do we all wish the outcome would have been different? Do we wish that Tina would have carried Clackamas County? Do we wish that all our County nonpartisan candidates would have won? Do we wish gas was cheaper and inflation lower? Of course, and much more. But we have no regrets and make no apologies. And even if we had known the outcome in advance, it was still the correct choice. We defended the values of our Party. We kept the faith with our voters, and we communicated a clear message to the next generation of voters: We are the party that can be trusted to defend its values. And those values are inclusive and based on the government playing a positive role in the lives of all: what FDR labeled as creating “social justice through social action.”