Much has been made recently of the need for Democrats in Florida to “engage moderate voters,” in the wake of poor electoral performances in 2014. No question exists that moderates have a role to play, particularly in rural areas where the party has seen a complete collapse in support since the mid/late 1990’s. But it would be foolish to believe that the Democratic message in this state has been more liberal than centrist. The Democratic brand has in many cases simply been identified as “anti-Republican” or based largely around social issues. The important issues of economic and social justice have been largely abandoned by the Democrats in this state, perhaps due to a misreading of the electorate and populace. Other factors in the party’s unwillingness to embrace progressive values revolve around the influence of special interests on elected officials who call themselves Democrats.
At times Democrats do engage on these issues and the FDP has — especially in the last past few years — driven the messaging home well when engaged. But all too often, probably due to pressure from elected officials and others the party is not as involved in these matters as required to be a truly values-based party. But I personally feel this is more a reflection of elected officials who are disconnected from everyday reality and the needs of their constituents than a failure by the FDP.
The idea of “swing voters,” someone who consciously splits their tickets or tries to balance some issues against others, is a distinctly dated concept. In the 1990s these voters existed en masse especially here in Florida, but today with few exceptions people who turn out do so to vote down the line for the party that better represents their values.
Voters these days are driven by emotion on one or two big issues. Even if they describe themselves as “moderates,” chances are very good they vote based on one or two issues where they are either clearly conservative or clearly liberal. This is particularly true in midterm elections. Lower voter turnout in midterm elections among Democrats from my vantage point can be traced largely if not wholly to a party brand that does not identify with the values it campaigns on during Presidential years. The party’s messaging also has consistently failed to mirror the voices of leading progressive groups. This is a problem as well on the national level, where the corporate bent of the Democratic Party is worse than it is here in Florida.
The theory that the party must be more moderate and avoid as much as possible topics such as economic justice, a living wage, corporate responsibility, health care, environmental preservation, climate change and gender equality in the workforce often develop thanks to the types of contributors individual Democratic elected officials cultivate, and the sorts of folks they hang around in Tallahassee.
As discussed in our piece on Broward County, the transactional nature of the county’s Democratic operatives and leaders has disaffected those interested in progressive causes and social justice from elements within the party. So even in places which appear on paper to be more progressive than the rest of the state, the influence of money and special interest access has clouded the judgement of many Democrats.
In a six square-block area around the capitol, the Democratic legislators and other elected officials who come up during session for various “days” might feel they have to kowtow to political ‘experts’ who are paid hired guns that claim to know strategically what works best for the party. They may believe that these guns-for-hire have all the answers when they being wined and dined by them or other corporate lobbyists. But in the rest of the state, the real grassroots and those struggling to get by every day are looking for aggressive leadership from the Democrats.
The FDP can only do so much even if they try — it is the elected officials who run as Democrats, not the party itself, who have time and again sought creative ways to avoid discussion on real issues. It is these same elected officials that for the most part avoid things that drive media also including criminal justice reform, gun safety, civil rights and racial issues including law enforcement over zealousness, and most discussion of immigration. I reiterate that I firmly believe President Obama’s ill-conceived punt on immigration in order to placate moderate U.S. Senators running for reelection cost Charlie Crist the governorship, while every single senator the delay was meant to help lost decisively. We can continue hand wringing about the other numerous and valid reasons Crist lost, but this was single most decisive factor in my mind. The slump in Hispanic turnout also led to a wipeout down-ballot for Democrats throughout the state.
Last month, Darryl Rouson who was ousted as House Democratic Leader-designee only 16 months ago told the Tampa Bay Times the following:
“Our actions will determine whether we are an irrelevant debating team,” Rouson said. “Or a collaborative, substantive political force with a policy agenda embraced by the majority of Floridians.”
As a progressive and someone who believes in multi-party democracies which Florida has ceased to be for some time, Rouson’s comments describe precisely why the Democratic Party has lost its way in Florida AND why so many progressives are thankfully that he was ousted as Minority Leader-designee. Rouson and his allies are more interested in status within the legislative community and acceptance by Tallahassee-based lobbyists and the GOP leadership than in growing the Democratic Party and representing the values of our party. This leads to a mentality that a party based on values that embrace what the citizens of this state need is a threat to the continued corporate and special interest control of Florida.
Low voter turnout in off years is in my opinion largely due to Democrats disengagement on economic issues and those of social justice. But with the push coming from Tallahassee insiders, lobbyists and corporate interests throughout the default solution for Democrats is always to “move to the middle.” If moving right were a viable solution the Democrats would have been long in control of both houses of the legislature and the state cabinet.
Moderation in governing can only come if the minority party stays true to its values and holds firm. A move to the middle by the Democrats would likely not improve the party’s electoral prospects and would cede important positioning in the effort to temper the excessive conservatism of the governing party and its special interest allies. Democrats must remember this when approaching the coming election cycles. The demographic changes in this state and nation favor the Democrats if they stay true to the values which the majority of citizens of this country have demonstrated they believe in.
The Florida Squeeze 
Great article. Keep it up
Barbara
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
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You’ve written some good pieces through the years and some shit ones too.
But I think this is the most important you’ve written.
If our party makes the decision to move to the middle before the next election we will be disconnecting with the voters we need most in the state and we will probably break our faith with so many of those people who are getting sick and tired of our failure to really fight for them.
Get this article around PLEASE!
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Let’s all become socialists running blacks and women for every office… Kartik’s wet dream!!!
Back here in the real world we need to work to win. That means going as far to the middle as possible. Grabbing those people in the middle that have been abandoned by the Republican drift to the tea party right.
Our liberalism has lost us elections.
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As I have pointed out in this article the Democrats have failed to embrace a truly progressive/liberal view on so many matters. Democrats consistently fail to embrace liberal causes on so many issues which activate citizens and media. If anything the left’s disaffection from the Democrats causes lower turnout and losses.
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The truth you’re telling is racist and sexist. Please go away.
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I hope Kartik Krishnaiyer becomes the 2018 Dem
governor nominee. Then we can push the communist manifesto on this state.
I am a democrat but we’ve lost because we are wrong on guns, wrong on religion, wrong on jobs and job creation and wrong on minority set asides.
We are close to being wiped out nationally also. It’s not just here!
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Cute…
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Kartik:
When it comes to the Crist campaign, how much of a negative impact do you think was felt because Crist would not debate Sen. Rich? Keep in mind that Crist was new to the Democratic Party, while Sen. Rich was the standard bearer for much of the Party faithful. She was in the House, Senate and chosen Senate Democratic Leader by her own colleagues.
The FDP was no better by not allowing her five minutes to speak at their grand dinner even before Crist became a candidate.
Voters look forward to debates. It’s when they get to see how well their candidate preforms under the hot lights and the pressure to think fast and make their points. People still make their candidate decisions by listing to campaign debates. Ignoring a person of standing such as Sen. Rich was not only a mistake, but I believe it built resentment toward Crist and many voters stayed home because of that. The Broward turnout was anemic.
People may remember that President Nixon spoke of a silent majority. These are the people that make their way in life without making a great deal of noise. These are the people that think before they speak. The ones that listen first.
Florida voters did not get to hear a Democratic Primary debate and it turned them off… and it was not limited to just South Florida.
So sad of the lost opportunity.
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I agree that Crist’s decision not to debate had negative ramifications. This shows once again the shortsightedness of some party leadership and the failure of Crist to really grasp how things are done in the Democratic Party.
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The lack of the debate did not affect the Progressives. We held our noses and voted for Charlie, because of court appointments, school vouchers, and helping the Middle Class. Those “middle of the road” people…who have NO standards to uphold, stayed home.
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I hardly think Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ bears any analogy to Nan Rich’s supporters.
If anything, Nan’s presence was disproportionately amplified by her handful of vociferous Broward activists and propped up by the mysterious out-of-state money behind Progressive Choice.
Beyond that, as Matt Isbell has ably shown, most of her votes from outside of Broward were protest votes: http://mcimaps.com/nan-rich-favorite-daughter-of-the-dixiecrats/.
Whether Nan was disrespected by the party is debatable but the facts are 1) they paid for her staff and she still made her entire campaign about insider resentment and backbiting, 2) as folks like Susan Smith will attest, that dinner had already gone on forever and everyone in that room was glad they didn’t have to listen to another hour of speechifying, and 3) the arithmetic was just never, ever close to being there for her.
There was no path to victory. Without Charlie (about whom I had my misgivings, which I’ve expressed in writing here), Dems end up with 40-43% of the vote for governor just like the other Cabinet races.
She was a footnote to 2014, not a bellwether, despite being given resources and plenty of time to do something with them. She never really wanted to win, or if she did, had a funny way of showing it.
Democrats have to and will take a serious look at what happened this cycle and they will be doing base voters like myself a disservice if they spend more than five minutes thinking about Nan Rich.
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How do you, or Matt, know that it was a pure protest vote against Crist and that there are not other explanatory factors?
Matt’s research does not include any controls whatsoever that can rule out other factors. He is using aggregate-level data to answer a question that requires survey research (which is whether a voter is voting for Rich out of protest against Crist). There is no “protest against Crist” aggregate-level data available. The only way that this would be available at the aggregate level is, possibly, if there was a recall, which is not even possible in a Democratic primary.
This is just a guess with no empirical backing whatsoever. Basically, he is noting an observation without showing further evidence of any casual relationship. You can show relationships using aggregate-level data to possibly explain economic voting, something that Lewis-Beck has done for years in the US (using both survey and aggregate level data), as well as Nadeau and Blais in 1993 and 1995 using a very simplistic model to explain Canadian election outcomes. Economy (usually using unemployment as the measure) and vote totals are two easily observable aggregate-level data. Once you add that “it is a protest vote”, then you are adding your opinion (as opinions can only be measured with survey research) without any survey data to back it up, therefore not showing any casual relationship whatsoever. Yes, it is an accurate observation (that Nan did well in those counties), but the lack of any control variables or appropriate data to measure voter dissatisfaction makes the research empirically weak at best.
Also, the experiment produces a number of threats to internal validity. As I mentioned with the controls, Matt has not ruled out anything else, thus the relationship he is observing could be totally spurious. Also, I am not sure of his leaning during the Democratic primary, but there might also be some experimenter bias. And again, there is really no indication that these are “protest votes”, only pure assumption. So, again, he argument is weak at best.
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Your strategy would permanently cost us North Florida and some of the suburbs we need to win. In theory we could make up those votes in Broward County and among Hispanic voters and African-Americans. But it is just a theory.
But your comments about Democratic legislators elected officials and the closeness to lobbyists and special interests are spot on. Well argued and articulated. You’re right on the money.
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North Florida is like 5% of the State’s electorate. Not worth the time.
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This article is the best yet in this series of yours.
Keep it up!
Mail copies to every Dem legislator. They should all be reading DA SQUEEZE anyway but if they aren’t they need to read comprehend this before they screw us in the session and then argue all summer we need to run “winnable” candidates.
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This us a great read but I could sum it up without the long narrative-
Voter turnout drops in off years because democrats insist on placating angry white makes. So everyone else doesn’t turn out and the white makes stay with the real white male party.
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How can the democrats get any more liberal?
Pot dispensers on every corner?
Every company has to pay 75% in taxes?
If you chip down a tree you go to jail?
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Who are you? Not a democrat I’m sure. Your diatribe is strictly tea bag mentality, so I don’t know why you are even on this blog. Obviously you have too much time on your hands.
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This is your best article EVER!
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Yeah run hard left and talk about people who can’t vote.
I feel sad for the families but if you want to hitch the party to law breakers and cop killers we will never win ever again.
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Don’t forget the democrats complicity on gun issues also. Stand Your Ground?
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This is a dangerous article. I believe the party pushing left is a very bad thing if we want to build a majority. The small fringe of angry activists, minority pressure groups and bloggers like you who have worked for leftist groups in the past do not represent the way forward. We cannot keep losing white males and win. Take a page out of Gwen Graham’s book. Moderation wins.
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If you think swing voters don’t exist why isn’t every election exactly the same???
People split tickets all the time!
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“…why isn’t every election exactly the same???”
Turnout.
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This silliness would cost us any real ability to win a majority . Charlie Crist lost because voters in north Florida abandoned him. That was because he went hard left. This author and operative was praising his class war economic rhetoric. Guess what? That is why Rick Scott won! People aspire to be reach not poor. Telling people they are poor and rich people suck only losses you friends and elections.
Sorry Kartik but you are so wrong on this. So terribly wrong.
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Honestly, I know you are a paid flak and ought just to disengage from these conversations where you leave provocative comments under this handle in order to make those who aren’t feeding from the trough like you appear to be the problem. I have banned you once previously from leaving comments and more disrespectful statements like this will lead you to be banned again.
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I meant rich not reach of course
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Running as pseudo Republicans never works. Alex Sink?
What we need is someone who people have faith in. Someone people will be fired up by.
Right now we do not have that progressive person in Florida
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I don’t think that Sink’s ideology was the reason she lost. She was just a horrible candidate.
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It’s moving to the center-LEFT not to the middle or right. We will still be progressives just smarter about the way we couch things for voters.
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A majority of the new growth in the Democratic Party has come from True-Blue pro-labor voters, who want higher wages, single-payer health care, affordable college and domestic spending vs defense spending —- When you give us Pat Murphy, another damn former-Republican who contributed to DEFEAT the Democrats in 2007 donating to the Romney campaign.. who is going to bother to vote?
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