Arthur Solomon

I’m an unabashed political junkie. I have been as long as I can remember. And while I made my name in the PR business as a sports marketing publicity specialist, few people know that I have worked on many none sports programs including political campaigns, ranging from local, to statewide to presidential ones.

Thus, like all the political pundits who are expressing their opinions on television, I too have one on why the Democratic Party is still reeling from their November 2 shellacking. In my opinion, despite all the hours listening to the self-designated TV political experts giving various reasons for the election outcome, the causes can be summed up by the time you are finished reading this analysis (if you do). Then instead of listening to the all-the-same gibberish on the various political shows, you can do something much more beneficial. Unlike the know-it-alls on TV, I’ll let you decide what’s beneficial for you. That’s because I don’t encourage bloc voting or bloc thinking, like the various political special interest groups that make you feel like you’re living in the 17th century or that you think like a Neanderthal if you only agree with 90% of what they want. To paraphrase a well-known idiom: With special interests groups it’s “Their way or the highway.”

To summarize, there are six main reasons for the Democrats’ defeats that they must solve if they don’t want what happened on November 2, 2021 to be repeated on November 8, 2022.

• Democratic voter turnout declines in mid-year elections.
• They must broaden their appeal to non-college educated voters (which means recognizing that lenient policies toward many criminals, a major talking point of the far left elements of the Democratic Party, affects voting, as does their political correctness stance, calls for defunding the police and accusing everyone of being a racist if they voice an opposing opinion about policies affecting people of color.
• Democratic candidates must also come to grips that for many voters “values” are more, or at least as important, as policies. This does not mean that Democrats have to abandon their liberal policies. It means that they should take into consideration the concerns of “value” voters that have abandoned the party. It means that the far left wing of the Democratic Party should be more open to compromise when initially drafting legislation and not insist in all or nothing policies.
• They must rebuild their party structure and propose legislation that appeals to voters in rural areas and not depend only on suburban and urban voters. 
• They should follow the GOP playbook and conduct their intraparty disputes in private, not on TV.
• And most important: Most American voters don’t like zealots of the left or right. 

In the 2020 presidential election, voters defeated the zealot in chief, Donald Trump.

In the November 2 election most voters again voted against the zealots. But this time it was the demands of the Democratic progressive caucus that was the target.

Despite what GOP politicians and most of the cable political gang are saying the results of November 2 does not necessarily indicate a Republican wave that will drown the Democrats next year.  

Don’t take my word for it.  People my age remember when the Republican Party was doomed forever after LBJ crushed Barry Goldwater and again when Richard Nixon was forced to resign from his presidency. And remember how the same prognosticators who now are telling you to believe their expertise predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide in 2016?

What the recent election means to me is that the Democrats have to stop giving into every demand from their self-interest caucuses. 

They have a year to do so. And in politics, a year is like a century. During my political days, and even more recently, I witnessed many “sure winners” who were defeated. Some were projected to win until they didn’t.

In 1992, when he was advising Bill Clinton in his successful run for the White House, James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” To a major extent that’s still true today. Bread and butter politics are very important to individual voters and must always be a top line talking point for a candidate.

If I was advising Democratic candidates, I’d tell them to lessen their campaigning on issues backed by woke and other pressure groups and mainly stress four issues: The economy, health care, the dangers to our democracy, and the Covid-19 situation.  Those are issues that everyone can relate to, whether they are liberal or conservative or middle of the road voters.  Everything else should be considered “and in addition” issues during the election season. The zealots won’t like it, but they are not as important as independent voters in determining election outcomes, and their “must issues,” AOC and gang, should be treated as add-ons during political campaigning by national and statewide candidates, exceptions being during interviews, at the end of a speech, during discussions or at town hall meetings. 

The national and statewide candidates should campaign in broad strokes – like FDR did when pushing his New Deal programs and LBJ did when explaining what his Great Society agenda would accomplish. (Or like Donald Trump did when campaigning in a demagogic manner with his Make America Great Again motto.)The nitty- gritty of various legislative proposals should be left to the local candidates and the national candidate’s surrogates.

Finally, a strong personal belief:  Voters should not base their opinions on what they hear while watching the political shows on TV, or from reading columns like this.

The only way to get the complete story is by reading the hard news articles in major print publications. In my case, it’s the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. And remember, editorial writers and columnists are the equivalent of TV pundits, though more knowledgeable about the details of issues.

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About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com or artsolomon4pr@optimum.net.