House Dems want new message for 2016
The results from a formal survey of House Democrats are in â and lawmakers want a better political message in 2016 than the party had in November. Democrats widely believed they lacked a unified message to cut through the noise of the midterm elections, in addition to failing to appeal to the middle class or capitalize on good news about the economy, according to a copy of the surveyâs results, were released Thursday. Story Continued Below Created by Rep. Steve Israel, the new chairman of the House Democratsâ messaging arm, the survey was designed to help Democratic leaders examine what went wrong during the midterms. The party ceded 13 seats to the House GOP, putting it further into the minority than Democrats had been in decades. Already, lawmakers at a House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia are hoping to turn away from the failures of 2014 to work toward 2016, when demographics and excitement from a potential Hillary Clinton presidential ticket could give Democrats a better chance of regaining seats. During a closed-door meeting Thursday on 2016, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told lawmakers that their policies in November âglazed overâ his eyes, according to sources in the room. âI listened to your policy discussion and my eyes glazed over,â Dean told the lawmakers. âYou canât repeat them outside your Rotary Club. Keep it simple. You donât win on policy, you win on values.â And other speakers said during the breakout sessions that Democrats need to focus on growth, not redistribution, when talking to voters. The results from the survey are not shocking. Members have been griping for weeks that the partyâs message, including the wider economic message from the White House, didnât cut reach middle-class voters during a busy election cycle headlined by an unpopular President Barack Obama. In the survey, House Democrats highlighted five things that went wrong in 2014 with the partyâs message, including that lawmakers âdidnât talk enough about the middle class, jobs and economic opportunities,â the message was âtoo narrow, need[ed] broader ideas and a vision for the futureâ and not enough emphasize was put on the âeconomic progress weâve made.â For the future, the lawmakers want the partyâs election-year messaging to focus on the middle class, jobs, education, infrastructure and economic growth â topics that Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly stressed in the past month. Obama, in a speech Thursday night to the lawmakers in Philadelphia, is expected to expand on his State of the Union address to explain âhow we can invest in his vision for middle class economics by making paychecks go further, creating good jobs here in the United States, and preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages,â according to a White House official. The survey also asked lawmakers to rate issues like âhousing costs,â âeconomic security,â âeducationâ and nearly a dozen others based on how important those policies should be to the partyâs overall political strategy. The clear winner? Job creation and middle-class economic security. Those two were named by the Democrats as âcritical message prorit[ies].â Obamacare, student debt, energy and Medicare and Social Security were ranked âimportant.â Democrats also want to see a focus on infrastructure and immigration reform. Israel unveiled the results to the House Democrats during a closed-door meeting Thursday morning. Now, House Democrats need to craft a strategy to move past the midterms â theyâve set their hopes on 2016 for winning back a bulk of the seats they have lost since 2010. The Democratic leadership team gathered lawmakers here for an annual three-day issue retreat designed to bring the party together after three months of post-election shock. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference Wednesday that Democrats will spend the next months outlining how the party would grow paychecks and create security for middle-class voters if they were in the majority. Already, lawmakers like Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are introducing legislation focused on the middle class. âItâs not that the Democrats didnât have a message, itâs that we had too many. The public didnât see the clarity and the focus of the message,â Pelosi said. âIt is going to be a presidential year so we hope to put on the table what we see as the big contrast in the House of Representatives.â Underscoring the partyâs new unity push, two panels Thursday, featuring Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray LujÃ¡n of New Mexico and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, are headlined âWe are in this togetherâ and âCharting a path forward: 2016 and beyond.â