By Ben LaBolt, President, The Incite Agency
In the reflection of our loss, a debate has broken out within the Democratic Party about whether we focus on reconnecting with white working class voters or continue to appeal to diverse constituencies and millennials. This is a false choice — our party must be big enough to appeal to both.
I take the election results seriously. I’ve spent my career taking elections very seriously. We learned from the election that opposition to Donald Trump alone is not a sufficient organizing principle for our party — it’s got to be matched with a vision that is motivating for our supporters and inclusive enough for converts.
I have had the privilege of working for Sherrod Brown, on his first campaign for Senate, and Barack Obama, on both of his presidential campaigns. Senator Brown is known for his ability to reach so-called Reagan Democrats who had been thought to have left the party with appeals for an economy that supports the revival of middle class jobs in challenged communities. The Obama coalition will always be known as a group of constituencies as diverse as the country itself, propelled in part by younger voters. But the truth is, Senator Brown couldn’t have won without millennials and diverse constituencies, and President Obama couldn’t have won without working class voters looking for a fairer shake in the economy.
Feel good partisan boilerplate can get you through an election, but it’s not a vision for the future that will allow you to succeed over time. We should be the party willing to tell hard truths, not one that settles for the easy thing to say in the moment. Sealing our borders is not going to stop globalization, but it will impede our exports — one of the largest job creators during this administration. We have only begun to see the proliferation of technology. Our focus should be on making sure the benefits of globalization and technology are more widely shared across regions and throughout communities. […]
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Read more at The Huffington Post.