Playbook for a Democratic Comeback

Josh Kraushaar: “The seeds of Demo­crat­ic re­new­al can be found in the af­flu­ent neigh­bor­hoods of At­lanta and its north­ern sub­urbs, where a quiet protest against Don­ald Trump’s Re­pub­lic­an Party took place on Elec­tion Day. The di­verse, mod­er­ate-minded con­stitu­ents of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices Sec­ret­ary de­sign­ee Tom Price took a markedly dif­fer­ent view of Trump than work­ing-class white voters in the Rust Belt. Mitt Rom­ney car­ried this dis­trict with 61 per­cent of the vote in 2012—a seat that The Al­man­ac of Amer­ic­an Polit­ics dubbed a ‘safe Re­pub­lic­an dis­trict’—but Trump eked out just a 1-point win over Hil­lary Clin­ton in 2016.”

“The res­ults from the At­lanta sub­urbs of­fer Demo­crats a play­book for how to com­pete in the fu­ture—win over so­cially lib­er­al, fisc­ally con­ser­vat­ive voters who tra­di­tion­ally lined up with Re­pub­lic­ans. This would pair the di­verse Obama co­ali­tion with voters who have favored free mar­kets and a tough-minded for­eign policy. It would be a throw­back to the cent­rist policies of Bill Clin­ton, along with a full-throated em­brace of a di­ver­si­fy­ing Amer­ica. It would con­cede some of the white work­ing-class gains to Trump, while mak­ing an ag­gress­ive push to bring col­lege-edu­cated sub­urb­an­ites in­to the Demo­crat­ic fold.”