Early Reactions to the Democrats’ Rebranding

The reactions are in and the response is “meh”. The editors of the New York Times in a piece that is more anti-Republican than it is pro-Democratic take the opportunity to implicitly make a call for bipartisanship while slamming the Republicans they’d need to seal the deal:

The Democratic agenda’s political purpose is clear enough. Party leaders realize, as Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, wrote on Monday, that they’ve lost the last two elections in part because they “failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program for the middle class and those working hard to get there.”

But articulating a program is one thing; persuading the party in power to work with them is quite another.

It cannot be stated often enough that Republicans have spent over eight years doing little more than obstructing Democratic initiatives. That tactic seemed to work for them politically. But elected representatives are ultimately judged on what they deliver.

I actually agree with that last sentence. The problem that Democrats face is that in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, Connecticut, Detroit, and many other state and local governments where they’ve held sway for decades what they’re delivering are debt and decline. Even with an acquiescent press you can’t expect to be judged solely on your victories, especially when your failures are more dramatic. They’ve got to learn that there’s more to good governance than higher taxes and more debt.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson found the Democrats’ “Better Deal” altogether too tepid:

I’m still waiting to hear the “bold solutions” that Democrats promise. I can think of one possibility: Why not propose some version of truly universal single-payer health care?

Yes, that would be risky. But it might generate real excitement among the Democratic base — and also grab the attention of some of the GOP’s working-class supporters. Incrementalism is not the answer. Democrats need to go big or go home.

echoed by the Washington Post‘s editors:

Even allowing for the degree of difficulty, however, the Democratic response, as sketched so far, is less than compelling: Its declared premise, that the economy is “rigged” against middle-class people, has a basis in the reality of Washington special-interest politics but seems better calculated to placate the party’s ascendant left wing than to start a serious policy conversation. American capitalism needs reform, not delegitimization. The Democrats offer one interesting idea in this respect — beefed up antitrust efforts to help bring down prices of airline tickets and the like. Otherwise, they rehash ideas that Mr. Trump himself has embraced at least rhetorically (massive new infrastructure spending; tougher negotiations between Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies) or play small ball (a tax credit for business to do job training).

The Democratic message includes nothing, yet, on trade, a major omission, given Mr. Trump’s effective exploitation of the issue. Yet perhaps it was better to remain silent than to admit the contradiction between House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (Calif.) promise that Democrats would confront “rising everyday costs” and the higher consumer prices that would result from the protectionism favored by both Mr. Trump and the Democratic left. Democrats also had nothing to say about tax reform, possibly because the clearest need is for a more internationally competitive (i.e., lower) corporate rate, which is what President Barack Obama correctly concluded, but populists abhor. Democrats are right that the United States hungers for a more equitable and effective alternative to GOP economics; obviously, though, they’re still working on it.

However, the reaction of the day goes to the Wall Street Journal‘s James Freeman:

It seems that the new rebranding campaign may be useful, except in many of the places where Democrats need to win.

will circling the wagons, conjoined with Republicans falling on their faces, be enough to recover the literally thousands of offices in legislatures the Democrats have lost over the last eight years? That seems to be what Sen. Schumer is banking on.